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May 19, 2008

An Accumulation of Scenes

I started writing this nearly two weeks ago; I wanted to write some long, rambling stream-of-conscious piece about the editing of this film. I never made much headway on it, but since its about to become drastically dated, I might as well get this iteration of it out of the way.

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As I edit, I think often of Claire Denis - not out of a need for answers or influence, or even for inspiration, but rather for the comfort of knowing that some of the more difficult parts of this path I'm taking are already well-worn. I can think of Beau Travail and L'Intrus, just as I can think of Syndromes And A Century and The New World and any of Harmony Korine's films, and find in them some sort of camaraderie or kinship - not with the filmmakers, but with the films themselves. When I think of them, I distill them to one or two broad strokes - an image, or a camera move, or a sound or a song - and can rest easy on the gentle support of these proxies and all they represent. To that end, thinking about Vendredi Soir and Trouble Every Day has sent me on a Tindersticks kick; Tiny Tears (Petite Chiennes) from Nenette et Boni has been running back and forth from one ear to the other for three days now without wearing out its welcome. I played it in my head while helping to shoot another film the other night, and this imaginary soundtrack to the scene in question brought tears to my eyes. I was listening to it this morning, walking through the rain with no hat and a hole in my shoe: sad music and sleeting rain, and me drenched in both. I felt a brief flutter of nostalgia for the days when I could unironically embody the cliche I so perfectly reflected on this early stroll; I wanted to revel in a loneliness I couldn't quite muster. I love this song and songs like it because they ebb and flow in such perfect harmony with my own musical instincts; I know where they're going; it's the sort of song that on good days I think I could write. And I do, but when I sit down at the piano to play whatever I've come up with, I can't can't make my hands hit the keys in correspondence with the notes in my head. Beat by beat, line by line, my lofty compositions hit the low ceiling of my talent and remain fluttering about within those narrow confines. I think musically, and edit musically, but I can't take those predilections and turn them into actual music. But I don't learn from my mistakes, nor do I grow from them; there's some amnesia at work, for I still I sit down at the piano and fancy myself a songwriter, and the other day when a friend asked me over breakfast if I was planning on scoring St. Nick myself, I couldn't help but take the question as an admission that I could in fact do it, and stammered out an answer that wasn't quite the declination it should have been.

What the music will be and who's going to do it is something I suppose I must start thinking about. My Bressonian resistance to score has given way to ideas for music made up of whale songs and banjos and drones comprised of wind and crickets. There are places where there needs to be music - places where there already is music - and when there's not there needs to be a musicality to the sound, the imperativeness and absence of which is keeping me from showing the rough cut to anyone at this point. It's eighty minutes long now, that cut, and I've just begun the third act; the pieces are starting to fall into place of their own accord, finding their own natural order and forcing the exclusion of anything that doesn't belong in the narrative. Scenes are falling by the wayside left and right: the angry neighbor; the girl in the cupboard; the band-aid; I very nearly jettisoned Dougnut, the beloved skeleton dog, and might still yet if need be. Anything that doesn't work I cut; those few faulty bits I'm still attached to will turn desiccate in time and fall away; so too will any remaining tendons of story, of set-up and consequence. The film I have in mind is an accumulation of scenes, none more important than any other. The story rises up in the negative space between them.

And so there is a scene where the Boy builds a booby-trap, and another where he shoplifts, and originally that was the order they occurred in. But if by reversing that order - if by putting the trap after the theft, does it become implicit that the Boy feels guilt for breaking the law, transfers that moral culpability into paranoia and responds to that by creating impediments and barriers?

Posted by David Lowery at May 19, 2008 1:30 AM

Comments

Posted by: Mateo Zeske at May 20, 2008 1:38 AM

Posted by: Ghostboy at May 20, 2008 7:44 PM