Dimention Zero is an unfocused, poorly-paced, wildly self-indulgent piece of filmic navel-gazing that bored me rigid within 10 minutes of watching it. Unfortunately, it seems very much designed to be that way.
The debut feature of director Andrew MacKenzie, Dimention Zero is the second feature made under the Pink8 manifesto, an anti-establishment, anti-conventional rulebook of film-making which imposes limits on directors such as “filming must be done without any preparation or a traditional script”, “your film must be 95% improvised” and “the cast must NOT know what your film is about.” Working within these parameters, MacKenzie’s film is 70% a loose-weave documentary about art, the meaning of life, the scottish youth culture and a myriad other themes, mostly filmed at raves, music festivals and on various city streets of Scotland and 30% an abstract narrative about a man (played by the director – another Pink8 rule) being freed from a life of dystopian repetition by spotting a pretty woman and dancing with her or something. It’s wilfully unclear.
The manifesto restrictions placed upon the film – originated by Italian film-maker Fabrizio Federico whose film Black Biscuit is the premiere Pink8 production – finish by stating that “bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly, and imperfect are perfect” and that film-makers must “answer to only one person – yourself” (whilst paradoxically not breaking a single one of Federico’s incredibly limiting rules it seems) all of which serves to make Dimention Zero frustratingly critic-proof.
Whether I agree or not with the ethos of Pink8 (for the record: I do not. I prefer directors to know what kind of story they’re telling or point they’re making before they pick up the camera) it’s hard to deny that there’s some compelling footage in Dimention Zero – mostly of the Scottish underground music scene – but any interest generated by the film is quickly dissolved by the aimlessness of the direction. The main body of the piece lumbers from one segment of handheld footage to another, most accompanied by a different non-actor opining on a issue of some kind. These range from nuclear disarmament, to youthful apathy, to how everyone in the world is ignorant, to what is art, all with zero connective tissue, edited without any overarching message in mind, which creates a jarring mess of discordant sentiment. Is the film about Scottish culture, all culture? Is it about everything? Is it about nothing? Ironically, the film is rammed full of passionate voices, but doesn’t have one itself.
Perhaps the most telling segment of all is a talking-head of a man who opines “Art is everything around us. (picking up a blade of grass) That is art. (pointing to a cloud formation) That is art. … We’re art. You’re art… if you believe you’re art, you’re art, baby. That’s all you need to know.” This spirit seems to resonate throughout Dimention Zero, MacKenzie never crafting his footage into an artistic statement of his own, but rather remaining content to simply point his camera at something happening and, trusting in something’s existence being its own artistic merit, plops it in front of the audience and goes “see? … Art.” At one point a topless woman takes a bath in Irn-Bru. Art. The film opens with 15 minutes of recycled footage of a man poaching an egg. Art. The film-maker confesses “for a great deal of the shooting I was drunk or under the influence of ecstasy.” Knock knock. Who’s there? Art. Art Who? Silence…
Experimental film is the culture of film-making in which it’s most important to remember to be subjective, that artistic value can be only be properly judged by a single viewer at a time, and with this in mind I was going to tentatively recommend Dimention Zero, just because it’s fascinating in its tediousness. However, that was before a despicably manipulative segment towards the film’s conclusion, which presented a pseudo-profound monologue being read over footage of dancers with mental disorders. Using footage of people with Down’s Syndome to add philosophical weight to a vague, ill-defined point about art is exploitation at its ugliest and was the point that I decided to not be charitable to this tosh.
It doesn’t feel pleasant to attack the debut work of a young director and I do not deny that the Pink8 agenda has the potential to great art of great interest, but presenting its film-makers with their own ‘get-out-of-criticism-free card’ is something I find directly provocative, especially when the film-making in discussion is so sloppy and generalised. Sometimes imperfect isn’t perfect.
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Jim 19th June 2013
It was a good film.