Week of 11/10 - To the Wonder

1) I'm really stunned by the process of this film. I'm very happy that I learned the very experimental and "natural" extent of Malick's filmmaking on this project before going into it, because it really helped me understand the way that the product felt to watch. I feel like this process and its being so distant from Hollywood narrative film really informed the film; avoiding scripts and marks and Malick's writing the narration after looking at the footage feels a lot like reality/memory. We look back on our own lives and we see moments and passage of time but very few specifics or actual conversations. On top of that, we prescribe thought and emotion onto our pasts that are more informed by our current states than the realities of the situation. The film felt like the visualization of the memories of a relationship and the thoughts accompanying that reflection, rather than a realistic depiction of things as they objectively happened.
2) The film felt very long, and between that and it's feeling already a little schizophrenic, I don't think that the product was entirely successful or pleasant to watch. What surprised me about my viewing experience, though, was that I burst into tears for a lot of the scenes with Rachel McAdams. While watching that section of the film, not only was I so impressed by both McAdams' performance and her character's story/presence, but I found myself reflecting on what it means to love someone in a very real way...and then to not love them anymore. This section didn't provide any insight for me on that topic, but I thought about it and something about contemplating that truth through McAdams' character made me very emotional.
3) David Sterritt's reading discussed how Malick films ponder how filmmaking can be less of a recreation/representation and more of an organic product, and I know, after learning about the production, that this organic was striven for; but also felt it in the product and how, to me at least, it represented this inaccuracy of memory in a way that seems inherently in conflict with notions of representation that are expected in Hollywood cinema. Sterritt also discussed Malick's contemplation of the validity and "naturalness" of human emotion, and I think this is why I got emotional during the Rachel McAdams scene; we didn't judge (I don't think) Ben Affleck's character for falling in love with someone else, but saw it as a process that happened unexpectedly.

Week of 11/3 - Mother and Son

1) I loved the mildly-surreal formal innovations in Mother and Son. I noticed the painting on the glass immediately and found myself looking for its effect in every shot. The warping effect I liked less, in that I felt that the blurry vignette effect was much more tonally effective--almost felt like watching the film with your eyes welled up with tears--than the structural distortion, which for me didn't add much to the piece. The sound was also great; I remember while watching the scene near the end where the son is alone in the forest and thinking about how clear every step he took was, but there was no noise besides that, and thought that moment in many ways articulated the experience as it was taking place inside his head.
2) I had to pee really badly when I was watching this film, so focusing on the ways that it formally experimented kept me excited. One shouldn't have to feel the need to be excited or entertained while watching a film like this, but it kept me a little bit more still in my seat when I was really squirming. That being said, I didn't want to just get up and go: for one, I had completely lost perception of time while watching this film, and I didn't know if time was moving really quickly or really slowly but every time I thought about getting up and going I thought that perhaps it was almost the end and that I would miss it. Again, not that the entertainment or the plot structure was vitally important, but I ultimately wanted the full experience and opted to be uncomfortable and a little distracted rather than missing part of the "journey" the film takes you on.
3) I'm not totally sure, after reading Schrader's piece, that I could identify if a film was or was not connected with the transcendental; though I appreciate his philosophy on the essence that filmmaking can articulate in a very special way. When he discusses style, I feel that Mother and Son gives a very heartfelt and genuine illustration of the things that he said these films contemplate, such as the mystery of existence and questioning "conventional interpretations of reality." There was a lot of mystery in this film, but not in the way we usually think of mystery as something ominous or to be solved. Rather, it waded in this mystery of intense spiritual connection with another person, and how that can be "isolating" in a way that is difficult to think analytically about, difficult to reduce down to words like "good" or "bad." Navigating into these connections is kind of magical; the world can truly melt away into one landscape, one color palette, one dialect, etc. when you invest your self toward the wellbeing of someone else.

Week of 10/6 - Asparagus

1) I loved the art in Pitt's Asparagus. The potential for physical surrealism, in sets melting together and abstraction of space in general, I feel was fully recognized in an animated platform. There is also a potential in animation for more specific/endless set design, and something in this film I found especially gripping was the color red which, to me, signaled an impenetrable femininity. While there were traces of the feminine (and masculine) loaded into nearly every image, I found the red in this film to represent the female as her own breed, completely separate from that of the male, in that of her subordination: the manicured red lips and nails of the woman as a sexualized animal; as well as of her biology: the red flowers as the menstruating woman's bloodied labia.
2) Incorporating sexuality into art is something that has been very important to myself as an artist, and this was an interesting experience for me as I am not an animator/2D artist, but work for and write live-action films. There is so much leeway in art outside of the photographic human image, as literal (or acted, but nonetheless human) representation gets close to actual sex in a way that makes people uncomfortable. This film reminded me of how I saw the bare asses of cartoon characters on children's television, played as a joke; but you would certainly never see naked human flesh on any children's program.
3) The repetition of action/space and the protagonist's clearly feminine facelessness reminded me of Deren, and it was interesting to read Mayne and see her draw parallels between the two films' representation of the female body in the male world. A connection she didn't make, but that resonated with me, was when she spoke of the presence of the male in Meshes of the Afternoon as "return to order" and as a stark distinction from the dream/feminine space. I found a similar masculine presence in Asparagus, but one that was less on/off and more intertwined: the harsh, rigid, phallic asparagus: still vegetable, but nonetheless disruptive of the graceful order of the garden behind the curtain; the blue of the protagonist's coat, conversely, blends into the coldness of the male-centric city, but nonetheless bears a softness and catches the wind in a way that brings out these store fixtures' harsh, uninterrupted masculinity.

Week of 9/29 - The Fall of the House of Usher

1) Though Melville Webber and J.S. Watson's editing techniques in The Fall of the House of Usher are extremely bold and kaleidoscopic in a way that is impressive not only for its time, but also were unlike anything else I've ever seen--save a few other films we watched during this screening--I was actually most impressed by the camera work in the film. I am amazed by the shots that comprise hallucinogen-like compositions, and even just the framing in some of the more static shots at the beginning. The canted angles and eerily endless motion on more abstracted shots really impressed me, even if the overall effect sometimes felt like too much.
2) I wasn't aware of the short story that this film was based off of, so I didn't pick up on the potentially really frightening narrative, and simultaneously felt distracted by not understanding who people are or being able to tell them apart once things got more distorted. Now knowing a little bit about what the narrative is based off of, the gradual increase of abstraction, superimposition and expressionist-like text as death asserts its presence in the house is really fascinating.
3) Although this film is in no way a depiction of dance and it's animation is limited to the text, Horak's analysis of Danse Macabre helped me get a grip on Webber and Watson's film. Horak spoke a lot of the presence of the masculine experience and of nature in both this film and American avant-garde at large; while that didn't resonate with me at all in any of the films we watched during this screening, other technical and thematic elements of Danse Macabre rang familiar: a simple set that brings out the abstract elements that it chases, while simultaneously attempting to bring across a complex melodramatic narrative. The expressionist-like animation, formal innovations, and layered exposures brings a narrative into something much different, but also different from other breeds of avant-garde we've examined, like nonrepresentational and surrealist films.

Week of 9/22 - Le Sang d'un Poète

Our readings only briefly describing surrealism and my previous understanding of surrealist cinema being David Lynch wholly unprepared me for Le Sang d'un Poète. I really enjoyed everything we screened this week, but that film absolutely blew me away; it was one of the most fascinating, beautiful things I've watched in so long, and it surprises me how apathetic many of my peers are about it. I found it interesting to compare this film to two specific elements of the readings: in Le Grice the notion of the decline of religion in art and worldview, and the subsequent turn to observation; and in Baldwin the notion of surrealism as a overthrowing authority and reinventing the self.

A common thread throughout this film, that ties in with those notions, was a divine view of the human. The film is bookended by two men, one white and one black, whose beautiful, near-perfect bodies are quite exposed as they take upon godlike tasks. The artist at the beginning finds himself in turmoil; unable to deal with the fact that, through art, he is God. He creates life, albeit unintentionally. To me this scene speaks interestingly about religion, in that there's a skepticism of divinity's intentions or even existence. His race speaks to the flaws in the Western, whitewashed, Christian interpretation of creationism. 

Conversely, the black "guardian angel" at the end appears, unnoticed, just to salvage and heal; to absorb the literal negativity of the dead child, and to right the cheating player's wrongs. This speaks of the unexpected, deeply-hidden truths of our fates and morality; salvation exists, but it is not in the form of God, as there is not God; there is only man. Goodness, therefore, cannot exist without violence and destruction, as they are an essential part of humanity.

Week of 9/15 - Strike

Strike was a film that, as I mentioned in class, meant something very different to me upon this second viewing. Although on this second viewing I was much more engaged and understood the pacing of the film better, the same images stuck out to me both times. While, upon this viewing, I appreciated much more thoroughly the cinematography and the general representation of proletariat experience, I felt most intrigued by Eisenstein’s message of purity versus corruption. I feel that Eisenstein illustrated this through two sets of figures: the cherubic child juxtaposed against his father and his murderer, and the baby animals against the slaughtering of the cats and bull.

While these images were not ever pitted against each other in the edit in literal montage, I do think that there’s still some element of “intellectual montage” used here. In his essay, Eisenstein fleshes out (or attempts to? I find this essay somewhat incomprehensible, but maybe that’s just me) how all art is derived from conflict, and how a viewer interprets meaning from conflicting concepts. Eisenstein’s note that this can be present in edit, cinematography or stage design, or even in character psychology points to this further. Both times I watched Strike the appearance of frolicking animals was a welcome reprise in such a dark industrial film, and their soft, carefree image made the appearance of dead cats and a slaughtered bull that much more horrifying. Similarly, the arc of the blonde child’s relationship with his striking father and the abuse he faced as the strike dragged on shows, to me, two things: first being the innocence that is lost upon being exploited by the bourgeois, and the second being the stark contrast between the purity and acceptance of the young proletariat, and the disgusting corruption of the businessmen.

Week of 9/8 - Expressionism and Caligari

Our viewing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the second time I'd watched the film. I wasn't excited to watch it again, as sitting through it in 272 (over two years ago) was a total bore, but I actually let go and rode with the experience this time, in a way that I previously resisted. There is one theme that especially stuck with me: the emphasis on sleep, and similarly what I can only think to describe as the "heaviness" of the several scenes showing characters in their beds. Kracauer wrote of the heightened architecture of the film in relation to tyrannical authority, as in the towering furniture in the police station and the asylum, but didn't mention this concept in the domestic setting. To me, at least, there's something so dense about the architecture of their rooms; the blankets looked heavy and all-enveloping, emphasizing a false sense of safety that actually leads to entrapment. The rooms themselves heavily contrasted in light and shadow, even in, supposedly, the middle of the night. This lighting visually carves out the irony of these character's faux sanctuaries, in spirit of Kracauer's note, and general knowledge, of the light and set-dressing in expressionism representing the internal state.

On the other hand, Cesare sleeps in a coffin, which furthers this representation, and also furthers Kracauer's note of Cesare as the victim of corrupt authority. His sleep is interrupted by forced violence, and, although he doesn't sleep in the state of ominous heaviness of his victim's, he also doesn't get any sense of safety or comfort, even if false. Sleeping in a coffin represents a deadening of the soul and of free will. He no longer has the basic semblance of safety and pleasure of those who haven't been exploited by (or perhaps even just disillusioned from?) the system of power. Being in this position is dangerous, but also has a certain element of comfort with it.