A Tale of Two Joans

I have stated in several previous posts how enthralled I am by the films of Carl Th. Dreyer, and in particular his film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Rewatching the film recently for the first time in over a year and half, nothing has changed: within the first few minutes I was once more completely overcome.

A little over a year ago (in October 2007), the BFI ran a season on Robert Bresson, and, having shamefully never seen a film by Bresson at the time, I took the opportunity to watch nine of his fourteen films within a relatively short space of time. These films included Bresson's own take on the last days of Saint Joan's life, The Trial of Joan of Arc.

During those few weeks toward the end of 2007, I grew from being completely ignorant of Bresson to having a reasonable understanding and a great admiration for his work (indeed, in my own way, I would even go on to pay tribute to him in my film Paintbrush). Despite the accusations of austerity and coldness, there is something gripping and fascinating about his work, and I have a resolute belief that Bresson was, like Dreyer, nothing short of a cinematic genius. However, although Bresson and Dreyer were both geniuses, and both belong to the so-called transcendental tradition of cinema, their two approaches to a retelling of Joan's trial and death could scarcely be more different.

While I don't necessarily believe in comparing and contrasting different films based on the same text, I somehow find that with these two films it's simply inescapable. Perhaps it's my extreme love for Dreyer's film, or perhaps it's to do with their fidelity to the records of Joan's real trial, but for whatever reason I find it very hard to cast Dreyer's film out of my mind when watching Bresson's film (interestingly, I don't have the problem of not being able to forget Bresson's film when watching Dreyer's).

I suspect by now it's become clear that, for me at least, Dreyer's film is the superior of the two (and regular readers of this blog will know that I consider Dreyer's film as the greatest film of all time, something which I by no means say lightly). In saying this, I mean no disrespect to Bresson or to his Joan, which is also a great film. Having rewatched The Passion, I felt a strange compulsion to also rewatch The Trial and see what it is that makes The Passion, at least for me, the superior work.

In this consideration of the two films, I decided, perhaps wrongly, to cast aside the technical aspects of the film, and concentrate instead upon the way in which the narrative unfolds. Both films tell the same story; that of Joan's trial and the events which unfolded over the last few months leading up to her burning at the stake. They both claim to be based on the actual records of the trial, and both follow a very similar narrative trajectory. So what is it that makes the films so different? And what is it, from this point of view, that makes Dreyer's film have the edge (or is it really all in the execution)?

Well, at least part of the answer to the first question is easy: one thing that makes the two films so different is in their depictions of Joan herself. To answer the second question, we step into personal opinion. And, for those that are interested, my opinion is as follows...

Dreyer depicts Joan as much more of a victim than Bresson does. Although they undergo the same questioning, the same ordeals, Bresson's Joan is a wall of resolution, while Dreyer's breaks down in tears (Bresson's Joan cries only once, alone in her cell, while Dreyer's rarely has a dry eye – she is the model of a suffering heroine). In Trial, Joan is seen being tortured, still firm and seemingly unaffected, while in Passion, Joan faints at the sight of the torture instruments. Now, while some might argue that this makes Dreyer's Joan the weaker of the two, I would argue that in fact she is all the stronger for her suffering. In spite of it all, she too has the strength of her convictions, and because she speaks them through tears rather than stone, her answers are all the more powerful; though she suffers, she has a great inner strength. In Trial, Joan's famous answers ('Do you not believe that God would have clothes for him?') at times come across like little more than clever rhetoric, while in Passion it seems like they come from the very core of Joan's being. And it is for this reason that both Bresson's Joan and his Joan come across as less pious and holy than Dreyer's, and why Dreyer's film is both more transcendent, and more moving, than Bresson's.

London Film Festival, Part I

What follows are a few thoughts on the films and events that I was able to catch during the first half of the London Film Festival. As this post has gotten rather lengthy, I will post the second part – about the screening and events I attended during the second half of the festival – later in the week.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to afford tickets for anywhere near the number of films that I would have liked to have seen at the festival, but luckily I did manage to get tickets for everything I tried for. Due to the idiosyncrasy of the final selection, this post is by no means meant to be a thorough report on the festival as a whole, but more like a few notes on each of the films I saw and the events I attended.

Items are listed by the order in which I saw them.

Nights and Weekends (2008)

As I have alluded to elsewhere, one of things I like most about Joe Swanberg's work is that each piece he does has a strong idea behind it. Here the idea was to explore a long distance relationship, and especially its more unpleasant side. Furthermore, within this outer idea, there are, embedded within seemingly throw away lines, many other ideas, and it is one of these which has really caught my attention: the question of what role we will play in someone else's story. As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story, and Nights and Weekends plays as a strong two-hander between Greta Gerwig's Mattie and Swanberg's James. In years to come, Mattie asks, if they are no longer together, what role will she play in James' versions of events? Will she be forgotten and not mentioned at all in the telling of his life, or will she form a poignant memory? The moment she asks this in the film is certainly a poignant moment, and it's one of many in a film built upon the types of moments which many films leave out altogether.

Once again, Swanberg has created a world populated by real people. One of the best things about his films is, for me, the way that his people look like people – their skin is not airbrushed Hollywood perfection, and the film’s penetrating close-ups allow us to see these real faces looking real. I've recently expressed my positive views on the close up of the human face, and, quite frankly, what faces these are, because they are real faces. As the quote on the poster rightly states, the film is 'so close to real life, it's barely a movie', and seeing life captured in this way not only allows us a glimpse into the lives of the characters, but, most importantly of all, also allows us a reflective glimpse of ourselves (and let’s not forget what it tells us about the filmmakers and actors behind the film).


Birdsong (aka El Cant dels ocells, 2008)
There is a line near the beginning of this film, which tells the story of The Three Wise Men travelling across the desert to visit the baby Jesus, when one of the Kings says to the others 'At times we’re awe-struck by the beauty of things'. As the film unfolds, the statement begins to seem almost like a reflexive manifesto, or perhaps like a viewer’s response. For, whatever people say of Albert Serra's film, and I’m sure that the film will have its detractors, I defy anyone to claim that it's not beautiful.

The film unfolds in a series of long, static shots. With minimal use of dialogue and editing, and only one use of music, the film certainly won't be for those short on patience (indeed, several people walked out of the screening I attended). Many of the scenes play out in one or two shorts, and the majority of these shots are wide enough to keep us at one remove from the facial expressions – and thus the inner thoughts – of the characters. In its wordless scenes of the Kings wandering the desert, the film called to my mind the similar endurance-testing lethargic beauty of Gus Van Sant's Gerry. The film’s sheer refusal to compromise also bought to mind the films of Michael Haneke and Béla Tarr, and indeed the static nature of Serra's camera could almost be read as a response to Tarr's waltzing kineticism. Despite their differences (and there are many) what these two filmmakers do share is an eye for creating images of crisp black and white perfection, and sometimes seemingly never-ending duration.

However, if all of this makes Birdsong sound overly dry, then I've misled you: there's a strong, rich vein of humour throughout the film.

In the question-and-answer session which followed the film, Serra revealed that he thinks of Birdsong as a spiritual film (which 'shows a very innocent version of religion'), but, although admitting that he is 'ultra' Catholic, stated that he sees it more as 'a work of art' than a polemical religious text. When I asked him after the session what the influences on his film were, he answered by naming the neorealist directors (and especially their religious works, such as Rossellini's God's Jester and Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew). Like the films of those neorealist masters, Birdsong struck me as a very human film, very down to earth and very, well, 'dirty'. Although some of the shots in the film are almost abstract in their lightness or darkness, there is a constant foregrounding and emphasis on the physical world around the characters. This emphasis results not only from the choice of long shot as the predominant shot size, but also from the fact that the extreme duration of the shots allows for clouds to move far enough overhead that the lighting conditions are often visibly changing. As a consequence of this focus on the environment, the film grounds the action on earth, and in the mud, the perfect framing all the while making it beautiful.

While it seems that the intention behind this beautifying of nature may well have been to imbue the film with some kind of teleological spirituality, the ultimate result of it is, for me at least, a humanising of the story: instead of mystical transcendence, I felt that – despite the references to and the appearances of angles – the film was almost secularising the story through its constant emphasis on Earth's physicality.

To illustrate my point, I offer an example of almost the antithesis: The Passion of Joan of Arc. Here, Dreyer achieves transcendence by reducing the background of the (often close-up) images to as plain a canvas as he could, and fragmenting the film’s grammar, thus placing the action of the film on a spiritual, metaphysical plane (apologies, but I am again drawing upon Rudkin here). Although the plane of Birdsong is indeed plain, it is also nature, life, beauty, and here we are reminded not of the spirit, but of the body.

Although it might sound like it, I by no means wish this to come across as a criticism of the film. The film is clearly a masterwork by a truly visionary director, and my point is only that, when all is said and done, the film seemed (to me) closer to the secular, depopulated landscapes of Antonioni than it did to the transcendent spaces of Dreyer, Bresson or Bergman. Indeed, I wonder if, in some ways, the Jesus of Birdsong is more human and less God than even the Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ.


Indiewood Is Dead... Long Live the New, True Indies
Indiewood is Dead... was an excellent panel discussion about the state of American Independent cinema, featuring Ramin Bahrani, Azazel Jacobs, Barry Jenkins (see also below), Kelly Parker and Joe Swanberg (see also above), and chaired by LFF programmer Michael Hayden. The panellists entered the discussion with full gusto and insight, with only Kelly Parker perhaps getting a little sidelined.

When discussing what the term 'independent' means to filmmakers today, they all seemed to agree that it was about a refusal to compromise, with Jacobs suggesting that this should be taken to the extreme: to be independent, he suggested, is to make a film without thinking about your audience, and to make the film first and foremost for yourself. Swanberg, meanwhile, suggested the truthful albeit cynical point of view that the term has become a marketing tool used to help filmmakers sell their films.

Bahrani suggested that the market for independent US cinema is not as strong as it once was. With the proliferation of digital filmmakers, many territories now have their own sustainable markets and are therefore not importing as many titles, while the multitude of choice means that the audience is thinner spread, making it harder to have a true breakout film. Seemingly on the flipside of this, Jenkins thinks that the new digital platforms for films will open up a range of choices for filmmakers which were not previously available. Both Jenkins and Swanberg suggested that independent filmmaking needs to learn from independent music, with Swanberg also suggesting that filmmakers should learn to be okay with 'touring' and then 'coming off the road' in order to work a day job for a few months to make a living. Furthermore, they should learn to be okay with their films only playing to a limited audience, and keep working in the hope that the audience will grow with each successive film and each successive 'tour'. Jacobs offered support to this mindset, by positing that there is no longer a stigma attached to not securing a distribution deal, and pointing out that self-distribution is an option (though it’s not an option that Bahrani would approve, suggesting that it takes too much energy away from the filmmaking itself). Indeed, Swanberg suggested that if filmmakers keep working, and each film makes a little bit of money, they will, over time, be able to create a sustainable career. Finally, Swanberg also talked about the immediacy of making content for the internet, the freedom it offers, and its direct line to the audience (which also therefore acts as publicity for other work).

From my perspective, as audience member and filmmaker, the talk was entertaining, insightful and informative (and more so than my notes above suggest). All of the panellists spoke very well, and I look forward to seeing the films of those whose work I'm not yet familiar with.

Medicine for Melancholy (2008)
Medicine for Melancholy marks Barry Jenkins' first foray into feature filmmaking, and it's a startling, breathtaking debut. Mixing racial politics with great characters who we can actually believe in, the film plays out with love and humour. Love for the characters, yes, but also for the city that they spend a day and a night wandering around, and at times the whole thing seems like a love letter to San Francisco. But as lead character Micah says, although he loves the city, he also hates it, and the film doesn't shy away from exploring some of the city's political problems. Visually accomplished and always absorbing, the film is beautiful and heart-warming, with a fascinating use of near black and white filmic colour supporting the narrative's emphasis on Micah's obsession with race. Brilliantly acted and stunningly shot, the film is one of the strongest debut films I've seen from recent years, and I hope that the film manages the success that it deserves.

[Update 29/10/08: click here for Part II of this report]

Scorsese

Being a self-confessed, and shameless, 'Scorsese fan boy', I have, several times now, had to endure a conversation which goes along the following lines:

Me: Yeah, I'm actually a big Scorsese fan.
So-Called Big Scorsese Fan: Oh yeah, me too! He's actually my favourite filmmaker!
Me: Oh, cool. (Beat). What did you think of The Last Temptation of Christ?
SCBSF: Oh, I didn't see that one.
Me: Oh, okay. Did you like The Age of Innocence though?
SCBSF: Yeah right, like I saw that one!
Me: Kundun?
SCBSF: Kun-what?
Me: New York, New York?
SCBSF: Come on…
Me: Gangs of New York?
SCBSF: Didn’t see it. Heard it was rubbish.

By this point I've normally given up, but if I'm in an argumentative mood, I'll carry on the conversation, and it'll play out something like this:

Me: You do know that The Last Temptation of Christ and Gangs of New York were both long-cherished projects of his, right?
SCBSF: So what. I saw GoodFellas and Taxi Driver.
Me (despairing): You know, all the films I've mentioned are amongst his best work...
SCBSF: Piss off. Everyone knows his best films are GoodFellas and Taxi Driver.

And this is the point at which I sigh, hang my head in (their) shame, and walk away...

The problem with these 'So-Called Big Scorsese Fans' is by no means with the works that they like. Scorsese is a great filmmaker who makes great films, and, to date, he's only made one film which has left me cold. As a body of work, his oeuvre is immense, full to the brim with towering achievements and full of staggering variety. And in this lies my point. A study (hell, not even a study: a quick glance) at his body of work as a whole shows a depth and breadth all too often overlooked. To be absolutely clear about this, I am by no means wishing to belittle or insult the achievements of the more popular works; my point is simply that there's a lot more to Scorsese than gangsters and guns. And this is what gets missed by people, even by his so-called 'fans'. Furthermore, Scorsese is, was, and probably always will be first and foremost a spiritual filmmaker.

Sidestepping the fact that, as a child, Scorsese considered entering the priesthood, to concentrate on the films themselves, Scorsese's religious vein can be detected right from his very first feature, most commonly known as Who's That Knocking at My Door? (which actually shows exactly how fully-formed Scorsese's themes and style were right from the off). The film itself is tied up through and through with Catholic guilt, and already shows the outside world clashing with faith (and, what's more, through the use of candles!): in one scene, the Girl lights some candles for dinner, only for J.R. (a young Harvey Keitel) to inform her that these are 'holy' candles and to be used only for religious purposes.

Scorsese's next film was Boxcar Bertha, one of his lesser works and often acknowledged as one of the least personal of his films. But even here there is a use of religious iconography, notably in Bill's crucifixion (which, of course, foreshadows nothing so much as The Last Temptation itself).

Boxcar was followed by Mean Streets, which I suspect is the earliest of his features to be seen by the SCBSFs, and, in my opinion, one of the keys to an understanding of Scorsese as primarily a spiritual filmmaker. I say this because not only do the opening words of the film provide us with the framework through which to understand the film, but also with the framework through which to understand Scorsese's entire oeuvre:

You don't make up for your sins in church – you do it in the streets.

These immortal words, seemingly spoken by the film's protagonist Charlie (Keitel again), but actually recorded by Scorsese himself, say it all. Although he strangely doesn't make the connection with this quote, David John Graham talks in his essay Redeeming Violence in the Films of Martin Scorsese (found in Explorations in Theology and Film, ed. Marsh and Ortiz) about how Jake La Motta's beating at the hands of Sugar Ray Robinson in Raging Bull should be seen as 'redeeming'. Although I found the essay a little disappointing overall, this is a key point, and illustrates perfectly how the quote from Mean Streets can help with an interpretation of Scorsese's other works: by not fighting back, La Motta is receiving punishment for – and thus annulment of – his sins, and he is doing this 'in the streets' as opposed to 'in church'.

(Interestingly, it's my opinion that this quote can also be applied to Crime and Punishment, and that Mean Streets can be understood as a reinterpretation of Dostoyevsky's work, with Charlie, standing in for Raskolnikov, seeking his own redemption through his relationship with Johnny Boy's Sonya. A self-confessed Dostoyevsky acolyte, Scorsese would later go on to loosely adapt The Gambler for his section of New York Stories, so it's possible that he was indeed influenced by Crime and Punishment when formulating Mean Streets.)

Of course, to say that Mean Streets is Scorsese's most religious film would not only be ridiculous but also a blatant oversight of the fact that his oeuvre contains two religious biopics: The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun, and indeed the former of these is perhaps the other key text necessary for a true understanding of Scorsese's tortured (anti)heroes.

“The dual substance of Christ –
the yearning, so human,
so superhuman,
of man to attain God...
has always been a deep
inscrutable mystery to me.
My principle anguish and source
of all my joys and sorrows
from my youth onward
has been the incessant,
merciless battle between
the spirit and the flesh...
and my soul is the arena
where these two armies
have clashed and met.”
Nikos Kazantzakis
From the Book
“The Last Temptation
Of Christ”

So begins one of the best films of all time: with a quote from one of the best books of all time. And here, perhaps, in Jesus, do we find the prototype for the Scorsese (anti)hero: a conflicted individual torn between the pleasures of worldly delights and the calling for/of something higher. Perhaps it is here that we find a way to understand Jimmy Doyle, caught between his music and his love for Francine (in New York, New York). And thus, although it's often overlooked, I believe it's genuinely possibly to find as much spiritual angst and confusion in the works of Scorsese as it is in those of Bergman, Tarkovsky or indeed Dostoyevsky.

I'm aware that I'm not necessarily breaking any new ground with these comments, but I felt compelled to write this blog as it still astounds me how many people overlook this aspect of Scorsese's work in favour of admiring them only for their violence (for, if we're being truthful, that's what SCBSFs like about his work). By ignoring this aspect of his work and by overlooking his 'smaller' pictures, the SCBSFs are not only missing out on some of Scorsese's best and most interesting works, they're also missing out on a true understanding of his work as whole, GoodFellas and Taxi Driver included.

- - - - - - - -

To pre-empt the criticism: I am aware that by focusing on the spiritual side of Scorsese's work this post is overlooking that other key aspect of his work: its inherent intertextuality and its revelling joy in the history of cinema. It has indeed been argued by others that Scorsese's films rewrite and rework those of others, and I intend to discuss this in full in a future post further down the line.

Candlelight

It seems only fitting than one of my first posts to this blog should be about one of my favourite films, made by one of the (if not the) greatest filmmakers of all time: Ordet by Carl Th. Dreyer. Based on a play by Kaj Munk, the film tells the story of three brothers, one of whom falls in love with a tailor’s daughter (only to have their parents disapprove of their interfaith relationship), one of whom declares himself agnostic, and one, Johannes, who declares himself to actually be Jesus Christ. Many people more skilled and schooled than me have written about this masterpiece of filmmaking, and I make no attempt here to dissect the text in full. Instead, I wish to focus my comments on one particular scene, which occurs near the beginning of the film, and show how it illustrates Dreyer’s genius and perhaps helps with a basic understanding of the film and its characters.

The two 'sane' brothers and their father sit around the living-room table, when Johannes enters. He strides over to some large candles which sit on top of a chest of drawers, and begins to light them. Once lit, he moves the candles over to the windowsill, so that his 'light may shine in the darkness'. Johannes then leaves the room, and Inger, the wife of Johannes' agnostic brother, walks straight up to the candles, blows them out, and returns them to the chest of drawers. The family then begin to discuss Johannes' madness.

Although ostensibly a minor action, Inger's behaviour in this scene is just one example of the sheer brilliance of Carl Th. Dreyer, and perhaps one of the great cinematic metaphors, perhaps also acting as a perfect microcosm of the film itself.

Ordet is, in every way, a complex and dense work, perhaps never truly unlocked and certainly as mystifying as it is captivating: as Chris Fujiwara states in his essay The Strangeness of Ordet, it is, by all means, a difficult film. And yet, taken at one level, it is a film – I would say perhaps even a simple film, but this would be misleading given its complexity – about faith.

By looking at the film through this lens (and examining it as a film about faith), Inger’s behaviour is a clear metaphor, the act of blowing out the candles representing a staunch defiance to believe. Although some of the characters claim to believe, their refusal to see Johannes' 'light', as it were, can be seen as representing their refusal to truly believe.

The film's ending, which is perhaps the most powerful ending in cinema, shows that anything is possible when people do have faith (excuse the digression, but at this point I feel I should mention that the ending is so powerful that Carlos Reygadas felt the need to rip it off almost shot-for-shot – but notably with none of the power – in his film Silent Light). However, even in the run up to the miracle with which the film ends, the family still do not have faith: they are still not ready to believe, to accept the light. It is only Inger's young daughter who believes wholeheartedly; a comment, perhaps, on the childlike worldview (dare I say purity?) that one needs in order to believe wholeheartedly.

Thus, the metaphor of the candles brilliantly shows that despite what some of the characters claim, none of them have faith or belief. This one, seemingly insignificant, piece of action tells us everything we need to know about the characters and, in the context of a reading of the film as a text about faith, even underscores and outlines a major theme of the film, while also foreshadowing its ending. To me, that is the genius of this metaphor, and the genius of Carl Th. Dreyer.