'Experimental Film requires a different kind of spectatorship.' Has this been your experience? [35]
Un Chien Andalou, the infamous 1929 surrealist short film from Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, attests to this. Such examples can be found throughout the film. The introduction of the film is what first made me realise how surreal this film is. At exactly 2 minutes into the film, I am shown an extreme close up of Luis Bunuel (who stars in the first part of the film) cutting a woman's eyeball with a sharp razor blade. The idea of cutting any part of the body is itself a chilling idea, but I found being shown an eyeball sliced open a particularly shocking image. Bunuel wanted to use shock tactics with this film and in this shot he uses them well as I was taken aback. Although it carries shock with it, the shot didn't make any sense to me and it was confusing. It could imply that Bunuel wanted to obscure my vision when watching the film, and by cutting an eye of the woman he manages to almost scream the idea at me.
Another example of the surrealism in this film is at 8 minutes, when the male character picks up two ropes, with various objects attached. Along it is two priests, and two pianos, each with a rotting donkey carcass laying on it. I found this scene to be incredibly random, as it seems to have no link to anything else shown in the film. I even found it humorous, when I was shown the expressions on the priests. This scene is a good example of how the director plays with the theme of dreams. When writing this film, he would note things he saw in his dreams, and then recreated them in the film. This scene stands out to me in the film as I could not begin to question the haphazard events within it.
The film addresses the issue of cross-dressing in the 20's, by showing the male character clearly dressed, and acting like a woman. Being 'gay' was seen as a serious crime, and was punishable via jail sentence. By openly showing a man to be 'gay' the film makes a bold statement against society, and goes against all aspects of popular opinion.
I found this film quite shocking to watch, because of some of the imagery that it shows, but I did find myself to have enjoyed it.
Chris Marker became known internationally for the short film La Jetée (1962). It tells of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photomontage of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. I found this film interesting, and it was certainly something I have never seen before. Using this odd technique to create a short film is something I have never seen before. Marker's film could be described as a 'slideshow' but he purposely shows each picture for a different amount of time, sometimes longer, sometimes quicker. By doing this he can create the effect of time passing faster and slower, which I find to be very impressive. Throughout the film there are relations to time, the medium by which the film is shown being one. Another way it relates to time is by idealising that Marker's world is only shown through photos, or memories. The film constantly plays on the idea that memories are shown by photos, not moving images. Modern science fictions films of today have references to La Jetée, such as 'The Minority Report' that showed the covering of the eyes with a pad.
About halfway through the film, Marker shows me a piece of actual video footage, of the female character blinking. The shot only lasts about 1 second. However, because the rest of the film is comprised only of photographs, I questioned myself as to whether I'd actually seen the moment. Marker may have been trying to show that memories can become distorted and falsified.
Overall I found this film to be quite boring. The monotone, quiet and non-diegetic narration and lack of movement caused me to lose concentration during the film, and I missed parts of the story, and at the end I was very confused.
Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a work that maintains all of the mystery, tranquility, unpredictability, and personal attachment that is ever present within the world of dreams. Despite all this, I did not like the film. I found it to be very uncomfortable and difficult to watch. The film explores the relationship between men and women, and how neither seem to fully understand each other. Throughout the film I am frequently shown a shadow-like, caped figure with a mirror for a face. The unnatural character is used to represent women's understanding of men, and the way that they see themselves is through the eyes of men.
The sounds in the film play an important role in making it difficult to watch. They consist of a non-diegetic sound of a drum being repeatedly tapped, and what sounds like a recorder. Neither of the instruments are played simultaneously or to a tune, and they quickly become annoying and uncomfortable. They do not seem to fit in with the pace of the film either, and are very abstract.
The film explores the themes that can be found in a dream-like state: time repeating itself, point-of-view shots and abstract characters. Themes like this are present in modern films, one of the most obvious being 'Inception' with Leonardo DiCaprio.
The film mostly takes place in a house, and the only rooms that are shown within it are the rooms that would be associated with where women should be, at the time of production. The featured rooms are the kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. In these rooms, an knife is often shown, seemingly following Maya around the house. The knife is shown to represent the opinions of men on women - shown to be sharp and if meddled with, painful. The way that it follows her around the house could represent how men's opinions of women are always in the back of their minds and how they cannot escape them.
Overall I did not like the film. I appreciate it's ideas and themes and the issues it addresses, but I found watching it to be very challenging.
No comments:
Post a Comment