Jose Saca – The Typewriter, the Rifle, and the Movie Camera (Eighth Post)

The Typewriter, the Rifle, and the Movie Camera is a documentary released in 1996 and directed by Adam Simon. The film looks at the life and films of Samuel Fuller, a filmmaker active in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s whose influence inspired directors such as Quentin Tarentino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese, all of whom are interviewed in this film. The film provides a candid look at Fuller through a one-on-one interview with Tim Robbins, who visits Fuller in his home in Paris.

The following post will argue how Simon’s film is both a talking heads and self-reflexive documentary.

Simon’s film sparsely uses narration to guide the viewer through Fuller’s repertoire, which are usually simple films with a muscular, unsubtle bent. These include classics such as Shock Corridor (1963), about an undercover reporter’s descent into madness after faking a mental illness to get an inside story on a mental institution, The Steel Helmet (1951), about a group of American soldiers fighting in the Korean War, and The Big Red One (1980), a semiautobiographical film about the 41^st Division of the United States infantry that fought during the Second World War, of which Fuller was a part of.

Fuller’s film never attracted a big enough audience to make him a household name, but his influence has not gone unnoticed. Talking head interviews with Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch supply a good amount of information on Fuller’s influences in their films. An example of this is in a scene where Martin Scorsese admits to lifting an effect used in The Steel Helmet for a fight sequence in Raging Bull (1980). The referenced scene is when the main character of Zack is fatally wounded and dies a slow, near poetic, death. Scorsese mentions how Fuller used a smoke effect to create disorientation in the scene, as if to suck the audience into the death of their beloved protagonist. He goes on to say how he used this same effect in Raging Bull in one of Jake LaMotta’s many fights with Sugar Ray Robinson by placing flame bars near the camera to create the exact same effect.

Scorsese is not the only talking head active in this film. Independent director Jim Jarmusch talks candidly about his friendship with Fuller. In one particular scene, Jarmusch mentions how, in a particular conversation with the director, Fuller told him how much detested word-of-mouth descriptions on events or occurrences. In Fuller’s view, you were either there or not. And if you weren’t, you have no right to go on talking about any event or occurrence. What Fuller appreciated more than anything else, Jarmusch concludes, is real life experience. Evidence of this is presented at length in Fuller’s films, many of which are semiautobiographical (his war films in particular include events that Fuller actually experienced or saw firsthand when fighting in the Second World War or during his days as a copy boy and crime reporter in New York City).

Simon’s film delves into self-reflexivity when discussing Fuller’s filmic and creative process with the man himself. Fuller, by that time elderly but still active and full of life, tells interviewer Tim Robbins of his start in film, when began when Fuller’s mother sent him a movie camera to capture images when he was in Europe fighting for the US. Fuller’s camera was one of the first to capture the aftermath of the atrocities that occurred in German concentration camps. Footage is shown in the film of bone-thin individuals being nursed to health, while in other sections we see similar looking bodies tossed into what look like burials. Indeed, it’s suitable for Fuller that his start into the filmic foray was no picnic.

Further into the filmic process, Fuller makes parallels between film and journalism. Fuller was a journalist before becoming a filmmaker, so he appreciated the power of simplicity of directness. He compares the power of a close-up to that of a headline, in that both make powerful statements in “bold-faced print.” Fuller furthers this point when discussing a particular scene in The Big Red One. The scene, which features an American soldier stumbling onto a confrontation with a German rifleman in person, creatively uses the close-up to illustrate Fuller’s point on the latter’s impact in film. With both soldiers pointing their rifles at each other, visibly scared, Fuller uses dual close-ups on the eyes of each soldier to illustrate the fear and overall tension embodied in this type of situation. An abrupt cut to the American soldier shows how he scores the shot in the confrontation. In discussing this particular close-up, Fuller goes on to say that the only thing a soldier sees when confronting an enemy gunman are his eyes.

Simon furthers his film into self-reflexivity in scenes shot in Los Angeles involving Tim Robbins and popular director Quentin Tarantino, himself an unabashed Fuller fan. Both visit a garage that stores Fuller memorabilia that includes props from his films (such as THE steel helmet from the film of the same name and bayonets used in the film Fixed Bayonets! (1951)) and equipment he used to make movies, including his very movie camera. Tarentino in particular shows a heartfelt side little seen in the many interviews he’s given in the past, reflecting on past experiences he has going to Sam Fuller films when he was a boy. He particularly references The Steel Helmet and The Big Red One as personal favorites in this segment of the film. Amid digging in the garage, Robbins finds Fuller’s wartime diary, which reads like a cut-up poem that utilizes terse, journalistic language to describe life in a time of war. Both men are indeed at awe when seeing the memorabilia and connecting it to each particular film in Fuller’s repertoire. Unfortunately, Robbins does not mention this visit to Fuller himself in the documentary (perhaps the Paris interviews were shot before the Tarentino section).

Throughout the film, Simon effortlessly uses talking head interviews to inform the viewer about Fuller and his life. At the same time, Simon manages to bring a conscious dialogue on the art of filmmaking by visiting and analyzing the filmmaking process of this great director. The directorial pedigree given by names like Tarentino, Scorsese, and Jarmusch only add to the depth of the documentary’s self-reflexive themes.

Here’s hoping Fuller’s films find a wider audience.

Outfoxed: Darnell Brown

For doc week, I chose to do the political documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Robert Greenwald's film was an examination on Fox News’ somewhat bias approach to presenting the news to the American audience. First I have to say I had to watch this film first in a media class I took last semester so I didn't really think about it in terms of how it presented contemporary ideas as opposed to fictional stories with narrative. It's very clear that this film maker was more concerned with presenting his belief on Murdoch's iron grip on a news conglomerate and how that my scew how news is presented. The production value for starters looked to be in the mid tens of thousands. There were no panning shots of a man overlooking his farm during sunset, there were nice soft mid shots of the people who agreed and assisted Greenwald in presenting his view and then there were harsh, in your face shots of conservatives who made his point. Even the director's choice of editing was used to drive home his viewpoint. When ever a liberal person was on the screen, it was a slow, sympathic pace to make you feel and understand their view, but at one point in the film when Bill O'Riley was arguing with a liberal, the fast paced and harsh close ups during the jump cutting made O'Riley seem like a dick. They cut to each time he had a antagonistic face or yelling. Now I'm not defending Fox news but what I will say is that this film, maybe unknowingly or knowingly did exactly what they accused Fox News of doing. It was very one-sided and that's there job. This film didn't have the enormous budget a film like "The Dark Knight" had so they had to spend every dollar trying to drive home there message. This film went straight to DVD so there were no theatrical considerations taking to make the film "look" like a film.

To be fair, as if late there have been a few commercially viable docs like “Religulous” “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Sicko”. But these films had a much larger production cost and more appeal. The new doc “Religulous” has the famously funny Bill Maher attached to it. He has a show on HBO and had a famous show on ABC, so over course there’s a audience for it just based on his face being on screen. The crew for this film did a lot of research and traveled the world so the images on screen were cinematically more dynamic than what you’d see in “Outfoxed”. Then you add the fact that religion is such a controversial subject that the American audience loves to talk about, so this film was released in limited showings around the country and is now number 7 doc on the year. “An Inconvenient Truth” was about a rising world debate, “Global Warming” and had the famous Al Gore. Of course it was going to win an Oscar and Nobel prize for Gore. Docs like these are easy to pitch to production companies and studios because there’s money to be made off topics like this. American audiences have become much more interested in docs now maybe because of the internet and our overwhelming need to know what’s “really” going on behind closed doors. There will never be the same demand for docs like there are for narratives. We want to be transported to another world more than we want to know the truth…or constructed truth. So that’s why a film like “Outfoxed” had to be released by polictal action group, MoveOn.org and went straight to video. They weren’t trying to make money. They were trying to get you to stop watching Fox News. It was all about making you feel like Fox News is the devil and CNN is the beautiful baby of the news reporting world. And with the archival materials, choice of editing, direction, I feel like Fox News is the devil. So mission accomplished. GO OBAMA!!!

Ferraro- "American Pimp"

"American Pimp"
Hughes Bros.
1999

For "documentary week" I've gone with the film "American Pimp". It was hard to sit there and watch the whole thing without getting horribly offended, but I'll keep my opinions to myself...

This is clearly a “talking heads” documentary, as it relies purely on the interviews of local-known pimps in Chicago or New York. At times, to strengthen a point, the director cuts to a clip from old movies such as “Willie Dynamite” and “The Mack”.

This can also be considered a “propaganda film”, since its entirety focuses on glamorizing the life and styles of a pimp. The only objective views are in the beginning when the director asks the public what they think of pimps. “Sleazy, snaky, [etc.]” they answer, but that’s only for 30 seconds, compared to the 80 minutes of what makes being a pimp so great. At one point, they even show the proud mother of a pimp and how she practically worships her son, decked in trendy clothes, which includes gator-shoes. The whole “sleazy” and “snaky” descriptions are supposedly stereotypes and called “perpetrator pimps” as described by “real pimps”.

Even the women they interview, whom are often called “bitches” and “hos” (which are suppose to considered pet names) explain why they stick around, and how wonderful their pimps are. According to the pimps, the hoes need them like doctors need nurses and priests need nuns... And hos are unable to function themselves, and need their pimps to tell them what to do, where to go, and how to act, and emphasize that women are their “property”.

In such a sensitive issue, I think this film would work better if they had an opposition view and/or ACTUALLY showed that the American pimps are nothing like the “perpetrator pimps.”

The budget seemed somewhat low, as the screen looked rather “fuzzy”, as if it was filmed in the70’s and not ’99.

Theresa Corvino - Monty Python & The Holy Grail

Theresa Corvino
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Dir: Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones

Synopsis: King Arthur puts together his band of men travel on a search for the Holy Grail, overcoming many bizarre arguments.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is quite a mind-numbing rush for the first time viewer. Although the story seems simple, it is told in a random way with little to no structure of the plot line. The journey for the grail seems to run from episode to episode as they meet each individual challenge that relates in no way to the previous challenge.

Many breaks from the story include events such as the random music number when they visit Camelot. This music number lasts for several minutes and then disappears at the end of the scene. There is not a single other music number in the film.

Another surrealistic element in this film was the cartoonish elements like God and the angels and other random elements that appear to interact with the main characters or replace them temporarily in the story.

Another element in this film is paralleling the main story-taking place in the Middle Ages with a modern story-taking place in the modern age. These stories then meet at the end of the film in a totally unrealistic way that ends the film in a very sharp, awkward way.

Many of these avant-garde methods are completely unrealistic and strange but combine to create a unique film that gives Gilliam a style all his own and sets the film and its story apart as exceptional.

Man with a Movie Camera - Brian Herron

Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertzov: 1929 Soviet Union

Brian Herron

In the beginning of the film, Man with a Movie Camera states that it is an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible event.  It then goes on to explain that the film does not contain sets or actors.  It states its main goal of aiming to create an international absolute language of cinema.

The film starts out showing a movie camera in the shot.  Then a small man appears on top of the camera setting up a smaller camera.  This was an early editing technique that Vertzov used placing two pieces of film over each other to create an illusion.  The film then proceeds to show shot of an empty theater and a man setting up a film reel.  Latter on in the scene it shows a crowd filling into the theater.  In this scene, Vertzov uses a motif of showing theater seats flipping down by itself as if the theater were alive and preparing itself for the crowd.  I believe this is to represent people about to watch what is to be shown in the rest of the film.

The film then proceeds to show a woman sleeping in her bed.  Then it starts a montage of some posters in her room and then proceeds to a montage of the town around her and the life that’s going on while she is in bed.  It appears that it is early in the morning because some of the shots have children sleeping in horse carriages.  The man with the movie camera appears again showing him filming in different locations while it cuts back to the woman sleeping in bed.

It then proceeds to showing the woman waking up and cuts to businesses opening up as well, all while the man moves around taking different shots with his camera.  The streets start filling up with people and trolleys are moving around everywhere.  It then goes on to show the soviet working machine, showing a montage of people working in factories.

I believe this film represents people watching the everyday life of their country and uses a series of shots to show this.  It’s as if he is putting a mirror in front of his culture so they can see themselves operating their society.  The films goal of creating an international film language succeeds because as a 21^st century American, I know exactly what’s going on and what the film is trying to achieve.   

Seventh Post - McGuirk

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Directed By: Michel Gondry

This film is about a relationship that going down the tubes. Joel (Jim Carrey) hears from friends that his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), had her memory erased of their relationship. Furious that she did this to him, Joel decides to have the same procedure done. He visits Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) who is the only doctor to perform this revolutionary procedure. The memories erased start from the most recent and work back to the beginning. As it gets further into the process, Joel realizes that he doesn't want to erase Clementine from his memory and he tries to stop it, but ultimately fails. But when the two meet again randomly, not knowing they acutally know the other, the question of the film becomes will they be able to start over.

When I read this section on avant-garde film, this film came to my mind first. It's definitly a movie you have to watch multiple times to be able the understand and catch all the details. What makes it avant-garde is the way it destorts editing, narrative structure, and even clever uses of lighting.

The editing is what makes the film work. The cuts are very random and fast in most parts when several of Joel's memories are being erased consecutively. We go from one action to the next without traditional uses of dissolves, wipes, etc. Sometimes two memories are combined into one. Objects that were in a scene, disappear with clever cutting of the same scene without the object to make it appear that object, or sometimes Clementine, as been erased.

The narrative structure is not your typical beginning, middle, and end, in the sense of consecutive events. The film begins at the end, but we don't know that until the end of the film. It then goes to when Joel is at the beginning of the procedure. The beginning of the procedure takes us through Joel's and Clementine's relationship backwards, since the most recent memories are being erased first. This structure is confusing at first watch, but the more times the film is viewed, the audience can get a sense of how the film is structured and why it's structured this way. (End to middle to beginning to end again). This creates a sense of confusion in the audience, and we feel Joel's confusion and frustration.

The lighting in this film is very interesting. Specifically, I noticed that darkness was a way to communicate something being erased from Joel's memory. An example of this is a memory where Joel and Clementine are in bed and they're talking about when she was little and thought she was ugly. She starts to disapear and Joel follows a spot light under the sheets to try and stay in the light in order to hold on to the memory. In a montage of several memories happening and being erased. Joel is leading Clementine out of the darkness and viewing some of their memories that are light with a spotlight that quickly turns to darkness.

These three elements are examples of how this film is a great example of avant-garde film.

Grizzly Man- Anisha Payne

Grizzly Man is a documentary exploring the life of Timothy Treadwell through his footage. Timothy Treadwell recorded himself and his experience living in the environment of grizzly bears. Timothy's purpose of this video diary was to get people to understand that if one would create a bond between a grizzly bear then they wouldn't want to kill animals for their fur.

This film would be considered a Self-Reflective, and Narrative Documentary because it follows the story of Timothy to his death. The cause and effect rule applies to this documentary because if Timothy created these video diaries of his experience with the grizzlies then his message wouldn't have been portrayed that strong. In the end, Timothy died trying to protect the lives of the grizzly bears. Because Timothy was so confident in his theory of becoming a bear in order to get to know them, he died because of it. This documentary was also a Sefl-Reflective piece due to Timothy's continuous diaries of his day. 'Grizzly Man' is a Narrative Documentary because the doc. tells another message beneath Timothy's initial message.

I found that this documentary had a very balanced perspective to his decisions. For instance, the audience got a look through Timothy's perspective, various people that don't agree with his cause, some that has the same feelings towards animals and those that were for him until his death. Throughout the documentary their was a narrator to help direct the documentary to its destination. Their were some talking heads, but majority of the film was b-roll footage.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "No More Workhorse Blues": Reviewed by Davis Rivera

In his 2004 short film “No More Workhorse Blues,” commissioned for the artist Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, writer/director Harmony Korine attempts and succeeds in telling a bizarre story while putting an indirect focus on the abstract qualities of the film images by exploring one particular technical aspect of film, stop motion. Korine made this film in the hope of administering a deeper sense of patience in his audience by strictly relying on the power of images, but in a redefining way. Watching Korine’s entire body of work before coming to what I consider his masterpiece, I always felt that he was attempting to portray himself as a convoluted expressionist; something I always admired and tried to remember before viewing his work. The thing is, he is right in thinking of himself in such a way; he is a man with a hundred different ideas, all of them bad. In his work with the notorious photographer/filmmaker Larry Clark, the rawness of Clark’s aesthetic pasted Korine’s vision amongst the pages of Thrasher and the repellent empty-headedness of Ed Templeton’s pieces. This was clear even before the completed cut was made available of Clark’s still unreleased in the United States, “Ken Park,” featuring a script by Korine. His two feature-lengths, “Gummo” and “julien donkey-boy,” are perfect examples of the sum of a film’s parts being better than the whole. Individual shots found in the film are frequently sensational, but not frequent enough to add up to much. “No More Workhorse Blues,” however, is a skillful avant-garde film completely realized, inspired, and, at the time, destined to bring back a fascination in experimental and difficult films that has been lacking for decades. Korine manages to match the multifaceted richness of the song with a juggernaut of a film. A sweet dystopian universe, simultaneously intensely delicious and to the same degree, inducing a certain nausea.

The film begins without any hesitation of what it is determined to be. There is a shot of a man with over-sized dollar bill glasses holding a tennis racket in front of him while a racquet ball seemingly floats in the air above it and a lethargic painted woman with a white wig and dress is embraced by the man’s arm. Every shot in the entire film is stop motion and each isolated image appears on the screen for about five seconds before moving on to the next one. This kind of scrutiny was familiar to me having seen Korine’s previous work but never before has he ever attempted to smash the conventional qualities of a film so ruthlessly without presenting any proper guide to the viewer to help them reassemble the pieces. One of the most startling sequences in the film occurs a few seconds later as the painted woman is depicted as the one holding the racquet while the ball lays fallen on the floor. Her arms are arched in an almost Diskobolos-like formation and one is reminded of Korine’s earlier short film “Sunday,” featuring a team of ballerinas. Seconds after the arched dance is completed, a blurred image of the painted woman is seen, made all the more apparent due to the racquetball court she is in being completely white. There is a sense of trepidation in her eyes as Korine cuts to a shot of the man in the glasses approaching her from behind. Due to the repetition found in this sequence, the viewer is allowed to stop and think without the interference of other characters, and acquire certain thoughts. Namely, a sense of uneasiness at the abstract images appearing on screen in unbelievably saturated colors creating a sense of looking at the characters through a foggy piece of glass that has been positioned to constantly project a glare into the viewer’s eyes.

Whether an image means the same thing to viewers when it is paired with an unlikely soundtrack is an important thing to consider when the viewer gets about thirty seconds into the film. Will Oldham (the real name of the man behind Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), in his clear, countrified voice sings, “I am in stitches, I am laughing at you,” as the painted woman appears to attempt to teach the man in glasses to properly serve the ball. These interspersing images are contrasted with various shots of the man apparently in a rage, bringing to mind the controversy over the March 2008 cover of “Vogue” magazine featuring LeBron James and Giselle Bündchen. Though just as the viewer is inspired to one thought, Korine jump cuts to a shot of the two characters embracing each other. Once this is finished we are once again projected to the beginning image of the woman teaching the man how to serve and we follow a disjointed pattern culminating in the man with his arms outstretched and apparently screaming, in an almost artfully lit shot fading into the bleached out mise-en-scene. Bringing the viewer back into a mode of thinking, Korine presents a shot of the painted woman eating a Popsicle in an extreme close-up shot. The alert viewer will, at this moment, overhear Oldham sing, “I held my own for you, Where is my tongue?” as the shot cuts to a high-angled long shot of the woman holding a bouquet of roses next to a lawn full of rubbish. Here, Oldham’s lyrics serve as a powerful indicator of mood and a turning point in the direction of the film, also made aware by the shot’s mise-en-scene no longer making use of bleach bypass printing. The first usage of saturated color, though still predominately pale of hue, combined with the striking image of the painted woman holding roses next to a disgusting lawn, while remembering the line, “I held my own for you,” all add up to a moment that captures the essence of the song’s beauty without having a character say one line of dialogue.

Korine is so adept at the usage of stop motion that he almost brings a certain element of practicality to the film once the wedding scene begins. Many have compared Korine’s film to “La Jetée,” by the French filmmaker Chris Marker, but this is an unfair distinction. Marker is innovative in his use of still photographs and voice-over as the two central elements of his film, but Korine, having no voice-over and only the words of someone else to work with, is the greater revolutionary simply for not allowing these obstacles to overcome his vision the way his younger and less experienced self permitted Larry Clark to do.

Not content to let the viewer become comfortable with the way the film is progressing, Korine follows the bouquet-holding bride for, thus far, the longest sequence in the film and stops with an unfamiliar technique not yet used. The woman’s face is contorted to drift in a circular pattern while her wide gaze is fixated off-screen to create an alarming eyeline match. Korine makes the spatial relationship clear to the audience and guides the viewer through the woman’s thought process as he cuts to a medium shot of the man from earlier, shirtless and atop a ceramic horse, addressing the title of the film. The woman attempts to get onto one of the horses but the shirtless man, no longer wearing the dollar bill glasses either, does not attempt to help her. Instead, he flexes for the camera as a long road is seen behind him. The experience of seeing this shot is, undoubtedly, troubling for some in an attempt to make sense of what Korine is trying to get across to his viewer, but this shot in particular struck me as the closest to creating a cohesive moment in summating the painted woman’s role in the film. As I mentioned before, directly behind the man is a road but even closer to the man is the second horse seen in the previous shot as the woman attempted to sit on it. Though she is no longer in the shot at all, Korine does make a noticeable attempt to get it in the shot by shifting the camera lens to the left, placing the horse at an important focal point in the background barely visible due to the man’s swelling biceps. As we look past the horse and see the road, we’re reminded of Oldham’s two-line delivery at the beginning of the song, heard while the woman taught the man how to serve, “What is this road here? Where have I come?” This kind of synchronization, once again, assures Korine’s genius at breaking boundaries by bringing in the exact opposite of what an avant-garde film is known to feature: a character that we can sympathize with.

If the viewer has stayed with Korine this long, he offers a reward by bringing in a third character, an elderly man with a dog held by a leash, seen in a medium shot. The man is hunched over but is smiling at something off-screen. In another great use of the eyeline match, the painted woman is now seen apparently dancing by him, while he unassumingly stands by not paying attention to her at all. Instead, he raises his right hand in a gesture similar to one hailing a taxi. Korine cuts to a close-up shot of the old man and, in contrast with the previous image we have of him, he is now frowning while the painted woman’s hand is seen approaching his shoulder in an ominous way. No harm was intended, however, as we see her now petting the man’s dog as he embraces it in a loving way. Shortly after, she attempts to get his attention, to no avail, as he again resumes his original position of a man hailing a taxi. The sequence ends with an extreme long shot of the woman seen through two interlocking branches. This jumble of discordant images seems frustrating, but then, if you stay with it, a pattern soon emerges from the jumble as the next scene depressingly proves. Oldham’s music, at this moment of the film, has been raised to an almost unbearable volume as he screams out (with the help of a haunting background singer), “I am no more workhorse,” over and over. While this is heard, the woman, now alone, lights a cigarette in a close-up and appears unusually tall compared to the tree standing behind her. Korine now shows the woman in an extreme long shot standing on a bucket with a rope around her neck. Having already determined the emotional intensity of the scene by way of the song, Korine lets the actress play out her fate as she eventually hangs herself and dies alone with a beautiful white home in the background, contrasting violently with the garbage-strewn house seen earlier while she held her bouquet of roses. Paying homage to the man responsible for the ethereal song heard throughout the film, Korine cuts to Oldham sitting in an easy chair, wearing an orange jumpsuit, as the lyrics proclaim, “I am your favorite horse, I am your favorite horse.” This scene is duly important, as it is the only time in the entire film that Korine does not use stop motion. Oldham looks blandly into the camera, smiles, and Korine cuts the film to black, not bothering to add any credits at all, perhaps as a gesture to his former days as a Dogme 95 member.

Whether the man with the dog was meant to be her uninterested father or the man with the glasses was meant to be her fiancée, Korine never informs the viewer but, by crafting this story while putting an indirect focus on the abstract qualities of the film images by exploring one particular technical aspect of film, stop motion, Korine has more than fulfilled his goal in making a film in the hope of administering a deeper sense of patience in his audience by strictly relying on the power of images. He also succeeds in creating a thought-provoking sensual and aesthetic experience while simultaneously making, undoubtedly, conventionally beautiful images and a main character with depth rich enough to carry an entire film. By not obeying the rules of narrative form, Korine has evoked sympathy rather than scorn. One should want to help expand this increasingly discarded genre of filmmaking, not destroy it. A paradox, considering that is exactly what Korine has spent his entire career doing.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Isaac Richter

One of my favorite films of all time explores what happens inside a person's mind while he's asleep, and the way that director Michel Gondry explores these images is by de-constructing time, distorting images, un-synchronizing sound and taking the characters to places that don't make sense. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the story of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, at his subdued best), a very reserved man who just broke up with his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet, manic, like we never saw her before). A few days later, he tries to win her back, but he finds out that she had him erased from her memory. Joel finds out about this company called Lacunna Inc, run by Dr. Howard Mirzwieak (Tom Wilkinson). What his procedure does is give people who have gone through bad break-ups a chance to start over by erasing that relationship from their memories, so Joel decides he wants to have it done.
The film plays with time a lot. Before we even hear of Lacunna Inc, we get a scene in which two men, who we later find out are the mechanics from Lacunna Inc, go into Joel's apartment to start the procedure. The next scene involves Joel talking to his friends, Rob and Carrie, and he tells them about how he tried to win Clementine back by going to the bookstore where she works with a gift, but when she saw him, she acted like she didn't know him. The way we cut out of this scene and back to Rob and Carrie's house is very unusual. Joel walks down the aisles of the bookstore, and the lights go out one by one in the bookstore, and then Joel turns around and we realize he's already back with his friends. This trick lets us know that we're already inside his mind. We don't realize it until we learn about Lacunna, but when you think about, you realize that this is a memory that needed to be erased, and Charlie Kaufman (the screenwriter) along with Michel Gondry (the director) included this scene to occur inside his mind, as well as give us information on the plot.
Throughout the film, there are other tricks such as this one that remind us we're inside Joel's mind. There's a scene in which Joel and Clementine are in bed inside Joel's mind, in a memory that Lacunna is not supposed to erase, and then they end up, with the bed, on the beach, which is something unusual. There's also a scene in which they're lying on a frozen lake, Joel is saying how he could die right now, and then Clementine disappears along with the lake, and he's in a street instead. All of these tricks lead Joel from one memory to another, and all of these memories are disappearing.
There are also very interesting tricks done with sound. For example, there's a scene in which Joel and Clementine are walking down the flea market, and they start arguing about having a baby. Joel decides to step away from Clementine while she keeps rambling about whether she would be a good mother or not, and we realize that what Clementine is saying is not in synch with her lip movements. This trick is employed, right before the scene turns to a different scene, telling us that this memory is being erased. Other scenes that defy convention are scenes with Joel as a little boy, in which he's still played by Jim Carrey. This one scene in which he supposed to be 4 years old, but he's still this adult in pajamas, hiding under the table. Then there's a scene in which he's pressured by some school bullies to kill a bird, and he gives in. This scene later turns into a long take that follows a little girl and little boy who are supposed to be Joel and Clementine, and we hear their adult voices talking over these images. And then we finally see their faces, we see that they're actually the kids talking with those voices, even though what they say is not in synch with their lip movements, it corresponds with their actions, including a mom watching Joel trying to sophocate Clementine, they tell they're just playing.
This distortion of images, including books disappearing in the bookstore, and sounds being out of sink, is a way to re-create how our memories work. Whenever we look inside our mind, images don't always appear the way real life does, and out memory is not always reliable. Maybe the out-of-synch dialogue is dialogue that Joel remembers in a different way than it actually happened, and it's not in synch with what Clementine said, because she never actually said it. Or maybe he's just filling it in, because he's not watching Clementine while he says it, so he's probably trying to fill in the way Clementine would look saying those words. The memories that are the clearest to him are the good memories, the ones he likes to remember, the ones he wants to remember, and the ones he wants to forget are distorted and out of synch. We don't always see inside our minds the way we see the real world, and because most of this film happens inside a person's mind, it's distorted. It resorts back to a traditional narrative when it's outside Joel's mind, even though in any ocassions, the outside interacts with the inside (when Joel hears that one of the technicians is now dating Clementine for example). It's avant-garde in the way it assembles it' camera-tricks, special effects and images to create a world that we all see, but we don't all share, or can even explain, and in this film, we see a company whose job is to go into this world and manipulate it, so we go into this world as well, and tr to understand it along with the characters, and that's what I feel makes this an avant-garde film. It becomes a surrealist film, since what we see inside our mind is surreal. Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter who plays with the surreal by bringing audiences into people's minds, including actor John Malkovich's mind and his own, but with this film, we finally get a true feeling of what it is to see someone's thoughts and memories while they're being manipulated.

Jose Saca – Trio – “Da Da Da” Music Video (Seventh Post)

I choose to make this week’s post a little different from past entries because we’re dealing with alternatives to narrative with an emphasis on avant-garde and experimental features within the medium of film. That being said, this week’s entry will be on a music video by the German band Trio for their novelty hit “Da Da Da,” which was originally released and made into a video back in 1982 but used in the early ‘00s for a Volkswagen commercial, where it became a modest novelty hit for a second time. The video does not have a credited director.

Among other things, this post will argue that Trio’s video can be classified as a piece of surrealist cinema similar to that of Rene Clair and Luis Bunuel in that it’s “rife with humor, sexuality, and scandalous images… [that] vigorously mock narrative form” (Pramaggiore, Wallis, 294-295). I will also add how the video, like its surrealist predecessors, rebels against conventional narrative but establishes its own voice through a postmodernist self-awareness that may well be ahead of its time.

One may scoff at the assumption that a music video by a German one-hit wonder band can be classified as surrealist cinema. Contrary to what one may think, music videos often do employ narratives similar to those found in mainstream American films. A good example of this is Chris Cunningham’s video for Squarepusher’s 1997 single “Come on My Selector,” which follows a little Japanese girl’s revenge and eventual escape from a futuristic mental institution at the hands of an evil orderly and doctor. Trio’s video, however, opts for a more playful, near-absurdist vibe, thus extracting its surrealism from the way it toys with the viewers expectations of what a “real” music video should look like. The video largely abandons the typical narrative to music and/or filmed performance that would become popular years later by Duran Duran and Bon Jovi by giving the viewer multiple versions of “reality” during the length of its screen time, thereby undermining the self-contained reality we as an audience are supposed to accept when viewing a filmic work of art. For instance, the video, which largely takes place in a German pub, includes the non-synchronized playing of a bar band (decades older than the band were at the time the video’s release) playing music that is not heard (and does not reflect the content of the music of the video itself) during the video and features members of the band Trio appearing in the bar and in the television set that plays a cheaply set-up performance of the band playing video’s song (in a cheap black-and-white television, no less). This, coupled with the darkly comedic stabbing of a waitress at the same pub (who, after being stabbed, appears on the television screen next to Trio lip-synching to the chorus while blood spurts out her mouth) are among the many absurd and nearly surreal occurrences that happen during the video’s three minute and twenty-seven second length of time.

The video freely jumps from the grainy color of its diegesis to the static-y black-and-white of the television screen that plays Trio’s performance. The video begins with a shot of that television screen, which contains Trio’s lead vocalist, in profile with his left cheek to the audience. His eyes are closed in a pretentious, self-aggrandizing manner, as if he is waiting for some fictional audience to calm down as he prepares for the next song. He holds this look for six seconds before saying the songs opening lines: “Uh huh/Uh huh/Uh huh.” The singer proceeds to turn and look at the viewer before being cut off by a shot of the German pub that will house the madness taking place for the rest of the song’s length. As we are integrated with the environment of the pub, the audience is quickly taken out of its element when the band, appearing on the television screen performing their supposed hit single, are at the same time seen lounging with pub patrons, knocking down a few drinks. I took this as a parallel between the established reality of celebrity and that of the real thing (the band performing a “hit song” on television while enjoying a few drinks just like anybody else). The video, it seems, is aware that it’s a work of art, and does not want the audience to lose itself in the piece.

Trio’s music video freely intersperses postmodernist asides throughout (postmodernism is “a style conscious of itself and of its history and in which form becomes content” (“Tristram Shandy and the Death Knell of Post Modernism”)) to fully establish the distance between a work of art and the reality it inhabits. A good example of this is singer Stephan Remmler’s constant looks at the camera, with a wry smile no less, during his own scenes at the pub, as if he’s winking at the audience and letting them in on the joke that this is all just a video. Further evidence of this is Remmler’s addressing of the diegetic world via his presence on the black-and-white television screen. He looks to down and to the left while singing verses of the song and looks at the viewer as well, thus addressing the reality of the film and the one it inhabits.

Further commenting on sexuality, the video features a controversial scene (censored during the “Max Headroom” show’s screening of the video) that features Remmler smacking a waitress on the behind, followed by her giving him the finger, followed by one of the band members throwing a butter knife at her back that stabs her. This cuts to the waitress character, now seen on the black-and-white television screen and singing along to the song while blood spurts out her mouth. She teasingly spits blood out as if to playfully hit the audience over the head with the fact that this is just fake blood. With scenes like this one, the video constantly tests the limits between tastefulness and art by using images that an ordinary viewer would certainly classify as sexist or misogynist.

Trio’s video challenges the viewer to accept its absurdity as logic, to take it for its word, before ending with a playful party where everyone in the band and pub get on the dance-floor and together have a celebratory boogie to the song’s final seconds. I viewed this section of the video as a celebration of the freedom and ennui one feels when challenging, or simply rebelling against, the artistic and societal norms established by narrative mainstream cinema. Or perhaps it’s just the band having fun and messing around during the video shoot. Either way, it may or may not make sense after viewing, but by the time the video’s over, you know you’ve seen an original filmic work of art.

It’s rare for a conventionally narrative film to let the audience in on the joke. It’s for this reason that I believe Trio’s music video for “Da Da Da” does, in its own way, classify as a piece of experimental film, with its emphasis on rebellion towards narrative and playfulness with reality and sexuality tilting it towards the surrealist form.