Can tedium become a revelation?
Category: Cinema
The Primacy of the Voice
Dreyer’s first love is the voice. For silent film, the voice is heard through the lyricism of movement, the dance that forms from the interplay of staging, the shifting of light and perspective, the tempo of quick editing, the choice of when or whether to include the narrative as written text, etc. When sound broke through the 2D barrier, these earlier techniques were quickly discarded by the mature Dreyer and fell out of favor. He had mastered a whole set of silent film techniques only to abandon them on principle. After all, it would only add an unnecessary complication, interfere with the true voice carried by the lyrical performance of the actors. Why protrude or impose your own artistic stamp as a Director when a single shot allows the actors to express so much unimpeded by the conventions of film?
It was a move many critics condemned in his later works, the experience equated to watching paint dry or furniture rearranged. Gertrud, his last film, was panned for that reason. “I mean, they’re not even making eye contact half the time!” In Venice, half the audience walked out. Those that stayed gave him a standing ovation. Godard proclaimed it the best film of 1964. Had it been around at the time, it is conceivable that a Razzie nomination would have been forthcoming. True, films can polarize us, but the contrasting views don’t reside in the same filmic universe. It’s a small sample size of “genius or revolting, contrived self-indulgence” which I include the films India Song and Last Year at Marienbad.*
Already in the 1960s we see the clear emergence of a “modern film audience” well-versed and raised on the conventions and techniques of film, only to have those expectations dashed at every turn. A steady shot = boredom. Nothing is happening because something must happen within a film. It’s the Action Rule, something described by a tentative mathematical formula (A=MT), Action = Motion x Temperament. “Don’t show me the inner lives of ordinary people. Film must be about something extraordinary. Otherwise, it’s just people talking, not doing.” But this is only a matter of positioning and artistic choice. The Action Rule is often evoked when the voice stands in for the collective id of the audience and, for that reason, often becomes formulaic in its expression. A good guy beating a bad guy is an immensely satisfying experience, and better still when it is sped up in unnatural time (e.g., a John Wick fight scene). The Action Rule can often be used as a substitute for the voice or to disguise a film’s hidden ideology or secret wish-fulfillment.
Regardless, the voice is never a single unitary object, but a qualitative multiplicity. Where does the voice come from? Or better still, who is entitled to wrestle it in their vanity and pride? Much like a hot potato, perhaps, a playful dance back and forth exists between performers, the director as auteur, and the audience projecting themselves and their desires into the luminous space.
* To clear up any misconception, I rate all three films as exceptional.
The Draw of the Single Vision
There’s a style of artistry, something I call for lack of a better word humanist, that appeals to me. It is nothing concrete in my mind, perhaps not even generalizable. I have only a vague definition of what I mean, a gossamer web, something which the rigorous push and pull of analysis might break apart the entire delicate tapestry inside my hands (though does that make it any less real?) Perhaps it is best to first explain what I don’t mean. By humanist, I don’t (simply) mean a style of thinking which elevates human matters above the divine, placing primary importance on rational empathy over and above spiritual or religious inspiration. Rather, it is a singular vision, root and branch, one constructed and aimed solely on our actual lives, that is to say, the lived experience.
I’m not even sure I can explain what quality I’m trying to identify from a loose coterie of writers, artists, filmmakers that share some deeper affinity. I can only point out master technicians of the form. To keep it simple, I’ll pick three, two filmmakers and a novelist: Robert Bresson, Agnès Varda, and Kazuo Ishiguro. There is a control each brings that is shattering (of illusion and pretense) and mesmerizing. A singular, almost divine gaze holds us in rapt attention for the entirety of the experience. Yet what we see is often trivial, mundane, ordinary, in other words, human existence in its naked unapologetic form. There is no judgment pasted over our experience or smuggled back into the world through clever artifice. There is no contemporaneous moralizing. (True, Varda hued closest to that line, but orthogonally. Varda’s reflections are only one note in an entire narrative ensemble.)
These works of art, approached and built upon a foundation of radically different techniques, impart the same message. If you want judgment, dear viewer, if you want meaning, that is yours, all yours, no one else’s. Feel free to cry, laugh, or dismiss. But this is human, singularly human. Their commitment to hold and maintain that same consistent (pervasive) level of attention to their subject matter is extremely difficult from a technical point of view. In Kazuo’s Worlds, inhumanity seeps like water through the gaps and holes of what is left unspoken but implied. Film Directors hold special admiration for Bresson, in particular, as they know how incredibly difficult it is to maintain a consistent look, measure, tone, rhythm, technical control over a film shoot while at the same time allowing the characters and the story the freedom to come alive. Few of us can achieve the mastery needed for this singular vision before we break down, no, no, this is too much, and must avert our gaze out of simple human dignity and respect (or so we tell ourselves) before we try a new approach. And they lived happily ever after. Amen. Magical thinking.
As a writer, I’m always looking for the novel entry point from which to begin to fashion and mold my clay. I can’t draw or make art, but if I did, I always supposed I would have been a sculptor by temperament. I write in a similar fashion, starting from a loose mock-up or cartoon. Then I proceed to throw words down before molding and shaping them into a single construction. I do this because I am confused and want to clarify the mess of ideas inside my head. My beautiful confusion, as Fellini would say. But these artists, have achieved something profound, not singular constructions, but singular visions. To achieve a singular vision, perhaps the height of artistic achievement, requires an exceptional level of craftsmanship. So that would be a basic ingredient in my definition of humanist: constructed from exceptional craftsmanship to produce a singular vision of human lives and the lived experience without judgment, magical thinking, or artifice. Each of these artists, master technicians in their own way, produced remarkable art that seems to descend from above, outside time but fully entrenched in the moment, carried by gossamer wings, a singular vision I never thought possible, certainly within my own abilities.
The Hack 