Attention

On By Michael TolbertIn Culture, WritingLeave a comment

Seeing the world through a child’s eyes.

“This is what comes from the wrong kind of attentiveness. People get brain fade. This is because they’ve forgotten how to listen and look as children. They’ve forgotten how to collect data. In the psychic sense a forest fire on TV is on a lower plane than a ten-second spot for Automatic Dishwasher All. The commercial has deeper waves, deeper emanations. But we have reversed the relative significance of these things. This is why people’s eyes, ears, brains and nervous systems have grown weary. It’s a simple case of misuse.” – White Noise.

Fassbinder

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, Culture, Politics, WritingLeave a comment

There is a unifying principle that underlies Fassbinder’s critique of modernity. Fascism isn’t a political program. Fascism is an inherent, pervasive condition, a cancer at the center of modern life. How do we deal with this fascism? How do we hold it at bay? Characters seek out the safety of anonymity, the cold comfort of depression, passionless lives, the perfection of inauthentic, tired, rote mechanical repetition. This is one possible response to fascism. Violence, extreme self-destruction is another. Neither are a cure, of course, but a temporary salve, a mild palliative at best. Sadomasochism in this sense is not a disease unto itself in need of further psychological treatment, but a logical response to fascism. The cauldron broils, the frustrations builds. Scapegoats become necessary. There must be a cause to our ills. This is why left wing critiques were off mark. You can not reduce the complex psychological makeup of a character to prototype. Petra’s loneliness, madness, and cruelty have nothing to do with her lesbianism, and everything to do with the fascism of modern life.

Is there no way out of this? Perhaps not. It is a bleak, pessimistic view of modern lives. The role of the artist is to bring this disquieting truth to the forefront, examine it under extreme conditions, not to present a 15-point political program to cure fascism once and for all.

Bad Guys Win, Now What?

On By Michael TolbertIn Cinema, Culture, WritingLeave a comment

What if we inverse the cinematic denouement: the hero dies and the bad guy wins?

Well, that’s just tragedy, no?

Okay, but what if we turn it into a mass slaughter?

Cue: The Great Silence by Sergio Corbucci. The effect is oddly unsatisfying. Why oddly? After all, the audience is denied the typical gratification, the tasty dessert of Justice revenged after a cold, hard meal. What’s odd about that? Well, this is not the satisfaction, I mean. What I mean is this: there is no redemption, no arc to justify the purpose of the story as presented. Not character redemption, but a narrative one. There is only cruelty and oblivion. We are moving away from political pessimism and closer to political nihilism or quietism, defeatism, though I doubt that’s the impression the Director was attempting to convey. On an artistic level, what am I supposed to do with the hour and forty odd minutes preceding that point? I can’t flush the experience away, nor would I want to. It’s a great film! The setting is inspired. The snow bound western, the stuff of legend. It’s movement is anatomical and clunky in parts, but that give it a real charm. The acting is powerful. Kinski is unsettling in his calm sociopathy. When is Trintignant ever not incredible? Muted Hope in a brutal world. There are no fair fights. The man who is as good as his word is as good as dead. The ending makes sense as a rejection of cinematic troupes. But we are no longer in the realm of drama perhaps and have almost crossed over to…documentary?

The promise and lie of cinema is that it can reveal unbarred the living soul. In this, I detect a cautionary tale of the dangers of hyperrealism. We’ve become too sophisticated cinephiles. We know full and goddamn well that film is a projection of our desires. But as we lose a feeling of reality in our lives we seek a projection of our lost reality into film. Hyperrealism is the threshold, live at the max, dial up to 100, exaggerated authenticity, etc. The desire to be grafted onto the medium of film, to be absorbed and lost in its orgiastic possibilities.

A Little Death

On By Michael TolbertIn WritingLeave a comment

The experience of death is not a monolith. Sometimes, people die to us…with us…for us. They are dead and yet they have not physically passed over and beyond. There, but gone. Here, but entombed. The connection long since severed. The bonds of our shared love (what? Was it only a dream, a murmur? Are you still there?) are still taut inside our heavy tired hands. Our feet give out, we are slipping, pulled and dragged along by the heavy weight in the dark undertow. We imagine this is not possible. Surely they are not gone. Sinking? And yet they still breath! And yet they still talk! Surely I can pull them back ashore, breathe the air, the light returning to their vacant eyes. Any sign, God, show me any sign. But they refuse. They will not come back to life. Love. I love you, the corpse refuses our salvation.