Quote for the Week

Earlier this week I finished reading a book on the artist Vilhelm Hammershøi. In keeping with last week's idea of a visual quote, here are reproductions of Hammershøi's paintings A Woman Sewing In An Interior (top) and Interior with Young Woman (bottom).

Gerry

Earlier this week I decided to rewatch Gus Van Sant's Gerry (the first time I saw it was several years ago). I know it’s a film which has its detractors, but I have to say that overall I find it a rather extraordinary and beautiful work. As I always do when I finish watching a film, I hit the net to see if I could find anything to read about it, and was rather surprised by some of what I found. For instance, in his review of the film, the critic Roger Ebert seems to express surprise at the film being described as 'existential', while in their interview with Van Sant SPLICEDwire refer to it as being 'about nothing more than two buddies getting lost -- very lost -- in the desert' (though they do at least see it as an existential work). In my opinion, to describe it as being about 'nothing more' than people being lost in the desert, or to miss its existential overtones, is to somewhat miss the point: the film is an open text, and can clearly be interpreted as an existential metaphor.

[Please note that the following paragraphs contain spoilers].

The two characters begin the film on a wilderness trail, looking for the 'thing'. However, they soon decide to deviate from the trail, and to 'fuck the thing'. No longer interested in reaching their destination, they turn around to retrace their steps, only to get lost in the landscape around them. It is a disaster that starts humorously, continues in despair, and ends in death.

Van Sant has stated in interviews how he always saw the 'thing' as being 'some kind of cave drawing' at the end of the wilderness trail, but readily admits to the fact that they referred to it only as the 'thing' in order to open it up to wider interpretations. And my interpretation is as follows: we begin our lives by following our goals, our desires, our 'things'. But as we get older and they seem ever-further from our reach, we abandon them, ending up lost in the desert of life. Left confused and without purpose, we wander aimlessly through our lives, only to die a cold and meaningless death. At the end of the film, when Matt Damon's character is 'back on the road', it can perhaps be seen as him once more finding his way in life, free to start looking all over again for the 'thing'.

Of course, this explanation of the film is only my personal interpretation, but hopefully it illustrates the film's existential edge, and proves that it is about far more than just what it presents on its surface.

Another Quote for the Week

I was doing some reading up on various things to do with acting today, and came across something that Sanford Meisner said, which seemed poignant enough to warrant an extra blog post:

"You know it's all right to be wrong, but it's not all right not to try"

Quote for the Week

Earlier this week I went to see the new print of Barry Lyndon which is currently enjoying an extended run at the BFI Southbank as part of their complete Kubrick retrospective. It's a film which just keeps getting better and better with each subsequent viewing, and is also, in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. It feels fitting, therefore, that I should choose a quote from Kubrick's masterpiece as my Quote for the Week. However, in keeping with the power of Kubrick's images, and the emphasis he placed on them in all of his films, it seems only right that it should be a visual quote. And so I leave you with this, one of the most beautiful and striking opening images in cinema:

Quote for the Week

Earlier this week I finished reading Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. It’s such a beautiful and poetic work that I’m not quite sure what to say about it other than that it is utterly sublime. It’s the type of work which it’s difficult to make notes on as, quite frankly, the whole book is worth nothing down. However, I’ve decided to distil this little quote from it, as I think it really captures something which is not only beautiful, but which we all need to keep in mind once in a while:

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Another Great Trailer

A few weeks ago I posted a blog on five great trailers, and in particular the trailer for Béla Tarr's The Man from London. Since then, I've become aware of this amazing trailer for the film In The City of Sylvia. Like the trailer for The Man From London, it consists solely of a single shot of people walking. I wonder if it's going to become something of a trend. Although I'm worried that an influx of 'walking' trailers might become a little too repetitive, I have to say that I find these trailers totally spellbinding and rather breathtaking, and will certainly be seeing In The City of Sylvia when it hits London screens in March.

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.