Deren and Brakhage shorts

Hmmm, where to start with this one. I guess I'll throw my opinion out first. I actually really enjoyed these shorts and their use of film as an artistic expression. I don't think I would've said that two months ago, I guess this class is really expanding my mind. I thought it was interesting when we discussed the films in class and it was realized that because we're all human we try to put a story behind each film that we see. It got me thinking even more about the shorts and trying to think of them without any plot behind them.

Of course when I think of Brakhage I can't help thinking about a baby's head slowly emerging from a bloody vagina first, but there is also a lot of beauty in that film. The build up to the actual birthing scene is gorgeous and even the birth is shot in such a cool way. The lighting is really soothing and the angles are interesting. My favorite part is when she's in the tub and the shadow of the window panes line up on her stomach, such a neat shot. I like the sort of glow that they have going on in the bathtub too, it was pretty sweet.

The conversation we got into during class was pretty intense and I still maintain that this short has changed the way I look at birth forever (that touches upon something I'll talk about later). The intimacy of what we were saying made it hard for me to watch, harder than those films they show you in biology and health class anyways. I felt like I was prying in on a moment that belonged to them, not me and that was tough for some reason. With the other birth scenes I've seen either in movies classes or hollywood movies make birth seem like a joke or something completely devoid of emotion and it was interesting to see Brakhage put the love, pain, and beauty into his short. I like that he shows you something in a way that you haven't seen it before. He also does this with the two other films we saw. He kind of deconstructs it and puts the pieces back together in a way that is different and beautiful.

The essay Brakhage wrote threw me for a loop at first, but after our class discussion I really loved what he was saying. I like that he's asking you to really look at the images he's creating and through his films he's trying to talk right to your eyes while breaking misconceptions. Brakhage's idea of using film to change both time and space is a concept that befuddled me at first, but now nothing could make more sense. He says that the magic of film is that you are given the power to change things. Someone in class said that it explodes and expands reality and I think that explains it perfectly. Like I said about the birth video, it completely changed my perception of birth and the feelings behind it. That film changed time and space for me forever when it comes to birth and I think that concept is pretty awesome. He uses lighting, camera angles, and ideas to shift the viewers thinking on a subject.

On to Deren.... I really liked her shorts too, but I definitely found myself trying to find a narrative behind them more than Brakhages. Maybe it was because there were actors moving through scenes and repetition was such a heavy focus, I don't know. At Land had me convinced that the chess piece represented something she was missing in life and that she was trying to get it in order to put the pieces of her life together. I really liked Ritual in Transfigured Time. The party scene was so beautiful and so much like a dance. The conversation in class revealed once again our desire to put a story behind it. For me it seemed like a commentary on social interaction between men and women. How men are constantly wanting attention, how people can't stay with one partner for long (easily distracted), how the interaction between men and women is all just a dance in a way. I love how her use of slow motion, stop and go shots, and her tight camera shot completely change the way we view the scene.

In her essay Deren touches upon film moving through time and space and manipulating film to change time and space. People know that the film has been manipulated, but they accept it as it is because they want to find the narrative behind the film, even if it doesn't exist. I also like Deren's commentary on photography and painting being such different realms of expression. A painting is really just anyone's perception of something, it isn't necessarily something real, but a photo is a visual representation of something that does indeed exist. Deren says that painting is removed from reality, while photos are real. She goes on to say a photo depends on the existence of an actual image and it represents something more than a thing, it represents an idea - A photo is an image and a metaphor than stands in for an idea. All of this plays into Deren's conception of what film is too.

Wow, this post is honestly kind of mind blowing.

La Dolce Vita

Normally a movie with no strategic plot drives me nuts, maybe this class is changing my ways, but La Dolce Vita captured my attention through out it's entirety. I loved all of the beautiful shots, beautiful people, and most importantly beautiful clothes. Marcello's white suit at the end of the movie was just perfection and his lady friend squirming around topless with a mink covering her was awesome too. I really began to see the value of post modernism through this film. I enjoyed that the focus was on style and not sustenance. The contrast between the perfection of these people's clothes and their actions was something I really noticed. They were always dressed so amazingly, but at the same time they were getting hammered, doing drugs, and being promiscuous.

I really enjoyed the shots in this movie as well. When everyone was at Steiner's there was a wide angle shot that included everyone in the living room and I thought that was pretty neat. I would've liked to snap a picture of everyone sitting there. I also really liked the constant bustle going on when Marcello was around his friends. Everyone was always moving, dancing, jumping in a car, or talking. So much of the movie was based on movement and large groups of people.

I kind of enjoyed that the protagonist didn't become a better person at the end, instead I think the reverse occurred for Marcello. He seemed to be searching for himself and love during the movie, but he could never quite grasp it. His girl friend was an addict and slightly insane, his other love interest was a big slut, and he just couldn't figure out whether to drop his journalist act to write a book. At the end he was alone, with a job that had nothing to do with his love for writing, and he seemed to be more of a rich asshole than ever. He was getting pretty abrasive with women and partying a little too hard. I think that all of this ties into the Neo-realism aspects of the movie. There isn't any pretending, this is completely a showcase of "real life" because of the lack of conversion in the main character and the rest of the characters are not innately good, they're just doing whatever they want to. I think it beautifully shows the lives of people with too much money and too much time on their hands.

I think the opening and closing shots are a commentary on the lack of morals in all of the character's lives in this film. Taking Jesus and flying him to the pope kind of said to me these people don't have strong values that they follow, especially when the guys flying Jesus stop to hit on girls in bikinis on a rooftop. I think the shot at the end ties into the same picture with the huge dead sea creature because it signifies the loss of a natural values system that these people obviously do not have. I could be way off base, but eh, I figured I'd take a stab at it.

The Last Year at Marienbad

Alright, right off the bat I'm going to be honest... I slept through about half of this movie. There was something about the warm room, repetitive language and fuzzy subtitles that just lulled me right to sleep. What I can say is that when I woke up and saw tid bits I felt like I had never even fallen asleep. It seemed like I had not missed a thing and I was just as confused as I had been when I was watching the film in the beginning of class completely awake.

One thing I did take away from my sporadic moments of viewing was the dream-like state of this film. The entire story seemed like something out of a dream. I felt like it was X dreaming up something he'd like to happen, but most people can't control their dreams, so A wasn't really going along with his dream and outside forces were interrupting as well. I really liked what Sarah said in class about X being at the hotel last year and seeing A, but never approaching her so he is sort of playing out the scenario he wished had happened before. For me it seemed like A was kind of a shot of reality in the crazy mixed up mind of X. Her constant refusal to his insistence about knowing her and his crazy back story about him brought forth the idea that what X was dreaming probably never happened. I also liked the idea about the garden's maze and the endless maze of hallways in the hotel being compared to X's mind and the endless gauntlet of story-telling he was leading A through. It was sort of like if A could make it through and not break and accept X's skewed vision of reality she would get to return to the "real world."

The repetition of dialogue really adds to that dream-like feel as well. The whole repetitiveness of the whole film makes it feel even more dream like. It gives you that feeling of being stuck in one place and being unable to move forward in any sense. This also makes it difficult for the audience to connect to any of the characters or the story. A and X are both pretty strange throughout the whole film and you can't really make any sort of connection to either of them. I liked an idea someone brought up in class about the characters being like ghosts who just repeat the same action over and over again, I felt like that really fit in this movie.

Another idea that I liked that came up in class had to do with the reading and the idea of solipsism, or the idea of thinking yourself is the only thing that is real. This also ties into Descarte's "I think therefore I am" idea, which means if I can form thoughts then I must be real. These ideas do make your own existence concrete, but it pretty much leaves everyone else out in the cold. Sure you're reassuring yourself in the fact that you must be real, but that doesn't speak for everyone else in your life. Does that mean that everyone around you is non-existent? I'm pretty sure if you're focusing so much on your own reality that you're going to have trouble relating to anyone else and I think this ties into X's obsession with A. He so badly wants to confirm A's existence, but no matter how much he slams the idea into his head and she won't simply tell him if she's real or not and she doesn't really give him any hints.

I really like the setting for this movie. The formality and grandeur of the hotel and grounds really makes a sharp contrast with the dream-like quality of it all. The formality kind of plays on the who idea of these people who are sort of insane. Especially when you're looking at the people who aren't the main characters. They are dressed so perfectly and doing all of these fancy things, but they're really quite odd in the way they speak and act. It goes the same for X and A. They are both really, really bizarre, but they look good doing it. They are also speaking in the formal form of French the entirety of the movie, but about super informal things, which adds another weird element to it all.