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Beat Halloween: Sidney Peterson's The Cage and The Potted Psalm (Shauna)

I believe there are two sorts of moods conjured up at Halloween, and they are both tied to anxiety. The first involves lust for gore, fright, heart palpitations and being generally unnerved. Films in this vein do not necessarily have to reach the gruesome, cathartic extremes of Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Hooper) or Silence of the Lambs (1991, Demme), although they may. What matters is not so much the content, but that the filmic form of that content effectively manipulates emotions. The mood (primal insecurity, agitation, pure fear) need not be connected to cannibalism. The same primitive human angst can be exploited through a variety of genres, including the slasher, psychological thriller, horror and even war films. What they share are momentary or prolonged emotionally manipulative sequences. I’m thinking of the gripping feeling Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock) evokes as Scottie, in an awkward sweaty panic, follows Madeline up the campanile at San Juan Bautista. Or, channeled through more grotesque visual language, the shots of Leatherface’s kitchen littered with animal skeletons, feathers and detritus; the icebox containing the body of his teenage victim in Massacre.

The second type of mood connected to Halloween is slightly more cerebral. The main driving question for this mood is not “What is the capacity for others to wreck violence against me?” but rather, “How far do I have to venture to detect the truly bizarre and unfamiliar within the familiar?” Anxiety is still a factor here, for we have to make the conscious decision to set aside normalcy, congruence and linear thought. If the slasher film relies on visceral responses and our most primal human fears, then surrealist and experimental films challenge our intellectual pursuit of narrative progression, reason, meaning and causality. Sometimes none of these exist, and sometimes they exist only to very small degrees. So experimental films are unnerving, not because they threaten our corporeal security, but because they problematize the conventional ways in which we think about the world.

Of the two Halloween “moods,” I believe the second is more difficult to achieve. Or at the very least, the industry has invested less time and fewer resources into its development. Hollywood is quite good at exploiting our instinctual, animal-like need for security. It is slightly less adept at illuminating the absurd. So, while films that agitate, terrorize or unnerve are not the exclusive purview of mainstream media, movies that venture —even briefly— into the surreal and avant-garde are generally treated as art cinema. Nevertheless, I would argue that these sorts of films are essential viewing at Halloween! Gore alone is insufficient. We also need a dose of the slightly strange — not supernatural, and not wholly divested from the objects and spaces of everyday life, but the distorted anatomy, jarring stop-action, and the playful conglomeration of store windows, shabby things for sale, reflected pedestrians and bifurcated vehicles. I’m advocating that all of you sit down and watch two shorts: The Cage (1947) and The Potted Psalm (1946), both by filmmaker and beat poet Sidney Peterson.

I first came across Peterson in Art Cinema, which classifies his work as surrealist. The point of that movement, according to Young and Duncan, was to "reestablish links with the 'primal mind.'"¹ I would argue there is no more appropriate time than All Hallows Eve to reaffirm such a connection.

The Cage and The Potted Psalm function as a nice pair, diverging subtly in the mood, but also complementing each other. Viewed together, they provide excursions (amusingly absurd in The Cage and somewhat more ominous, though still not ghoulishly so, in Psalm) into the unfamiliar side of seemingly normal people, interactions and material things. In The Cage, Peterson establishes a surprisingly coherent visual language reminiscent of the Soviets' Kino Eye. He warps and distorts images, spins the lens across axes of symmetry, collapses space and captures pedestrians navigating San Francisco backwards. Surveillance is a motif that permeates both shorts. In Cage it is articulated explicitly: an escaped eyeball rolls, maneuvers, appears and disappears along the California streets and around an amusement park, spawning a protracted chase. What we perceive as a narrative progression perhaps makes The Cage more digestible than Psalm, but the internal logic of Cage is also undercut by the existence of the protagonist's alternate personas, and the wrought-iron spiraling bird cage that encloses his head.

Peterson also seems to communicate a fascination with the threshold between life and death. Resurrection is suggested almost continuously throughout the film. For instance, early on, cooked ducks in Chinatown windows are juxtaposed with live pigeons. The film also constructs an indeterminate space which could arguably function as a world for the living or the dead. Cars and people move in reverse, as though sleepers moving through a dream. The carnival space becomes doubly unnerving as its visitors and rides predominately move in reverse. The physics of rotating rides and bullet-like cars tunneling through space seem simultaneously graceful and precarious, and the odd forward running march of the group chasing the detached eye connotes them as social misfits. To us, they look both militaristic and hilarious.

As weird as things get, they never stray too far from an inner documentary basis. True, a man may lose an eye, butter his bread with fresh oil paints, and inhabit different bodies, one of which buries itself in the sand. But at its core, the short investigates the possibilities of the absurd built into the textures of everyday life. A female thief who steals a bundle of onions strikes us as odd as the male companion threatening to shoot the stray eyeball with a rifle (and later a dart). The two become nearly interchangeable. They both characterize what we possibly fear most about ourselves: that we are driven not by rational thought, but by instinctual, even animalistic inclinations.

If The Cage strikes contemporary viewers as "playful," then The Potted Psalm is notably less tame. Clownish makeup, graveyards populated by tropical flora instead of the typical hemlocks, and distorted women all render gothic horror motifs slightly exotic. Whole sequences seem devoted to the "body mischievous," a theme communicated through elongated limbs, goiter-like necks and mannerist torsos. Things get stranger as the film progresses: most notably, women submerged and abandoned imply the aftermath of violence, but not the violent acts themselves. Yet, even in Psalm, Peterson exercises great restraint. He does not manipulate viewers, or at least he does so subtly, so that we feel we have come to all the conclusions on our own. At the film's closure, a woman runs a considerable length, shot at variable distances. She stumbles, yet persists, and this time the hilarity of the small steps and brisk cadence that characterized the chase in The Cage is replaced with a sense of urgency. The force that pursues her is imperceptible; the lack of dialogue or even other humanity is acutely felt. And whenever she is captured in a frame with another human form, it is only herself, superimposed and dissolving briefly on an overexposed horizon.

 

1. Young, Paul. Art Cinema. Ed. Paul Duncan. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009. Print.

Urban Indian as Exile and West Baltimore's The Wire (Shauna)

“It reflects a life that is not true for all Indians, but typical of many.”

So begins the narrative voice-over in The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961), which presents a refreshingly original portrait of American Indians, situating them in a Californian urban milieu, away from their parents and grandparents on the reservations. Over the course of this semester, I’ve looked at a variety of movies concerning peoples historically underrepresented in film art. Constructions of ethnic minorities consistently have as much to do with previous media portrayals and stereotypes as they do the real people. In that sense, films with minority characters share certain conventions of the genre picture (and indeed, many genres incorporate ethnic tropes, including the Italian of the Gangster, or the African-American servant or performer in classic Hollywood or melodrama).

It is interesting to note that 50 years after the release of The Exiles, its particular image of the urban Indian  remains radical. The level of realism is startling: I appreciate its authenticity, and its dedication to a particular subculture rarely explored by the camera lens. According to the 1990 census, 63 percent of Native Americans lived in urban regions.[1] Yet, the construct of Indian as “noble savage” or frontier warrior persists in the nation’s cultural mindset, reinforced by the canon of Western films and America’s collective foundation myth. For most of white America, the Indian is of the continent — and yet, crucially, only particular parts of the continent are recognized as his domain.

The reservation is understood as the Indian’s arena. Even if it is somewhat marred by the history of forced migration and prejudice, there is a resurgence of pride in the reservation as emanation of the Indian self. The magazine section of the Times frequently runs ads for Native American Universities: “If I stay on the Res, I’m more likely to graduate.” The reservation provides a convenient domain for historians and anthropologists to think about the Indian, for there, he is identifiable by tribe, costume, language and rituals.  The “res” simplifies Native culture, segmenting it from the mainstream, in a sense controlling for interference and cultural mingling. But once the American Indian enters the city, abandons “authentic” costume, and internalizes Euro-American constructions of private ownership and anonymity, he becomes indistinguishable, almost invisible to the untrained eye.

The transition into the dominant culture is probably partial (no one can disavow an entire life experience), and certainly gradual. Ultimately, though, urban life presents a dilemma for the American Indian, who experiences ethnic misclassification, and a sense of disconnect from his heritage. The Exiles is extraordinarily compelling in its ability to communicate the ambivalence of the urban Indian experience. Such is the sentiment expressed by Homer in The Exiles: “My people roamed all over the place…I would rather be in that time than now.” It is important that Homer distinguishes between the two systems of Indian life in terms of time and not space. 

Over a decade after the making of The Exiles, the American West Center at the University of Utah asserted the dilemma faced by the urban Indian in these terms: “The city is an alien place…[It] demands of the individual to disavow his heritage to become a truly urban citizen.”[2]

Donald Fixico frames the problem as an issue of insufficient information: “People who know very little about American Indians…have very little to base a viewpoint on about urban Indians. They have to rely on stereotypes,” which have been overwhelmingly negative. I am cognizant of the fact that there is a level to Yvonne’s attitudes and desires that I will never fully grasp. For instance, what future does she envision for her unborn child in Los Angeles? Why does she subject herself to Homer, a husband who rarely acknowledges her presence, or leaves her to live vicariously through solitary excursions to the movies? What are her motivations and aspirations as she watches her husband and Tommy walk through the alleyway after a night on Hill X with the women they picked up in a bar? There is no way to read the expression on her face with the system of equivalencies exploited by Hollywood.

 

In trying to qualify my response to the film, I repeatedly came back to The Wire. As I watched Season 1 this week, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of fondness for the characters from West Baltimore. True, I don’t belong to this particular subculture, enmeshed in urban warfare, drug addiction and drug trafficking, bombed-out low-rises, imposing high-rises, poverty and slick Roc-A-Wear and Baby Phat wardrobes, but these characters speak a dialect that’s ubiquitous in the Baltimore's schools. It’s fascinating to hear it spoken on the screen: the show’s creators captured the spontaneity, the diction, the wisdom hidden beneath the layers of archaic-sounding syntax. These actors speak the cadence I heard from the moment I entered Baltimore’s school system in August 2001. Coming from New York, I remember thinking this the strangest place. What language were these people speaking? Baltimore seemed like an island, severed from the realities I had taken for granted on 207^th Street in Manhattan: the subway, Dominicans, Asians, the populated playground, and people in general.

The general absence of human bodies in the street and the alien nature of the speech I did hear presented a weird environment for an outsider. But I guess I became accustomed to it eventually, because watching The Wire today, I felt solidarity with the West Baltimore speakers captured on film and projected on screen — however violent their language, however amoral and degenerate their behaviors. I think this supports the universally validating power of cinema: the recording of real Indians, their accents uncensored and uncorrected, lends an authentic quality and asserts the urban Indian’s realness. It recognizes a distinctive presence in the world.

 

 

 “It’s cool up there, you sing your own tribal songs….you know… anything you want to do… you know”

One of the most interesting scenes in The Exiles follows Homer and Tommy to Hill X, the spot overlooking the LA skyline where the city’s Indians gather and reenact their cultural rites and rituals, modified to fit the urban environment, the particular demographic shift of the Indian populace, and the physical remoteness of the reservation. The modified powwows serve a younger generation of reservation "exiles," integrated into the metropolis. While not particularly young in years, these men and women resemble adolescents. They enter the semi-spiritual peak of Hill X as rambunctious American teens, blasting horns and revving engines. They convalesce, chant, dance, beat the drum as Indians by night, and in the morning, abandon the Hill, returning to the mainstream. The scene they leave behind is once more ambivalent: the land is dusty and beaten flat by tires; empty bottles and refuse clutter the clearing. It becomes clear from the image of the Hill that the urban Indian presents a unique and challenging blend of identities. His values with respect to ownership, environment, and family are an ambiguous mix of two cultures that our media has, for so long, presented as irreconcilable.

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[1] Fixico, D. Lee. (2000). The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

[2] “Seattle Indian Center Plan,” February 3, 1972, in Mary Ellen Sloan, “Indians in an Urban Setting, Salt Lake County, Utah (1972),” Occupational Paper No. 2, American West Center, University of Utah, 1973, 6.

People on the Fringe: Gypsy Culture in Angelo My Love (Shauna)

    There is something fascinating about delving into the world of a sociocultural Other. And indeed, white America has for centuries enacted such an imaginary process, projecting itself onto alternate groups and peoples located on the fringes of society. The process of projection has involved both revulsion and attraction: the savage has functioned primarily as foil and scapegoat (i.e. the Other of didactic Puritanical stories), but also as an exotic entity, impossible to characterize, explain or fully comprehend. Both constructions expose entrenched prejudices, and neither contributes much in the way of new insights about the people themselves.

    The captivity narrative, while declaring savagery and civility to be incompatible and irreconcilable, also conveys a subtext about the complementary nature of indigenous life. The fact that some Puritan prisoners of war preferred to stay with their captors suggests that the world of the Native imparted certain benefits, particularly for women. These advantages, whether material, spiritual, or psychological, were either inaccessible or nonexistent in the civilized (patriarchal) life of the settlement. Implicit in the captivity narrative was the idea that indigenous life satiated a certain social hunger and filled a spiritual void left by Christian civility and codified European traditions. How would “mainstream” society cope with the Native? The answer lies in exclusion — through physical separation and rhetorical devices. The discourse on native peoples has consistently positioned the American Indian beyond the periphery of the colonial settlement (lurking in the forest, or beyond the butte, dunes or hills), or safely contained on reservations, far from the burgeoning cities and sprawling homesteads.

    The gypsy, in contrast, has been less widely articulated or addressed in America’s historical conversation with itself. Though ostracized through policy, the American Indian has at least been acknowledged in America’s cinema culture. Certainly, the characterization of the Native American has been far from ideal. He is rarely afforded the same level of character development as the white frontiersman, and his language is systematically dismissed as unintelligible (a notable exception is John Ford’s The Searchers, in which Ethan’s knowledge of Comanche partly humanizes his antagonist, Scar). The historical practice of casting white actors to play Native American roles further solidifies Hollywood’s seeming prohibition on nuanced, authentic American Indian performances. And yet, even the most bigoted cinematic portrayals of the American Indian allow for a conversation about how the Native is represented in the movies and the American consciousness. One can hope that as audience sophistication increases, so too will sensitivity to racialized portrayals of the Native.

 

    What does this mean for the gypsy, whose portrayal in American movies is not merely negative, but actually nonexistent? The gypsy is an invisible entity in the space of mainstream cinema, which perhaps should not be surprising, given the limited space he occupies in our collective national consciousness. Given this reality, Robert Duvall’s film Angelo My Love (1983) is essential viewing for anyone interested in the treatment of underrepresented peoples in cinema. His luminous commentary on gypsy life depicts the Roma neither as pitiful victims nor grotesque menaces, but as human beings who are at times exuberant, and at times melancholy. Though we may occasionally perceive their language (a hybrid of English and Gypsy) as jarring, and their gesticulations, dances, and affectations as eccentric, we accept their actions and attitudes as rational, given the context. It is the camera that allows us to see into the crowded apartments, decorated with their plush plastic couches; the masses at the Feast of St. Anne; and the men and women gathered around the campfire near Albany, following Patalay’s acquittal at the Kris. Thus, it is cinema that facilitates our receptivity to the gypsies, whom we might otherwise dismiss as inconsistent with familiar laws, social structures, and behaviors. We come to appreciate misdemeanors as pragmatic choices, necessary given the gypsies' position at the city's social and economic periphery.

    The gypsies’ relationship to mainstream society is a complex arrangement, verging on mutualistic. Their status as Other arises not from systematic exclusion by a non-gypsy majority, but from the gypsies' conscious efforts to keep their culture intact. They are ostracized to some extent, yet they are not completely disconnected from the services and institutions that constitute the fabric of mainstream society. In fact, the gypsies partially integrate themselves into the dominant culture —at least on a superficial level— to ensure their economic survival and, to a lesser extent, their children's literacy and education. Paradoxically, the gypsies work to maintain a distinction between their world and the conventional mainstream. Nowhere is this more evident than when Angelo's mother delivers her ultimatum following Angelo's recovery of the family's ring. Throughout the film, Angelo is characterized as a small adult man. He blurts obscenities, exerts complete control over his body, mesmerizes women with his suave demeanor, and embodies the same machismo as his uncles. Yet, he is moved to tears like a small child when his mother says, “You can be Gypsy or Gadjo [non-Roma]— but not both.” The finality of the statement suggests that commitment to discreet elements of gypsy culture is insufficient; what is necessary is the complete repudiation of the mainstream culture, including its rules, logic, and values.

    The film does not simply dichotomize Gadjo and gypsy cultures. True, the rules, moral codes, and rituals enacted by the gypsies within the context of nuclear families, the wedding and the Kris occasionally seem alien, patriarchal, and even clientelistic. And yet, by integrating scenes in which Angelo socializes with non-gypsies, including an inept grade school teacher, an elderly Puerto Rican woman, and the child country music star Cathy Kichen, Duvall connects Angelo's world to a familiar social milieu.

    A wonderful aspect of Angelo My Love is the unapologetic performances by its cast members. Of course, the men and women in the film are not really actors at all. They are not "performing" so much as they are conveying shared experiences, internal crises, and identities. The film text is as much an episodic narrative as it is an anthropological study of New York City's Roma community in the 1980s.

  The film maintains an interesting balance between Old and New World, conveying something about the adaptability of this formerly nomadic people transplanted from Europe. Even during the Kris (trial), Frankie, the de facto judge (reminiscent of a mafia Godfather), and Angelo vacillate between English and the Roma mother tongue. Sentences and soliloquies meld syntax and vocabulary from both languages; a perpetual high-energy rhythm links them together in an almost continuous vocal flood. This mode of discourse conveys the resilience of the people, seemingly referencing their migrant heritage, which likely required rapid adaptation to new environments, cultures, and resources.

    We also learn of the ethnic and cultural variation that exists within the New York gypsy community, perhaps most clearly encapsulated by the Greek/Russian rivalry that provides the ongoing conflict for the film and context for the theft of Angelo’s father’s ring.

    Finally, the costumes and modes of transport in the movie should not be dismissed, for they reveal something about the interconnectedness between gypsy and Gadjo cultures. Whereas the Amish completely reject "English" electricity and cars, the men in Angelo rely heavily on vehicles to pursue enemies, transport their families to religious ceremonies, and court women. The language of cars is ubiquitous: Angelo and Michael hail a taxi to pursue Patalay, Angelo "drives" partway to upstate New York (seated on Frankie's lap), and lacking cash for a cab becomes the justification for Angelo's failure to take Patricia out on her birthday. This sort of motif reveals something striking about the gypsy culture, at least as it is portrayed in Angelo. There is a high degree of devotion to ritualism, folklore, superstition, cultural pride and family honor, yet a reliance on the modes of contemporary Gadjo life. Still, the gypsies maintain a notably ambivalent attitude toward the mechanisms, bureaucracy, and institutions of the dominant culture. As Angelo's mother asserts (and Michael echoes), "Maybe you'll go [to school] today and not tomorrow."

    But perhaps the most interesting conflicts in the film emerge within the gypsy community itself. As Angelo, Frankie and Michael watch Patalay and his fellow Russians singing around a campfire, Angelo observes their ugliness, horrified. Indeed, his statement articulates a reality we've come to appreciate throughout the film (shots of Patalay often fixate on his grotesque fleshy nose; those of Millie linger on her crooked teeth and aged skin). The ideal physical appearance —a handsome face and smooth skin— becomes emblematic of Angelo's clan (and the Greek gypsies, by extension). Angelo's discourse on beauty reveals something interesting about the construction of masculinity in the larger gypsy culture and among the Greeks, in particular. However, we cannot help but wonder whether Angelo's self-proclaimed beauty is not merely a transient sign of youth. His appearance, too, may be susceptible to the physical disfigurement and moral decay that marks Patalay.

Internal Landscapes in John Cassavetes' Shadows (Shauna)

America was in a state of disequilibrium and flux in 1959. Over the preceding decade, an uncontested post-war order had come to dominate, epitomized by suburban sprawl, escalating homeownership, conspicuous consumption and the primacy of the nuclear family. Yet, those values represented unrealistic, vacuous ideals for certain segments of the youth generation. At the close of the decade, new foci of social and cultural power began to coalesce: the nation’s discontents began to assert themselves.

Culturally, 1959 was a tremendous year. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, Malcolm X articulated a radical racial politics of black “militant separatism,” and Lenny Bruce tackled lewd and taboo topics on primetime television.[1] Artists and independent thinkers were addressing the nation’s neuroses directly and unapologetically.

Allen Ginsberg observed in the summer of ’59 that “America [was] having a nervous breakdown…” but he also asserted that this was no cause for alarm, at least among artists and outsiders: “[T]here has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city.”[2] If anything, this was a cathartic moment for artists. The cultural shift threatened the immaculate, formulaic narrative of the 1950s —a narrative that pervaded television, Hollywood and, allegedly, mainstream daily life. But it also marked a renaissance for the culturally estranged, whether Bohemian, beatnik, or black male.

Amidst this turbulent culture, John Cassavetes offered Shadows (1959), a film shot on-location in New York’s Time Square, MoMA’s sculpture garden and Central Park, with improvisational elements infused into the script and the actors’ performances. Although the film was not improvised per se, it evokes the spirit of a neorealist picture or documentary. Whereas Hollywood narratives are structured around a masculine “coherent ego” whose equilibrium is temporarily disturbed, and subsequently “restored,” Cassavetes rejects such plot-driven devices [3]. Instead, he elaborates the worlds of characters whose names are shared by the actors who play them.

Internal dramas and peripheral conflicts converge on three siblings: Benny, a light-skinned deviant juvenile and musician; Hugh, his much darker older brother, who is unable to secure serious musical gigs due to his race; and their sister Leila, a coquettish girl who ultimately reveals her naiveté and vulnerability. Much of the conflict stems from Benny and Leila’s lighter complexions, which allow them to navigate the mainstream space of white America, internalize racial hatreds, and turn against people darker than themselves — even while they remain emotionally close to Hugh. But what is crucial about the film is its level of nuance, achieved through silent dialogues via close-ups, and idiosyncratic speech patterns. Cassavetes is “not afraid to create an inarticulate character,” and this lack of anxiety about conforming a character to an ideal persona is what sets his work apart as strikingly realist and distinct from mainstream Hollywood.

 

 

John Cassavetes’ film Shadows explores issues of race relations, familism, and gender equality through the intimate space of characters’ minds. Internal conflict and mental perturbation dominate the film, so that subtle indicators of psychic tension often take priority over blatant displays of conflict and violence. Indeed, aggression and passion, whether in the form of masculine roughhousing in an alleyway or Leila’s precocious advances toward Tony at the literary party, provide insights into each character's emotional instability.

On the narrative level, Ben accompanies Tom and Dennis in their perpetual and vacant pursuit of women in diners and clubs. The three men seek out ladies who are apparently equally disinterested in relationships. Tom implies that the females' behavior encourages superficial, short-lived romantic encounters: “You want to get picked up, don’t you?” But If Benny is portrayed as a transient cool cat, maneuvering the neon urban jungle and seeming to transcend racial identities (in different contexts he appears more or less African-American), Cassavetes suggests an overlooked level of depth to his persona. This complexity is especially evident on the level of form, as in the iconic composition in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The shot evokes Ben's introjective mind or spirit, eliciting our empathy for a character who habitually seeks physical intimacy with women prior to emotional discourse. Whereas Ben silently contemplates a single work, Tom dismisses the whole collection as a series of artifacts testifying to the hypocrisy of academia. For Tom, the artworks merely serve to reinforce inflated intellectual egos: the garden signifies a place “for a lot of creeps trying to show off what they know.” Yet, Tom morphs into a similarly detestable intellectual bigot when he accuses Dennis of knowing “nothing” and asserts his own mental superiority (“I went to college, Dennis”). Tom’s relentless belittling is visually accentuated by his dominant height. Though Dennis wears the trench coat, his small stature and strong New York accent endow him with a juvenile quality, as do his vague appraisals of the works (“He’s a statue”). Dennis at least comes to terms with his lack of insights, whereas Tom persists in his blind self-righteousness. The animosity persists until their moods spontaneously shift and harsh language is replaced with frenzied laughter and seemingly authentic bonding over the voluptuous "Standing Woman" by Gaston Lachaise.

A similarly sudden reconciliation is later enacted by Hugh and Benny, and ultimately by Hugh and Rupert; all three resolutions testify to the transient nature of conflict and moods in the film. Prior to the resolution between Tom and Dennis, tight compositions and the telephoto lens collapse the space of the sculpture garden, heightening the sense of antagonism. Two bronze sculptures (a nude and an abstract piece) in the mid-ground divide the frame roughly in two, momentarily allocating "territory" to each man. The nude leans forward slightly, as though enraptured with their conversation, and the diagonal slant of the abstract form mimics her curvature. Long shots in the sculpture garden inter-cut with the tight, low-angle shots of the men, optically diminish Dennis. He seems comically small when Tom scales the bridge, elevated just a few feet off the ground. Even in the least constrained shots (camera pans that punctuate the garden scene), looming trees and flat concrete building facades heighten the impression of enclosure.

During the altercation, Ben withdraws from the dynamic. He is subsequently shot in profile, in front of a carved stone face whose eye sockets, defined brows, and slightly frowning lips seem to represent rounded caricatures of his own features. Cassavetes provides a confrontation of graphic visages. A strange indigenous quality pervades the image of man and his nonliving alternate. It is made all the more bizarre by its modern environmental context — the apartment buildings, just behind the brick walls of the tranquil garden space. Tom’s berating voice (“You’re nothing but an ignorant slob”) further undercuts the sense of epiphany etched on Ben’s expressive features. The juxtaposition of the visually serene, introspective, daringly primordial image with Tom's antagonistic language, imparts an unsettling atmosphere. It's as though we've ventured into the intimate space between dialogues, a realm largely ignored by conventional Hollywood.

 

Conflict between people has traditionally served to forward the plot in narrative cinema. Yet, Cassavetes adopts a decidedly different goal in conveying the transient moods, clashes, and ritual battles between friends, relatives, and acquaintances in Shadows. Rather than exposing power dynamics, social structures, or discrimination, interpersonal conflict primarily functions to reveal what is inconsistent or inauthentic about the individual. Moreover, these clashes —even when they play out against the vivid, magnetic, and external landscapes of New York City— are fundamentally about intimate encounters. They range from vacuous, superficial, and fleeting (like the dates with countless women in restaurant booths) to genuine and nourishing (as in Hugh and Rupert’s conversation in Penn Station at the end of the film).

Whenever Ben and his crew meander through the city space, flattened anonymous figures, graphic signs, reflective windows, and vehicles constitute a dynamic background. The impression is wholly impersonal. For instance, the masher assault on Lelia occurs under a multiplicity of bright lights, movie posters, and shop windows. That is, it plays out in full view and elicits little response from the crowds. Aside from Cassavetes' chivalrous cameo, the assault goes largely unnoticed and unpunished. Though this urban landscape is neither overtly hostile nor strictly bifurcated along race, gender or generational lines, there is evidence of increasing atomization and loneliness amidst the crowds.

Taking this external landscape as the basis for his cinematic “improvisation,” Cassavetes might have encountered problems while addressing social inequality, hostility, housing discrimination, or miscegenation law. But Shadows never devolves into a didactic montage about victimized groups. Cassavetes refuses to demean his characters with pity. Instead, he explores universal problems of authenticity, agency, and identity, allowing Ben, his sister Lelia, and his brother Hugh to possess personalities neither completely wholesome nor wholly flawed. No single figure explicitly emerges as the dominant or "lead" role.

Ray Carney has observed that “[w]hile Hollywood melodramatically externalizes characters’ emotional states, writing them in ten-foot-high letters…to maximize their visibility, the drama in Cassavetes’ work is internalized to the point of being almost subliminal.”[4] The director’s capacity to evoke conflicted personas, ambiguous relationships, and dynamic psychological landscapes culminate in a brilliantly arresting visual spectacle. Cassavetes does not resort to the grotesque or the abnormal, yet there is something profoundly distinctive about the world he constructs. He manages to incorporate conventional spaces, conflicts, relationships, and roles in a completely unconventional, almost surreal manner. Temporal transitions and connections between characters seem smooth and convincing; yet, critics have widely acknowledged the episodic nature of film. It occurs almost as a series of vignettes, each extraordinarily pleasurable to watch and an exceedingly truthful portrayal of what it is like to be human. That is, to experience and to deny prejudices; to project an ingenuously constructed self-image (Leila); to feel isolated, undervalued, or exploited (Hugh and Ben); to share in the common renewal of laughter; to make oneself vulnerable to another.

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[1] Fred Kaplan, “1959: Sex, Drugs and Datsuns,” New York, Vol. 42, No. 20 (8 June 2009), pp. 38-43.

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Maria Viera, "The Work of John Cassavetes: Script, Performance Style, and Improvisation." Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 42, No. 3, Problems in Screenwriting (Fall 1990), pp. 34-40.

[4] Carney, Raymond. The Films of John Cassavetes : Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Neckface, Sweet Toof, Cyclops and Swoon: The Banksy Phenomenon (Shauna)

Aside from providing a wealth of beautiful imagery documenting a transient art form subject to weathering, urban renewal, vandalism, and natural decay, Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) provokes a number of questions relevant to the production and consumption of art. Exit unsettles deeply rooted ideas about ownership, authenticity, the creative process and the derivative, as well the aesthetic and monetary value inherent in a piece of work. There is also an undercurrent of anxiety related to whether the film qualifies as documentary. The alien footage, urban landscapes, and candid humanity of the street artists are enthralling and cinematic. But the film retains a level of realism despite its hyperbole. The formal attention to process is quite vivid. Perhaps a narrative framework was imposed on the footage, but the footage itself could not have been contrived.

Art by Swoon. Creative Commons. Photo credit: guero:

 

Perhaps because the universe of the graffiti artist is so foreign to most viewers, we assume Thierry (who later adopts the pseudonym Mr. Brainwash) is sincere, in his words, expressions and affectations. To use his adoring quote of Banksy, we believe that he is “what he represents.” Transparency is indeed critical to Thierry, or so we are told, and we resist the idea that he might be complicit in a falsified documentary. We accept the street art universe as Thierry presents it — through footage of works by Swoon, Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Buffmonster, Neckface, Invader, Fairey and, of course, the iconic Banksy. Yet, there is more than footage to convince us; Thierry’s narrative perpetually asserts and validates his involvement in the scaling of buildings and plastering of billboards, all in an effort to record artists augmenting their landscapes.

If the environments and characters portrayed in Exit are slightly bizarre, that’s acceptable within the film’s logic. For one, the credibility of the street artist depends on his occasional ludicrous display of passion. Secondly, the graffiti artist, working invisibly and at night, symbolizes the unnerving, distorted quality of the urban night landscape. In a moment evocative of Philippe Petit’s climatic walk in Man On Wire (2008), Thierry films himself scaling a Parisian rooftop with Fairey. In that sequence, the total focus of the film is on procedural execution, not of a heist, bank robbery, or murder, but of a subversive act that claims the cityscape for the artist and for the viewer, and repudiates the concept of private ownership. The art contests authority and the status quo, even if its content are not overtly political. For however long it is preserved, the work extends a message to everyone, including the disenfranchised “other.” It upsets the uniformity and organization of the public space.

   Art by Swoon. New North Place, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: AdversMedia.

 

  Art by Swoon. New Orleans. Creative Commons. Photo credit: Dingler1109.

If Thierry seems slightly “crazy” with his ever-present camera and obsessive need to film everything (“it was unimportant how it was made — it was important what it was”), his apparent authenticity is reinforced by his naiveté, expertly and inadvertently communicated whenever he comes into contact with law enforcement officials. Juxtaposed against Bansky’s cutting wit, these run-ins make Thierry seem all the more credulous. Banksy’s description cuts to the core of Thierry’s weirdness: “So this guy shows up looking like something out of the 1860s, with these, like, huge sideburns sweatin’, telling me he could do anything, he could take me anywhere, he could get me whatever I wanted. He could fix it all up.” In any other context, Thierry’s strong French accent and frequent inversion of idiomatic phrases might push the character too far, into the realm of cliché. But, in the particular world of Swoon, Invader and Neckface, where individuals regularly risk arrest to make a visual statement through installations, stencils, spray paint and drawing, Thierry is convincing.

His distinctiveness infuses potentially banal sequences with a vivid and verbose theatricality. His flamboyant affectations, expressive language, and over-the-top art (all commissioned, mostly “meaningless”) complement Banksy’s reserve, sparse and scathing dialogue, and high quality, purposeful art.

 

Art by Sweet Toof. Regent's Canal, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: bobaliciouslondon.

 

 

 
Art by Neckface. Creative Commons. Photo credit: urbandata.

Of course, the film challenges us when Thierry violates the “conservative” code practiced by street and studio artists. He bypasses the labor, the training, the education (independent or institutional), and the formation of an identity. Instead, he adopts a vacuous persona (MBW) and transforms himself into a corporate managerial type, delivering orders in lieu of creating work. It’s all the more horrifying because we are led to believe that Thierry wants to emulate and honor Banksy. Thierry becomes totally enamored with material excess, quantity, size and scale. He refinances his home multiple times to rent a large gallery space, which ends up resembling some kind of psychedelic mall. Viewed as a collection, the work is rather grotesque, and viewed individually, the pieces are sophomoric. Banksy’s intermittent commentary provides an analytical critique that is sufficiently cynical without completely undercutting the genuine hilarity of Thierry’s performance and dialogue.

  Art by Banksy. Chalk Farm, London. Creative Commons. Photo credit: Dan Brady.

Thierry qualifies as an odd bird, even by Banksy’s standards. This is remarkable, given some of Banksky’s stunts documented in the film. One iconic sequence reveals Banksy and his accomplices (all rather wary of Thierry) slicing through a London telephone booth and subsequently welding it back together in a newly contorted form. The altered icon communicates a sense of violent assault on the urban space. Yet, the booth is made more beautiful through its reinvention. Though static, it retains the memory of movement and dynamism, visually implying the manipulations that transfigured it. Banksy and his men, wearing official-looking neon work suits and driving a tarp-covered construction vehicle, return the surreal sculpture in a ritualistic procession and then rapidly depart the alley.

The booth provides a grim ambiance, as though the urban alley had just witnessed a violent assault. Yet, strangely, it lacks the broken glass, the jagged edges, and the generally ugly chaos that follows an attack. One Brit in his thirties snaps an image on his camera phone and declares it an effective Banksy “installation.” An older woman smiles, observing, “Someone must be annoyed with BT Telephone!” Their disparate responses suggest the artist’s hesitance to ascribe unequivocal “symbolic” meanings to his work. Banksy would rather provoke discussion than train observers to read the syntax of his visual texts.

Art by Banksy. Park Row, Bristol. Creative Commons. Photo credit: daz smith.

Whether documentary or not, the film is admirable in its subtle complexity. It frames a documentary within a documentary, and refuses to assign moral supremacy to either Thierry or Banksy. Finally, there is the question of whether any of it actually transpired. If Mr. Brainwash had succeeded in promoting his work, his persona, and his legacy prior to creating a single piece of art or selecting any of the works for his show, it leaves us feeling a bit uneasy about individuals’ capacities to judge good work. Towards the end of the film, Bansky laments, “I used to encourage everyone to make art. I don’t do that so much anymore.”

 

Art by Banksy. Brighton. Creative Commons. Photo credit: simonbooth.

 

Art by Banksy. Bristol Council Sexual Health Clinic. Creative Commons. Photo credit: nicesenzatesta.

Russia, Mongolia and Hollywood: A Silent Hybrid in Storm Over Asia (Shauna)

 

 When it comes to Soviet Montage, at least from the American perspective, Eisenstein is the dominant figure, Vertov the experimental artist, and Pudovkin the peripheral character defined in terms of his relation to Eisenstein as friend and aesthetic rival. Perhaps this hierarchy reflects the paltry selection of modern English translations of works by Pudovkin and the comparative wealth of resources by Eisenstein. Or maybe it reflects Eisenstein’s deft capacity to theorize and simultaneously self-promote. In “The Fourth Dimension of Cinema,” he routinely cites his own works as “classic”[1] examples illustrative of all the most crucial formal elements of film art.

Eisenstein was not above criticizing, and occasionally dismissing, works by Pudovkin, particularly when he construed them as veering too far his own artistic vision of montage. Eisenstein cites Storm Over Asia (1928) as an example of metric montage gone awry. The technique, he argues, fails when it is paired with “complex rhythmic tasks.”[2] True, the religious procession to honor the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is highly complex and orchestrated, even prior to the added intricacies of cutting and splicing. The sequence is not Pudovkin’s most glorious in Storm. However, it is neither inherently flawed nor fruitless. The awkwardness, which Eisenstein describes as the “forcible application” of metric montage, suggests an inability to convey all of the nuances of this Mongolian ritual practice. We are inundated with visual information (compounded by the vigorous, ethnic score), yet the meaning of vast ceremony remains oblique. The best moments are those in which Pudovkin exercises restraint, for instance, when the static camera fixates on the exotic dancing bodies, filmed in horizontal and diagonal lines, and finally in a curve that snakes from background to foreground. The slightly jarring cuts, which juxtapose accelerating dancers with static musicians, suggest a level of uncertainty, as though meanings and symbols inevitably elude the westerner.

Pudovkin transplants the viewer to a space that is neither fully human nor divine, but rather exists on the threshold of both of these worlds. He does not impose a vision or attempt to contrive meaning from the indigenous dance and music. Rather, he allows the Mongolian masks and costumes, the formations and the dances, to speak on their own terms. The content is beautiful and enthralling, even if the metric montage is occasionally awkward. The sequence evokes the experience of an outsider far more than it characterizes the Mongolians. We empathize with the camera’s gaze, which is incapable of focusing on a single dancer or musician for long. Who is to fault Pudovkin for evoking the experience of walking in on a ceremony performed by a foreign people or culture — that is, the experience of witnessing but not belonging?

 

One of the reasons Storm Over Asia resonates so profoundly in the silent film canon is its thematic, if not contextual, connection to the Soviet heritage and worldview. Although the film does not address Soviet woes, routines, or spaces directly, it grapples with a powerful and pervasive question present in the Russian psyche: To what extent should Russia be construed as “West” or “East”? Pudovkin alludes to the historical debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers through cinematic language, rather than blatant, polemical statements. Few Russians appear in the film, with the exception of the partisans. But the Russians' naturalistic style creates a visual parallel with the seemingly ancient Mongols — suggesting deeper connections to the Mongolians than to continental Europeans.

Storm suggests an underlying ambivalence in terms of Russian identification with either the West or East, though the film tends to empathize with the Mongolians. The sentiment is conveyed through (1) landscapes that manifest an Asian aesthetic in their graphic simplicity and still depiction, (2) the intimacy and sensitivity with which the nuclear Mongol family and its prized ornaments are filmed prior to the son's departure, and (3) the implicit connection between Anglo characters and unnatural processes, including surgical repair of the body, the hygienic and materialistic "rituals" before the visitation to the Buddhist Temple, and the infiltration of technology into the primeval environs of the Steppes.

Throughout the film, the agrarian and uncultivated landscapes range from chillingly vacant, to tranquil, serene and sublime. Ultimately, though, the Steppes pulse with a voracious life force: a mysterious and aggressive wind decimates the British colonial presence. Pudovkin elevates and restores the dignity of the indigenous Mongols through this ostensibly natural (though seemingly supernatural) force. Pudovkin wrote that D.W. Griffith was highly influential in molding his cinematic consciousness. Indeed, the scale and graphic potency of Pudovkin’s landscapes do reveal parallels between the directors' works. But the shots in Storm overlooking the sand dunes, mountains and conifers of the Steppes, are also entirely unique. Prior to Storm, no one had ventured into the rural, nomadic domestic spaces of the Buriat-Mongolian Republic with a movie camera. Pudovkin had attended film school with Valeri Inkizhinov, the actor who played the protagonist, and thereby entered a world previously invisible to film. Had he employed a strictly Hollywood approach, the product would likely not have contained the languid series of stills, dissolving one into the next, forming subtle conflicts of plane and scale, which infuse Storm with a distinctively Eurasian atmosphere. The director complemented his Soviet montage technique with an awareness of Asian art, establishing graphically simple, yet emotionally stirring landscapes, with just the slightest degree of movement (shuddering leaves, shifting ice, or the slow, almost viscous flow of a river).

Storm constitutes an exquisite portrait of Mongolian life, integrating graphic landscapes (in which the individual is frequently subverted to the grandeur and scale of the natural environment) with humanizing close-ups of the native people and the indexical signs present in their lives, such as the amulet that had belonged to the lama, and the prized skin of the silver fox. The Mongolian hunter's family appears aged, crouched, tanned, and wrinkled, yet their faces embody a spirit and spontaneity that is totally absent from the visages of the British Army Commander and his bejeweled and powdered wife. The lighting in the interior of the Mongolian yurt is fascinating and quite beautiful. Whatever wrong Eisenstein perceived in terms of metric montage in the religious dance is fully compensated by the tonal complexity within the shot! The crisscrossing of cast shadows simultaneously gives the impression of individuals trapped within a colonial economic framework, and integrated with the natural space. The continuity between anatomy and environment suggests a higher level of authenticity. These individuals, bound by the complex of shadows, are close to the earth and to each other, in-tune with the seasons, the wildlife, and the hours. In contrast, the British delegate and his wife shroud themselves in unnatural pieces of finery: a long satin sheath wrapped around an obese male torso, the whale-bone corsette cinched unnaturally at the waist, and layers of lotion and powder set on the skin.

The naturalistic quality of the Mongolians makes the surgery performed on Inkizhinov's character all the more loathsome. The victim, after being bound and brutally shot, is essentially reawakened from the dead and brought out of the natural space of the sand dunes into the civilized Anglo interior. Sanctioned violence is followed by sanctioned medical penetration to revive the human form. The body, bound like a mummy, and restricted in its movements, constitutes a mannequin or dummy. It is the physical manifestation of the Mongolian's diplomatic function as a pawn of the British Empire's. The surgical repair is unnatural in that it is totally divested from any spiritual healing (i.e. the sort of healing presented in the earliest moments when the lama prays for the father's recovery).

The Mongolian is wholly castrated, unable to quench his thirst or articulate his thoughts. The moment when he attempts to drink from the fish tank, an action wholly outside the purview of civilized European decorum, is quite poetic: his head on the slick floor, surrounded by the thrashing fish, constitutes a visual metaphor for all the trauma and exploitation he has endured, and his inability to thrive within this world. Yet, like all of the images infused with pathos, it is neither sentimental nor contrived.

The closing scene is perhaps the most unambiguous example of Soviet montage. Pudovkin employs the fastest tempo, the wildest mise-en-scéne, and rapid inter-cutting between a savage, fully restored Mongolian hunter and the intertitles, producing negatives of the image that seem monstrous and supernatural. Yet, it is highly telling that the British defeat is staged without bloodshed: the wrath of the wilderness is the only outpouring of violence. The men fall back, rolling and somersaulting like weightless dolls blown down. It is as though this culminating struggle occurs outside the bounds of mortal life: it is no mere territorial dispute, but a recovery of the dignity and humanity that was lost.

 

 

 

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[1] Sergei Eisenstein, The Eisenstein Reader, trans. Richard Taylor and William Powell(London: BFI Publishing, 1998).

[2] Ibid.

Mexican Women in Salt of the Earth and Biutiful (Shauna)

On a superficial level, there is very little in common between Salt of the Earth (1954), a bare-bones narrative of labor unrest in an arid, desolate New Mexican mining village dubbed Zinctown, USA, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s vivid, saturated, and jarring portrayal of contemporary Barcelona, entitled Biutiful (2010). Iñárritu addresses a distinctive socio-economic underbelly in Spain, filtering experience through a single Mexican protagonist, Uxbal (Javier Bardem). But he suggestively exposes broader demographic and immigration changes underway across Europe.

Javier Bardem in Biutiful. Creative Commons, by Cinema Davar.

At its core, Salt of the Earth is a decidedly local film. It employed neorealist techniques and was subjected to a variety of constraints imposed by Cold War politics. Political pressures helped to mold a particular atmosphere and imparted an unrehearsed quality to the film. According to Rosaura Revueltas, the actor who played Esperanza Quintero, “[The cast] never saw any rushes. The film was shot blindly. Scenes were never repeated. During filming, helicopters flew overhead in order to protest…”[1] Salt exudes a spontaneity that pervades even the most didactic scenes. This natural quality reinforces Esperanza’s radical and incisive soliloquy. In it, she articulates the crux of the conflict with her husband, Ramón: Anglo employers undermine and antagonize the Mexican miners, yet Ramón is complicit in discrimination, debasing his wife by discouraging her political engagement. The dismissive nature of his responses (“You’re talking crazy!” and “Will you be still!”) betray the truth in her words.

 

Biutiful represents an essentially global film, in which characters from developing nations are linked to each other and to Europe in a tightly wound economic network. This is not to insinuate that Iñárritu disregards the local environment. With the utmost care, he conveys textural and chromatic details of Marambra’s (Maricel Alvarez) apartment, the dank sweatshop housing Chinese laborers, and the living quarters of the Muslim Senegalese. Still, a nascent internationalism emerges, with Barcelona functioning as a hub for émigrés, human trafficking, and other illicit activity. The resulting social universe is exceedingly complex, and the wealth of visual information contained within each frame only compounds that impression. Iñárritu’s filmic precision approaches hyperrealism. His style proves expressive and photogenic, if at times unsettling.

Interspersed throughout the film are supernatural moments, which call to mind the magical realism of Latin American literature. Those moments function as visual breaths, which alleviate the slightly claustrophobic and suffocating experience of material poverty. In one sequence, two massive swarms of birds dance in flight over city. For a moment, they exist not as birds, but as abstract entities. Uxbal fixates on this display, which is at once bizarre and extraordinary.

  

Calatrava Bridge, Barcelona. Creative Commons, Zio Fabio.

Stylistic distinctions between the two films reflect their unique historical contexts. Salt of the Earth was produced under tremendous political pressures. Actual workers participated in the production process, lending a greater degree of authenticity and making  Salt slightly more astonishing than if it had relied purely on professional actors. In some ways, Salt of the Earth and Biutiful represent polar opposites; in terms of scale, stylization, casting, sound, and complexity of the mise-en-scene, the films could hardly be more different. Yet, both films convey a particular experience of Mexican transplants, engaging issues of male anxiety, gender equality and inequality, and the adverse consequences of free-market capitalism. They occupy separate parts of the temporal and geographic spectrum (1950s United States, and present-day Spain), yet the films address a number of related cultural questions. A full comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this entry. Instead, I will outline the construction and experience of women in the Mexican émigré culture.

 

Salt of the Earth may be considered groundbreaking for its apparent foray into feminist activism. It subverts, or at least challenges, an established gender order in post-War America, and does so rather obliquely. When Esperanza articulates her condition, it is without flourish or euphemism. Early in the film, she shies away from politics and tacitly accepts her domestic identity. For instance, she asserts her ambivalence about entering the union meeting with the other women. Moreover, it is Consuela (Angela Sanchez) who proposes the women’s auxiliary branch for the miners’ union. In the wake of the meeting, Ramón brusquely acknowledges, “At least you didn’t make a fool out of yourself like Consuela.”

The formation of the auxiliary, and its ultimate effectiveness in maintaining the picket line after a court injunction prohibits future miners’ strikes, reflects a morality in the filmic universe of Salt, which contends that men and women are essentially the same. Although tensions exist between husbands and their wives, a mutually beneficial partnership gradually emerges in the film. Ramón even invokes unity between “brothers and sisters” in the aftermath of the attempted eviction. Still, feminine acquisition of a labor relations discourse, and the subjection of women to physical violence (in the form of strikes and imprisonment), runs contrary to many of the entrenched gender norms espoused by the men.

In one of the most memorable dialogues in the film, Esperanza asserts Ramon’s total reliance on her involvement in the negotiations: “You can’t win this strike without me. You can’t win anything without me.” He responds with a threatening gesture, but it elicits no spasm of fear; rather, it spawns her complete renunciation of “the old way.” Esperanza’s final instructions, “Sleep where you like, but not with me,” convey the transformative potential of her political engagement in realigning power dynamics within the home.

Interestingly, Biutiful presents a far more ambivalent picture of the Mexican female. In Salt of the Earth, men occasionally adopt a feminine perspective, as when Ramón hangs the wash to dry and wonders why indoor plumbing had not been a major union demand from the beginning. But masculine and feminine perspectives in Biutiful seem nearly irreconcilable. Uxbal’s wife Marambra is presented as rather wretched and manipulative, even if these traits are beyond her control and likely symptomatic of her mental illness. Whereas Esperanza is indispensible to Ramon, Marambra seems only to sap Uxbal’s energy: her alcoholism and apparent bipolarity, her incessant need for sex, and her total economic dependence add up to a woman who resembles a child more than a spouse. Marambra also actively undermines Uxbal’s attempts to create and maintain order in the household. His exertion of control is not coercive, but rather intended to establish much-needed boundaries for his children, Ana and Mateo.

Nowhere is the fissure between male and female perspectives exemplified more clearly than in a late sequence in Uxbal’s brother’s strip club. Whether Iñáarritu intends to communicate something about Mexican, Spanish or European attitudes towards women is not entirely clear. What is evident, however, is that objectification of the female is rampant, and the audience’s limited exposure to such imagery prior to this scene merely reflects Uxbal’s relative dignity within the film’s dubious moral spectrum. Perhaps what is more shocking than the seedy costumes, inflatable decorative flesh, incessant pounding music, and seizure-inducing lights, is the exchange that occurs between Uxbal and a young woman (whom his brother boasts he has slept with). Their physical proximity only amplifies the sense that she and Uxbal are separated by a lifetime of experiences. Her youth underscores his impending death, seemingly accelerated by his drug and alcohol-induced intoxication. When she asks why he isn’t dancing, he responds, “Because I’m dying.” It is unclear why he is doing what he is doing – perhaps it is a defensive strategy in this grotesque and demeaning atmosphere. A profound sense of isolation and male anxiety settles around Uxbal at that moment. It is a loneliness that no female presence can attenuate.

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[1] Esteve Riambau and Casimiro Torreiro,“This Film is Going to Make History,” Cineaste 19 (1992): 50.

Killer of Sheep (Shauna)

In his commentary on Killer of Sheep (1977), Charles Burnett habitually downplays his own role. He seems to construe his sublime compositions and vignettes merely as true-to-life portrayals, or fictitious constructions derived from real people and real spaces. He sees himself in terms of documentation, though the film is not a documentary in the formal sense. Deft attention to environment, dialect, “invisible” characters, and the integration of improvised moments and staged scenes, illuminate Burnett’s tendency to incorporate documentary-style realism into his film texts. He speaks of lighting, framing, and collaboration with actors in terms that are pared down and frank. Perhaps the cinematic and narrative elements had always existed, and Burnett merely had the audacity to cull and splice the pieces together. There is nothing exploitative about the picture. And there is no pompous pretense to his language. Unencumbered by a monolithic artistic vision, Killer strives towards honest portraits that elicit a spectrum of potent emotions: jarring, rousing, titillating, and tragic.

Unique framing, candid blocking, and precise dialogue reflect Burnett’s discerning eye — and his ability to distill from fragmented, contradictory, disordered moments of a day or year, a coherent and lasting impression of the local world and its inhabitants. That Burnett’s work substantiates and gives voice to a group that has been historically ostracized, undermined, oversexed, or undersexed by Hollywood, represents an accomplishment independent of its artistry. Yet, even if we view Killer in a social-cultural vacuum, divested from the disparities, segregation, and inherently unequal parameters of life in the United States, the result is a stunning aesthetic achievement. Killer of Sheep plays out an urban space, interspersed with great expanses, massive trains, open lots, and construction sites resembling war zones. It incorporates elements of the Western, and of the metropolis, yet Killer transcends both of these locales, establishing a potent temporal and spatial coherence. The circumstances of this particular universe in Watts, Los Angeles, vacillate between melancholy and dark comedy. Nuclear families, neighbors, and floaters proceed through life, seemingly unencumbered by the objective eye of the camera. And it is this ambiguous balance between the despondent and the droll, which resonates with the human psyche.

The flexible, agile bodies of the children in Killer navigate their neighborhoods, forming a dynamic pattern against steeply inclined streets, construction lots, and freight trains. Their figures elicit in the viewer a sense of exuberance and compassion, interest and astonishment. We are transfixed.

Nor can the audience help but to indulge in watching the incoherent freeloader rub his face, tug at his bandage, and lick his lips. There is something fascinating about his impenetrable torpor, and the slow dolly back that reveals the car motor beside him. A woman in the same room massages lotion into her decidedly un-Hollywood legs and thighs, rippling, yet oddly enticing, nonetheless. The two figures, each surpassing the bounds of the frame, are united by an ephemeral and disconcerting jump cut that is visual shorthand for her physical blow to his bandaged head, following her comment, “You ‘bout tasteless as a carrot.” It is the odd balance between pleasure and pain that imparts such gravity to the scene. First, there is the electric thrill of her verbal quip (which, incidentally, seems both a trite cliché and a unique turn of poetry). Then, there is the visceral recoil as she delivers the blow, which is abstracted by the violent cut and Stan’s appearance at the side of the groaning, damaged, contorted body that twitches like a squashed insect. All the while, the flamboyantly dressed “uncle,” tugging at a jerrycurl and fawning over his reflection, lends ambivalent comic relief.

Bishetta Merritt has emphasized the juxtaposition of imagery from the slaughterhouse and shots of the children, who are “oblivious to the squalor and poverty around them” (2008: 113). Neither the sheep nor the children, she asserts, are cognizant of their impending demise. But such an assertion fails to convey the full richness of Burnett's visual metaphor. Moreover, the film seems to challenge such didactic principles.

Indeed, children constitute the only truly resilient force in the film's universe. Although they are not immune to suffering, they surely are not doomed. In contrast, the living sheep are inseparable from their limp, shaved counterparts hanging on prongs, or the gelatinous ovine bodies moving weirdly with the spray of the hose. The sheep connote monotony, angst, and suffering. Such qualities are evocative of the lives of adults in the film, but rarely those of children. While Stan's crisis seems uniquely “existential," most adults execute day-to-day rituals of work and family with alternatively dark and humorous perspectives.

Stylistically, the film exemplifies Burnett’s interest in capturing and conveying life in an unadulterated, unspoiled form. These lives transpire in a tactile, emotional, and architectural environment irrefutably linked to his own childhood.

Parallels between the open environments of the Italian neorealists and Burnett’s Watts emerge early in the film and constitute a sustained motif. Burnett, like the neorealists, delights in gritty, naturalistic landscapes. Indeed, part of what makes Killer of Sheep so intriguing is the constant interchange of locations. Although there is a degree of continuity (the camera never ventures beyond a particular cultural and social universe), there is a surprising multiplicity of spaces. Burnett acknowledges that his familiarity with the neighborhoods afforded him a variety of locations for shooting. Although he is ostensibly the master of this realm, he never overtly directs us in how we should judge the space and the individuals who inhabit it. We empathize with Stan, yet never fully understand the social or clinical origins of his depression. Likewise, we identify with the old man who witnesses a burglary across the alley, yet his departure from the yard to contact law enforcement does not seem exactly heroic.

We are complicit in the crime insofar as we recognize it would be a shame to disrupt what Burnett has orchestrated: the balanced composition, with the thieves running down the street, heavy T.V. in tow. Why sacrifice this robbery-dance to bureaucracy and justice? Anyway, the police would likely spawn new problems for the neighborhood.

 

 

Havana, Lisbon and Wim Wenders (Shauna)

It is in an incredible risk to create a film about the struggle of making a film.  A movie partly devoted to the study of sound, not only the production of music by trained vocalists and musicians, but the accumulation of everyday noises by a man with a boom mic seems equally ambitious.  For anyone else, the results might be forced and superficial, but Wim Wenders' products are at once astounding and spontaneous.  Both in Lisbon Story and Buena Vista Social Club, Wenders seamlessly integrates the passionate, fatal and trivial aspects of cinema and musical performance.  Whether staged or improvised his narratives never veer into the dreadful realm of predictability.  It is through his profound sensitivity to place, reflected in the local musical and chromatic vibrancy of Cuba in Buena Vista, and the hybrid medieval-industrialized Lisbon basking in Mediterranean light, that the questions of art, music and cinema are raised.  He grounds the two films so authentically in their locales that we eagerly embrace the topics of music and movie-making.

Wenders is not interested in strictly replicating the structure, lighting, energy and mood of the two respective cities, though he masterfully captures the form and atmosphere of each urban place.  He goes beyond simply conveying the essence of a city as an entity: he suggests the emotional sentiments a city might elicit and characterizes the bond between his characters and their environments.  The crosscut is used particularly effectively in Buena Vista to create a coherent portrait of an intimate cast of characters who retain their mannerisms, humor, technical skill, wit and dignity whether at home or on the stage, whether in Cuba, Amsterdam, or New York.  A specific building, street, figure or piece of debris might trigger the memory of another place or time, but Wenders plays visually with nostalgia in such a way that he avoids overt sentimentalism. 

 

Guitarist Ochoa Bustamante (left) and vocalist/guitarist Compay Segundo. Creative Commons, by Hiabba (2008). http://search.creativecommons.org/

Most of the emotional responses and dynamics between character and place are sufficiently subtle to require full attention and multiple viewings.  In Buena Vista, a group of elderly Cuban male musicians and one female vocalist come together to record and perform the nation's provincial and popular music.  They are musicians who have been forgotten or fazed out -- some had abandoned their instruments for a decade or more -- but performers endowed with a striking vitality, humanity and appreciation for their Caribbean culture.  Working with Ry Cooder, Wenders captures the centrality of music to their lives: in the studio, on the streets, in ornate pre-Revolution gambling houses and in abandoned bars.  Rhythm is inescapable, permeating all aspects of life.  Wenders recognizes that the discovery of a culture and locale so inherently bound to music constitutes something refreshing and unique.  Particularly from the European or American perspective, he acknowledged in the commentary, we tend to think of music as a separate entity, something we listen to for a duration and then set aside.  We occasionally go to concerts, listen to the radio or improvise, but these are less integral elements in the fabric of life than they are exceptional circumstances.  In contrast, Cubans constantly discover, produce and collaborate in formal and informal musical exchanges. 

 

Extreme Right: Trumpet player Manuel Mirabal Vázquez. Creative Commons, by Moyo Taxiguerrilla (2006).

One of the film's most revealing sequences occurs when singer Omara Portuondo, clad in a bold print dress, strolls down the street of her old neighborhood amid residents standing on the curbs and in front of dilapidated buildings.  As she wanders through the street, Portuondo sings, partly to herself and partly offering an impromptu performance to the audience that has gathered for her.  One woman of African descent joins her in song, invoking their common career experience and suggesting Cuba's ethnoracial heterogeneity.  During the commentary, Wenders emphasized that the neighborhood promenade scene unfolded spontaneously, a fact that is at first difficult to believe.  The individuals who gather to hear Portuondo balance reverence with anonymity.  They convey interest and desire to hear her voice, yet maintain relative nonchalance and refrain from pressuring or bombarding their locale celebrity.  Their expressions also appear unaffected by the presence of the camera.  The audience embodies civility and appreciation, without the self-consciousness or egotism that often accompanies the presence of a camera.  Indeed, as Wenders asserted, there is nothing "fake" about the people of Cuba. 

Interestingly, the concept of cinematic authenticity is a motif that recurs in Lisbon Story.  Towards the conclusion of the film, the mysterious German filmmaker Frederick challenges the very act of movie-making.  In his diatribe with his sound recorder he equates "Pointing a camera" with "pointing a weapon" and reflects, "...Every time I pointed at something, I had the feeling of depriving things of their life."  The very presence of the camera changes the subject, and the very eye of the cinematographer distorts it even further.  That is Frederick's unhappy conclusion, anyway.  The only way to escape these limitations is to capture figures without their knowledge or consent and without the corrupting influence of the filmmaker's own eye.  Frederick fashions plastic shopping bags, small backpacks and garbage cans into vessels for hidden cameras.  The flimsy blue plastic shopping bag seems appropriated directly from Buena Vista, where it also functioned as a vehicle, but one holding sacred visual elements from the past, rather than illicitly capturing unknown moments in the present. Cuban pianist Rubén González's uses a blue plastic bag to transport photographs of himself and other musicians at the height of their careers.  Against his characteristic orange zigzag button down, Rubén's insubstantial bag of treasured images intimates the pervasiveness of Cuban poverty, but also visually encapsulates Cuban values of relationships, authenticity and meaning in images and lyrics.  Armed only with a minimal plastic shopping bag, Rubén manages to protect the photographs from any blemish, indentation or tear.

 

Bassist Orland Lopez "Cachaito." Creative Commons, by Volume12 (2008).

Visual parallels between the two films run far more deeply than mere recurrent props.  In fact, Wenders captures environmental structures and geographies with suggestive doubles in Havana and Lisbon.  Train tracks function as one structural motif and symbol of transport, change, interconnectedness and, paradoxically, divisiveness.  In Buena Vista Social Club, Ochoa Bustamante sings and plays his guitar with a provincial folksiness as he walks towards the steady cam, following the tracks.  In Lisbon, the pace of life around the tracks is slightly more frantic and mechanized.  Trolley tracks in Lisbon Story help propel the protagonist Winter towards the mysterious child employed by Frederick.  Other analogues to the Lisbon trolleys are the putrid green and pink buses imported from the Soviet Union, seeming anachronisms that are actually critical to Havana's contemporary transport infrastructure.   

Wenders grapples with the environmental opposition between old and new in both films, and plays extensively with boundaries.  Boundaries may be physical thresholds, such as the coastal waters crashing against Havana's highways, or may exist in space and time, as with the cross cuts between the group's performance in Amsterdam and their work in the Cuban recording studio weeks earlier.  Diegetic sound bridges across these cuts (Silencio, sung by Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo) lend a sense of continuity to an editing technique that might otherwise create temporal confusion. 

In both films, cinematography works to suggest navigation and exploration.  It evokes another breed of tension, this time between familiarity and newness.  The mobile camera ventures through the streets of Havana and Lisbon in a series of long takes that capture not only the neighborhood architecture and lighting, but the residents' attitudes and body language.  Wenders relied fully on the mobile cam and two heavier cameras with tripods (no tracking or dolleying), and the subtle irregularities in camera stability humanize the framing.  We are somewhat conscious of the street venturer recording the sights.  He is not a blatant tourist, but rather a selective observer, an outsider who also experiences a sense of connection with the new city.  In Lisbon Story, Winter embodies that "outsider."  En route to Lisbon, he listens to a Portuguese language cassette and struggles to replicate comical phrases.  Yet, although certain cultural and linguistic aspects of life in Lisbon are quite foreign, other elements -- like the exotic voice of Madredeus (Teresa Salgueiro) -- exist independent of national bounds and deeply resound with Winter.  A similar tension arises in Buena Vista Social Club, when the members of the band arrive in New York City for the first time.  In souvenir shops, the musicians recognize certain bobble-heads (Charlie Chaplin, for instance), but struggle and fail to name others (Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy).  By including such sequences detailing cultural connections and deviations, the director reveals something about himself.  Wenders has thoroughly established himself as an international figure in cinema.  Yet, he too must experience the strange, exciting imbalance that comes from traveling: the alien and unsettling juxtaposed with the familiar and universal.  And this opposition is what makes his local environments so vivid, so authentic and so approachable, regardless of a viewer's experiences or background.

Coulais' Soundscape in Coraline (Shauna)

Why is it so difficult to remain attentive to sound while watching a film?  And why is it so rare that we fully appreciate and internalize a musical score?  In a culture that bombards us with visual emblems, cues and representations, image frequently subverts sound, particularly in retrospective analysis.  We subconsciously relegate the musical score to the background, assuming it is more of an embellishment than a fundamental structural component.  Yet, a soundtrack can elicit intense emotional responses and deserves independent analytic and artistic investigation. 

The mise-en-scene acquires a notably warmer pallet in the alternate universe; costumes, props and visible light sources furnish a deceptively enticing fantasy world. Coraline. Creative Commons.¹

The challenge of formulating a non-verbal audio accompaniment to a narrative cannot be overstated.  In constructing an audio landscape, directors risk imposing a generic emotional atmosphere.  Such moods are frequently sentimental or melodramatic.  Exploiting sound to elicit calculated audience responses is highly problematic: a musical score that reduces the climate to shallow, one-dimensional emotions undermines the audience.  Characters and environments tend to lose their originality under the oppressive weight of music that “tells” viewers how to feel.  In turn, audiences habituated to overt musical scores lose the ability to formulate original thoughts about characters, relationships and environments.  A score might inspire angst, pity, joy or elation, but one-to-one equivocations between musical styles and emotions are rarely interesting.  When music is manipulated to induce a calculated response, it fosters complacency among viewers and dulls their capacity to think critically about the music in relation to the mise-en-scene, framing and characters. 

Last weekend, I ventured into Muvico 24 to see Henry Selicks’s acclaimed stop-action film Coraline in 3D.  Until then, I never had a reason to visit Arundel Mills.  But after seeing the film in 2D at The Charles, a trek down to the Mills was my only option if I wanted to see Coraline in all its stereoscopic glory.  The first thing you notice as you enter Arundel Mills is the ridiculous scale of things.  The whole mall is divided into "neighborhoods," each complete with streets and massive cafes facing massive stores selling computers and televisions.  It’s like an airport, only exponentially larger.  During the trailers, the sound was overwhelming and obtrusive, functioning only to amplify the impact of mass destruction, mechanical failure or human brutality.  In a way, the trailers' sound quality and volume conformed to the grotesque scale of the theater and mall.  I consider this type of sound to be exploitative because it obstructs our sense of cinema's visual language and fails to illuminate subtle connections between sound and imagery.

A successful sound universe generally develops an environment's complexity, widening the number of possible associations and interpretations, rather than confining a scene to one monolithic mood (i.e. "melancholy" or "happiness").  Part of what makes Coraline such an intriguing piece of art is the musical score's capacity to evoke new sentiments with multiple viewings.  Instrumental details and subtle shifts in tonality, volume and timbre are integrated with a level of craftsmanship that merits the meticulous language of stop-action animation.  My emotional response is never identical or formulaic.  Rather, I experience conflicting senses of familiarity and refreshing newness each time I listen to the score.  Moreover, within the context of each investigation, it is possible to discern conflicting elements: desire and repulsion, harmony and discord.

It would be a disservice to the film to try to analyze the extensive array of technically brilliant elements, including the interiors and landscapes, the characters' physical forms and movements (angular or wobbly, and often "twitchy," according to Selicks) and the lighting (cool/diffused versus warm/hard).  Instead, I hope to analyze three realms – Coraline's ordinary home, the art deco theater, Bobinsky's circus tent and the other-worldly garden – to investigate how the musical score and mise-en-scene interact to reveal parallels between characters and their micro-environments.  

Bruno Coulais is the film's French composer.  He is also well-known in the U.S. for his compositions in Les Choristes, a film that ardently asserts the power of music to counter repressive regimes.  The presence of youthful singers from Nice in Coraline identifies the musical score as Coulais'.  His work is original and inventive, oscillating between contemplation and agitation.  Perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing a film score is to ensure it is unified without being redundant.  Coulais achieves such a sense of unity by relying on a core group of instruments: horns and oboes, harps, vocals, piano and percussion instruments, along with synthesizers and bells.  He avoids the typical musical motif, instead opting to use certain melodies, rhythms and tones to color specific characters.  Thus, individuals and their environments acquire musical personalities that complement their visual impact. 

Neutral tones, cool accents and diffused lighting predominate Coraline's ordinary domestic existence. A raked stage intensifies the sense of confinement in the drab interior. Coraline. Creative Commons.²

In Coraline's home, a neutral dinginess pervades the dining room.  The accumulation of cool neutral elements - tiles, chipped cabinetry, fogged windows, metallic chairs, kettles and cutlery - cement the sense of ordinary.  Her parents are so embedded in the minutia of domesticity that they seem to become human appendages of the monotonous environment.  In the office, her father's gaunt, hunched body is echoed by precariously piled boxes and canted camera angles.  Coraline's restless form reflected in his computer poignantly encapsulates the gap between her boredom and his frustrations over work.  When he sends her on a mission to list the doors, windows and "everything that's blue," Coraline conveys curiosity, insight, independence and slight brooding.  Her quest is accompanied by Coulais' "Exploration," a light ballad performed with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.  A single angelic voice and accompanying harps and piano endow Coraline's childhood with a balance of beautiful innocence and potential darkness.  Using the synthesizer, Coulais compiles harmonies (from the solo vocalist) to create an illusion of multiple intertwined voices.  The result is a sound metaphor for the paradigm of the only child, who relies on her imagination for companionship. 

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, retired British theater performers. Coraline. Creative Commons.³

Within the universe constructed by the "other mother," one of three luxuries used to entice Coraline is an elaborate art deco theater.  There, imitations of Coraline's two elderly neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, perform an opera complete with intricate costumes, two-dimensional sets and an elaborate pulley system for hoisting figures.  It is a testament to the convincing characterization and deft manipulation of the puppets that we perceive the scenario to be authentic.  Suspended in the world of Coulais' musical composition and Selicks' animation, we embrace the notion of sculpted characters consciously performing against their own two-dimensional mise-en-scene!  Spink's fleshy body is firmly encased in a fish tail and Forcible's voluptuous form is scantily clad in sequins. Rarely in popular cinema is the elderly female body so brazenly displayed, and in this sense, Selicks departs from conventional Western constructs of feminine beauty.  However, Coulais' musical score grounds the scenario in a performance culture, where such absurdity seems natural. The music is highly dramatized and full of affectations.  And perhaps because the sequence is so flamboyant and unexpected, the lyrics assume a greater weight, even a sense of urgency.  It is difficult to ascribe a particular meaning to the opera's narrative, yet the warnings to sailors hint at an ominous future.

Music plays an equally critical role in the faux Bobinsky's circus tent.  It lends a sense of magical-realism through vaguely Eastern European melodies and frantic orchestral maneuvers.  There is a childish quality to the music, which seems to oscillate and glimmer alongside the synchronized mice.  Small bells, cymbals, percussion and fluttering high-pitched brass instruments give the sequence a ephemeral, dreamy aura.  But the music also echoes the eerie oboes, horns and chimes earlier associated with the authentic Bobinsky, blurring the threshold between the two parallel worlds.

The final other-worldly wonder is the Fantastic Garden, endowed with luminescent crocuses, tickling ivy and swarms of hummingbirds.  The garden brims with color, warmth and movement - pulsing with the vitality of an intricate ecosystem.  The visual elements are built up gradually, each striking component giving way to another, until the entire garden is viewed from above to reveal a fauna mosaic Coraline head.  The music develops in parallel fashion: what starts as a few lone violins culminates in a jazzy conglomeration of percussion, cymbals, bells, horns and strings.

After viewing the film in 2D and 3D, I have to say that the 3D format undermines the potent textural impact of Bruno Coulais' musical score.  Although it certainly adds a technically impressive element to the opening sequence, in which needle-thin metallic fingers deconstruct the fibers, fillings and hair of a doll, it deprives the movie of its cinematic essence, giving it the feel of a video game.  Coulais' music, influenced by the French pianist Eric Satie, renders the animation deeply emotional, at once delightful and disconcerting.  Coulais' sound scheme renders Selick's work more vivid, immediate and lasting.  His impact far exceeds anything stereoscopic effects can achieve.

In an interview regarding the film's fastidious attention to detail and craft, Henry Selicks asserted that his main job was "to keep the beauty under control...to knock down the beauty."  Excess beauty is a very real risk when a project involves so many talented people, each engaged in one small component of the whole.  But Selicks, through figure twitches and grit, successfully combats perfection.  He relies on visual language to convey characters' behaviors and mannerisms, and trusts Coulais' music to inform their deeper emotional complexities.  For this he should be commended. 

 

Image Credits:

1. "Pic by Focus Features." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

2. "Coraline's Normal Life." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

3. "Miss Forcible and Spink." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

 

 

The Brothers Quay: Exploring the Czech "Tactile Experiment" (Shauna)

Recently, I rediscovered the stop-action animated shorts of the Quay Brothers, two Czech experimental filmmakers.  I was first exposed to their works as a kid stuck on the couch with the flu.  My dad brought home the video, and prefaced it with a mention of my great-grandfather who had escaped Czechoslovakia trekking around Europe before coming to the U.S.  Symptoms gave way to awe for the quality of movement of the puppets and props.  Whoever had crafted and manipulated these figures, I thought, had given them a unique spirit.  Indeed, the Quays endow each figure with a dark and surreal brooding, an element they refer to as “pathology.” 

Frequently in Quay films, visual relationships, particularly the spatial and temporal links between a figure and its “poetic” universe, supersede narrative associations.  Although narrative structure exists, it is embedded within the visual and abstract.  Compositions and movement through space emphasize transformative processes and the tactile experiences of life and dreams.  Dialogue is largely absent.  Language that does exist fulfills a primarily graphic function.  Often, words allude to the genre of Czech surrealism, or provide an Eastern European contextual heritage for the mise en scène. 

Ident commissioned by BBC2 (1991). Creative Commons.¹

The Quay Brothers tend to emphasize the creation and revision of atmosphere as the basis for their filmic process.  In one interview, they compared inventing and sustaining a climate to choreographing a ballet.  Both film and dance hinge on the integration of lighting, décors, bodies in motion and, perhaps most critically, music.  These elements coalesce to form the dynamic environment that engages, isolates or opposes characters.  The necessity for music in dance is completely self-evident.  The role of music in Quay films differs somewhat.  Music does not dictate the physical patterning of puppet movements; rather, it infuses each shot's universe with a lifeblood.  Music exists in lieu of dialogue.   Verbal exchanges would add an unnecessary redundancy to the subtle, abstracted drama provided by the musical score.  The brothers acknowledge that passive viewing yields few insights into their work.  Attentive sensitivity is absolutely necessary to fully appreciate each sequence.  

Quay Brothers at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee Switzerland. Creative Commons.²

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, an entire kingdom is encapsulated in a wooden cube, whose linear architecture, small geometric windows and high-tension wires suggest that an alien modernity pervades the derivative mythical world.  The brothers reconfigure the epic myth to fit within the constraints of a brief, though precisely executed, pilot.  Gilgamesh's kingdom, spatially estranged and bordered by strong currents of wind on two sides, serves as the motivation and vehicle for his fatal encounter with rival bird-man Enkidu.  Enkidu's venture out of the Enchanted Forest and into Gilgamesh's domain triggers the contriving of the beast's trap.  The trap exploits Enkidu's carnal instincts and subdues his psychological discomfort in the realm of the kingdom.  The "sandbox" kingdom becomes an acetic, almost clinical foil to the forest, and the trap starts to resemble a grotesque operating table.  The musical score adds a disconcerting dimension to the muted palate of the kingdom.  Seedy saxophone music plays during Enkidu's lewd encounter with the trap.  Following Enkidu's demise, Gilgamesh emerges, accompanied by childish carnival music.  The tune is a sound approximation of his sinister, clownish features and diminuative feet, pedaling madly on his tricycle.

In The Street of Crocodiles, the brothers again appropriate a preexisting narrative as the skeletal foundation for their filmic universe.  However, once more, space and geometry subvert narrative structure.  The decors plays a critical role in evoking the precise climate of a Polish retail complex shrouded in dust, debris and refuse.  The environment's essence, in the Quays' words, is "degraded reality."  Yet, the imperfections, indentations and reflections are acceptable, even wonderful, in the cool diffused light.  The most interesting aspect of this environment is the "breakdown," conveyed by the deranged movements of mannequins, screws unscrewing and the reforming of a knot in a string that serves as the gateway into the labyrinth of dust and decay.

In an interview in Paris, the Quays distanced themselves from filmmakers Nick Park and Tim Burton, two key contributors to the genre of stop-action animation.  While technical similarities and a common choice of medium unite these filmmakers, distinctions of equal weight can also be made.  The Quays' works are informed by their Eastern European heritage and surrealist aesthetic, while Nick Park captures the essence of the suburban domestic U.K.  Park (Wallace and Gromit), frequently expresses cynical attitudes towards the status quo (see Creature Comforts), but these sentiments are couched in comedy.  Even at its darkest moments, his work retains a ludicrous hilarity to which we can relate.  Moreover, the narrative structure remains paramount.  Even Wallace's absurd gift of mechanical pants serves a narrative function in The Wrong Trousers, advancing the plot towards the climactic heist scene.  In contrast, the absurd image of a broken tennis racket strewn over high-tension wires in Gilgamesh's domain serves no such function.  Rather, it is merely an artifact of the brothers' village memory.

The Quays are equally hesitant to draw analogies between their shorts and the works of Tim Burton, suggesting that his mise en scène is more closely related to the tradition of horror.  Indeed, graveyard scenes in The Nightmare Before Christmasemploy chiaroscuro and exaggerated angles that hearken back to German Expressionism.  Burton composes a narrative that integrates the qualities of a musical: imaginative backgrounds and songs advance a linear plot.  The Quays instead compose a non-verbal cinematic dance.  The musical score and environment of that dance are the primary concern, and the narrative is far more cryptic. 

Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers, 2007. Zeitgeist.

1. Photographer: "The Justified Sinner." Dec. 27, 2008. Creative Commons.http://search.creativecommons.org/

2. Photographer: Hendrick Speck. Nov. 22, 2008. Creative Commons. http://search.creativecommons.org/