Author: BRWC

Plastic Love – Review

Let’s begin by saying that Jamie Hooper’s Plastic Love will certainly push some people’s boundaries. Personally, I can applaud this, however, given that Fingercuff Production’s short-film is a self-professed ‘dark and twisted tale of love, loss, obsession and fetishes’, perhaps we can assume that it’s not for the faint-hearted. You’ve had your warning with the words ‘twisted’ and ‘fetishes’, however, what Hooper forgets to mention here is how Plastic Love is also a surprisingly tactful and poignant take on a range of very personal and taboo subjects.

Plastic Love follows three different stories; a young couple with an interest in performing dangerous bondage routines, a man’s loss of sexual interest in his partner being replaced with a sexual fetishism for a pair of her shiny red shoes and, lastly, a widower coming to terms with the loss of her partner through her own sexual release.

Put in the wrong hands, these story-lines could certainly be fodder for some painfully awkward comedic moments and, even worse, could accumulate to being insensitive and ignorant of the taboo subjects it portrays. Luckily, Hooper and the talented cast perform an excellent job of delivering a both tactful and believable portrayal of the three stories, whilst also managing to end the film on a rather serene and positive note.

Whilst not particularly dialogue-heavy, Plastic Love includes a well-needed dose of aesthetically-farcical British humour (running around the garden half-naked brandishing a garden-tool, anyone?) that works well to relieve some of the intensity of the story-lines. However, given the artistic and smart cinematography used throughout, the short-film certainly does not suffer from the small amount of dialogue as it is arguably this very factor that contributes to the film being so poignant.

Although Plastic Love certainly lives up to its own description of being a ‘dark’ tale, it is the intelligent way in which it visually portrays these tales that allows what the characters do to become rather completely normal and even deserving of empathy. Regardless of your opinion on boundary-pushing, acknowledgement should be given to Hooper for relentlessly tackling a group of taboo subject matters in our arguably close-minded society.

29th May 2013
Four Self-Interviews About Cinema (4 Of 4)

NOTES: (1) This series originally appeared in the Montage: Cultural Paradigm (Sri Lanka) in September/October of 2011. The paperback and FREE E-BOOK has now been re-issued by Pocketful Of Scoundrel (an Imprint of KUBOA). (2) Though not essential to the reading of this series, the three films by Norman Reedus being discussed are available through Big Bald Head Productions

Concrete:                     To me, this film is the most intriguing of the three when taken through our filter of investigation of Identity—I find the film at once lends itself to literal investigation of concrete elements while at the same time being very and intensely impressionistic (or expressionistic) and in such overtly welcoming of abstract/felt reaction. Too, that Reedus both wrote and directed this piece concentrates the punch of its usage of abstract and actual—that no element of the film (from conception to actualization) originated outside of the single Artist, so to speak, makes this the most wholly single minded of the three films and so, I think, the most quantifiable.

Abstract:                      Concrete elements such as it’s being about—or about I will put in a tentative voice—an actual personage, namely Miles Davis? Or is there something else to it you’re thinking of that frames it so differently than the other two films we’ve chatted about?

C:                     You don’t think that it so distinctly choosing an actual person as subject leads to our, or any, interpretation of it being, consciously, steered in a certain way? I mean, certainly one can make abstract statements, suggestive, allusive statements and atmospherically frame a film which is about an actual person to also be about things ethereal but I don’t see how it is possible to ignore the choice of Miles Davis as the central figure being depicted, to treat that inarguably deliberate choice as neither here nor there, as just-something-the-filmmaker-did-off-the-cuff. This choice isn’t the same as the merely naming a grotesque, hobgoblin figure Richard Nixon as in the earlier discussed The Rub, it isn’t just a suggestive, psychologically-weighted name, not some symbol, or at least not only some symbol, to make a clumsy phrase.

A:                     I will never accept—and certainly not in the case of this film, which is done as a combination of loose brush strokes and tempered, intimately realized images—that any sort of historical or devotee understanding of Davis is integral or even important to the viewing. And further, I don’t accept that knowing about Miles Davis (which I don’t and I don’t seem to think you do either) would be anything but destructive to one’s reception and experience of this film. Look at it this way—the film is presented as largely dialogueless and the dialogue (or rather the staccato monologue) that does exist is placed inside of a memory, not even in flashback, but in striped down, suggestive memory—the woman, upset, yelling at Davis, her actions aren’t literal, aren’t filmed in time and place but rather are a presentation of the likely exaggerated elements needed to distill the emotion that rings in Davis’ head based on them. We are introduced to Davis (in every sense) in this film through our being Davis, the camera his headspace, we looking out—so much so that before the Davis/Us character even has remotely tangible things to focus on (memory, present moment events, etc.) we see a blur of lights, freeform indications of fluorescents in shapes and motion—an entirely alienated headspace, the result of the altercation with the woman (which could have happened at any time, either earlier in the evening depicted or ten years prior). So—because I don’t want to get too adrift—I can only see it as being a misstep to investigated Davis outside of the presented, representative Davis, a mistake to try to figure out what, when, and if anything Actual-from-Miles-Davis’ life is being presented.

C:                     As always, I dig on your repetitive long-windedness, but man do you dissolve things! Even if, as you say, we are introduced to Davis-as-a-headspace, the events of the film are simple, intimate—so very simple and intimate that the film seems, akin to portions of Francois Girard’s Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould—just a vignette. Davis drives to a practice session; Davis pauses to get into the mood to perform; Davis performs. Obviously, there is also much artistry on display, but I see it more as artistry meant to depict this tangible, actual thing an artist must grapple with—how to move from being a person to being a performance (not even a performer, but the distillation of that—A Performance) how to get shut of (or even how to incorporate) elements of Self into Performance. That artistry, an interpretation of it is in the film, but just because the film is that moment on display and it’s a moment that a camera cannot just be pointed at but that a cinema is needed to evoke.

A:                     Okay—but now think of the moment where Davis is stood near his trumpet case, microphone at the ready, he looks up to see the rest of the band there mute, immobile, staring at him—just looking, as if expecting something and ill at ease due to it not simply being there—every moment in the film leading up to this has depicted that band having a swinging, jazzy good time, playing, motioning to each other, fully existent as performers-in-performance: then, Davis shows up—Davis who in reality would be someone they know, are intimately acquainted with and so not some larger than life personality—and they become still-life, they become the expectant observers, become waiting assessment. This is meant to depict any moment of actuality, just an actual evening where Miles Davis goes to practice? Not at all, man—so what I mean is it would be totally knuckleheaded to assign the specificity of this really happened to Miles Davis to it. The film depicts something that happens (not happened) to someone, that happens to someone who is expected to come out of himself, to be a thing beyond individual—this is a cinematic realization of a pressure to exists as yourself but simultaneously as something other than yourself, a Sartre-esque nausea.

C:                     I don’t disagree with any of that—but why would it hurt if there was historical basis to the film? For example, if that woman were some particular woman, if some falling out akin to what is depicted had literally happened between she and Davis?

A:                     The film is—as we both say—a shedding of some tension of Actual to get at something Ethereal: event must be diffused into memory, memory into mood, mood transmuted into music/art—Identity lost, or identity rearranged to be a new identity, in a sense. We start the film and the focus (the character) is a nonentity, the film progresses and it becomes clear that it is a man-in-a-shook-up-headspace, then the man becomes a musician, then, at the last possible instant, the musician becomes Miles Davis—without clues from outside of the film, this final identity is still nonspecific, the biggest cinematic move being conceptual: the camera now depicts the man, We (audience) are now watching him instead of being him. We—the audience—begin as the headspace, the confusion, the swirl of emotion and eventually We are shed, along with what We are, and the character stands before us, exorcised.

C:                     Miles Davis stands there.

A:                     You are particularly one track today. Okay—Miles Davis stands there, but he stands there for Us to regard ourselves, not him, he’s not a bunny pulled from a hat, he’s a representation of an aspect, a collective aspect of Us, made individually manifest So why does this suggest that anything in the film is historically to do with Davis? The fight with the woman, it might as well be an idea for a song an emotion for a song, nothing of identifiable, decipherable import. Or the story/memory he relates to the young boy—that surrealistic vision of grandparents surrounded by cackling wasps, beckoning lovingly, the image of the father at the boy’s side vanishing as the boy walks and the mixture of joy and maliciousness (that eerie, horrific look) on the child’s face, his grinning at a wasp alighting into one of the women’s mouths—certainly this isn’t something that happened to Miles Davis, the boy depicted is closer to Damien from The Omen than Davis, indeed, the young boy Davis is telling the story to seems more proxy for Davis than the boy in the story Davis tells. What do you concretely make of that—not to be aggressive, but if the presence of the actual Davis is so Actual, why this?

C:                     I saw that as a story Davis relates, just some odd, slightly perverse thing, a displacement of his angsty mindset—telling the story to the boy was a distraction and that the story was obviously responded to favorably (with laughter, with warmth) indicated to me, quite literally, an actual intimacy, an intimacy with this boy, with the studio space, and this acknowledgement of intimacy (safety, control) gets Davis loose from his preoccupation with an earlier upset/trauma with the woman.

A:                     Sometimes I wonder what film it is you’re watching. But anyway, touching on something I’ve observed of Reedus as a director—when he is a director of other people’s source material—is his often inverse use of progression and it fits that in a film depicting a loss-of-identity-into-artistic-expression that Reedus would move from abstraction (POV film-work) to concrete representation (camera filming subject) and would use the reveal of an actual, identifiable individual to represent the loss of specific, not the stamp of it.

C:                     Because it’s more of an abstraction to an audience member to become Miles Davis than it is to just become a trumpet player—yes, I see that.

A:                     Anyone can be a trumpet player, anyone can be the eyes in a trumpet player’s head—but to realize one was just the eyes of Miles Davis—it’s a kind of trickery. But, it only really works when the series of things we experience as Davis are themselves made of pure expressionism—wasps and disappearing fathers, being slapped in the face by a furious, devastated woman, wisps of light and colour.

C:                     Fine—I don’t want to talk exclusively within the confines of this film, for a moment, because it has to be pointed out that while what you’re saying may be applicable here, to this film by this filmmaker, certainly it is not universally a move-toward-abstraction or inversion-of-audience-versus-subject to depict an actual person in cinema. You would agree, right?

A:                     I don’t want to bulldoze you, so I’ll withhold response for the time being.

C:                     You’re a sweetheart. In fact, I would say that maybe this film—for the sake of cinematic dialogue saying I agree with your take—might be a rarity. Just because a filmmaker says This is about Miles Davis or whoever does not mean that it is a depiction of actuality—no, it is an expression of some large idea filtered through an attempt to distill some essence of said person, and so, in that respect, abstract. But nine times out of ten, it is a richer experience to depict a person as a person and that cinema might suggest an audience turn their attention to actual world events or the actual life or history of some figure rather than to solipsistic, interior banter is not a deplorable thing, right?

A:                     Well…

C:                     Or wouldn’t it be the same thing with an abstract concept? This is a film about Art—should that make one contemplate only one’s own view of art, to twine what is depicted around one’s own finger until it resembles what they, themselves, already think and feel, regardless of the stimuli of the actual cinema? Or should it be to get one to step out of oneself, to view Art as something elsewhere as something that exists regardless of personal perception of it?

A:                     Fine questions. But this film—and in general the cinema of Reedus’ that has been displayed in these three films—is a cinema of inducing solipsistic regard. I don’t think any of the films we’ve discussed have much concern with actuality and, indeed, as a set, I think they are just rotations of a single set of observations. I think, really, I Thought Of You—written and directed by Reedus—is the sequence of all three films reduced in to one, distilled: the cinema of all three pieces is an expression of shedding Reality for Artifice then re-shedding Artifice for the original Reality which can never be original, again, for the very fact that it has been undone and reassembled.

C:                     I honestly don’t know what you just said.

A:                     Reedus, with his films, does the equivalent of standing someone before you, all dressed, polished, nice, then unclothing them so their unadorned, un-self-conscious nudity is displayed, then putting the same clothing back on them, with great care, retuning the person to their original appearance—but, for the very fact that the audience has now seen the denuded individual, the clothing loses its surface, it no longer cloaks anything, anyone looking at the dressed person now sees the nude underneath. But now take what I just said and make it about Ideas—that is this cinema.

C:                     I agree in as much as I think the finality, the blunt finality (whatever emotion it may evoke) in all his films is a reshuffling—the audience thought X was being depicted but now must come to terms that really Y was being depicted, yes. But in the case of I Thought Of You, even as you say, Reedus begins with formlessness (the first moments are characterless, are just motion, just elements of perception) then moves into environmental identity (we know the eyes we are watching the film through belong to a musician not because of anything in-referenced, but because of outward shots of the other musicians practicing) then moves into personality (the memory, the story to the boy) then into particulars (the trumpet waiting, the microphone) then into Actuality (Miles Davis, seen as part of the physical environment, performing). That is the film—building a man from nothing, taking atoms, relationships, fragmentary aspects and assembling them through a simple, linear depiction. No one is undressed and then re-dressed so that we can see the nude body beneath the artifice—that simply isn’t this film, no matter how nicely you speak about it out in some maybe land. This film is one of as literal a depiction of the formation of an individual (in this case Miles Davis) as could be. And so, therefore, I think it would only benefit to examine it, to try to know the film more by leaning about the actual Davis—this is the momentum, the beauty, the aim.

A:                     Look at it this way—take the same film, but remove the title cards, the credit sequence, the outside of the film part of a packaged piece of cinema: you would have no way of knowing it was a depiction of Miles Davis, one way or another. I mean, I kind of agree with what you’re driving at, but see it as a footnote, moot to the actual pulse and blood of the cinema, not what the cinema is built of. Admittedly it’s largely my own fault, but we’ve danced away from the first cut of our conversation here, namely is it essential or vital to the piece that it’s Miles Davis? I say No and further say that to really, honestly interpret the film in your way is to dismantle the act of cinema—you make it not just happenstance that Miles Davis has some touch of focus in the film, you make the actuality of the real Miles Davis essential to what is being displayed and it’s just not.

C:                     I know what you’re trying to get at, but as much as cinema itself is an observable reality it is a meaningless one without some stamp or the tangible, the historical. Even in these three films, the reason I find I Thought Of You so imperative is because, by including the actuality of Miles Davis it allows that it isn’t just a riff, isn’t rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric—it fuses Expression with Actuality. If it were just about a rhetorical musician even if it were filmed the same and etc. etc. it would lack—artfully it would be nice, but it would be reduced to a kind of superficiality, the kind of superficiality (a word I use in a non-pejorative way) that Reedus’ other films have.

A:                     Expression is a reality in itself—Davis, you know, he was just as much expressing wasps in grandmother’s mouths as he was expressing some spat he had with a lover. Art isn’t connect-the-dots from this happened to me to here’s a song I wrote about it.

C:                     I totally agree—but, come on, that’s why the film depicts both, right? The memory of the fight with the lover and the invention of the surrealistic encounter between boy-and-grandmother/relatives are the two expressive realities that fuse into an artwork.

A:                     Mmn.

C:                     ‘Mmn’? What’s that?

A:                     I just—as much as in some mild way I’m with you—can’t get comfortable with any sort of thought that Art—reaction to art, I mean, not creation of art—isn’t about introspection, isn’t about the fact that the very notion of reaction is to reveal oneself to oneself, that one observes to give themselves a blunt of pertinence, not to remain in the position of audience. And at the same time, I don’t think that the artist creates to reveal to others, but simply to reveal themselves through the act of revelation, that the result is the act and the act is, must be, solipsistic. If we’re audience to art and audience is meant to remain audience, mute and unconcerned of itself, why would audience be desired?

C:                     Do you think we are?

A:                     Well, I think I might be—I’m not so sure about you. Always nice talking to you, though.

C:                     Always nice listening to you talk.

***

Thanks are certainly due to Norman Reedus, for not just labeling me a nutter and ignoring my oddly phrased communiqués, way back when this project was a half formed inkling. And enormous gratitude to Wendy Shepard, for not only showing interest from the get, but going so far above and beyond in helping spread word about these articles that this little project got enough inertia to take care of itself. Do check out the films, they are more than worth the time.

23rd May 2013
New Man Of Steel Trailer!

With Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy reaching its epic (yet somewhat ridiculous) conclusion, it’s over to Zack Snyder and Superman to take over the reigns in DC’s cinematic battle with the all conquering Marvel.

If this new trailer is anything to go by, everyone over on the red team must be a crapping in their lycra as Warner’s attempt at rebooting Supes looks absolutely stunning. Continuing on from the viral marketing campaign, the latest (and presumably final) trailer reveals a little more of the plot and what looks like a million different action set pieces.

Man of Steel is certainly maintaining its position as my most eagerly anticipated blockbuster of the summer, but you should just watch it and make your own judgement. Please excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.

Starring Henry Cavill as Clark Kent himself and Michael Shannon as General Zod (who looks suspiciously like a Space Jockey from Alien), Man of Steel is released on the 14th of June and I will probably explode when I see him strike ‘dat mid-flight pose.

22nd May 2013
Four Self-Interviews About Cinema (3 Of 4)

NOTES: (1) This series originally appeared in the Montage: Cultural Paradigm (Sri Lanka) in September/October of 2011. The paperback and FREE E-BOOK has now been re-issued byPocketful Of Scoundrel (an Imprint of KUBOA). (2) Though not essential to the reading of this series, the three films by Norman Reedus being discussed are available through Big Bald Head Productions

Concrete:                     That this film is actually linear, literally linear—despite what could be easy misinterpretation—and that it works without large tricks or unneeded superficial tweak was great for me, it was like watching a real, top shelf Twilight Zone episode, golden era, Twilight Zone before what that means got skewed to mean overt, superfluous twists—I mean those Serling, Matheson episodes that were powerful simply for being so plain, that let the subtextual content, rather than the surface, be what really defined them.

Abstract:                      What intrigues me the most about this film—yes, I agree with you totally there, not brushing you off—is, as you say, the flat, low key way it is presented. Especially as the central conflict, the story of it, is one that is delicate and ethereal, easy to overlook—again, as you say—that it maintains so muted, unadorned and aloof a presentation drives the impact. And this impact, at least to me, is interesting because, on the one hand, there is no obvious presentation of purpose or even of conclusion, in the film, yet it’s precisely this seemingly omitted aspect—in thinking back over the film—that reveals the violence (not physical, but psychic) that took place.

C:                     Can it be said to be violent? I know you mean this because the one identity usurps the body, but since it’s all one person, do you really think it’s an expression of (even psychic) violence, or just an expression of a change-in-character, a film exploring a moment where someone decides (perhaps unconsciously) to make a change in their life, that the usurping aspect of things is kind of incidental or, better to say, just presented to give the film an entertaining storyline, just a track to move the representational discussion along?

A:                     It’s a good point—or a good question, I guess. Yeah. But I think there is a violence suggested in the identity shift, which I will explain in a moment. First—because I do like what you say—I want to explore that I think the film is an expression of the necessarily violent nature of the unconscious in expressing itself, the intrinsic violence of artistic expression, artistic identity.

C:                     Let’s do that second rather than first, maybe? What indicates a more forceful, violent aspect to you—let’s do that, first.

A:                     Okay. The initial dialogue that opens the film (or monologue, if you’d like, because technically the Apple says nothing, the man just reacts to suggested dialogue from the Apple) between the Comedian Identity and the Apple is filled with frustration, a kind of lecherousness, and a clear angst, even dissatisfaction. The Comedian doesn’t understand why the Apple (here proxy for the Lawyer Identity, which will appear later) won’t do as he says why there is something else it wants—money, girls, etc. all of which baffle the Comedian, it seems inappropriate, absurd even, for the Apple to desire things. Of course, this translates to the Comedian (or the artist/unconscious identity) not understanding the yearning toward creature comforts (or even excesses) the Lawyer (or practical/conscious identity) comes to illustrate. Then, we have the scene of Comedian on stage, the Apple remaining mute, not allowing a dialogue and so not allowing Comedian to be voiced, to be expressed—indeed by its very silence Apple diminishes Comedian to the point of non-existence (a comedian, after all, who cannot even fully articulate a performance, a single wisecrack, is no comedian).

C:                     But it’s Lawyer who wakes up screaming, would you say, from the dream that he was the Comedian?

A:                     I would say. And in that lies the violence—this anguished, genuine panic in which Lawyer wakes is actually indicative of a distinct repulsion toward the idea of being or becoming Comedian. That is, the practical/conscious personality is terrified that the artistic/unconscious could actually get the upper hand, could, eventually, usurp him.

C:                     And so violent, I see. Okay. But Lawyer is the Actual Man, as far as a concrete, literal reading of the film-in-sequence. That is, Lawyer is a man who has lived a kind of practical, status quo life, been afforded certain comforts he at once wishes to retain but also wishes to relinquish, or at least to put in jeopardy by allowing (even relegating the desire to a dream state) the artistic to take over the actual, waking body.

A:                     Yes—and that was very good, good for you, there, I’m always so proud when you talk like that. The film, to me, sequentially, is a rendering of the unconscious (Comedian) and the conscious (Lawyer) more and more melding into each other until Comedian (unconscious) comes into possession of, as you say, the Waking Body. Most pointedly, there is the sequence (inside a dream, and so technically Comedian speaking) of the man on the therapist’s couch, the therapist questioning directly the notion of the identity of the Apple as it appeared in the dream, asking the man (as patient) to consider what the Apple might be, what it might indicate—it’s important that while the response to this questioning is very much born of the Lawyer (Conscious) aspect of our man—he says, ‘It’s just an apple, doc’—that in the same moment he leans up to aggressively deliver this statement he discovers the therapist is inhuman, a baboon/insect thing, and this sight again leads to waking, startled even more aggressively than before.

C:                     In the dream, for a moment, Lawyer has control (outside of his waking domain), and uses this control to dismiss the notion of analysis of the Apple and so, really, is rejecting self-analysis, analysis that would indicate there can be more than one aspect to things—but even as Lawyer asserts this control, the dream changes context, a reassertion of Comedian (unconscious), a return to the same struggle as Comedian wanting the Apple to talk, on stage, the Apple remaining mute. I see that, I see what you mean—because initially while on the therapist couch, the man speaks in terms of being a Comedian, actually giving voice to the conscious minds’ fears of what fate would lie in store if the artistic/unconscious mind took over—he says, ‘No one dies like stand-up comics die,’ a fear of something singularly awful awaiting him if aspects of control are relinquished.

A:                     And later, in the direct dialogue between Lawyer and Comedian, remember how shocked, mortified Lawyer is when Comedian offers to tell him how he’s going to die—‘I’m going to die?’ Lawyer says, in horror, as though it isn’t possible, as though the admission of this inevitability means it will immediately happen, and so devalue, make meaningless, all that conscious consideration and desire for control tries to maintain. Comedian is very at ease with death and with all possibility and inevitability—such as the notions of having kids of suffering some tragedies etc.—the unconscious is the un-agitated, the comfortable-with-anything, almost to the point of being null.

C:                     I was so with you until that last thing—comfortable-with-anything almost to the point of being null means what, exactly?

A:                     The unconscious only has the struggle of gaining expression on its mind—as long as it can use the Body to speak, as long as it can express itself, nothing else is of concern—while the conscious, in possession of the Body, has umpteen concerns, nuances, details, things to keep in check, not the least of which is resisting the more unconscious elements of itself. So, the calm Comedian presents is not a wise calm but an un-caring calm—Comedian could burn the life of Lawyer to the ground, wind up starving in a cold water flat and it would still be an acceptable, almost romantic, expression of unconscious/artistic desire. Which, in turn, is why Lawyer is so agitated at every suggestion, even those that are obvious—Comedian nonchalantly saying ‘We all die’ is not news to Lawyer, Lawyer just consciously notes the fact of it, the implication, and so frets. Comedian (unconscious) accepts anything and everything, to the point that continuation of self is kind of irrelevant.

C:                     This is why, earlier, I questioned your use of the term violence. Lawyer is technically more of the usurper—he is the little element, the tiny consciousness that has taken control. In a technical sense, any individual is far more unconscious than conscious and there is a kind of absurdly inverted balance of power in consciousness making decisions, keeping things in check, in this smallest part of anyone being the controlling part. Virulent, almost, in that consciousness has to constantly look outward for assurance of itself. We can note in the film that when Lawyer wakes in a panic (before we know he is a lawyer, when we only have any reason to think of him as a comedian) he stumbles into the hall and is relieved to see his law degree framed on the wall—‘Thank God’ he says, this outside evidence reassuring him that he is himself. But I would say this is the act of a pretender, a thief, who feels inside that he is Comedian but out of fright, weakness, vanity, etc. puts on disguises and then always has to check they are still in place.

A:                     You see Comedian as retaking what was his a kind of flushing out the infection of Lawyer, of consciousness.

C:                     I do.

A:                     That’s wonderful, I love that. I wish I’d said that actually. Instead, I’ll jump off from there to where I was heading, earlier. The film quite artfully posits audience/viewer as Comedian (and to my way of thinking Interloper, though you did just make a stellar point there, I’ll have to consider that while I go on) in that it takes until three-quarters of the way through the film to cement the idea that the physical body is controlled by Lawyer (that this man is really a lawyer and not a comedian to put it more flatly) and so by the time the film concludes and Comedian does, indeed, take active, physical control of the body, the audience/viewer has been placed in the position to think we have won, Comedian has won in that Comedian has gotten rid of Lawyer. Which is what you say—that Lawyer was infection, that consciousness is virulent.

C:                     I think we’re largely on the same page, and since you’re staring at your shoes a moment, I’ll just press on. I think the film isn’t so violent (even psychically) as you initially posited it to be. I think it more celebratory of the eventual triumph in any man of the unconscious/artistic. There is the scene—ostensibly inside a dream, but by this time in the film the distinction has been all but eradicated—of Comedian going up to a receptionist desk at a job placement agency and saying ‘I’ve been in show business, but I think my real calling is to be a Temp’—which is not only very funny, but an articulate, wonderful inversion of the way such a conversation is supposed to go—someone is supposed to come to the realization that they are an artist and shed their day job definition, so to witness the artist saying ‘I’ve realized my true calling is to be a non-artist’ is actually a subtle, clean statement of the main thrust of the film. That is: It is natural, appropriate, for the unconscious to shed the conscious, expectorate it, but it is horror and absurdity for the conscious to gain control.

A:                     In this film though, we watch (if we take it your way) unconsciousness, the largest part of us bully out a small aspect, consciousness. There is a reason Lawyer is terrified, feels the walls closing in, feels the sting of absolute mortality—think of that, the conscious part (even you say the unconscious does not care, simply is) the knowing part, the aware and decisive part of you realizes it is vanishing, being stripped away, but has to face the fact that it’s physicality will go on. Unconscious, as wonderful as it is, is uncaring and devoid of dimension. It is the Consciousness where personality resides—choice, fret, struggle. To allow the unconscious absolute dominion is to allow the death of personality and, in fact, the death of identity. The small flame—Lawyer—is what defines this man, but to take what you say, decisions (and so the man he has forcefully, willfully made himself) are to swept aside and some undecided version based on no precedent, and not even concerned with continued survival, should be allowed the reigns of Identity—hardly a triumph to proceed without direction, drive, even if it means proceeding without fear.

C:                     Mmn. You mean that being an artist isn’t a choice, it’s born of unconscious association, but being a practical individual is choice? Choice defines, even if it brings with it consequence, trepidation?

A:                     The film, I think, is an expression of the necessity of balance. When we consider that Comedian is a kind of wraith, just a dull assertion, nothing that (in this particular case, in this particular film) seems to contain any passion, then the balance that has already been struck—Lawyer is in control and Comedian is a nagging little, unfilled desire—is appropriate, is the way it should be.

C:                     I do see that. So that’s why you said violent.

A:                     Oh good, I would have forgotten to mention how this reproves my point about that—yes, that is why I said violent. As banal as it might be, the unconscious needs to stay fettered, needs to exist as internalized angst. You even bring up the absurdity of Comedian saying he thinks he was meant to be a Temp, but I think in this scene we have admission of the propriety of how things are—a Real Person should be in the position to say there is some unrealized part of myself but if the Equation of Identity is that a person is 99% realized (the unconscious in control) then the notion of fulfillment, of desire-toward-completion (or even toward self-contemplation) is unlikely. As Comedian says in the dialogue with Lawyer ‘I am who you were before you were born, who you will be after you die’—the unconscious is undifferentiated, is the void from which consciousness is born and the void to which consciousness returns. It is violent and I might in my passion go so far as to say deplorable to suggest that the unconscious (which is eternal) should also have controlling dominion over the brief, mortal life of the conscious.

C:                     You’re not going to get me to clap, if that’s what you’re trying to do.

A:                     But I have gotten you to agree, I’ll settle for that—I can tell just looking at you that you do.

C:                     I don’t know that you’ve gotten me to anything, but I see a lot in the film that touches on what you say. Yes, that last moment, Comedian claiming ownership of the dream—‘This isn’t your dream, it’s mine now, as soon as I eat this Apple’—and then the camera following Comedian in to the bathroom, to the sink, and that dull, empty, emotionless gesture of Comedian beginning to run a toothbrush in his mouth—that moment of nothing—and then the blankness in the expression looking out of the mirror is kind of disquieting. And I admit, that if the attributes you asserted (and these attributes I don’t disagree with) define the unconscious—calm, unaffected, at ease with anything and everything, desireless and passionless—were to become the total, physical man it would be a horror. That is kind of gutting.

A:                     I think where you go sideways is in thinking that simply because an individual is more unconscious than conscious it is the same as saying we ought to be unconscious. We are nothing if not for our consciousness, and even if it does make us mewling little cowards, even if we’re afraid of our shadows, well, at least we’re something. Really, when you assert unconsciousness as the appropriate identity, all you’re suggesting is that majority rules, when nothing should be further from the truth.

C:                     So, let me understand—you think the film is downer because somebody decides to be an artist?

A:                     Ha. Yeah, I suppose. Or if not a downer, at least a horror—definitely a horror. The Artistic Man, the man who allows more the unconscious aspects of himself to be his definition, there’s always something frightening and destructive about that, when not kept in check. You really want your kid to be Rimbaud? To be…I don’t know…Sid Vicious or Darby Crash? No. You want them to be Godard, Bob Dylan, Duras—brilliant but aware enough to find meaning.

C:                     And barring that, I suppose you want them to be a clerk at REI or a wallpaper salesman?

A:                     That’s a stretch. The man in the film is a Lawyer, not a bartender or some chump humping a retail gig—are you devaluing the study, refinement, and practice of Law? Law, that which allows us civilization—Reason devoid of Passion.

C:                     You’re quoting Legally Blonde at me?

A:                     Har har. I’m just pointing out that it isn’t a choice between Artist or Shoe Clerk it’s a tension between Control or Not, Meaning or Lack.

C:                     Artist or Lawyer—well fine, why is either a horror?

A:                     Well, not everyone is an artist, which I think is a truth, something to be celebrated. Unconsciousness is not Art—unconsciousness filtered through consciousness is Art and this is what is destroyed in the film, what we witness and (as I was saying) by trick of being first imprinted on as Comedian celebrate the destruction of—the death of that filter a death which allows a void to rush out. The film is about the death of potential identity and the birth of nothing.

C:                     The film’s about that? Or your sidestepping and free-associations are about that?

A:                     If you can explain the difference, I’ll be glad to answer you.

21st May 2013
The Murderer Lives At Number 21 – Review

When asked to review a film called The Murderer Lives at Number 21 I rather expected something else. Maybe a grey-pallated pg-13 psychological snooze-horror starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan as either a writer or some sort of dad, moving into a new house without knowing he’s accidentally boarded the murder-go-round. Maybe a chicken-fat-smeared British thug drama about coppers n’ killers that’s 2 parts shotguns to 3 parts tits. Maybe a film about a silly bastard who keeps telling people where he lives. So I was shocked to find that 21 is in fact a charming 1942 french comedy whodunnit. Well played, BattleRoyaleWithCheese. Well played.

The Murderer Lives at Number 21, or L’Assassin Habite… Au 21 for those wish to appear intelligent when recommending it, is the debut film of acclaimed french director Henri-Georges Clouzot, who’d later find prominence as a master of suspense with thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, often finding himself compared to Alfred Hitchcock. In fact the two were sometimes rivals; Clouzot beat the legendary director to securing the rights to make Les Diaboliques by a matter of hours.

But this is a much lighter affair. There are touches of a macabre flair – a lengthy killer’s POV tracking shot is an effective tension-ratcheter – but 21 places a greater focus on comedic characterisation and witty verbal sparring. The film has a surplus of personality, populated entirely by arch characters played with delicious relish by a wonderful ensemble cast, chewing their way through a sly, and often sexy, script. All of which is fortunate because, as a whodunnit it’s a rather slight affair.

Detective Wens and his batshit-bonnetted girlfriend Mila (returning characters of the director’s, having previously sleuthed their way through Clouzot-penned Le Dernier des Six the year before) are hunting a calling-card carrying serial killer called Mr Durand. When a snitch reveals that Mr Durand is one of the residents at a boarding house, the titular 21, Wens goes undercover as a protestant parson in order to discover which of the 8 residents is the killer… before he/she can kill again.

The single-setting, suspicion ’em up scenario (Ten Little Indians, Murder on the Orient Express, all the rest) is wonderfully rich, and played with an almost parodic joy. One of the characters is even a thriller writer who, naturally, recognises the circumstances as one worthy of the pulps and even makes a grisly prediction of death. Will it come true? You bet your baguette.

There’s so much to love in this setup, so many of the suspects being so obviously slippery that they must almost be ruled out on principle. Wens’ investigations scenes are beautiful little comic vignettes, each laced with a slender vein of threat and punctuated by a cheeky punchline. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t last. The film’s running time is a somewhat enemic 82 minutes, and while there aren’t any cogs missing from its clockwork structure, it could’ve done with taking its time a little more. There was so much charm in its boarding house set-up, that more time with the suspects, a slower build of suspicion and tension and the film would have felt much more substantial. But if it’s froth, 21 is tasty froth, definitely worth sampling.

As so much of the film is understandably plot-driven, there’s not much more I really want to say about it, other than to heartily recommend it. Some of the more thriller-literate in the audience might call the ending before it happens but that won’t make the journey any less pleasurable. There’s even a slight touch of french kinkiness to proceedings that belies the film’s age, and it’s these quirks that place it above the rote and the routine. In subsequent years Clouzot would achieve his greatest successes charting a darker shade of humanity but with The Murderer Lives at Number 21, he gives us Murder Most Vaudeville and it’s more than worth your time. A very pleasant little surprise.

19th May 2013

Author: BRWC

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