Philosophy & Film

Deconstruction and Metacinema by Jacques Derrida

2012-02-16T18:16:00.003-05:00

French philosopher Jacques Derrida explains his concept of deconstruction through pure metacinema moments in these first excerpts from documentary Derrida (2002) directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering:

Paths of Hate by Damian Nenow

2012-02-16T17:46:00.002-05:00

How far does the rage go between men? Man vs. man, ideologies, war, illogic... An interesting and very well done reflection on the war.

The struggle. Its scale is irrelevant or the ideology that stands behind it, no matter whether it is two people or a million. It is followed by only a scar - the bloody traces... Paths of Hate is a short tale about beasts, which lie dormant deep in the human soul and push them into the abyss of blind hatred, rage, and anger. Chasm that leads to the inevitable destruction and annihilation. In the sea of comprehensive, grim, existential desire to put an animation film which will be primarily for spectator entertainment. A spectacular and visually attractive movie. On the other hand I wanted that Paths of Hate was more than just another pokazówka technical capabilities, all hitting the wielgachnych robots or trolls Paths of Hate is an audiovisual project in its truest sense. - Damian Nenow.

Nenow creates his films from the very beginning, assuming that music and sound is no less than half of the final result. However, what made the film music for this animation is quite a surprise even for the artist: "I never expected it to rise to my film fully worthy rock hit," say Nenow.

Paths of Hates (Poland, 2010) directed and written by Damien Nenow

Thanks Jas for this great video.

A free replay (notes on Vertigo) by Chris Marker

2012-02-10T03:44:00.003-05:00

“Power andfreedom.” Coupled together, these two words are repeated three times in Vertigo. First, at the twelfthminute by Gavin Elster (“freedom” underlined by a move to close-up) who,looking at a picture of Old San Francisco, expresses hisnostalgia to Scottie (“San Francisco has changed. The things that spelled San Francisco to me are disappearing fast”), a nostalgia for atime when men—some men at least—had “power and freedom.”Second, at the thirty-fifth minute, in thebookstore, where ‘Pop’ Liebel explains how Carlotta Valdes's rich lover threw her out yet kept her child: “Men could do that in thosedays. They had the power and the freedom...” And finallyat the hundred and twenty-fifth minute—and fifty-first second to beprecise—but in reverse order (which is logical,given we are now in the second part, on the other side of the mirror) by Scottie himself when, realizing the workings of the trap laidby the now free and powerful Elster, he says, a few secondsbefore Judy's fall—which, for him, will beMadeleine's second death—“with all his wife's money and all that freedom and power...”. Just try telling me these are coincidences.

Such precisesigns must have a meaning. Could it be psychological, an explanation of the criminal’s motives? If so, the effort seems a littlewasted on what is, after all, a secondary character. Thisstrategic triad gave me the first inkling of a possiblereading of Vertigo. The vertigo the film deals with isn't todo with spaceand falling; it is a clear, understandable and spectacular metaphor for yet another kind of vertigo, much moredifficult to represent—the vertigo of time. Elster's‘perfect’ crime almost achieves the impossible: reinventing a time when men andwomen and San Francisco were different to what they are now.And its perfection, as with all perfection in Hitchcock, exists in duality. Scottie will absorb the folly of time with whichElster infuses him through Madeleine/Judy. But where Elsterreduces the fantasy to mediocremanifestations (wealth, power, etc), Scottie transmutes it into its most utopian form: he overcomes the most irreparable damage caused by time and resurrects a love that is dead. The entire second part of the film, onthe other sideof the mirror, is nothing but a mad, maniacal attempt to deny time, to recreatethrough trivial yet necessary signs (like the signs of a liturgy: clothes,make-up, hair) the woman whose loss he has never been able to accept. His own feelings of responsibility and guilt forthis loss are mere Christian Band-Aids dressing a metaphysical woundof much greater depth. Were one to quote theScriptures, Corinthians I (an epistle one of Bergman’s characters uses to define love) would apply: “Death, where is yourvictory?”

So Elsterinfuses Scottie with the madness of time. It's interesting to see how this is done. As ever with Alfred, stratagems merely serve to holdup a mirror (and there are many mirrors in this story)to the hero and bring out his represseddesires. In Strangers on a Train, Bruno offers Guy the crime he doesn't dare desire.In Vertigo, Scottie, although overtly reluctant, is always willing, always the one taking the first step. Once in Gavin's officeand again in front of his own house, (the morning after thefake drowning), the manipulators pretend to give up: Gavin sits down andapologizes for having asked the impossible; Madeleine gets back in the car and gets ready to leave. Everything could stop there. But, on both occasions, Scottie takes theinitiative and restarts the machine. Gavin hardly has topersuade Scottie to undertake his search: he simplysuggests that he see Madeleine, knowing full well that a glimpse of her will be enough to set the supreme manipulator, Destiny,inmotion. After a shot of Madeleine, glimpsed atErnie's, there follows a shot of Scottie beginning hisstake-out of the Elster house. Acceptance (bewitchment) needs no scene of its own; it is contained in the fade to black betweenthe two scenes. This is the first of three ellipses ofessential moments, all avoided, which anotherdirector would have felt obliged to show. The second ellipse is in the first scene of physical love between Judy and Scottie, whichclearly takes place in the hotel room after the lasttransformation (the hair-do corrected in the bathroom). How isit possible, after such a fabulous, hallucinatory moment, to sustain such intensity?

In this case,the censorship of the time saved Hitchcock from a doubly impossible situation. Such a scene can only exist in the imagination (orin life). But when a film has referred to fantasy only in thehighly-coded context of dreams and two loversembrace in the realist set of the hotel room; when one of them, Scottie, thanks to the most magical camera movement in thehistory of cinema, discovers another set around him, thatof the stable at the Dolores Mission where he lastkissed a wife whose double he has now created; isn't that scene the metaphor for the love scene Hitchcockcannot show? And if love is truly theonly victor over time, isn't this scene per se the love scene? The third ellipse, which has long been the joy of connoisseurs, I'll mentionfor the sheer pleasure of it. It occurs much earlier, inthe first part. We have just seen Scottie pullMadeleine unconscious out of San Francisco bay (at Fort Point). Fade to black. Scottie is at home, lighting a log fire. As he goes tosit down—the camera follows—he looks straight ahead. The camera follows hislook and ends on Madeleine, seen through the open bedroomdoor, asleep in bed with a sheet up to her neck.But as the camera travels towards her, it also registers her clothes and underclothes hanging on a drier in the kitchen. Thetelephone rings and wakes her up. Scottie, who's come intothe room, leaves, shutting the door. Madeleine reappears dressed in the red dressing-gown he happened to have draped across the bed. Neither of them alludes to the interveningperiod, apart from the double entendre in Scottie'sline the next day: “I enjoyed, er... talking to you...”Three scenes, therefore, where imagination wins over representation; threemoments, three keys which become locks, but which no present-day director would think of leaving out. On the contrary, he'dmake them heavily explicit and, of course, banal. As aresult of saying it can show anything, cinema hasabandoned its power over the imagination. And, like cinema, this century is perhaps starting to pay a high price for thisbetrayal of the imagination—or, more precisely, those who stillhave an imagination, albeit a poor one,are being made to pay that price.

Doubleentendre? All the gestures, looks, phrases in Vertigo havea double meaning. Everybody knows that it is probably theonly film where a “double” vision is not onlyadvisable but indispensable for rereading the first part of the film in the light of the second. Cabrera Infante called it “the firstgreat surrealist film,” and if there is a theme present in the surrealistimagination (and for that matter, in the literary one), then surely it is that of the Double, the Doppelganger (who from DoctorJekyll to Kagemusha, from the Prisoner of Zenda to Persona, has trod a royal paththrough the history of the medium). In Vertigo, the theme is evenreflected in the doubling-up of details: Madeleine's looktowards the tower (the first scene of San Juan Bautista, looking right, whileScottie kisses her) and the line “Too late” which accompanies it have a precise meaning for the naive spectator, unaware of thestratagem, but another meaning, just as precise, for a watchfulspectator seeing it a second time. The look andthe line are repeated at the very end, in a shot exactly sym- metrical with the first, by Scottie, looking left, “Too late,” justbefore Judy falls. For as there is an Other of the Other, there isalso a Double of the Double. The right profile of thefirst revelation, when Madeleine momentarily stands still behind Scottie at Ernie's, the moment which decides everything, isrepeated at the beginning of the second part, so precisely thatit's Scottie who, the second time, is “in front”of Judy. Thus begins a play of mirrors which can only end in their destruction. We, the audience,discover the stratagem via the letter Judy doesn't send. Scottiediscovers it at the end via the necklace. (Note that this moment also has its double: Scottie has just seen the necklace head-onandhasn't reacted. He only reacts when he sees it inthe mirror.) In between, Scottie's attractionfor Judy, who at first was merely a fourth case of mistaken identity (the constant of a love touched by death; see Proust) Scottieencountered in his search through the places of their past, this attraction hascrystallized with her profile in front of the window (“Do I remind you of her?”)in that green neon light, for which Hitchcock, it seems,specially chose the Empire Hotel: her leftprofile. This is the moment when Scottie crosses to the other side of the mirror and his folly is born ...

...If onebelieves, that is, the apparent intentions of the authors (authors in the plural because the writer, Samuel Taylor, was largely Alfred'saccomplice). The ingenious stratagem, the way of making usunderstand we've been hood-winked, the stroke of genius of revealing the truthto us well before the hero, the whole thingbathed in the light of an amour fou, “fixed” by what Cabrera (who should know)called the “decadent habaneras” of Bernard Herrman—all that isn't bad. Butwhat if they were lying tous as well? Resnais liked to say that nothing forcesus to believe the heroine of Hiroshima. She could be making up everything she says. The flashbacks aren't theaffirmations of the writer, but stories told by acharacter. All we know about Scottie at the beginning of the second part is that he is in a state of total catatonia, that he is“somewhere else,” that it “could last a long time” (accordingto the doctor), that he loved a dead woman “and stilldoes” (according to Midge). Is it too absurd to imagine that this agonizing, though reasonable, and obstinate soul(“hard-hitting” says Gavin), imagined thistotally extravagant scenario, full of unbelievable coincidences andentanglements, yet logical enough to drive one to the one salvatory conclusion: this woman is not dead, I can find her again?

There are manyarguments in favour of a dream reading of the second part of Vertigo. The disappearance ofBarbara Bel Geddes (Midge, his friend and confidante, secretlyin love with him) is one of them. I know very well that she married a rich Texan oilman in the meantime, and is preparing a dreadful reappearance as a widow in the Ewing clan; but still, her disappearancefrom Vertigo is probablyunparalleled in the serial economy of Hollywood scripts. A character important for half the film disappears without trace—thereisn't even an allusion to her in the subsequent dialogue—untilthe end of the second part. In the dreamreading of the film, this absence would only be explained by her last line to Scottie in the hospital: “You don't even know I'mhere...”

In this case,the entire second part would be nothing but a fantasy, revealing at last the double of the double. We were tricked into believing thatthe first part was the truth, then told it was a lie born ofa perverse mind, that the second part contained the truth. But what if thefirst part really were the truth and the second theproduct of a sick mind? In that case, what one may find overcharged and outrageously expressionistic in the nightmare imagespreceding the hospital room would be nothing but a trick, yet another redherring, camouflaging the fantasy that will occupy us foranother hour in order to lead us even further awayfrom the appearance of realism. The only exception to this is the moment I've already mentioned, the change of set during thekiss. In this light, the scene acquires a new meaning: it'sa fleeting confession, a revealing detail, the blink of a madman's eyelids ashis eyes glaze over, the kind of gaze which sometimesgives a madman away.

There used tobe a special effect in old movies where a character would detach himself from his sleeping or dead body, and his transparent formwould float up to the sky or into the land of dreams. Inthe mirror play of Vertigo there is a similarmoment, if in a more subtle form: in the clothes store when Judy, realizing that Scottie is transforming her piece by piece intoMadeleine (in other words, into the reality he isn't deemedto know, making her repeat what she did forElster), makes to go, and bumps into a mirror. Scottie joins her in front of themirror and, while he's dictating to an amazed shop assistant the details of one of Madeleine's dresses, a fabulous shot shows us “allfour of them” together: him and his double, her and herdouble. At that moment, Scottie has trulyescaped from his hospital chair: there are two Scotties as well as two Judys. We can therefore add schizophrenia to the illnesses whosesymptoms others have already judiciously identified in Scottie's behaviour. Personally, though, I'd leave out necrophilia, so often mentioned, whichseems to me more indicative of a critic's neurosis thanthe character's: Scottie continues to love a truly living Madeleine. In hismadness, he looks for proof in her life.

It's all verywell reasoning like this, but one must also return to the appearance of thefacts, obstinate as they are. There is a crushing argument in favour of a phantasmagoric reading of the second part. When, after thetransformation and the hallucination, Madeleine/Judy, with the blitheness of asatisfied body, gets ready for dinner and Scottie asks herwhat restaurant she'd like to go to, sheimmediately suggests Ernie's. It's the place where they first met (but Scottie isn't meant to know this yet—Judy's careless “It's our place” isthe first give-away before the necklace). So they go there without making a reservation. Just try doing thisin San Francisco and you'll understand we're in a dream.

As Gavin says,San Francisco has changed. During a screening at Berkeley in the early eighties, when everyone had forgotten the movie (the old foxhadkept the rights in order to sell them at a premiumto TV, hence the cuts for commercials and thechanged ending) and the word was that it was just another minor thriller, Iremember the audience gasping with amazement on seeing the panoramic view of the city which opens the second part. It's anothercity, without skyscrapers (apart from Coppola's SentinelBuilding), a picture as dated as the engraving Scottie looks at when Elsterfirst pronounces those two fateful words. And itwas only twenty years ago... San Francisco, of course, is nothing but another character in the film. Samuel Taylor wrote to meagreeing that Hitchcock liked the town but only knew “whathe saw from hotels or restaurants or out ofthe limo window.” He was “what you might call a sedentary person.” But he stilldecided to use the Dolores Mission and, strangely, to make the house on Lombard Street Scottie's home “because of the red door.” Taylor was in lovewith his city (Alex Coppel, the first writer, was “a transplanted Englishman”)and put all his love into the script; and perhaps even more than that, if I am to believe a rather cryptic phrase at the end ofhis letter: “I rewrote the script at the same time that I explored SanFrancisco and recaptured my past...” Words which could apply asmuch to the characters as to the authors andwhich afford us another interpretation, like an added flat to a key, of the direction given by Elster to Scottie at thestart of the film, when he's describingMadeleine's wanderings; the pillars Scottie gazes at for so long on the other side of Lloyd Lake—the Portals of the Past. This personal note would explain manythings: the amour fou, the dream signs, allthe things that make Vertigo a film which is both typically and untypicallyHitchcockian in relation to the rest of his work, the work of aperfect cynic. Cynical to the point of adding fortelevision—an anxiously moral medium, as we all know—a new ending to the film:Scottie reunited with Midge and the radio reporting Elster's arrest. Crime doesn't pay.

Ten yearslater, time has continued to work its effect. What used to mean San Francisco for me is disappearing fast. The spiral of time, like SaulBass's spiral in the credit sequence, the spiral ofMadeleine's hair and Carlotta's in the portrait, cannotstop swallowing up the present and enlarging the contours of the past. The Empire Hotel has become the York and lost its greenneon lights; the McKittrick Hotel, the Victorian housewhere Madeleine disappears like a ghost (anotherinexplicable detail if we ignore the dream-reading: what of the hotel's mysterious janitress? “A paid accomplice' was Hitchcock'sreply to Truffaut. Come on, Alfred!) has been replaced bya school built of concrete. But Ernie'srestaurant is still there, as is Podesta Baldocchi's flower-shop with its tiled mosaics where one proudly remembers Kim Novak choosing abouquet. The cross-section of sequoia is still at the entrance to Muir Woods,onthe other side of the bay. The Botanical Gardenswere less fortunate: they are now parkedunderground. (Vertigo could almostbe shot in the same locations, unlike its remake inParis.) The Veterans' Museum is still there, as is the cemetery at the DoloresMission and San Juan Bautista, south of another mission, where Hitchcock added (by an optical effect) a high tower, the real onebeing so low you'd hardly sprain an ankle falling off it,complete with stable, carriages and stuffed horse used in the film just as theyare in life. And of course, there's Fort Point,under the Golden Gate Bridge, which he wanted to cover with birds at the end of The Birds. The Vertigo tour is nowobligatory for lovers of San Francisco. Even the Pope, pretendingotherwise, visited two locations: the Golden Gate Bridge and (under the pretextof kissing an AIDS patient) the Dolores Mission. Whether one acceptsthe dream reading or not, the power of thisonce ignored film has become a commonplace, proving that the idea of resurrecting a lost love can touch any human heart, whateverhe or she may say. “You're my second chance!' criesScottie as he drags Judy up the stairs of the tower.No one now wants to interpret these words in their superficial sense, meaning his vertigo has been conquered. It's about reliving a moment lost in the past, about bringing it back to life only to lose itagain. One does not resurrect the dead, one doesn't lookback at Eurydice. Scottie experiences thegreatest joy a man can imagine, a second life, in exchange for the greatest tragedy, a second death. What do video games, which tell usmore about our unconscious than the works of Lacan,offer us? Neither money nor glory, but a newgame. The possibility of playing again. “A second chance.” A free replay. And another thing: Madeleine tells Scottie she managed tofind her way back to the house “by spotting the Coit Tower'—thetower which dominates the surrounding hills and whose name makes visitingFrench tourists laugh. I “Well, it's the first time I ever had tothank the Coit Tower,” says Scottie, the blaseSan Franciscan. Madeleine would never find her way back today. The bushes have grown on Lombard Street, hiding all landmarks.Thehouse itself, number goo, has changed. The newowners have got rid of (or the old owner kept) thecast-iron balcony with its Chinese inscription “Twin Happiness.” The door is still red, but now blessed with a notice which,in its way, is a tribute to Alfred: “Warning: Crime Watch.”And, from the steps where Kim Novak and JamesStewart are first reunited, no one can see any more the tower “in the shape of a fire-hose,” offered as a posthumous gift to theSanFrancisco Fire Brigade by a millionairess calledLilli Hitchcock Coit ...

Obviously,this text is addressed to those who know Vertigo by heart. But do those who don'tdeserve anything at all?

Originally published at Positif , n°400, june 1994, p.79.

Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring and the Image of Time by Gilles Deleuze

2012-02-07T21:01:00.001-05:00

“An empty space owes its importance above all to theabsence of a possible content, whilst the still life is defined by the presenceand composition of objects which are wrapped up in themselves or become theirown container: as in the long shot of the vase almost at the end of Late Spring [directed by Yasujiro Ozu, 1949].”

“The vase in LateSpring is interposed between the daughter's half smile and thebeginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form ofwhat changes does not itself change, does not pass on. This is time, timeitself. 'a little time in its pure state': a direct time-image, which giveswhat changes the unchanging form in which the change is produced.”

Gilles Deleuze, Time-Image

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey

2012-02-07T20:48:00.001-05:00

I.INTRODUCTION

A. APolitical Use of Psychoanalysis

This paperintends to use psychoanalysis to discover where and how the fascination of filmis reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work withinthe individual subject and the social formations that have moulded him. Ittakes as starting point the way film reflects, reveals and even plays on thestraight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference whichcontrols images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle. It is helpful tounderstand what the cinema has been, how its magic has worked in the past,while attempting a theory and a practice which will challenge this cinema ofthe past. Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriate here as a political weapon,demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structuredfilm form.

Theparadox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on theimage of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea ofwoman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces thephallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that thephallus signifies. Recent writing in Screen about psychoanalysis and thecinema has not sufficiently brought out the importance of the representation ofthe female form in a symbolic order in which, in the last resort, it speakscastration and nothing else. To summarise briefly: the function of woman informing the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold, she first symbolises thecastration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises herchild into the symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in theprocess is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and languageexcept as a memory which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude andmemory of lack. Both are posited on nature (or on anatomy in Freud's famous phrase).Woman's desire is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound, shecan exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns herchild into the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis (the condition,she imagines, of entry into the symbolic). Either she must gracefully give wayto the word, the Name of the Father and the Law, or else struggle to keep herchild down with her in the half-light of the imaginary . Woman then stand&in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolicorder in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions throughlinguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied toher place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.

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Can anyone explain to Sean Penn the purpose of his character in The Tree of Life?

2012-02-07T02:29:00.002-05:00

In an interview to Le Figaro, Sean Penn (Into the Wild's director) showed his disagreement to Terrence Malick's directorial work in The Tree of Life, in which the actor plays one of the main roles:

I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which isthe most magnificent one that I’ve ever read. A clearer and more conventionalnarrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening itsbeauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doingthere and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terryhimself never managed to explain it to me clearly. - Sean Penn

Here some possible answers to Sean Penn's concerns proposed by Philosophy and Film students:

Justyna:

The character that Sean Penn playsin The Tree of Life rounds out the film by providing a present-day context tothe events of the past. At the beginning we witness the parents of three boyslearning of the death of their middle child. On the anniversary of hisbrother’s death, adult Jack (played by Sean Penn) lights a candle, goes towork, calls his father, but, confronted with grief, is unable to be present inhis surroundings. Now a successful architect living in a beautiful white cubeof a house with an understanding wife, Jack feels like he is “bumping intowalls” when he is at the architecture firm’s office. He goes for a walk andintroduces the audience to a long sequence of flashbacks by saying “I see thechild that I was.” Jack also contemplates his relationship to God and theunanswerable question of, “If there is a god, why is there suffering?” Through fantastical sequences that showthe vast and unstoppable forces of nature that have been at work since thebeginning of time, and through witnessing snippets of Jack’s childhood asbystanders, the audience is bidden to share in the same questions and in thefamily’s grief. Through this reflection, Jack comes to a realization that itwas his Brother and his Mother that led him to God, that God was always therecalling him, and that his Father and his Mother will always wrestle inside him.In the end, in an abstracted time and space, the family find the middle son andfind a form of resolution and peace with the loss of him. The Mother offers herson to God.

Through Sean Penn’s character theaudience is given context for the complex images throughout the film; however,that does not explain why Sean Penn was chosen to play adult Jack. After all,Jack had hazel eyes and a flattened nose so it does not make sense that hewould grow up to have blue eyes and a nose that is definitely not flattened.Such incongruities add unnecessary confusion to a film that already is notexactly straightforward.

Piragashini (Perry) Chandrakumar:

I personally don't think Sean Pennwas supposed to add anything to the movie. He was simply a prop in this moviefor Terrence. It was about a family who suffered a loss. The family wascontrolled by the father and I believe he was the hardest on the eldest son.The eldest son as a result of this, was kind of the pillar and strong member ofthe family guiding his little brothers. In the future Sean Penn (one of thebrothers) seemed like he became successful but was very lost. He didn't haveguidance anymore because his brother was gone. His purpose in the film was toshow us how socially awkward he became and how lost he was in the world withouthis older brother to guide him. Near the end of the movie he is asking forguidance from his brother and finds some sort of peace.

Shalini Shanmuganathan:

I think Sean Penn was trying tofigure out what he was doing in the end when he had an illusion that hereunited with his family. He was going up the elevator and I guess he felt likehe was going up his "tree of life" revisiting the people from hispast like his friend who was burned in the house fire, his youthful mom anddad, and his two younger brothers. I think Sean Penn felt like he needed togive his mother closure for the loss of his brother. In the end he reunites hislittle brother with his parents. Of course his mother is extremely happy andemotional. She eventually is seen with two ladies, whom I think are angels andtells God "I give you my son". The dead brother is then seen walkingout of a door to a deserted place which resembled heaven.

Sean Penn then starts going backdown the elevator and then they also show the camera descending from the tree.I think that resembled him getting back to reality and the present. Once SeanPenn got off the elevator and walked outside he looked emancipated as if hejust knocked back into reality. He seemed a lot more happier as if he himselffound closure. For him closure was giving his mom happiness.

Jelena Macura:

In my opinion, Sean Penn’scharacter in The Tree of Life adds to the context of the film as the audience,through the character’s childhood memories and flashbacks and current state ofbeing, is able to generate a deeper meaning of the film’s story. I feelthat Sean Penn’s character is very central to the story because his currentmental state allows the audience to better understand the significance of thecharacter’s childhood. As such, I feel that the audience is able to fullyexperience the character from his birth, rebellion, tragedy, and ultimatelyadult life in which the character finds himself in a confused state still hauntedby the death of his brother, the memories of his strict father, and thememories of his overall childhood.

Maryam Rahimi:

In myopinion the whole movie can be looked at as Sean Penn's mental process as heruminates through the past. The memories of his relationship with his parentsand siblings, of passing through puberty, of he rebellious teen age years. Healso remembers of being lost between what his mother teaches him about God andnature and what he sees of the world. The movie shows even as a grownup he isstill lost in the world and has unresolved issues. His role is to show a humanbeing who is suffering the pain of being confused about his being; existence ofthe world, God, nature; and origin of the world. The adult audience needs himto relate too.

Daniel Rokhvarger:

I think what Sean Penn adds to thefilm is structure and perspective. The whole story is told through the imagesof experience that his character had along with his family in childhood. Imagesforwarding to the future show a confused, disoriented, older Sean Penn who,like in childhood, is still struggling to make sense of his life and reach aninner peace. His character is the embodiment of man's timeless struggle to findmeaning in life. In a way, his character serves a significant narrative role asit guides the film's plot and gives it purpose.

The Tree of Life review

2012-02-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

The Tree of Life Essay by Kent Jones

All That Heaven Allows by Laura Mulvey

2012-01-30T03:49:00.000-05:00

Douglas Sirk once said: “This is the dialectic—there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” When All That Heaven Allows was released by Universal Studios in 1955 it was just another critically unnoticed Hollywood genre product designed to appeal to the trashy “women’s weepie” audience. Now, in retrospect, it is considered to be closer to the art side of Sirk’s “dialectic” and one of his key films. But this is part of a wider process of critical re-evaluation, in which his entire body of work has been rediscovered and reappraised by successive generations of filmmakers and historians.

No one seeing the film at the time would have imagined its director to be an elegant, extremely erudite European whose career started in the theatre of Weimar Germany and was an early director of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. After a short, but successful, career at the UFa studios in the vacuum left by the massive emigration of Jewish talent after the Nazis came to power in 1933, he made his way to Hollywood, directing his first film there in 1942. But after an unsuccessful attempt to return to Germany in 1949–50, he signed a contract with Universal Pictures. His movie career then culminated with his most high-profile films, the melodramas of 1952–58. By 1959 he was Universal’s most successful director. At that very point, he left moviemaking and America. Until his death in 1987, he and his wife Hilde lived in Lugano, Switzerland.

All That Heaven Allows marks the final turning point in Sirk’s strange and varied career. On the back of Magnificent Obsession’s success the previous year, Universal gave him the budgets and the freedom that enabled his mature style to blossom. All That Heaven Allows contains all the elements of characteristically Sirkian composition: light, shade, color, and camera angles combine with his trademark use of mirrors to break up the surface of the screen. Here are all the components of the “melodramatic” style on which Sirk’s critical reputation is based and that has made him the favorite of later generations of filmmakers, from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Quentin Tarantino, from John Waters to Pedro Almódovar.

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Borge's Streets

2012-01-24T18:05:00.005-05:00

"The task of artis to transform what is continuously happening to us to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man's memory. That is our duty. If we don't fulfill it, we feel unhappy."

Jorge Luis Borges

A little homage to the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, one of the greatest writers of all time. This video was shot in the winter of 2010 in Buenos Aires and Capilla del Señor, Argentina.

Directed and shot by Ian Ruschel with a Canon 5d. Edited and color graded it in Final Cut Pro using Twixtor, Knoll Light Factory and Magic Bullet.

Alcidez Zonco as Borges
Assistant Director: Max Laux
Production Manager: Arnoni Lenz
Production Company: Zeppelin Filmes

Track: Gustavo Santaolalla - 21 - The Motorcycle Diaries Soundtrack

Defining the Photoplay by Hugo Münsterberg

2012-01-14T23:58:00.002-05:00

Un chien Andalou (FRA, 1929) Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali

We have now reached the point at which we can knot together all our threads, the psychological and the esthetic ones. If we do so, we come to the true thesis of this whole book. Our esthetic discussion showed us that it is the aim of art to isolate a significant part of our experience in such a way that it is separate from our practical life and is in complete agreement within itself. Our esthetic satisfaction results from this inner agreement and harmony, but in order that we may feel such agreement of the parts we must enter with our own impulses into the will of every element, into the meaning of every line and color and form, every word and tone and note. Only if everything is full of such inner movement can we really enjoy the harmonious coöperation of the parts. The means of the various arts, we saw, are the forms and methods by which this aim is fulfilled. They must be different for every material. Moreover the same material may allow very different methods of isolation and elimination of the insignificant and reënforcement of that which contributes to the harmony. If we ask now what are the characteristic means by which the photoplay succeeds in overcoming reality, in isolating a significant dramatic story and in presenting it so that we enter into it and yet keep it away from our practical life and enjoy the harmony of the parts, we must remember all the results to which our psychological discussion in the first part of the book has led us.

We recognized there that the photoplay, incomparable in this respect with the drama, gave us a view of dramatic events which was completely shaped by the inner movements of the mind. To be sure, the events in the photoplay happen in the real space with its depth. But the spectator feels that they are not presented in the three dimensions of the outer world, that they are flat pictures which only the mind molds into plastic things. Again the events are seen in continuous movement; and yet the pictures break up the movement into a rapid succession of instantaneous impressions. We do not see the objective reality, but a product of our own mind which binds the pictures together. But much stronger differences came to light when we turned to the processes of attention, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, of division of interest and of emotion. The attention turns to detailed points in the outer world and ignores everything else: the photoplay is doing exactly this when in the close-up a detail is enlarged and everything else disappears. Memory breaks into present events by bringing up pictures of the past: the photoplay is doing this by its frequent cut-backs, when pictures of events long past flit between those of the present. The imagination anticipates the future or overcomes reality by fancies and dreams; the photoplay is doing all this more richly than any chance imagination would succeed in doing. But chiefly, through our division of interest our mind is drawn hither and thither. We think of events which run parallel in different places. The photoplay can show in intertwined scenes everything which our mind embraces. Events in three or four or five regions of the world can be woven together into one complex action. Finally, we saw that every shade of feeling and emotion which fills the spectator's mind can mold the scenes in the photoplay until they appear the embodiment of our feelings. In every one of these aspects the photoplay succeeds in doing what the drama of the theater does not attempt.

If this is the outcome of esthetic analysis on the one side, of psychological research on the other, we need only combine the results of both into a unified principle: the photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time, and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely, attention, memory, imagination, and emotion.

We shall gain our orientation most directly if once more, under this point of view, we compare the photoplay with the performance on the theater stage. We shall not enter into a discussion of the character of the regular theater and its drama. We take this for granted. Everybody knows that highest art form which the Greeks created and which from Greece has spread over Asia, Europe, and America. In tragedy and in comedy from ancient times to Ibsen, Rostand, Hauptmann, and Shaw we recognize one common purpose and one common form for which no further commentary is needed. How does the photoplay differ from a theater performance? We insisted that every work of art must be somehow separated from our sphere of practical interests. The theater is no exception. The structure of the theater itself, the framelike form of the stage, the difference of light between stage and house, the stage setting and costuming, all inhibit in the audience the possibility of taking the action on the stage to be real life. Stage managers have sometimes tried the experiment of reducing those differences, for instance, keeping the audience also in a fully lighted hall, and they always had to discover how much the dramatic effect was reduced because the feeling of distance from reality was weakened. The photoplay and the theater in this respect are evidently alike. The screen too suggests from the very start the complete unreality of the events.

But each further step leads us to remarkable differences between the stage play and the film play. In every respect the film play is further away from the physical reality than the drama and in every respect this greater distance from the physical world brings it nearer to the mental world. The stage shows us living men. It is not the real Romeo and not the real Juliet; and yet the actor and the actress have the ringing voices of true people, breathe like them, have living colors like them, and fill physical space like them. What is left in the photoplay? The voice has been stilled: the photoplay is a dumb show. Yet we must not forget that this alone is a step away from reality which has often been taken in the midst of the dramatic world. Whoever knows the history of the theater is aware of the tremendous rôle which the pantomime has played in the development of mankind. From the old half-religious pantomimic and suggestive dances out of which the beginnings of the real drama grew to the fully religious pantomimes of medieval ages and, further on, to many silent mimic elements in modern performances, we find a continuity of conventions which make the pantomime almost the real background of all dramatic development. We know how popular the pantomimes were among the Greeks, and how they stood in the foreground in the imperial period of Rome. Old Rome cherished the mimic clowns, but still more the tragic pantomimics. "Their very nod speaks, their hands talk and their fingers have a voice." After the fall of the Roman empire the church used the pantomime for the portrayal of sacred history, and later centuries enjoyed very unsacred histories in the pantomimes of their ballets. Even complex artistic tragedies without words have triumphed on our present-day stage. "L'Enfant Prodigue" which came from Paris, "Sumurun" which came from Berlin, "Petroushka" which came from Petrograd, conquered the American stage; and surely the loss of speech, while it increased the remoteness from reality, by no means destroyed the continuous consciousness of the bodily existence of the actors.

Moreover the student of a modern pantomime cannot overlook a characteristic difference between the speechless performance on the stage and that of the actors of a photoplay. The expression of the inner states, the whole system of gestures, is decidedly different: and here we might say that the photoplay stands nearer to life than the pantomime. Of course, the photoplayer must somewhat exaggerate the natural expression. The whole rhythm and intensity of his gestures must be more marked than it would be with actors who accompany their movements by spoken words and who express the meaning of their thoughts and feelings by the content of what they say. Nevertheless the photoplayer uses the regular channels of mental discharge. He acts simply as a very emotional person might act. But the actor who plays in a pantomime cannot be satisfied with that. He is expected to add something which is entirely unnatural, namely a kind of artificial demonstration of his emotions. He must not only behave like an angry man, but he must behave like a man who is consciously interested in his anger and wants to demonstrate it to others. He exhibits his emotions for the spectators. He really acts theatrically for the benefit of the bystanders. If he did not try to do so, his means of conveying a rich story and a real conflict of human passions would be too meager. The photoplayer, with the rapid changes of scenes, has other possibilities of conveying his intentions. He must not yield to the temptation to play a pantomime on the screen, or he will seriously injure the artistic quality of the reel.

The really decisive distance from bodily reality, however, is created by the substitution of the actor's picture for the actor himself. Lights and shades replace the manifoldness of color effects and mere perspective must furnish the suggestion of depth. We traced it when we discussed the psychology of kinematoscopic perception. But we must not put the emphasis on the wrong point. The natural tendency might be to lay the chief stress on the fact that those people in the photoplay do not stand before us in flesh and blood. The essential point is rather that we are conscious of the flatness of the picture. If we were to see the actors of the stage in a mirror, it would also be a reflected image which we perceive. We should not really have the actors themselves in our straight line of vision; and yet this image would appear to us equivalent to the actors themselves, because it would contain all the depth of the real stage. The film picture is such a reflected rendering of the actors. The process which leads from the living men to the screen is more complex than a mere reflection in a mirror, but in spite of the complexity in the transmission we do, after all, see the real actor in the picture. The photograph is absolutely different from those pictures which a clever draughtsman has sketched. In the photoplay we see the actors themselves and the decisive factor which makes the impression different from seeing real men is not that we see the living persons through the medium of photographic reproduction but that this reproduction shows them in a flat form. The bodily space has been eliminated. We said once before that stereoscopic arrangements could reproduce somewhat this plastic form also. Yet this would seriously interfere with the character of the photoplay. We need there this overcoming of the depth, we want to have it as a picture only and yet as a picture which strongly suggests to us the actual depth of the real world. We want to keep the interest in the plastic world and want to be aware of the depth in which the persons move, but our direct object of perception must be without the depth. That idea of space which forces on us most strongly the idea of heaviness, solidity and substantiality must be replaced by the light flitting immateriality.

But the photoplay sacrifices not only the space values of the real theater; it disregards no less its order of time. The theater presents its plot in the time order of reality. It may interrupt the continuous flow of time without neglecting the conditions of the dramatic art. There may be twenty years between the third and the fourth act, inasmuch as the dramatic writer must select those elements spread over space and time which are significant for the development of his story. But he is bound by the fundamental principle of real time, that it can move only forward and not backward. Whatever the theater shows us now must come later in the story than that which it showed us in any previous moment. The strict classical demand for complete unity of time does not fit every drama, but a drama would give up its mission if it told us in the third act something which happened before the second act. Of course, there may be a play within a play, and the players on the stage which is set on the stage may play events of old Roman history before the king of France. But this is an enclosure of the past in the present, which corresponds exactly to the actual order of events. The photoplay, on the other hand, does not and must not respect this temporal structure of the physical universe. At any point the photoplay interrupts the series and brings us back to the past. We studied this unique feature of the film art when we spoke of the psychology of memory and imagination. With the full freedom of our fancy, with the whole mobility of our association of ideas, pictures of the past flit through the scenes of the present. Time is left behind. Man becomes boy; today is interwoven with the day before yesterday. The freedom of the mind has triumphed over the unalterable law of the outer world.

It is interesting to watch how playwrights nowadays try to steal the thunder of the photoplay and experiment with time reversals on the legitimate stage. We are esthetically on the borderland when a grandfather tells his grandchild the story of his own youth as a warning, and instead of the spoken words the events of his early years come before our eyes. This is, after all, quite similar to a play within a play. A very different experiment is tried in "Under Cover." The third act, which plays on the second floor of the house, ends with an explosion. The fourth act, which plays downstairs, begins a quarter of an hour before the explosion. Here we have a real denial of a fundamental condition of the theater. Or if we stick to recent products of the American stage, we may think of "On Trial," a play which perhaps comes nearest to a dramatic usurpation of the rights of the photoplay. We see the court scene and as one witness after another begins to give his testimony the courtroom is replaced by the scenes of the actions about which the witness is to report. Another clever play, "Between the Lines," ends the first act with a postman bringing three letters from the three children of the house. The second, third, and fourth acts lead us to the three different homes from which the letters came and the action in the three places not only precedes the writing of the letters; but goes on at the same time. The last act, finally, begins with the arrival of the letters which tell the ending of those events in the three homes. Such experiments are very suggestive but they are not any longer pure dramatic art. It is always possible to mix arts. An Italian painter produces very striking effects by putting pieces of glass and stone and rope into his paintings, but they are no longer pure paintings. The drama in which the later event comes before the earlier is an esthetic barbarism which is entertaining as a clever trick in a graceful superficial play, but intolerable in ambitious dramatic art. It is not only tolerable but perfectly natural in any photoplay. The pictorial reflection of the world is not bound by the rigid mechanism of time. Our mind is here and there, our mind turns to the present and then to the past: the photoplay can equal it in its freedom from the bondage of the material world.

But the theater is bound not only by space and time. Whatever it shows is controlled by the same laws of causality which govern nature. This involves a complete continuity of the physical events: no cause without following effect, no effect without preceding cause. This whole natural course is left behind in the play on the screen. The deviation from reality begins with that resolution of the continuous movement which we studied in our psychological discussions. We saw that the impression of movement results from an activity of the mind which binds the separate pictures together. What we actually see is a composite; it is like the movement of a fountain in which every jet is resolved into numberless drops. We feel the play of those drops in their sparkling haste as one continuous stream of water, and yet are conscious of the myriads of drops, each one separate from the others. This fountainlike spray of pictures has completely overcome the causal world.

In an entirely different form this triumph over causality appears in the interruption of the events by pictures which belong to another series. We find this whenever the scene suddenly changes. The processes are not carried to their natural consequences. A movement is started, but before the cause brings its results another scene has taken its place. What this new scene brings may be an effect for which we saw no causes. But not only the processes are interrupted. The intertwining of the scenes which we have traced in detail is itself such a contrast to causality. It is as if different objects could fill the same space at the same time. It is as if the resistance of the material world had disappeared and the substances could penetrate one another. In the interlacing of our ideas we experience this superiority to all physical laws. The theater would not have even the technical means to give us such impressions, but if it had, it would have no right to make use of them, as it would destroy the basis on which the drama is built. We have only another case of the same type in those series of pictures which aim to force a suggestion on our mind. We have spoken of them. A certain effect is prepared by a chain of causes and yet when the causal result is to appear the film is cut off. We have the causes without the effect. The villain thrusts with his dagger—but a miracle has snatched away his victim.

While the moving pictures are lifted above the world of space and time and causality and are freed from its bounds, they are certainly not without law. We said before that the freedom with which the pictures replace one another is to a large degree comparable to the sparkling and streaming of the musical tones. The yielding to the play of the mental energies, to the attention and emotion, which is felt in the film pictures, is still more complete in the musical melodies and harmonies in which the tones themselves are merely the expressions of the ideas and feelings and will impulses of the mind. Their harmonies and disharmonies, their fusing and blending, is not controlled by any outer necessity, but by the inner agreement and disagreement of our free impulses. And yet in this world of musical freedom, everything is completely controlled by esthetic necessities. No sphere of practical life stands under such rigid rules as the realm of the composer. However bold the musical genius may be he cannot emancipate himself from the iron rule that his work must show complete unity in itself. All the separate prescriptions which the musical student has to learn are ultimately only the consequences of this central demand which music, the freest of the arts, shares with all the others. In the case of the film, too, the freedom from the physical forms of space, time, and causality does not mean any liberation from this esthetic bondageeither. On the contrary, just as music is surrounded by more technical rules than literature, the photoplay must be held together by the esthetic demands still more firmly than is the drama. The arts which are subordinated to the conditions of space, time, and causality find a certain firmness of structure in these material forms which contain an element of outer connectedness. But where these forms are given up and where the freedom of mental play replaces their outer necessity, everything would fall asunder if the esthetic unity were disregarded.

This unity is, first of all, the unity of action. The demand for it is the same which we know from the drama. The temptation to neglect it is nowhere greater than in the photoplay where outside matter can so easily be introduced or independent interests developed. It is certainly true for the photoplay, as for every work of art, that nothing has the right to existence in its midst which is not internally needed for the unfolding of the unified action. Wherever two plots are given to us, we receive less by far than if we had only one plot. We leave the sphere of valuable art entirely when a unified action is ruined by mixing it with declamation, and propaganda which is not organically interwoven with the action itself. It may be still fresh in memory what an esthetically intolerable helter-skelter performance was offered to the public in "The Battlecry of Peace." Nothing can be more injurious to the esthetic cultivation of the people than such performances which hold the attention of the spectators by ambitious detail and yet destroy their esthetic sensibility by a complete disregard of the fundamental principle of art, the demand for unity. But we recognized also that this unity involves complete isolation. We annihilate beauty when we link the artistic creation with practical interests and transform the spectator into a selfishly interested bystander. The scenic background of the play is not presented in order that we decide whether we want to spend our next vacation there. The interior decoration of the rooms is not exhibited as a display for a department store. The men and women who carry out the action of the plot must not be people whom we may meet tomorrow on the street. All the threads of the play must be knotted together in the play itself and none should be connected with our outside interests. A good photoplay must be isolated and complete in itself like a beautiful melody. It is not an advertisement for the newest fashions.

This unity of action involves unity of characters. It has too often been maintained by those who theorize on the photoplay that the development of character is the special task of the drama, while the photoplay, which lacks words, must be satisfied with types. Probably this is only a reflection of the crude state which most photoplays of today have not outgrown. Internally, there is no reason why the means of the photoplay should not allow a rather subtle depicting of complex character. But the chief demand is that the characters remain consistent, that the action be developed according to inner necessity and that the characters themselves be in harmony with the central idea of the plot. However, as soon as we insist on unity we have no right to think only of the action which gives the content of the play. We cannot make light of the form. As in music the melody and rhythms belong together, as in painting not every color combination suits every subject, and as in poetry not every stanza would agree with every idea, so the photoplay must bring action and pictorial expression into perfect harmony. But this demand repeats itself in every single picture. We take it for granted that the painter balances perfectly the forms in his painting, groups them so that an internal symmetry can be felt and that the lines and curves and colors blend into a unity. Every single picture of the sixteen thousand which are shown to us in one reel ought to be treated with this respect of the pictorial artist for the unity of the forms.

The photoplay shows us a significant conflict of human actions in moving pictures which, freed from the physical forms of space, time, and causality, are adjusted to the free play of our mental experiences and which reach complete isolation from the practical world through the perfect unity of plot and pictorial appearance.

The Photoplay: A Psychological Study

Hugo Münsterberg

D. Appleton and Company, New York / London, 1916

Nothingness in Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer: An Analytical Essay

2012-01-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

According to Andras B. Kovacs' Screening Modernism, the concept of nothingness is “a series of everyday situations where man is alone, desperately looking for something solid in a situation where his own identity is called into question.” This nothingness is created when one’s expectation reaches a point of frustration, and it is also the central concept of existentialist philosophy. This is due to the human condition, or rather, the “nonbeing of something” or of something that should be. This concept thus defines the nature of the human existence, where feelings of helplessness are faced with the repressive forces of the exterior world. Given the nature of these ideas, Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer (2008) is a prominent exemplary form of the concept of nothingness. Set in the near future, it depicts a world where Mexican workers provide the United States with labor, while eliminating their physical presence. Therefore, Mexicans do not migrate; rather they are plugged into a computer to operate robots in the United States. The film highlights many issues we struggle with today, technology versus alienation being one of the more prominent themes. This essay will deconstruct and analyze the film following Kovacs’ concept of nothingness to depict the extent of which technology creates alienation through the elimination of the basic experiences of everyday life.

Kovacs states that nothingness is created from the interaction of consciousness and the world. Additionally, through nothingness, people come to define themselves. This is evident from the beginning of the film as one of the main characters, Memo, describes his living conditions. Rather than describing the physical properties of his inhabited village, he states that it is “a village dry, isolated and disconnected.” In this description, the viewer enters into Memo’s physical and mental world all at once. He wanders into the emptiness in silence, a notion that well describes his state of consciousness. In this particular scene, the director sets up the notion of alienation as the imagery presents vast and wide spaces of empty and deserted land. The viewer begins to understand Memo’s personality through his stream of consciousness. Although he is a man of few words, it does not take long for the viewer to decode his persona. This young man is detached from his personal and physical surroundings, even when his family surrounds him. As the family dines together, Memo’s lack of mental presence overshadows his physical presence. The only time the viewer feels his presence is when he picks up signals on his radio that transport him to far away places. They connect him to the outside world, to vibrant and lively cities where people are living a fast paced life, something he has never experienced. However, as he listens in on the hustle and bustle, this electronic connection makes him feel all the more disconnected.

Furthermore, as the viewer watches Memo work in the fields of the empty village, the feeling of nonbeing is furthermore explicated. Through his work, a lack of purpose and fulfillment is captured. Moreover, this notion is shown in several different sequences in the film. First, the viewer witnesses the technological and corporate takeover that has ensued, which has completely blocked the Mexican-American border. This technology has eliminated much of the everyday human interaction the residents of village experience. They are only able to speak through machines in order to obtain goods and services. This also highlights the barrier that technology has created, which has severely decreased and burdened human communication. The director translates this idea further by showing that much of the communication is between people and computer programmed machines that do not require any human control. This emphasizes the feeling of disconnection between Memo and his environment.

As events transpire, Memo’s father is killed in his home by a robot controlled by a pilot in the United States. This is due to Memo’s signal capturing radio that was deemed as a threat. Memo leaves the village in hopes of finding work outside town, and he encounters a woman who introduces him to the ‘Sleep Dealers’ factories. This woman, Luz, faces her own form of disconnection in a rather bizarre way that will be discussed shortly. Memo begins working for the sleep dealers as a construction worker in San Diego. Visually, he is able to experience a life he had never known to be possible. His previous feelings of needing to escape the village have been somewhat alleviated; yet he is always brought back to reality once he is unplugged from the labor harboring machines. This creates further confusion for Memo as he seems to be living two separate lives while inhabiting one body. He questions his identity more so than when he was living in the village. This technology has forced him to call into question the meaning of his existence. The only way he feels a sense of purpose is by sending his family the money he earns. However, it is not gratifying as he witnesses their living conditions in the hot and dry village as they are lacking water. This is due to the indestructible dam that was built to secure the border between the two countries. Here, the viewer is able to empathize with Memo’s feelings of being lost and isolated as he is stuck in world that seemingly prioritizes technology over humanity. What furthermore exacerbates these feelings is the lack of control Memo has over the way he lives his life, his surroundings, and his means of survival. There is no room for change, and everything is beyond his control.

The ‘Sleep Dealer’ factories give insight into a world where corporations have taken over the complete human living conditions through the use of technology. In the film, this is depicted in several ways. As the process of working has been previously examined, we now turn to the experience of memories and interpersonal relationships. Luz, one of the main characters in the film is involved in the memory market. She transfers her memories to a program where they can be viewed and even purchase. This technological breakthrough in the futuristic society portrayed by Rivera highlights the breaking point of communication, forming relationships, and sharing experiences. Luz transfers her memory of her meeting and interaction with Memo (photo above), and at one point the program requests that she states the truth about the experience as it can detect a lie. This is significant as later on while we enter her stream of consciousness, she reveals that she is able to tell the program the truth about her feelings towards Memo, yet she is unable to share her true feeling with him. This highlights the barrier that is created between people in terms of personal relationships. As Luz shares her memories, a feeling of alienation is created because she is not capable of expressing her true self in real life, rather only through technological means. She states that people can see what you see, therefore instead of communicating; you transfer a series of images and lines that depict your emotions. She faces a problem similar to Memo’s, which is the rarity in feeling connected. This inability challenges the formation of one’s identity as it becomes difficult to define oneself when one cannot identify with their self, environment, or lifestyle.

In his need to escape, Memo now lives a new life yet he is as lost as he previously was. The only difference in his current state is that he is more aware of the reasons behind these feelings. His work has allowed him to witness the downfall of society up-close as he is now an avid participant in the technological barrier that has been created by humans. In the village, he used his radio to escape and live as if he were somewhere else, yet now he is closer to the source of his agony. Luz described Memo as someone who is lost, clinging on to what he left behind. His new life did not help his situation as he has experienced two lives, yet neither experience has filled the void of finding his place in the world. Rivera emphasizes these notions in revealing that the state of the current world promotes feelings of alienation regardless of a person’s location. Whether it is a small town, village, or a city, the impact of technology in displacing human necessities such as communication and everyday experiences can be felt the world over.

Rivera allows the viewer to delve into the characters’ psyches prominently through their stream of consciousness. In this form of narration, Kovacs’ concept of nothingness is truly illustrated. Sleep Dealer is deeply philosophical as it depicts the central concept of existentialist philosophy. The central characters each portray their own method of finding their place in the world. Through that method, they attempt to find the purpose of their existence. While this is a feeling that is universal in nature, and transcends from generation to generation, and civilization to civilization, it is the element of technology that truly exacerbates this concept. Technology has greatly impacted and influenced the way of life, making it harder for one to find their place in the world when much of the communication and interaction is eliminated. It is only logical that we define ourselves through our experiences with our fellow people, therefore when those experiences are marginalized; it makes it all the more difficult. This is one of the main reasons this film truly captivates the senses. It allows the viewer to enter a world that could very well exist in the near future, and without the dramatic use of special effects, we witness the possibility of our very own alienated future. Drawing on Kovacs, it is the interaction of consciousness and the world that shapes and defines our being. Therefore, living in a world where this interaction becomes so minute and impersonal, we should be fearful of finding our place and purpose.

Drawing on Kovacs’ concept of nothingness, this essay has analyzed the film Sleep Dealer, directed by Alex Rivera to expose the relationship of technology and alienation and their affect on one’s identity. To that effect, it can be concluded that the film exhibits central philosophical concepts pertaining to existentialism. The film was successful in highlighting a futuristic society where technology is the main form of work and communication, therefore creating barriers that lead to feelings of displacement and alienation. Two of the film’s main characters, Memo and Luz, have been deeply analyzed to show their different ways of dealing with the harsh conditions of this impersonal world. In analyzing these characters, Kovacs’ explicated, predominantly through their streams of consciousness. It is a key factor in their evaluation since much their thoughts are not exposed to their peers and colleagues. Hence, this process was crucial to understanding the motives behind the director’s intentions. His portrayal of the near future, a society well on its way to existence, provides the viewer with insight into his or her place in the world. Additionally, it examines the basic necessities for humans in the face of fast paced technological advances, and the way they influence the very core of our being.

Reem Al Mousawi
Ryerson University
(CPHL 710 - Summer 2011 - Instructor: Hudson Moura)

Sleep Dealer as a modern melodrama

2012-01-05T16:59:00.000-05:00

In Chapter five of Andras Balint Kovacs' book Screening modernism: european art cinema, he puts forth his view on the difference between classical and modern Melodrama. Kovacs' criteria for what makes a modern melodrama can be broken down into a few main ideas. In a modern melodrama the source of the conflict in the film is not something concrete, rather it is represented by a lack of something, in other words a nothingness. The protagonist does not have a complete awareness of his or her situation. The protagonist has a passive reaction to the provocation caused by their situation. Finally, concrete narrative events are just representations of the greater crisis of the world that the character inhabits. (Kovacs 89, 90) In this essay I will discuss how Sleep Dealer fits Kovacs' criteria of a modern melodrama. I will also discuss how the same events in the film contribute to the theme of disconnectedness.

Sleep Dealers and Kovacs' modern melodrama.

“The bigger power in modern melodrama is represented by something that is stronger not by its presence buy by it's absence.”(Kovacs 89)

In Sleep Dealer the “greater power” is not some singular enemy that we can pin point, rather it is the general societal situation that the protagonist inhabits. In the world of Sleep Dealer corporations have taken over water supplies, and people's labour is exploited using dangerous technology. In Sleep Dealer, the bigger power is the unchangeable societal situation, where Memo has to face “...an existential lack of these positive values.”(Kovacs 90) Some examples of this lack of values are when he first arrives in Tijuana he is robbed. After that he gets a job, but the labour practices are exploitive. Even his relationship with the girl is temporarily ruined when he feels he is being used by her. All of his money is being sent back to his family, so he can't even enjoy that. All of these things add to the fact that there is a positive values in his world. The Greater Power in Sleep Dealer is a lack of hope and connection to people and the fruit of his labour.

The protagonist Memo was born after the damn was built, and his community (Santa Ana) was left dependent on a corporation for it's water. Memo never knew any other situation, unlike his father, who live before the damn was build. For Memo “Santa Ana was a trap. dry, dusty, disconnected.”. Memo had the sense the community was futureless and he pined for a more interesting life, and he felt no connection to the land that provided for him. Memo's father on the other hand, was angry about the damn and longed for the old days, when he was allowed to provide for himself and his family with the fruit of his own labour. After Memo's father dies, Memo moves to Tijuana to find work as a remote labourer and succeeds, with the help of a young writer. He works as a remote labourer and supports his family and he now has what he wanted, to live in the city and have a more interesting life. Despite having what he wants, his life is still hopeless, because the of lack of job advancement and the fact that the technology used slowly makes its users blind. In Kovacs' book he describes one aspect of modern melodrama:

“We talk about modern intellectual melodrama when the protagonist finds herself in front of an existential situation that she cannot understand, and this lack of understanding provokes passivity, suffering and anxiety.”(Kovacs 89)

The father, because he has memories from before the situation was so hopeless, he recognizes the lack of positive values in his world. In other word because he has memories of positive values he sees the nonbeing of these values, he recognizes the nothingness. In this film we can clearly see that Memo dose not understand his situation, in the film he never seems to consider the unfairness of his situation because he has known nothing else. Memo does not recognize his situation, as a result he feels bored, hopeless and anxiety. Sleep Dealer fit into Kovacs' definition of a modern melodrama Because Memo Doesn't understand his situation.

Kovacs says that in a classical melodrama Characters react at first but then “abandon themselves to pure emotional suffering”(Kovacs 89). In the case of modern melodrama he says that: “The reaction of modern melodramatic heroes to the provocation of the environment is even more passive.”(Kovacs 89)

Memo clearly fits into the archetype of a modern melodramatic hero. When faced with the provocation of his world he does nothing in response, because there is nothing he can do. Memo simply moves through his world not responding to provocations physically. The forces that are causing the conflict are far to insurmountable for him to even consider doing anything in retaliation. Memo is face with several provocations most notably when: father is killed, he is robbed, the working condition at his are exploitive. His response to all these provocations are completely passive. At the end of the film Memo is track down by the remorseful pilot who killed his father and the pilot want to make amens. The pilot with the help from Memo damages the Damn in Santa Ana letting water through. Memo plays a passive role in this plan, he merely allows the pilot to do it, and once it's done it is clear that very little will change in the long run. Sleep Dealer fits Kovacs' idea of a modern melodrama because Memo reacts passively to the provocations he faces.

The event that triggers the narrative in Sleep Dealer is when Memo's father is killed by an american military aircraft that bombs their house. Kovacs says that in a modern melodrama:

“No matter what concrete event triggers the narrative action, it is but a superficial manifestation of a deeper and more general crisis for which no immediate physical reaction is possible.”(Kovacs 89)

The Inciting incident in Sleep Dealer (the fathers death) is representative of the greater crisis in the world being represented. Namely the marginalization and oppression of mexico and it's people by america and corporations. This crisis also brings with it the existential consequences: hopelessness, anxiety, etc. Furthermore there is no possible physical reaction to either Memo's fathers death or the greater societal crisis. This further show that Sleep Dealer fit into Kovacs' description of a modern melodrama.

Disconnectedness and Nothingness

One of the themes of Sleep Dealer is the idea of disconnectedness, this idea is manifested in the protagonist Memo. At the start of the film Memo feels bored and disconnected from the world, and he blames that fact that he lives in rural mexico. After he moves to the city he meets a girl who he forms a connection with but he later finds that it was partly contrived by the girl because she was using Memo to sell memories. so even though he moved to the city he is still not able to form real human connection. Another aspect of the film that reinforces the theme of disconnection is his job. At Memo's job he works for hours on end and when he is finished there is very little tangible reward and Much of his money goes to supporting his family. The only thing to show for his hard work is his slowly degrading vision. This theme of disconnectedness is related to nothingness in that Disconnectedness is an absence of connection. This theme relates to Kovacs idea of nothingness in modern cinema.

Keifer Wiseman

Ryerson University

(CPHL 710 - Summer 2011 - Instructor: Hudson Moura)

Nothingness as the human experience of being

2012-01-05T15:57:00.000-05:00

Alex Rivera’s 2008 film Sleep Dealer has everything to do with nothing. Or to put it more precisely, the film delves deeply into the philosophical topic of nothingness. Utilizing the conflict of connection (in the form of technology) versus alienation, Rivera exposes audiences to the inescapable nothingness that permeates our human existence. Whether the protagonist Memo is alienated from technology in his remote village of Santa Ana or connected using the latest technology in Tijuana, he is still faced with overwhelming amounts of nothingness.

But what is nothingness? How does one describe something that is not?

Kovac’s Genre in Modern Cinema draws attention to three of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas about nothingness. The first is that nothingness is “a product of human intentions and at the same time the essence of being” (Kovacs, p. 92). As such, nothingness is a central part of our world, and it is inescapable.

The second principle is that nothingness is born of unmet expectations, or the “non-being of something that should be” (Kovacs, p.92). Human expectations, frustrations and memory are the creators of nothingness.

The final Sartrian idea is the notion that nothingness is freedom. Nothingness is “an empty moment in the world where man is liberated from his past and must choose” (Kovacs, p. 93). The nothingness as the gap between what was and what could be creates the opportunity to make a choice.

Sleep Dealer encompasses all three of these Sartrian ideas. Because nothingness is a central element of human existence, Memo can never escape it, whether he is alienated from or connected with technology.

The nothingness is first presented when Memo is alienated from technology. To be alienated is to be absent. Prior to Memo’s migration to Tijuana, technology, the fast-paced lifestyle of the city, work, and etc. are all absent from his life. There’s a nothingness in their place and this nothingness presents a gap.

Furthermore, this nothingness exists because Memo has created an expectation of what could be were he not alienated. While still in Santa Ana, he uses amateur hacking skills to overhear the conversations of various node workers around the world. From these slivers of conversation, he paints a fantasy image of how being connected with the technology of the big cities will provide him with everything he has ever wanted. It is through these fantasies that he is aware of their “non-being” in his own life. He does not have nodes, nor is he living in a bustling city or working as a node worker. In their place is a great nothingness.

And in this gap he has the freedom to choose. Will he stay in Santa Anna or will he move to the city?

Ultimately, an even greater nothingness – the loss of his father at the hands of
a
military node worker – stimulates Memo to choose to move to Tijuana and get connected. There is an irony here; Memo moves to Tijuana to fill a gap created by technology through using technology. Technology is both the cause and the solution for the nothingness. It is inescapable.

The inescapability of the nothingness becomes even more apparent when Memo moves to Tijuana and gets his nodes. Although he has filled the absence of technology in his life, he finds even more absences in its place, i.e. the absence of: meaningfulness/satisfaction in what he does, contact with his work and connection with others.

Again, the absence of meaningfulness/satisfaction is due to an unmet expectation. As it turns out, being a node worker is not the fulfilling career choice Memo had dreamed it to be. In fact, his whole endeavour to get connected was terribly disappointing; he gets mugged by the first “coyotek” he attempts to do business with, he works 12-hour night shifts to the point of exhaustion and he does not even have a proper home to retire to at night. And in the end, all of these sacrifices are for nothing.

Memo’s job as a node worker is loaded with nothingness. At the start of every shift, Memo plugs into his personal terminal and puts on his contact lenses. He no longer sees the factory environment where he really is or the other node workers standing beside him. He simply becomes surrounded by nothingness. Although he operates a robot that exists in another real location, there is an absence of contact with the environment in which he works. Once plugged in, he could be in California, or China, or anywhere, without ever actually being there. Furthermore, the robots operated by node-workers such as Memo bear little semblance to humans. They look and operate like robots. In effect, there is a complete absence of humanity when Memo plugs into his terminal and becomes a robot.

But the final and most ironic way in which Memo encounters nothingness in Tijuana is in the absence of connectedness. The very technology that was meant to cross borders and connect people actually serves to alienate them. For example, Luz states that the whole reason she became a “writer” (or rather a memory merchant) was to promote connectedness. But in recording Memo’s story and selling it, she actually alienates herself from him – as seen from Memo’s rather negative reaction when he discovers her true motives for spending time with him. The military node worker Rudy serves as another example of how technology removed the connectedness it was supposed to promote; rather than connecting him to his country and the people he is supposed to protect, the technology has alienated him from them to the extent that they become nothing more than targets – as in the case of Memo’s father. Lastly, Memo also experiences the lack of connectedness in his factory job, as described earlier. The very nothingness that incited the need for technology is the same nothingness that the technology promotes.

Throughout the movie, the audience comes to realize that the true conflict of the film is not alienation versus connection, but alienation versus alienation, or nothingness versus nothingness. In the film, the pervasiveness of nothingness is much more powerful than the characters’ abilities to fill it. In watching the film, audiences realize that the same is true of reality and that there will always be more nothingness than can be filled. Overall, Rivera successfully captures how central nothingness is the human experience of being.

Jessica Tremblay

Ryerson University

(CPHL 710 - Summer 2011 - Instructor: Hudson Moura)

Node Life: Nothingness and Sleep Dealer

2012-01-05T15:45:00.000-05:00

Technology has changed our lives greatly. We no longer use it just to aid us at our jobs, but rather, in many cases today, technology is the one that completes our jobs for us. Our lives have greatly become dependent on technology. With this dependency however, consequences have resulted. One main downfall of our lives revolving around technology is human alienation. The central theme of Sleep Dealer is the widely spread yet increasingly invisible prevalence of alienation in the world today that questions the affect of the relationship between man and technology.

Memo Cruz, the protagonist in this film, lives with his family in the small village of Santa Ana del Rio in Mexico. This small farming village is the kind of place that seems to be frozen in time in itself and the people living there. The only one who doesn’t blend with this frozen mould is the hi-tech, militarized dam that controls Santa Ana’s water supply. Memo doesn’t care about his town. He loves technology and dreams of working in the hi-tech industry in the big cities. One night, while playing around with his radio, Memo stumbles across something he’s never heard before; the communications of the security forces that are patrolling the area around his village to protect the dam. Unfortunately, security agents have spotted Memo’s radio intercept and concluded that it is a threat. Memo is then forced to realize his dream of leaving Santa Ana in the worst possible way when his house is destroyed in a remote-control bombing. Driven by feelings of guilt and the need to earn money to support his family, Memo leaves to the big city to find work and help his family start again. He heads to Tijuana to only end up losing himself to the “node” world. Once connected to the net, workers are able to earn money by working in factories where they build skyscrapers, care for children and the like without having to cross the border. Alex Rivera’s, Sleep Dealer simply imagines a world of vanished identity and virtual everything where the mood is lonely and abandoned.

Alex Rivera’s artistic purpose is to show the dramatic character in a situation that lacks humanistic values which in return makes him suffer and become lonely. This lack is ultimately the reason for Memo’s unhappiness. Rivera has created a thriller of the vanishing: the character’s vanished ability to depend on themselves as their lives seem to be controlled by the modernization around them has become the source of their own suffering. Memo knows what he’s lacking but he can’t help it disappear. In the opening scene we see how Memo deeply wishes his family would leave his small village and move to the city for a better life style. His emptiness and loneliness make him a victim in this film. The dynamics of emptiness make “nothingness” the ultimate explanatory tool for Memo’s situation.

“Emptiness” or “nothingness” is an existential situation that is within him but functions as a “disease” of which he is not the cause of and can’t fight against. The title of this movie already gives an idea of disappearance of humane elements and identity. The plot is built upon a series of disappearances. First we learn that Memo’s village lacks water supply. Then we discover that Memo lacks any interest of wanting to stay in his town. Memo then loses his father after his house was bombed, forcing him to flee to the city. Then we see that after he gets his “node” job, he begins to lose his energy and self to the technology. Memo also loses his trust in Luz when he discovers that she is selling her memories of him online. The ending of the story shows that despite the village having gained its water supply back, Memo refuses to go back, enforcing the idea that he has lost his identity to his “node” self or in other words, technology.

The concept of nothingness developed by Jean-Paul Sartre is an important one in this film. The main aspect of nothingness is that it’s not only recognized when something is missing from what exists but rather it is linked to it. Nothingness has become the central concept of existentialist philosophy (Kovacs, 2008). Nothingness has become a key player in the relationship of man to the world or in this film, Sleep Dealer, man to technology. Nothingness is a series of everyday situations where man is alone, disappointed by his beliefs and expectations, desperately looking for something solid in a situation where his own identity is called into question (Kovacs, 2008). Throughout the film Memo questions why his family is staying where they are despite their poor living conditions. He is lonely in this world which is why he spends his days and nights with his technological toys. This gives him a place to run to, a place for him to let himself be, a place where he can try to find himself and understand who he is and what he is about. Him being lonely and feeling as if he belonged somewhere else is in essence the foundation of his being, of his existence as we later discover in the film. His love for technology was the cause of his father’s death yet it also saved his small village as it supplied them with water.

Nothingness is the Sleep Dealer is a human memory. All expectations, all disappointments and all memories are tied to concrete contents (Kovacs, 2008). In Sleep Dealer, we see many flashbacks of Memo’s memories from his small village. By closely looking at these images, most of these flashbacks show images of an empty village, a waterless, deserted, lifeless and most importantly a “kingless” one. By seeing these images with those missing elements, nothingness is produced by their absence. We also see this concept in the supporting actress. She too left home without a plan and is now empty on the inside. She introduces herself to Memo as an inspiring writer which we later discover her “writing” is not the conventional writing we know about. Rather, it is all about her memories being recorded and uploaded to the virtual net to be purchased. This shows that even the one thing she stands by and the reason why she left home has lost its reason. When someone finally showed interest in one of her uploads, that of her encounter with Memo, things brighten up for her and she sees some purpose to her “writing”. When she also learns about Memo’s family and what his father did to support them, she asked him “how did it feel like to work with something so... real?”, to which he responds with; “I guess I never really thought about it.” This again shows how the character is accepting his loneliness and is sinking more into misery as he begins to realize what he has abounded, a life that was much better and closer to the heart than this “node” life.

From another perspective, nothingness can also be positive in the sense that it is an empty moment in the world. Between what happened to Memo and what can change in the future in empty space that Memo can shape and control its outcome. In other words, nothingness is freedom. “In freedom man invalidates past and creates his own nothingness... Nothingness is freedom intercalated between past and future.” Nothingness created by free of choice obligates man to make a choice. After his father’s death, Memo felt responsible for what had happened to his father and decided to flee his village and find work in the city to support his family. In the city, Memo is presented as a lonely man, freed from his past to a certain degree, but forced to choose and to look out for himself. He begins to work in a factory environment in Mexico. There, they don’t make products, however, they connect their bodies to a network that allows them to control machines in America. What the director Alex Rivera is trying to establish is this cause and effect. As the character move is this far away place, the machine moves in America is some sort of “puppetry” scenario. He is trying to make the audience see and feel how this futuristic, alienated worker, which in a lot of ways is the same way many people feel like today. In the sense that there are people who live in the shadows, a ghost work force, like that of unrecognizable workers in our society or those who work in the outsourcing fields.

Modern art cinema tells stories about the “individual” who has lost his or her contact with the surrounding world. This film tells the story about the lonely, alienated, suppressed and helpless man who is faced with repressive forces of the exterior world. The happy ending is unexpected as it happens by chance and even then the main character was not freed from his “nothingness”. The bigger power is represented by something that is stronger not by its presence but by its absence. Memo found himself faced with an existential situation that he couldn’t understand, and this lack of understanding provoked loneliness, suffering, and anxiety. In the ending of the film however, this “modern authentic individual” accepted nothingness as the fundamental aspect of his freedom and gave up the search for traditional metaphysical values as he decided to stay in the big city and continue to work as his “node” self. The concept of “nothingness” has shaped his new self and the world around him.

Ola Jayzeh Al-Hallak
Ryerson University

(CPHL 710 - Summer 2011 - Instructor: Hudson Moura)

Nature and Transhumanism in Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer

2012-01-05T15:16:00.000-05:00

Human beings are becoming dangerously dependent on technology. Many people say they cannot live without their cell phones, computers or the Internet. In the 2008 film Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera, a bleak vision of the future is offered where the character Memo Cruz suffers the effects of a dangerous dependence on technology. The film deals with a conflict between nature and technology, depicted when Memo has nodes implanted into him and begins working at a sleep dealer (factory) and thus begins experiencing an existential crisis, a “nothingness.” Although working as a cybracero, a virtual labour worker, is the new way to make a living in this dystopian future set in Tijuana, the technology is actually the cause of Memo’s existential nothingness, and it is a return to nature that liberates him from this crisis. Sleep Dealer shows the process of Memo losing touch with his humanness by merging with technology, becoming alienated, isolated and feeling lost, alone and empty, then ultimately breaking free and returning to nature where he finds his humanness again and is liberated from the nothingness. Although Sleep Dealer is billed as a science fiction film, according to András Bálint Kovács’s Screening Modernism, it has many elements of a modern melodrama by means of the Sartrian concept of nothingness.

Alienation

At the beginning of the film, a scene predicts the direction Memo’s life takes when his family is sitting down for dinner, and Memo is missing, absent. His family is outside in the beautiful weather (nature) and Memo is shown alone in his dark, dingy bedroom playing with electronics (technology). It is Memo’s fascination with technology that leads him to getting nodes implanted in him so he can connect to the global digital network as a cybracero, where people’s minds and experiences are joined. Yet despite this technology that merges people, Memo enters into an existential nothingness, which Kovács describes as feelings of being “lonely, alienated or suppressed” (Kovács 101), and Memo fits the description of an “individual who has lost his…contact with the surrounding world” (Kovács 101). At the sleep dealer, Memo works with others but no one seems to interact and connect with each other, they are each in their own virtual space. At one point in the film Memo spends so much time working in the factory, he begins to fall asleep. When he is not in the factory, he is left drained, empty and devoid of emotion and humanness—he is the physical manifestation of nothingness. He works so much in the virtual world that when he returns to the living world he is still not present; he is absent because the humanness is sucked from him. Kovács mentions that with modern melodramas, this experience of nothingness is a “world of lonely and emotionally alienated people” (Kovács 109) who are in “a situation, which fundamentally lacks humanistic values” (Kovács 109). The most extreme example of this is when Memo and the character Luz, his lover, get intimate and have a sexual encounter, yet it is not in the typical sense. They connect to each other with their node cables. These characters have become so dependent on this technology that the very basic human act of a sexual connection must be aided by technology. Kovács points out that this lack of humanistic values makes the characters suffer and that “this lack is the ultimate instance and reason for unhappiness” (Kovács 109) and nothingness. Memo, a virtual labour worker, Luz, a memory trade worker, and another character, Rudy, a virtual drone pilot, all become alienated and feel a lack a humanistic values because of this technology. They all experience a nothingness, an insignificance and meaninglessness in their lives. They begin to feel an angst and frustration because they are searching for something missing in them. Soon they realize it is the technology they work with that takes away from their human experience and causes their existential nothingness. The characters then try to, as Kovács says, “find a way out of an existential situation” (Kovács 101).

Liberation

Once the characters realize they are missing a human autonomy, an independence from technology, they begin to take actions to break away from technology, leading to a more authentic, natural human emotional connection and experience. Kovács translates his concept of nothingness into “a series of everyday situations where the individual is alone, disappointed by his beliefs and expectations, desperately looking for something solid in a situation where his own identity is called into question” (Kovács 106). This describes Memo, Luz and Rudy’s existential situation. At one point Memo remarks that he does not know what he is doing anymore, he feels lost. Luz also says she lost her way after arriving in Tijuana and getting nodes implanted. And Rudy begins to question his moral identity after taking instructions like a robot and being ordered to kill a man. They question themselves and feel imprisoned in this emptiness, the virtual realty that is taking over their lives. There is a scene where Memo is on the beach, and in the shot there is a fence, a border, separating Tijuana from the outside world, and Memo stares longingly into the ocean waves. It is a border between him and nature. Eventually Memo realizes that the banality and meaninglessness of his life is caused by spending so much time connected to the digital network. Yet as Kovács’s article mentions, in modern film genres, “the individual is someone who can look through the insignificance of life and can free herself of the angst caused by the nothingness of the world and accept her own life in the midst of this nothingness” (Kovács 107). From this realization Memo and the others make a choice and take steps to break free from the cause of their nothingness, to “cross over to the other side” as they say, on the other side of the technological barrier separating them from nature. The three characters manipulate the system and use it to break a water dam in Memo's hometown of Santa Ana Del Rio in Oaxaca, and release water (nature) that was being contained and sold by Del Rio Water Inc. (technology). This act is a liberation and emancipation for the characters from their technological dependence, as well as for the locals in Santa Ana Del Rio to be free from the dependence on buying water. According to Sartre’s concept of nothingness in modern genres in cinema, this human emptiness and frustration causes the individual to be liberated from his past and can then choose freedom. Thus, “nothingness is the definition of freedom” (Kovács 106) and nothingness is the “expression of modern experience of human existence” (Kovács 106). Kovács says if the modern individual is free, it is possible only by facing nothingness, which is what Memo, Luz and Rudy are able to achieve.

Naturalization

Though the breaking of the dam has significance as an allegory, a metaphor, for Memo’s liberation, it also shows the importance of nature and how fundamental it is to the human experience, as it is Memo’s return to nature that frees him. Water is the symbol of nature in Sleep Dealer and is used throughout the film. Water is innocence, essence, purity, vitality and life. The first line of dialogue spoken in the movie comes from Memo’s mother when she says, “We need water.” It sets up the importance of water (nature) throughout the rest of the film. Water represents a human’s very basic dependence on nature and a connection to earth and the natural world. This is very different from the population of the futuristic dystopian city, where many are dependent on technology, machines and the global digital network. Water is a free, natural resource, yet for Memo’s hometown it has been stolen from the people and water is owned and controlled by a corporation called Del Rio Water Inc., so the people must buy water. A visual shot of Del Rio Water Inc headquarters shows a large fence surrounding a shrinking lake, where Big Brother surveillance cameras attached with machine guns ensure that people pay for water. This represents the technological barrier separating humans and nature. Water is what connects all life and people. And the technology that promises to connect people is what actually alienates them. Technology replaces the very basic and natural human connection and eliminates the connection to the natural world. In a scene at the beginning of the film, Memo and his father are in the family garden, a milipa. The father is trying to teach Memo the value and importance of having land and being connected to the earth and nature. His father represents the old ways of depending on nature to subsist and survive, whereas Memo represents the newer generation that embraces technology and loses touch with Nature. Memo says that he felt his home was a trap, that Santa Ana Del Rio was “dry, dusty and disconnected” from the world. In the end, he finds that to live as a cybracero and be constantly connected to the digital network is what it really means to be disconnected—from nature and from human existence. Sartre says that “nothingness is the key concept of human relations and the relationship of man to he world…the essence of being (Kovács 106). The nothingness experienced my Memo, his isolation and absence, is from losing connection with his humanism and nature. What is missing for Memo is the authenticity of interpersonal relationships to other humans and to nature. So Memo disconnects from the digital global network he re-connects to nature by creating his own garden. Then he is no longer disconnected and asleep, no longer absent and missing, but existing in a relationship to the earth and to nature, existing again naturally as a human. The end scene’s location is the outskirts of Tijuana, with Memo in his garden, with water, watering the seeds he planted. Memo may not have found the answers he was looking for, or the ultimate solution to his existential nothingness, but at least he is able to embark on a new beginning, a new identity, to experience an existential rebirth. He says that perhaps there is a future for him back in the natural world. If nothingness is about something missing, a human frustration from searching for a something, then this new existence for Memo is a step away from no-thing-ness and a step toward some-thing-ness. When Memo breaks free from technology and returns to nature, he re-aligns himself with his human essence; he gets back in touch with his human existence.

The film is called Sleep Dealer because, as Memo explains, if you are connected long enough in the digital network operating as a robot, the worker falls asleep. The term sleep dealer says a lot about this existential nothingness experienced by the characters. Sleep Dealer demonstrates that the more a human merges with technology and the further away from nature they are, the less human they become. Technology alienates humans from each other and causes a sense of loneliness, meaninglessness, insignificance and emptiness, which is precisely 'nothingness' as defined by András Bálint Kovács in the article Genre in Modern Cinema. When humans lose touch with nature, they lose touch with their humanism. Sleep Dealer offers a vision of a future not so far away and unimaginable. ‘Transhumanism’ is a cultural and intellectual movement happening right now in our real world. Transhumanism supports the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities—basically, merging technology and the human body. As our societies progress and continue to incorporate technological advancements to enhance the human experience, can the human condition exist and survive? Like Memo, will we all eventually merge our human bodies with technology and lose our human essence? Whatever direction our future takes us in, we will always need nature to remain human.

Will you have nodes or chips implanted?

Kiel Longboat

Ryerson University
(CPHL 710 - Summer 2011 - Instructor: Hudson Moura)

Short film from Salvador Dali and Walt Disney

2011-12-27T23:51:00.000-05:00

Check out this amazing partnership between Spanish painter Salvador Dali and film animator Walt Disney:

In 1946, two legendary artists began collaboration on a short film. More than half a century later, their creation has finally been completed.

Thanks Jaskrit Dua to send this.
Enjoy!

Philosophy of Film

2011-12-27T05:28:00.001-05:00

Thomas Wartenberg

The philosophy of film is a rapidly growing subfield of contemporary philosophy of art. Although philosophers were among the first academics to publish studies of the new artform in the early decades of the twentieth century, the field did not experience significant growth until the 1980's when a renaissance occurred. There are many reasons for the field's recent growth. Suffice it to say here that changes in both academic philosophy and the cultural role of the movies in general made it imperative for philosophers to take film seriously as an artform on a par with the more traditional ones like theater, dance, and painting. As a result of this surge in interest in film as a subject for philosophical reflection, the philosophy of film is now an important area of research in aesthetics.

[…]

2. The Nature of Film

The question that dominated early philosophical inquiry into film was whether the cinema—a term that emphasizes the institutional structure within which films were produced, distributed, and viewed—could be regarded as an artform. There were two reasons why cinema did not seem worthy of the honorific designation of an art. The first was that early contexts for the exhibition of films included such venues as the vaudeville peep show and the circus side show. As a popular cultural form, film seemed to have a vulgarity that made it an unsuitable companion to theater, painting, opera, and the other fine arts. A second problem was that film seemed to borrow too much from other art forms. To many, early films seemed little more than recordings of either theatrical performances or everyday life. The rationale for the former was that they could be disseminated to a wider audience than that which could see a live performance. But film then only seems to be a means of access to art and not an independent art form on its own. The latter, on the other hand, seemed too direct a reproduction of life to qualify as art, for there seemed little mediation by any guiding consciousness.

[…]

Hugo Münsterberg, the first philosopher to write a monograph about the new art form, sought to distinguish film by means of the technical devices that it employed in presenting its narratives (Münsterberg 1916). Flashbacks, close-ups, and edits are some examples of the technical means that filmmakers employ to present their narratives that theater lacks. For Münsterberg, the use of these devices distinguished film from the theater as an artform.

Münsterberg went on to ask how viewers are able to understand the role that these technical devices play in the articulation of cinematic narratives. His answer is that these devices are all objectifications of mental processes. A close-up, for example, presents in visual form a correlate to the mental act of paying attention to something. Viewers naturally understand how such cinematic devices function because they are familiar with the workings of their own minds and can recognize these objectified mental functions when they see them. Although this aspect of Münsterberg's theory links him to contemporary cognitive philosophers of film, he does not explain how viewers know that what they are looking at are objectified mental functions.

[…]

For [Rudolph] Arnheim, the silent film had achieved artistic status by focusing on its ability to present moving bodies. Indeed, for him, the artistic aspect of cinema consisted in its ability to present abstractions, an ability completely lost when films began to employ simultaneous soundtracks. Writing near the dawn of the talkie, Arnheim could only see what we now recognize as a natural development of the artform as a decline from a previously attained height.

André Bazin, though not a professional philosopher or even an academic, countered Arnheim's assessment in a series of articles that still exert an important influence on the field. (Bazin 1967; 1971) For Bazin, the important dichotomy is not that between the sound and the silent film but rather between films that focus on the image and those that emphasize editing. Although editing had emerged for many such as Sergei Eisenstein as the distinctive aspect of film, Bazin returns to the silent era to demonstrate the presence of an alternative means of achieving film art, namely an interest in allowing the camera to reveal the actual nature of the world. Relying on a conception of film as having a realist character because of its basis in photography, Bazin argues that the future of cinema as an artform depends on its development of this capacity to present the world to us “frozen in time.”

In making his argument, Bazin valorizes the film style he dubs realism, characterized by extended shots and deep focus. Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, and the Italian neo-Realists are the filmmakers whom Bazin sees as culminating this imagist tradition of filmmaking that has realized the true potential of the medium.

[…]

The discussion of the realist character of film continues to be a topic of heated debate among philosophers of film. Most recently, the emergence of digital technologies for fashioning the image raise very basic questions about the plausibility of this view.

[…]

4. Emotional Engagement

Philosophic discussion of viewer involvement with films starts out with a puzzle that has been raised about many artforms: Why should we care what happens to fictional characters? After all, since they are fictional, their fates shouldn't matter to us in the way that the fates of real people do. But, of course, we do get involved in the destinies of these imaginary being. The question is why. Because so many films that attract our interest are fictional, this question is an important one for philosophers of film to answer.

One answer, common in the film theory tradition, is that the reason that we care about what happens to some fictional characters is because we identify with them. Although or, perhaps, because these characters are highly idealized—they are more beautiful, brave, resourceful, etc. than any actual human being could be—viewers identify with them, thereby also taking themselves to be correlates of these ideal beings. But once we see the characters as versions of ourselves, their fates matter to us, for we see ourselves as wrapped up in their stories. In the hands of feminist theorists, this idea was used to explain how films use their viewers' pleasures to support a sexist society. Male viewers of film, it was held, identify with their idealized screen counterparts and enjoy the objectification of women through both screen images that they view with pleasure and also narratives in which the male characters with whom they identify come to possess the sought after female character.

Philosophers of film have argued that identification is too crude a tool to use to explain our emotional engagement with characters, for there is a wide variety of attitudes that we take to the fictional characters we see projected on the screen. (See, for example, Smith (1995).) And even if we did identify with some characters, this would not explain why we had any emotional reactions to characters with whom we did not identify. Clearly, a more general account of viewer involvement with cinematic characters and the films in which they appear is required.

The general outline of the answer philosophers of film have provided to the question of our emotional involvement with films is that we care about what happens in films because films get us to imagine things taking place, things that we do care about. Because how we imagine things working out does affect our emotions, fiction films have an emotional impact upon us.

There are two basic accounts that philosophers have put forward to explain the effects that the imagination has upon us. Simulation theory employs a computer analogy, saying that imagining something involves one having one's usual emotional response to situations and people, only the emotions are running off-line. What this means is that, when I have an emotional response like anger to an imagined situation, I feel the same emotion that I would normally feel only I am not inclined to act on this emotion, say, by yelling or responding in an angry way, as I would be if the emotion was a full-fledged emotion.

What this explains, then, is a seemingly paradoxical feature of our film-going experience: that we seem to enjoy watching things on the screen that we would hate seeing in real life. The most obvious context for this is horror films, for we may enjoy seeing horrific events and beings that we would strongly desire not to witness in real life. The last thing I would want to see more of in real life is a rampaging giant ape, yet I am fascinated to watch its screen expoits. The simulation theorist says that the reason for this is that, when we experience an emotion off-line that would be distressing in real life, we may actually enjoy having that emotion in the safety of the off-line situation.

One problem facing the simulation theorist is explaining what it means for an emotion to be off-line. While this is an intriguing metaphor, it is not clear that the simulation theorist can provide an adequate account of how we are to cash it out.

An alternative account of our emotional response to imagined scenarios has been dubbed the thought theory. The idea here is that we can have emotional responses to mere thoughts. When I am told that a junior colleague of mine was unjustly denied reappointment, the thought of this injustice is sufficient to make me experience anger. Similarly, when I imagine such a scenario in relation to someone, the mere thought of them being treated in this way can occasion my anger. Mere thought can bring about real emotion.

What the thought theory claims about our emotional response to films is that our emotions are brought about by the thoughts that occur to us as we are watching a film. When we see the dastardly villain tying the innocent heroine to the tracks, we are both concerned and outraged by the very thought that he is acting in this way and that she is therefore in danger. Yet all the time we are aware that this is a merely fictional situation, so there is no temptation to yield to a desire to save her. We are always aware that no one is really in danger. As a result, there is no need, says the thought theorist, for the complexities of simulation theory in order to explain why we are moved by the movies.

There are some problems with thought theory as well. Why should a mere thought, as opposed to a belief, be something that occasions an emotional response from us? If I believe that you were wronged, that's one thing. But the thought of your being wronged is another. Since we can't have full-fledged beliefs about the fictional characters in films, the thought theory needs to explain why we are so moved by their fates. (See Plantinga and Smith (1999) for more discussion of this issue.)

5. Film Narration

Fiction films tell stories. Unlike literary media such as novels, they do so with images and sound—including both words and music. Clearly, some films have narrators. These narrators are generally character narrators, narrators who are characters within the fictional world of the film. They tell us the film's stories and, supposedly, show us the images that we see. Sometimes, however, a voice-over narration presents us with an apparently objective view of the situation of the characters, as if it originated from outside of the film world. In addition, there are fiction films, films that tell stories, in which there is no clear agent who is doing the telling. These facts have given rise to a number of puzzles about film narration that have been discussed by philosophers of film. (See Chatman (1990) and Gaut (2004).)

One central issue that has been a subject of controversy among philosophers is unreliable narration. There are films in which the audience comes to see that the character narrator of the film has a limited or misguided view of the film world. One example is Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), a film that has been discussed by a number of different philosophers. The majority of the film is a voice-over narration by Lisa Berndle, the unknown woman of the film's title, who recites the words of the letter she sends to her lover, Max Brand, shortly before her death. The audience comes to see that Lisa has a distorted view of the events she narrates, most clearly in her misestimation of the character of Brand. This raises the question of how the audience can come to know that Lisa's view is distorted, since what we hear and see is narrated (or shown) by her. George Wilson (1986) has argued that unreliable narratives such as this require the positing of an implicit narrator of the film, while Gregory Currie (1995) has argued that an implied filmmaker suffices. This question has become very relevant with the increased popularity of filmmaking styles involving unreliable narration. Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995) touched off a flurry of films whose narrators were unreliable in one way or another.

A related issue concerning narrative that has been a focus of debate is whether all films have narrators, including those without explicit ones. Initially, it was argued that the idea of a narratorless narrative did not make sense, that narration required an agent doing the narrating, who was the film's narrator. In cases where there were no explicit narrators, an implicit narrator needed to be posited to make sense of how viewers gained access to the fictional world of the film. Opponents responded that the narrator in the sense of the agent who gave film audiences access to a film's fictional world could be the filmmaker(s), so there was no need to posit such a dubious entity as an implicit narrator of a film.

There is, however, an even deeper problem in regard to film narration over what has been called the “Imagined Seeing Thesis” (Wilson 1997). According to this Thesis, viewers of mainstream fiction films imagine themselves to be looking into the world of the story and seeing segments of the narrative action from a series of definite visual perspectives. In its traditional version, viewers are taken to imagine the movie screen as a kind of window that allows them to watch the unfolding of the story on the “other side.” However, it is hard for this view to account for what is being imagined when, for example, the camera moves, or there is an edit to a shot that incorporates a different perspective on a scene, etc. As a result, an alternative view has been suggested, namely that viewers imagine themselves to be seeing motion picture images that have been photographically derived, in some indeterminate way, from within the fictional world itself. But this position runs into problems, since it is normally part of the film's fiction that no camera was present in the fictional space of the narrative. The resulting debate is over whether to reject as incoherent the Imagined Seeing Thesis or whether it is possible to develop an acceptable version of this Thesis. Philosophers remain sharply divided on this fundamental issue.

The topic of film narration thus continues to be a subject of intense philosophical discussion and investigation. Various attempts to explain its nature remain hotly debated. As new and more complex styles of film narration become popular, it is likely that the subject of film narration will continue to receive attention from philosophers and aestheticians.

6. Film and Society

The best way to understand the innovations made by philosophers in our understanding of how films relate to society is to look at the view that was dominant in film theory some years ago. According to that view, popular narrative films—especially those produced by “Hollywood,” a term that referred to the entertainment industry located in Hollywood, California, but also included popular narrative films produced on a similar model—inevitably supported social oppression by denying, in one way or another, its existence. Such films were taken to present nothing but fairytales that used the realistic character of the medium to present those imaginary stories as if they were accurate pictures of reality. In this way, the actual character of the social domination assumed by such a view to be rampant in contemporary society was obscured in favor of a rosy picture of the realities of human social existence.

As part of their argument, these film theorists have gone beyond examining individual films themselves and have argued that the very structure of the narrative film functions to assist in the maintenance of social domination. From this point of view, an overcoming of narrativity itself is required for films to be genuinely progressive.

In opposition to such a negative view of film's relationship to society, philosophers of film have argued that popular films need not support social domination but can even give expression to socially critical attitudes. In making this argument, they have corrected film theory's tendency to make broad generalizations about the relationship between film and society that are not grounded in careful analysis of individual films. They have instead concentrated upon presenting detailed interpretations of films that show how their narratives present critical takes on various social practices and institutions. Class, race, gender, and sexuality are among the different social arenas in which philosophers of film have seen films make socially conscious, critical interventions in public debates.

One interesting example of films that develop political stances that are not merely supportive of existing modes of social domination are those that involve interracial couples. So Stanley Kramer's 1967 film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, investigates the plausibility of racial integration as a solution to the problems of anti-black racism in America through its portrayal of the problems facing an interracial couple. Nearly 25 years later, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever argues against the earlier film's political agenda, once again using an interracial couple that encounters racism. Only this time, the film asserts that the intransigent racism of White Americans undermines integration as a panacea to the ills of this racist society (Wartenberg 1999). And many other films employ this narrative figure to investigate other aspects of racism and possibilities for its overcoming.

Similarly, philosophers have looked outside of Hollywood to the films of progressive filmmakers like John Sayles to illustrate their belief that narrative films can make sophisticated political statements. A film like Matewan is shown to involve a sophisticated investigation of the relationship between class and race as sites of social domination.

In general, then, we can say that philosophers have resisted a monolithic condemnation of films as socially regressive and explored the different means that filmmakers have used to present critical perspectives on areas of social concern. While they have not ignored the ways in which standard Hollywood narratives undermine critical social awareness, they have shown that narrative film is an important vehicle for communal reflection on important social issues of the day.

7. Film as Philosophy

Ever since Plato banished poets from his ideal city in The Republic, hostility towards the arts has been endemic to philosophy. To a large extent, this is because philosophy and the various artforms were perceived to be competing sources of knowledge and belief. Philosophers concerned to maintain the exclusivity of their claim to truth have dismissed the arts as poor pretenders to the title of purveyors of truth.

Philosophers of film have generally opposed this view, seeing film as a source of knowledge and, even, as potential contributor to philosophy itself. This view was forcefully articulated by Stanley Cavell, whose interest in the philosophy of film helped spark the field's development. For Cavell, philosophy is inherently concerned with skepticism and the different ways that it can be overcome. In his many books and articles, Cavell has argued that film shares this concern with philosophy and can even provide philosophic insights of its own (Cavell 1981; 1996; 2004).

Until recently, there have been few adherents to the idea that films can make a philosophical contribution. (But see Kupfer (1999) and Freeland (2000) for counterinstances.) In part, this is because Cavell's linking of film to skepticism seems inadequately grounded, while his account of skepticism as a live option for contemporary philosophy is based on a highly idiosyncratic reading of the history of modern philosophy. Nonetheless, Cavell's interpretations of individual films' encounter with skepticism are highly suggestive and have influenced many philosophers and film scholars with the seriousness with which they take film. (For one example, see Mulhall (2001).)

Now, however, there is an ongoing debate about the philosophical capacity of film. In opposition to views like that of Cavell, a number of philosophers have argued that films can have at most a heuristic or pedagogic function in relation to philosophy. Others have asserted that there are clear limits to what films can accomplish philosophically. Both of these types of views regard the narrative character of fiction films as disqualifying them from genuinely being or doing philosophy.

Opponents to this point of view have pointed to a number of different ways in which films can do philosophy. Foremost among these is the thought experiment. Thought experiments involve imaginary scenarios in which readers are asked to imagine what things would be like if such-and-such were the case. Those who think that films can actually do philosophy point out that fiction films can function as philosophical thought experiments and thus qualify as philosophical (See Wartenberg 2007). Many films have been suggested as candidates for doing philosophy, including the Wachowski Brothers' 1999 hit The Matrix, a film that has engendered more philosophical discussion than any other film, Memento (2000), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Philosophers have also begun to pay attention to a strand of avant-garde filmmaking known as structural films. These films are analogues to minimalism in the other arts and thus give rise to the question of whether they are not actual experiments that seek to show necessary criteria for something being a film. If this view is accepted, then these films—examples include The Flicker (1995) and Serene Velocity (1970)—could be seen as making a contribution to philosophy by identifying such putative necessary features of films. This view, while adopted by Nöel Carroll (See Carroll and Choi 2006); Thomas Wartenberg 2007), has also been criticized on similar grounds to those used to deny the philosophical potential of fiction films, namely that films cannot actually do the “hard work” of philosophy.

Whatever position one takes on the possibility of “cinematic philosophy,” it is clear that the philosophical relevance of film has been recognized by philosophers. Even those who deny that films can actually do philosophy have to acknowledge that films provide audiences with access to philosophical questions and issues. Indeed, the success of the book series entitled “Philosophy and X,” where one can substitute any film or television show for X, indicates that films are bringing philosophical issues to the attention of wide audiences. There can be no doubt that this is a healthy development for philosophy itself.

8. Conclusions and Prognosis

The philosophy of film is a rapidly growing area of philosophical and aesthetic research. Philosophers have concentrated both on aesthetic issues about film as an artistic medium - the philosophy of film - and questions about the philosophical content of films - films as philosophy. The sophistication and quantity of contributions in both of these areas continue to increase, as more philosophers take film seriously as a subject for philosophical investigation.

As film and its related digital media continue to expand in their influence upon the lives of human beings, the philosophy of film can be expected to become an even more vital area for philosophic investigation. In the coming years, we can look forward to new and innovative contributions to this exciting area of philosophical research.

Wartenberg, Thomas, "Philosophy of Film", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/film/>.

Andrei Tarkovsky: Still Time on Polaroids

2011-12-27T04:17:00.000-05:00

“Never try to convey your idea to the audience – it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.” Tarkovsky – Sculpting in Time

It is not widely known that Tarkovsky, whose films often seem to be composed as a montage of still photos, in a period effectively took photos with a Polaroid camera. These photos, taken at home and in Italy, in spite of all their technical imperfections bear witness to the same way of seeing and visual world as the great films.

A selection from these photos was first published in Italy in 2006, and recently a Russian photo blog digitized all the pictures. The photos below are taken from there. As usually, move the mouse above the tiles for a smaller picture and click on them for a larger view.

“In 1977, on my wedding ceremony in Moscow Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid camera. He had just shortly discovered this instrument and used it with great pleasure among us. He and Antonioni were my wedding witnesses. According to the custom of the period they had to choose the music played during the signing of the wedding documents. They chose the “Blue Danube”.

At that time Antonioni also often used a Polaroid camera. I remember that in the course of a field survey in Usbekistan where we wanted to shoot a film – but finally did not do it – he gave to three elderly Muslims the pictures he had taken of them. The eldest one as soon as he took a glance at the photos, immediately returned them with these words: “What is it good for, to stop the time?” This unusual refusal was so unexpected that it took us by surprise and we could not reply anything.

Tarkovsky thought a lot about the “flight” of time and wanted to do only one thing: to stop it – even if only for a moment, on the pictures of the Polaroid camera.”

Tonino Guerra

METACINEMA or METAFILM

2011-12-27T03:32:00.000-05:00

Metacinema is literally cinema about cinema, which self-consciously comments on films and the making and watching of them. These self-reflective, multi-layered stories can be about a writer trying to write a screenplay, a filmmaker trying to make a film, a spectator trying to watch a film, or even a character recognizing that they are a character within a film. Metacinema often blurs the lines between fiction and reality and ultimately poses questions about writing, spectatorship, and films in general.

8½  (ITA, 1962) dir. Federico Fellini

A Star is Born (USA, 1954) dir. George Cukor

Adaptation (USA, 2002)  dir. Spike Jonze

Ararat (CAN, 2003) dir. Atom Egoyan

Broken Embraces (2009) dir. Pedro Almodovar

Caro Diario (ITA, 1993) dir. Nanni Moretti

Cecil B. Demented (USA, 2000) dir. John Waters

Cinema Paradiso (ITA, 1988) dir. Giuseppe Tornatore

Day for Night (FRA, 1973) dir. François Truffaut

Deconstructing Harry (USA, 1997) dir. Woody Allen

Ed Wood (USA, 1994) dir. Tim Burton

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Doc, USA, 1991) dir. Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (Doc, FRA, 2009) dir. Serge Bromberg Ruxandra Medrea

Intervista (ITA, 1987) dir. Federico Fellini

Irma Vep (FRA, 1994) dir. Olivier Assayas

La Dolce Vita (ITA, 1963) dir Federico Fellini

Life and Nothing More… (IRAN, 1992) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Living in Oblivion  (USA, 1995) dir. Tom DiCillo

Man Bites Dog (BEL, 1992) dir. Rémy Belvaux

Notebook on cities and clothes (GER/FRA, 1989) dir. Wim Wenders

Persona  (SUE, 1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman

Salaam Cinema (IRAN, 1995); dir Moshen Makhmalbaf

Shadow of the Vampire (UK, 2000) dir. E. Elias Merhige

Singing in the Rain (U.S., 1952); dir Stanley Donen

Stranger than Fiction  (USA, 2006) dir. Marc Foster

Synecdoche, New York (USA, 2008) dir. Charlie Kaufman

Contempt (FRA, 1963) dir. Jean-Claude Godard

The French Lieutenant's Woman (USA, 1981) dir. Karel Reisz

The Last Tyccon (USA, 1976) dir. Elia Kazan

The Player (USA, 1992) dir. Robert Altman

The Purple Rose of Cairo (USA, 1985); dir. Woody Allen

The State of Things (GER, 1982) dir. Wim Wenders

Through the Olive Trees (IRAN, 1994) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Ulysses Gaze (GRE, 1998) dir. Theo Angelopoulos

Voyage in Time (Documentary, ITA/RUS, 1983) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra

Hitchcock's Psycho

2011-12-20T04:45:00.000-05:00

“Hithcock extended the transition from life to death into the surrounding mise en scène (Psycho). For a moment, the stillness of the recently animated body is juxtaposed with the stream of water still pouring from the shower, inanimate material in unrelenting movement. First, in close-up, the water runs down the drain, creating a circular axis that the camera echoes just before this image dissolves. The circular movement prefigures the nex close-up on Marion’s eye. As the involuntary flickering of the eye is usually a guarantee of life itself, its fixed, inanimate stare becomes uncanny. Just when the image’s stillness seems necessarily to derive from a photograph, a single drop of water falls in front of the camera. Its effect is to reanimate the image, to create another contrast with the inanimate corpse. The paradox of the cinema’s uncertain boundary between stillness and movement also finds a fleeting visibility. The stillness of the “corpse” is a reminder that the cinema’s living and moving body are simply animated stills and the homology between stillness and death returns to haunt the moving image.”

Laura Mulvey, Death 24 x a second

Philosophy and Film at Ryerson University

2011-12-12T17:32:00.000-05:00

Ryerson University
_______________________________________________

CPHL 710 Philosophy and Film

Course Instructor: Dr. Hudson Moura

Department of Philosophy
The Chang School of Continuing Education

Course Outline

This course explores the relationship between philosophy and film. As D. N. Rodowick states, for philosophers Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze “cinema is the philosophy of our everyday life.”

Our intent is to examine and approach the intersections of these two disciplines theoretically, culturally, and historically by screening films and presenting analysis based upon philosophical perspectives and arguments from scholars, philosophers, and filmmakers. In this way we will see how much both areas have influenced each other and have improved their own practices relating to contemporary thought and film’s aesthetics.

As a contemporary art form, cinema has motivated deep philosophical investigations about its nature, function, and reception. This course focuses on philosophical concepts having to do with the nature of film and our experiences of it. We will discuss how a film conveys meaning by producing specific forms of experience in the audience. Using cinema as an inspiration and a source for questioning the meaning of life, other inquiries to be considered may include: What can film teach us about the nature of perception? How do we understand filmic time? What is true in a film? And simply, what is film?

Examining closely the work of several directors (Bergman, Tarkovsky) and philosophers (Cavell, Deleuze), and a variety of genres (melodrama, science-fiction, road movie), the course themes will address the nature and aspects of film (realism, metacinema) and scrutinize conceptions embedded in philosophy and film such as the philosophy of and in film, film as philosophy, filmosophy, and film-philosophy.

Required Reading: CPHL 710 Course Reader; H. Moura, ed. Winter 2012

Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers. Ed. by Felicity Colman. Montreal/Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

Suggested Reading: Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. Susan Hayward. New York, Routledge, 2000.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Course Topics:

I. Introduction - Philosophy of film

II. Nature of Film and Realism

III. Genre: Melodrama – Affects and Morality

IV. Philosopher: Stanley Cavell

V. Philosopher: Gilles Deleuze

VI. Metacinema

VII. Filmmaker: Ingmar Bergman

VIII. Modern Cinema: Mental Journey and Nothingness

IX. Think Otherwise: Film as Philosophy

X. Genre: Road Movie – A Search For Life’s Meaning

XI. Filmmaker: Tarkovsky – Metaphysics & Spiritualism

XII. Existentialism and Digital Ontology

XIII. Conclusion