1. Matt, Just a quick note to let you know that I started my descent into madness with John Cassavetes this evening – so called only because I started with A Woman Under The Influence . My response, having just finished it, is similar to what I felt after watching Shadows last fall: great admiration, but from a distance. I think this is perhaps because I was expecting, especially in this case, something far more realistic than what I actually got. Rowlands and Falk were certainly entirely believable in their roles – masterful performances, to be sure – but there was a lack of restraint to their direction that irked me. I kept thinking that the film was like a very rough cut of an Altman film from the same period, a cut in which some of the takes might go on too long and in which he hadn't yet excised some of the more "actorly" moments. Amongst all the vérité realism were frequent exaggerations (Mable's dad vehemently claiming that he's "not a spaghetti man" at the most inopportune moment, for example) that took me out of the film and made me think I was watching an exercise in improvisation. Thus, the scenes that reached me the most, where I found the movie most consistently brilliant, were the ones involving the children. It's been said that very young children, when they're given the opportunity to give do their best acting, do not actually act at all; I think that's certainly the case here, and the adults were forced to stay grounded when playing opposite them; the results were incredibly powerful. But was vérité really what he was going for? Just as I felt with Shadows, I'm not sure my opinion is entirely correct; he may not end up being my perfect cup of tea, and I certainly haven't found the instant appreciation of his work that you have, but I also sense there's something in his work that I haven't picked up on yet. To the end of further edification, I've got Faces lined up for tomorrow, followed by Chinese Bookie and Opening Night . Stay tuned for further thoughts next week, once I've seen all of them, and perhaps read a text or two as well... dvd
Dear David, One shouldn't have to read a book – especially a Ray Carney book – in order to appreciate a film or filmmaker, but I strongly urge you to pick up Cassavetes on Cassavetes – by far the best Faber & Faber interview book I've read, even though it's occasionally repetitive – it might not help you to like the pictures anymore than you do, but it'll certainly offer you (at least one way) to watch them. The problem is that Carney has a kind of monopoly when it comes to writing on Cassavetes – it's not that he's not good, but that there are other ways to see the work – as you indicate, I think, when you ask whether or not he was going for cinema vérité. This said, I can't help but be reminded of Carney's reply to my e-mail of a while back when you say that your admiration for A Woman Under the Influence was great but "distant": he wrote that, upon first seeing Cassavetes' work, he resisted it as much as he could – people tend to react in this way when they first get challenged by this kind of work. Of course, I'm not for a moment suggesting that you're not primed for Cassavetes – after all, you're a Gallo fan – just that...well, give it a while and see what happens. (Clearly, I just want you to love what I love...!) I'm interested by what you have to say about the length of some of the scenes – something that I had trouble with in Woman myself, though not in the same sense (I took it as my shortcoming and not the film's). The fact of the matter is that "scenes" in life "run long;" as long as Mabel's breakdown, if not longer, for example. As you know, I've just finished shooting a run-and-gun project, Notes from the Arctic Circle, in which we shot such improvised scenes (for the record, very little in Cassavetes is improvised); the fact of the matter is that life "runs long". We were shooting fifteen minute takes on Arctic Circle not because the actors were so busy making the scenes dramatic (the only thing dramatic about the scenes, in my opinion, are the faces of the girls), but because that's how long the scenes would be in real life . Of course, there's a lot of stuff that – because the film has to be shorter than seven minutes – won't make the cut – the "dull" stuff; the "undramatic" stuff – and that's what, in Cassavetes' longer work, is kind of remarkable – it just plays. Some would argue, of course, that we don't go to the cinema to see life as it is, but I clearly think that, sometimes, we can. In other words, I have no problems, besides those that I have with my own MTV-conditioned eyes, with the length of the scenes in Woman (wait until you see Faces – which, for the record, I actually think you'll love). Needless to say, I agree with you on the children. As someone who's very big on the idea of the screenplay-as-standalone-literature (even though I'm becoming less and less interested in actually writing them as such myself; I'm far too anal and I get obsessed with the "rhythm" of the action lines), I was very impressed with your most recent blog entry. I realised just recently – while getting back, however briefly, into fictional literature – Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to be specific – that my films (the future features, I mean) are very literary in their (structural) nature – they're not epic poems like Dead Man, but are closer to novels. Of course, any fiction filmmaker might say that their films are novelistic, but I'm definitely not just talking about the films being fictional. What I realised is that I love the Chapter – and, therefore, in cinema, the Sequence (in the episodic sense as opposed to in the "shot sequence" sense). I wonder if this also has something to do with the random access nature of DVD and its influence upon our generation. (Completely off topic, are we even part of the same generation? Are you X or Y? Oh, my, the generation gap...) At the same time, I'm extremely interested in the essayistic structure of Godard (and, I assume – Goddammit! – Jean Rouch; you've really got to read about him, I swear). What I would like – and I have absolutely no clue, as yet, if and how I'll ever be able to do it in practice – is to combine novelistic and essayistic structures in a way that (like both my proposed combination of Wes Anderson and Godard and my recent blog entry about "pessimistic optimism" and "cynical humanism") is contradictory but revelatory. I have an inkling that the "Novel" must work on the level of narrative structure and the "Essay" must work on the level of meta-narrative and abstract themes. If we were to transpose this idea to photography, we could say, perhaps, that my current obsession with photographing the human face can as (a) an interest in portraiture (sort of the photograph's "narrative structure;" the "Novel") and (b) an interest in, among other things, the shape of a face – it's lines – it's marks – it's colour (or tone) – the performance of the subject who knows that they're being photographed (the photograph's "meta-narrative;" the "Essay" – in this instance, I would hope, a cross between anthropology – the physical "layout" of the face, which is in itself remarkable – and phenomenology – everything that this face means to us when we look at it.) I've attached a photograph of my grandmother – who's got acute dementia – looking directly at the camera. On one level, yeah, it's a portrait – but what's most interesting to me (even as her grandson!) is the photograph's "meta-narrative".
Anyway, I hope that this made sense and didn't jump too violently away from the "What makes a film literary?" discussion (it was the word "Essay" what done me in, I swear!), but I think I can safely say that your Cassavetean e-mail and literary post have definitely kick-started session two. I know that you're going to be a busy boy in the next few weeks and months, so don't feel obligated to shoot back e-mails at me everyday like last time. Though, admittedly, it would be nice...! Yours with apologies for the hyperbole, m. P.S. You're right about the literary quotations as well. Nicely done.
Matt, So, I've just finished my initial trek through Cassavetes territory. You're right, I loved Faces. And as you've already read, I really loved Killing of a Chinese Bookie . Opening Night was mostly good, although I felt some of the material with the dead girl was a bit overdone (the séance scene could easily have been cut, I think). The problem I had with A Woman Under The Influence wasn't in the length of the scenes (and let me interrupt myself here to note that the fault I found with Shadows was that it wasn't long enough ) but in that they seemed more in service of the performance than the film itself. I love scenes that let real life play out, quietly observing the (often terribly exciting) minutiae of banality, but I though that in that film those scenes were too often extended simply to let the actors act. In both Faces and Chinese Bookie, everything the actors did was in service to the film and not the other way around ( Opening Night cleverly subverts these concerns by being about acting). The reins were pulled tight, and the results were extraordinary. I appreciated your comment on how the only thing you find dramatic in your recent short is the faces of the actresses; I suffer from the same malady with my films, in that I have to force myself not to linger indulgently on close-ups (preferably extreme ones) of faces of my actresses. Was it Rivette who said the history of cinema is men photographing women? It's a rather sexist overstatement, but I'm afraid I'm guilty of propagating it. Let me use this is the bridge to the second part of this discussion, concerning your contradictory plans to combine the structure of both a novel and essay. Well, first of all: I was thinking about the notion of chapters (I even did a bit of research, thinking at first that perhaps the concept of episodic storytelling became commonplace during the years when many of the great European writers were publishing their best known works in serial form before remembering that the bible basically used the same structural concepts), and while an episodic narrative is often a benchmark of a literary film, films can also certainly have chapters, or sections, complete with titular text on screen, and not be literary in the slightest. Having just watched The Life Aquatic again, let me submit that as an example. Dogville, too (unless one includes plays in the definition of literature). Then, on the other hand, we have Barry Lyndon (I have a feeling this film is just going to keep coming up again and again in our discussions), which not only is based on a novel, and not only is structured with chapters, but which simply feels literary – just as Jarmusch's Dead Man does. Novels generally have films bested in terms of narrative freedom; interior monologue and lack of time constraints being chief among the benefits of the form. What a good director can do is realize that he or she can use what film does have over the novel - an instant means of visual communication - as a substitute for both these literary traits. Thus, a long shot of a character walking across a veranda to meet a woman (to use one from Barry Lyndon as an example) - a shot which observes but does not intrude - can contain in its content, its actors' performances, everything that makes up those lengthy interior monologues or descriptive passages. Adaptations of novels generally fail to live up to the books because they try to cram too much in (and in those cases, an episodic structure becomes a problem, rather than an asset). (And regarding the influence of DVDs in your affinity for chapters - let me just say that I'm generally on the side of David Lynch, who refuses to put chapters on his DVDs. While it's certainly frustrating when trying to watch individual scenes from his films (and is it ever!), I agree with him. Whether a film is episodic or not, its episodes are part of the rhythm of its narrative and only poorly structured films are better seen in bits and pieces). But then we come to the notion of the film-as-essay. Which would be, in other words, something akin to a documentary, about which there's nothing necessarily abstract. The point at which it becomes abstract - when the essay becomes meta-narrative - would be in its introduction to non essayistic elements; in your case, the more traditional narrative, in which it would be embedded. I don't think it's nearly as crazy as you might think; in fact, I think the idea meta-narratives are a fairly common postmodern concept. For example, Jonze's Adaptation contains both traditional (albeit warped) and meta-narratives. A perfect example of the type of meta-narrative I think you're particularly interested in would be Godard's Notre musique, which is about one thing (the fictional narrative) and at the same time is about how it is about it (the essay, represented by Godard's running on-screen lecture on film theory). A somewhat less intentional case would be the aforementioned Opening Night; a film like that functions on a postmodern level in the same way that my looking at your photograph of your grandmother does; just as I know that I'm watching a real life husband and wife act in a film about acting, I know that I'm looking at a photograph is that I know who it's of and who took it and the relationship inherent in that. What you have to decide is whether you want this meta-narrative to be subtle or overt. Do you let the photograph of your grandmother simply exist on the levels available to the audience on a case by case basis, or do you overlay it with text and call attention to the inherent abstraction? Godard walks the line perfectly with Notre musique, I think. I feel like I should bring up Peter Greenaway now, but I think that's just because he makes extensive use of text overlays. I'm really not familiar enough with his work to start bringing him into a discussion he most likely belongs in. In any case, that's my two cents for the evening. I'm sure I'll look at this in the morning and realize that (a) I've jumped in way over my head, (b) failed to elucidate the points I intended to make, or (c) both of the above. Take care, dvd
Dear David, I had to get up at five o'clock this morning because I'd stayed at a friend's place overnight and had to catch the train back to Bond for his eight o'clock start – I originally thought we'd be driving, which takes infinitely less time to do, but, no, we had to take the train. The upside to this, of course, is that I've finally found the time to continue upon this little sortie of ours. Your take on A Woman Under the Influence as being a film that serviced the actors is very astute. I agree with you, of course – the film was originally conceived as three short plays that would run on consecutive nights as a "star vehicle" (so to speak) for Rowlands; the film reflects this – but I don't believe this to be too detrimental, especially under a meta-narrative gaze (see below; I've had some revelations pertaining to what this might actually mean). I think, for this very reason, Woman is a harder film than Cassavetes' other work (though I assume that Bookie is really tough as well for most people – especially those who come in expecting a gangster film); it requires a transformation of sensibility on the part of the viewer. The thing is, because of the film's yielding to the actors, we have to learn to view it differently – to see it differently, to listen to it differently, and, as a result, to experience the world in general differently. Needless to say, I've been reading, and have been very influenced by the material in question (Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation, which I adore though sometimes disagree with). My theories of meta-narrative (which is a crummy term, I now realise – let's call it, quite simply, "implicit content" – or what one of my lecturers today called "deep story" – instead) have been enforced and further clarified for me. At the same time, I've been watching a lot – and I mean a lot – of Hitchcock; these two experiences – Hitch and Sontag – have combined together to make me realise just what form is (or might be) and how it relates to content – both implicit and explicit. The following little bit of the e-mail is from an e-mail I wrote to the other Dave about his (highly formal) poetry:
(Actually, seeing how I used the term "meta-narrative" in that extract almost validates it again for me: you can have meta-narrative of implicit content.) Anyway, this is sort of what I'm saying about Woman . Yes, Rowland and Falk are "bigger," so to speak, than the film itself, but I think this is a good thing – something that forces us to re-evaluate the way we experience and approach the work – and then the world – not a bad one. Unfortunately for Alexander Payne, I was reading Sontag and watching Hitchcock when I saw Sideways the other day. As nice as the performances were, I found that, as Rosenbaum noted, there wasn't anything interesting being done with sound and image – the film wasn't offering us a new way to look at a film or the world. Every great film, in some way, offers a unique way of experiencing things. I think Woman does this extremely well (although it doesn't "offer" – it "insists"). What it's implicit content or meta-narrative (or whatever) is, as yet, I don't know (I've only seen it once), but I tend to believe that Cassavetes' major project, however conscious or unconscious, was to catalogue as well he could the indeterminable breadth of human gesture (the body) and expression (the face). He was, in his way, very much an anthropologist. Regarding chapters, I don't really wish to discuss that any further – it sprung from the literary cinema discussion, which I find infinitely more interesting – but I have to disagree with you on Dogville, which I found to be extremely literary – not merely because I consider plays to be literature, but because it just felt that way to me – much like Barry Lyndon, which you do think is literary. So, I don't know. Different strokes? As for chapters on DVDs, I understand where Lynch is coming from – it's the same place Spielberg's coming from when he refuses to record director's commentaries – but I can't help but feel that it just makes life that little bit harder for the critic or scholar who wants to deconstruct or closely read a work – specifically if they want to do a close reading of a scene or sequence – could you imagine trying to do a close reading of the "Silencio" sequence of Mulholland Drive without the luxury of chapter stops? Rewind, play, rewind, play. Thank God for bookmarks! But who knows? Maybe Lynch doesn't want his work to be analysed in the first place – but, then, a lack of chapter stops isn't going to stop a die hard academic anyway. I'm not sure you completely understood what I had to say about cinematic essays – I say this based on (a) the fact that you say that "the essay becomes meta-narrative [with] the introduction of non essayistic elements – in your case, the more traditional narrative," and (b) the fact that you reference Adaptation, which I don't see fitting into my schema at all. Let me try and explain this again as clearly as I can; now that you've seen Notes from the Arctic Circle, it might be easier for me to explain using that film as a model: When I say "essayistic," I don't mean documentary – I'm not making documentaries, but am speaking very much from within the realm of fiction. Where my ideas and your understanding of them get muddled is the line that exists – or rather, which doesn't exist – between the terms "essayistic" and "meta-narrative". Where we differ is that, I don't differentiate between the two; for me, they're one and the same – at least when we're talking about the fiction film, which I was and you weren't. Take Notes, which is, very broadly speaking, a fiction film. The narrative – the explicit content – is made up of a very loose plot and the character's personalities. The meta-narrative – the implicit content – is the slightly more anthropological discourse (one of many – there are probably others that I was completely unconscious of) on the bodies and the faces – the narrative is a story in the more traditional sense and the meta-narrative is essayistic. (Not coincidentally, I now realise, the meta-narrative is often very much about the formal, surface-level, external, sensuous aspects of a work – the non-fiction of the fiction – which is probably why Sontag's "On Style" hit me so hard when I read it – indeed, her work has helped me verbalise much of what I've written to you in this e-mail.) Obviously you're on the right track, however – in fact, you're probably exactly right – when you mention Notre musique ; a film that I've not yet seen, but want to more with every passing day. The only difference there is that Godard has, more and more over time, emerged as the cinema's foremost essayist; I'm talking about working on a more subtle way – the same way that Cassavetes can be seen as an essayist who writes on the face (so to speak!); the way that Hitchcock can be seen as an essayist (among countless other things) who wrote at length on cinematic forms; or Eisenstein on Montage Theory (that last example is not so good only in that Eisenstein's meta-narrative was far less meta). Either way, I think that the meta-narrative/implicit content/deep story is one of the keys to great filmmaking – I guess, in a way, I'm saying that every great filmmaker is in his or her own way an essayist [*] . (At the same time, I do actually like essayistic forms in general, even when brought into the realm of the "actual" narrative. I'm just focusing on that other plane for the time being.) Have you found a copy of Cassavetes on Cassavetes yet? Buy a copy of Against Interpretation while you're at it! If only you didn't have to spend all your money on, you know, that "Berlin thing" (for which I shall forever envy you). Don't worry about the Flushed DVD; I'll hold a copy until you're back. Looking forward to hearing back from you before you leave (demanding, ain't I?), m. [*] My position on this has shifted slightly since the writing of this e-mail. For me, now, it is not so much implicit content or meta-narrative that defines a great filmmaker, but a unique sensibility that one cultivates over time (indeed, one that never stops being cultivated). The key to the very greatest filmmaking is the creation of one's own forms – of one's own unique way of seeing and experiencing (and shooting) the world. I discuss this notion in a non-cinematic fashion in regards to the Apple iPod and blogging here.
Matt, An unusually quick reply this time; I've got a few hours before I head back into the sound mixing studio (and for the record, you wouldn't believe how exhausting it is to sit and watch someone else mix sound. It wears you out). Anyway, jumping straight into the meta-narrative fray: I'm pretty sure I knew what you meant in your earlier e-mail; any misunderstandings are probably mostly related to an inability to properly communicate my ideas - I've got to work on that. I've done a small amount of reading on post-modernism, which uses the meta-narrative term pretty frequently, and there are a variety of interpretations and usages I've come across – but as long as we're both talking about "implicit content" (which is indeed what I was talking about), then I think we're on the same page. When I say that "the essay becomes meta-narrative [with] the introduction of non essayistic elements – in your case, the more traditional narrative," what I mean is - well, let me start an entirely new sentence. If you take the strict essayistic approach, I do believe you're left with something along the lines of a documentary - an expository document, cinematic or textual, depending on your medium: an anthropological document entirely capable of being looked at separately from the fictional conceits of the plot, in the case of your Notes (that separative element is where it seems you saw our disagreement over the term. I don't think we disagree – you simply don't see a line, but I see a line in varying degrees of definition, from obvious to entirely absent). When you introduce a narrative to the essay - or, to be more exact, introduce the essay to a narrative - and merge the two, the essay can become the meta-narrative - or, using the far friendlier term, the "implicit content." This can be done in degrees - in Notre musique, they're only a few elements away from oil and water. But then, on the other hand, you have my use of Adaptation as an example, which is only an imperfect one inasmuch as the viewer is unaware of the film's extenuating circumstances. Consider: the narrative is about Charlie Kaufman and these crazy hijinks with his brother. But implicit in this narrative is the viewer's knowledge that Charlie Kaufman did in fact write the script for the film; that he has no twin brother; and that he's calling attention to, and in a way answering, the very criticisms that are waged against him: that his scripts generally go to hell in the third act. These are the two levels upon which the film is operating, and while they are far less distinguishable than, say, what Godard does, they are certainly distinct, and certainly fit rather neatly into these established narrative/meta-narrative categories. Just as Cassavetes, categorizing the extent of the emotive qualities of the human form while telling the stories of damaged individuals, did with his films; or you, chronicling the attempts of a braggadocio-on-the-outside-lonely-on-the-inside young man to bed one of his girlfriends as an "excuse" (I hesitate to use the term, as it almost devalues the narrative) to study the human face, in Notes From The Arctic Circle. And, to an extent, every film has these categories. If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentary on a DVD and then watch the film it pertains to again, you'll be looking at with new eyes, with new knowledge and with the implicit understanding of how the film was made working alongside (or against) your understanding of the surface narrative. But this is an extreme example, and, indeed, a mostly invalid one, since the meta-narrative – in this case, an actual essay/documentary – exists in a separate state: the line between narrative and meta-narrative is firm and mostly prohibitive. To digress ever so slightly for a moment (but only slightly), I think Dogville is un-literary because: (a) I saw the chapters not as a literary conceit but as an overt homage to Barry Lyndon and (b) while I do consider plays literature (I was wrong to suggest that I didn't in my last e-mail), the level which Dogville is theatrical is similar to the Kubrick reference mentioned above, although to a lesser extent: it's staging seemed almost more about how it evoked Thornton Wilder than about its own stagy-ness. In the case of the latter instance especially, reference is inherent to the form, and by turning these references on their head, the film becomes something that is uniquely cinematic. I could branch out here into how the audience's implicit knowledge of these references turns them into...but I'm sure you see the connection, however minute it may be. Segues are frustrating when they aren't progressive! A few more thoughts: 1. When I write fiction, I like to keep a pentameter of indeterminable but definite rhythm running in my head, which parlays to the prose a certain poetic sensibility. In doing this, I came to realize (with, as I recall, a palpable sense of wondrous discovery) some time ago exactly what you explained to "the other" David in the message you quote: that the words are so very much about themselves, how they sound, how their pure consonance or dissonance works on the reader's subconscious, both alone and in concert with each other. When one realizes that, writing takes on an entirely different perceptive, and each word carries new weight; (I'm rue to admit that this prosaic meticulousness contrasts unfavorably with the surging bursts of thought that produce these e-mails). This, of course, translates to film theory, with shots replacing words, and here I ask you to consider the possibilities of a poem or text whose form and style exists on a purely phonetic level. Is it possible? And would this not be very similar to the idea I suggested in the last series, of a film made up entirely of shots that are very much about how they contrast with other shots, and montages that contrast with different montages? On all but the most theoretical levels, I think now that both ideas would be doomed to fail (and the text in a more extreme sense than the film). 2. James [M. Johnston] used various scenes in Mulholland Drive as reference points while he was rehearsing for Deadroom, and he told me how frustrating it was. However, when it comes down to the artist versus the academic (or the art of the academic, to be fair), I'm afraid I'm coming down on the artist's side. Of the directors who don't (or no longer) do commentary tracks, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lynch are the two who made me realize what a beautiful thing the mystery of a film can be, and I'm glad they don't try to explain their work. 3. Interestingly, I think Adaptation (and Being John Malkovich, too) is a benchmark as to how overt filmmakers can get with their post-modernism while maintaining commercial appeal. Prior to the fifties, it seems, such films were much fewer and far between (and generally swept under the rug for historians and scholars to later thrill over); subsequently, it became far more acceptable (as a result of the French New Wave), although still confined to art houses. Then Scream came out in 1996 and mainstream audiences suddenly seemed to realize they could be smarter than the movies and still be affected by them; the (relative) success of the two Jonze/Kaufman collaborations are a direct extension of this (Gondry/Kaufman, however, go in a different direction, and offer the refreshing suggestion that overt postmodernism isn't all that enriching in the long term). 4. I see from the comments on your blog that you're close to calling Hitchcock the greatest filmmaker of all time! There was a time when I'd have agreed with you, and that I no longer do is simply because I'm too fickle (or, as I like to see it, all-inclusive in my love) to ever call someone the greatest. I generally put Vertigo on my frequently shifting list of what I think are the ten best films ever made – although it's not his best film, I think it's probably my personal favorite and I use it as a token to represent his entire repertoire. 5. And how about Van Sant's remake of Psycho for an example of a meta-narrative? Jesus Christ! Looking forward, as always, to finding out if I made as much sense as I always think I'm making but almost never actually am… Take care, dvd
Dear David, I still think that "documentary" is the wrong word to use in relation to implicit content/meta-narrative. That said, I have no other alternative (working on it, though; keep reading). I guess the thing is that I think that "essay" and "documentary" can be mutually exclusive terms; an essay can be fictional, a documentary cannot (a mockumentary isn't a documentary, of course). I would consider Godard's films to be essays (on cinema, of course) without considering them considering them to be documentaries. (Of all the early works, only Alphaville comes close to being documentary – on Paris – for me.) This said, I do know where you're coming from – the word I think we're looking for is at the crux of the word "documentary" without actually being it: "document," one that you use but don't highlight. I think that's the word. Implicit content, which exists in every single film (you're right!), is the cornerstone of a document that exists beyond narrative. The question is one, as you so aptly point out, of transparency/subtly/director's consciousness of what they're doing. A few thoughts based on your thoughts: 1. Why would a purely phonetic poem be doomed to failure? Dave's current obsession with words for the mere sake of words – something that doesn't apply to his quasi-autobiographical Document 1, which works on that personal level as well and is thus not just about its own surface-level existence – has been prompted by a bizarre book of poems called Eunoia by Christian Bok. This is the production description (which apparently doesn't even begin to get into the insanity of the project) from Amazon.com:
Again, this is a surface-level thing, much in the way a film of juxtaposed montages or long-shots might be, so I don't believe that "doomed to failure" is a very apt term, though I realise as I write the sheer impossibility of anything being solely surface-level or solely implicit. (Another way of putting it might be to say that nothing can be summed up as purely sensuous or purely intellectual.) The true nature of things – people, emotions and works of art – is their unavoidable duality. I think the problem, again, is with but one or two words – "solely" and "purely". Nothing is solely or purely anything. But I do believe that a poem that comes very close to being nothing but pure phonetics needs not to be doomed to failure! 2. Perhaps it's telling of my inner workings that I still disagree with you, ever so slightly, on the matter of DVD chapters – I don't come down on the artist's side – or, at least, not completely. If a filmmaker wants to be "mysterious" or whatever, then I believe they have the right to avoid recording commentary tracks – to avoid "explaining" the work – like Spielberg, Lynch and PTA, but I still maintain that criticism is something that cinema needs in order to understand itself, and close readings, which DVD chapters undoubtedly make more efficient, are an important part of this. The only thing that worries me about DVD chapters is the same thing that worries me about DVDs in general: a shift in the way we think about the cinema experience – the question of possession. There's a huge difference between buying a ticket – in essence, a seat – at the cinema and buying – thus owning – a film. The modern spectator is slowly but surely shifting from a traditionally passive position to a more aggressive one. (Just as a side note, this is something that has struck me about all the Vertigo stuff I've been reading this past week, which usually equates the act of looking with activity and the act of being looked at with passivity – for ought that I can tell, however, the one place where this truism is inversed is in the cinema, where the act of looking – unless you choose to walk out – and then it doesn't count, because you're no longer looking – is a passive, not aggressive, act. Therefore, Vertigo and criticisms of it operate, as ever, on the same inherent duality upon which all things must operate!) But anyway, I have mixed feelings for the DVD chapter, because, while I believe that a film's submission to the viewer – as opposed to the other way around – is the more undesirable of the two options, I also believe, paradoxically, that the possibilities it opens up for the study of films – which I think I place more value on than you – not a lot more, of course, and I don't mean to be arrogant, but I think that's a fairly accurate assessment. Of course, don't get me wrong: the most important thing is to watch the film as it was meant to be seen – as a film, first and foremost – at least once before going chapter-hopping! 3. As for Hitchcock, I'm not close to calling him the greatest – I am calling him the greatest (followed closely by Godard, Cassavetes and Kubrick). I'm also very fickle, but that's something that usually affects my ranking of films as opposed to my ranking of directors (though I've tried doing both in the postscript to this e-mail.) Until Monday, when I see Vertigo again, for the third time – and I think it's going to be a definitive experience (though I'm probably jinxing myself by saying so) – I'd have to say that Rear Window is my favourite Hitchcock, followed closely by Dial M for Murder and North by Northwest . I need to see Psycho again, now that I've learn to "see" Hitchcock. Surprisingly, it wasn't very hard: a good fortnight of constant exposure and everything simply begins to emerge from the screen – a web of links and connections that spans across the entire body of work, in regards to both form and theme. It may be little more than a camera move, and it's surely more loaded in the latter picture, but there's something remarkable about the manner in which Hitch's camera pushes in quickly and intensely, like punctuation, on a portrait of John Gielgud in Secret Agent, and again, twenty-two years later, on one of Carlotta in Vertigo . In between, in Shadow of a Doubt, as I recently mentioned on my blog, the camera moves in exactly the same revelatory way to pinpoint Charlie's decision to wear a stolen ring – much in the same way the shot in Vertigo makes explicit Carlotta's flowers, hair and necklace. This is one example of literally hundreds – some which mean something, some which don't, all of which suggest a true coherence and unity – a true artistry – like no other. The same could probably be said for Welles, of course, but I really haven't seen enough of his work to talk about it at any great length. That and I'd much rather point out that the same can be said of Kubrick, too! 4. I've not seen Van Sant's Psycho as yet. But I'll be sure to as soon as I can find a spare minute or one-hundred-and-twenty. 5. No, film isn't the sole area of study at Bond, but it's the only one that I have anything to do with – that is, of course, until next semester, when I'm hopefully going to be able to take French Language as an elective, and Introduction to Philosophy in the semester after that (my final one; hooray!). Why do you ask? Well, to tell you the truth, David, I nearly though that this was going to be the final e-mail of the series, but once I hit your "thoughts," I almost couldn't stop writing. Although we've pretty much resolved and clarified the ideas of implicit content/meta-narrative and essayistic structure for ourselves, I think there's still a fair bit worth talking about buried in those last couple of paragraphs somewhere. No doubt you'll be heading off to Berlin quite soon – that is, if you haven't left already – and so I wish you a safe flight, the most awesome time of your life, and enough waking hours for you to write me a reply at length. That said, of course, two out of three ain't bad. Your friend, m. P.S. Oh, and I decided, in the end, not to write a list. I'm very bad at them. And I never knowing if I'm including a film because I think it's great or because I feel I should or because of a sentimental attachment to it.
Dear Matt, (Before breaking into the body of this e-mail, let me thank for recommending the Susan Sontag collection. I've only had time to read the first two essays, but already I'm entranced, enlightened and overjoyed by her writing - and, of course, I found opportunity to quote her in the body paragraphs below!) To put my last two cents into the whole meta-narrative discussion: I think I finally see with more precision where you're coming from, and also the half-fallacy of my use of the term "documentary" in relation to all this. First of all, I was using the term strictly in reference to meta-narratives of essayistic structure, whereas I think you interpreted my hypotheses as suggesting that all implicit content was essayistic and therefore documentarian. Secondly, you're absolutely right about documentaries and essays being (almost exclusively, in fact!) exclusive terms. I believe the common ground I so conclusively found in them was that they are both rooted in the study and exposition of non-fiction; but beyond that the definitions are almost contradictory. Essays, of course, being by definition inclusive of the artist's opinion - furthermore, one doesn't often find documentaries about something as abstract as concepts, which are easily and often dealt with in essay form (here we find too the difference between the implicit content in Godard's work you mention ). Finally, I would argue that fictional essays, while perfectly legitimate, occupy the same territory as fictional documentaries ("mockumentaries" included), in that they are fictional content presented within the guise (or trappings, to use a more properly disclosive term) of a nonfiction format (and I do believe that essays, being expository and perhaps argumentative in structure, fall almost squarely in the realm of nonfiction). But whether we agree or disagree here is a matter of minutiae in nomenclature I don't think we necessarily need to delve into. Now onto the other more involving minutiae of this series: 1. Again, I express recompense (do you sense a trend here?): my use of "doomed to failure" was the melodramatic excess of an artist always concerned for his audience. However, I do believe that such works - what Sontag refers to in as "programmatic avant-gardism...experiments with form at the expense of content" - cannot, no matter how perfect their construction, transcend the conceit of that construction. This is fine, as far as that structure is concerned, but you hit the nail on the head when you suddenly realized mid-sentence the limitations of attempted purity. If art is made available for an audience, as all art should be, then it is by admission of its own nature dependent on the complicity of that audience; and that audience will, in all but the most studiously academic circumstances (and even then not completely), attempt to read between the lines. This may not even be an active decision on their part; but the presentation of two words next to each other, like the juxtaposition of two images, will inspire a reaction in the audience. And if the artist isn't active in guiding that reaction - if his dedication to the form was pure - then the audience will be left to come up with their own varied, personal reactions that are contrary to the work of art; they will create their own content. Now, this may in fact be the intent of the work of art; it may be an accidental but beautiful by-product of it; but the work of art itself loses far more solidarity than it might have had were the artist to let the implications of the form be guided by the content, rather than be the content in and of itself. And of course one must consider the possibility that an artist is creating the work of art for the sake of its own existence, knowing but disregarding that an audience will fill it in with what they may. This is why I was wrong to say "doomed to failure," because while I love the nature of an audience's complicit involvement in art (although I certainly do not believe things should be made easy for an audience), I also hold the artist's intent sovereign over all else. To make an example of this generally peaceful conflict: had Gus Van Sant simply filmed two actors walking from one end of a desert to another for two hours, and let that form be the sole content of the film, I would have praised his vision; however, because he, with great restraint and subtlety, implied narrative content upon this form, I can praise the resulting film far more than I would have otherwise. 2. This rather major notion of artistic sovereignty continues into the rather minor discussion of DVD chapters; what it basically comes down to for me is "what they say goes, no matter how inconvenient to the viewer or critic!" Of course, I will put chapters (and commentaries, most likely) on my own DVDs, for, while I completely understand the argument against them, I suppose I also consider those offenses to be negligible. More important than the presence of chapters in DVDs is the presence of DVDs themselves - certainly a wonderful invention, and one I wouldn't give up for the world - and yet they do shift the perception of the cinematic experience - not just in terms of possession, as you mention, but, more importantly, in terms of control. I believe that cinema ultimately is, as you correctly posit, a passive medium (can we use the term aggressive passivity in the same way we use optimistic pessimism?), and, with a handful of notable exceptions, works best as such; the level of aggressiveness that is fast becoming the standard (as the cinema becomes more and more a mere step in the marketing of an eventual DVD, at least in terms of more mainstream film) worries me a little - but only a little. I think there enough people like you and I who would almost always choose a darkened theater over a television screen to ensure the survival of the cinema (and here I must digress ever so slightly to admit that I thrill to the notion of films that by their very nature defeat the aggressiveness of critics and scholars – a defeat that merits the very existence of those critics and scholars in the first place!). 3. The only reason I would rank Hitchcock behind Kubrick, Godard and Cassavetes (well, maybe not Cassavetes, in my case - there are still many filmmakers I prefer to him, despite my sustained awe over Chinese Bookie ) is that their work contains more reflective possibilities than Hitchcock's (notable exceptions include Vertigo, the first half of The Wrong Man, and perhaps certain aspects of Marnie as well, if I remember that one correctly), for whom pathos was more of a circumstantial tool than an emotive device. I of course admit that this is simply a personal preference (and it's worth mentioning that the reflective qualities of art have quite a lot to do with the complicit reaction of the audience - the reading between the lines), and that, as a craftsman, he's possibly unequaled (although I don't think he ever transcended the craft - the genres, certainly, almost every time, but never the craft - but then again I very much doubt he'd have wanted to). 4. Perhaps transcending the craft was what Van Sant was (implicitly) trying to do with his remake of Psycho ; if so, he proved the fruitlessness of the idea. I found the film to be a fascinating failure, and worth watching as such. Of some interest is the rumor that he's considered remaking it again – an idea which, if true, I'm actually completely for. And that brings about the end of this entry, and also, I think, to this particular Series. The caffeine has worn off, and I'm going to go snatch a few hours of sleep. Take care, dvd
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