Experiments in Narrative Film (and a baby birth)

Hello everyone! It has been a while since my last post and things have changed since we last talked. Things have gotten a little crazy and Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage have made a permanent imprint on retinas. Stan Brakhage seems to be more about the experimental-ness of the content, not just the technicality. Maya Deren explores the ways to use camera through a surreal setting.

"Meshes in the Afternoon" is an extremely interesting showcase of camera tricks and symbolism. While taken in context the image to the left makes some sense, it is really funny when coming across it on the internet. Personally, I have been getting semi-frustrated with all of the feminist media we are assigned in our classes. This collection however, made that subtext. Being an English major I look for the story.

"Meshes in the Afternoon" is very surreal. The film creates a smattering of different Maya Derens all repeating the same afternoon routine. There is a figure shrouded in black and has a mirror face. Yes, his face is a mirror. There is a lot of symbolism riddled throughout film. The key is cross cut with the knife, implanting the correlation between the two in our minds. So when we see her dead at the end of the film we assume that she killed herself in order to 'unlock' the way to her freedom. Sorry about the obviousness of that, but I feel it is an extremely important aspect of the film.

We find out quite literally that the shrouded figure is her companion. The ominous figure she is trying to escape from is not only her lover, which we see from her laying in the bed when he gets home, but is in fact the routine itself. What is really interesting is how previously we see Maya climbing the stairs. She is displaying the struggle in her subconscious of how she knows what is going on is oppressive and wrong. In her essay she talks about all of the camera tricks she uses in a very technical fashion and I think it is extremely interesting how she uses the camera to alter reality. In a great coordinative effort, Maya falls right and left with the camera as it shakes to the left and right. This gives the effect that the planet itself is being tossed around. As we get closer to the top Maya turns the camera sideways and upside down, she alters what we think is real with in an attempt to show us her knowledge of the camera.

"At Land" is great for considering the essay in which she talks about altering space and time. She starts at the beach which we can associate as the underworld as she only goes up from this point. In the middle world, or midgaurd as the Norse would call it, It is just a bunch of white men sitting at a table talking. Which is her metaphor for what our lives our like up here. She cuts the film stock so that it appears she climbs the tree trunk and immediately appears in this world. She alters space to explore what how film can manipulate reality.

A pawn falls down into the underworld and she goes after it. The pawn which by definition is meaningless and one of many, becomes men who interchange every time they are put in the shot. We also get this awkward situation where a woman in white and a woman in black are playing chess in the underworld, only two are doing it and that it feels like that is the only way they can get away with it. They do not seem to care taht they are playing chess which could mean that they are doing it and going through the motions just to spite men.

All in all I believe most of this collection is a feminist backdrop to great film tricks. I would talk about Brakhage, but I'm afraid to be fined by the FAA.

James Bond's Worst Nightmare (In French)

The Last Year at Marienbad is extremely hard to get through on your first viewing if:
a. You do not know anything about French New Wave
b. You are already sleepy.

This being my first viewing of the a fore mentioned movie I had some problems. The cyclical filming and dialogue caused my eyes to close two or three times. The French voice mixed with the repeating dialogue will lull you into a coma. The beginning of the movie is a series of shots looking up at chandeliers at other things you would see on the ceiling of a castle or mansion. It is overlapped with a poem that is repeated and it is almost calling you to go to sleep, to begin dreaming yourself.

Also, the narrative in the story is f*****. I got a better hold on the story when talking about it in class. Watching it in class made my brain hurt trying to follow it. Professor McRae told us not to pay attention to the story and just pay attention to the camera tricks and the techniques used by the film makers. I couldn't do it. While the cinematic style pulls you into a almost dreamlike state, the story doesn't let you go either. A love triangle between the characters the script calls X, the narrator, A the woman and subject of men's desires, and M, possibly A's husband, is gone over and shown through various situations throughout the film.

The movie revolves around X's attempt to pick up A. X being the creepy guy in the image to the right, and A being the woman in the man's crosshairs. The way I interpret the narrative in the film is by trying to establish a linear series of events. The movie takes place at a mansion and the events X is talking about happened one year before that day. The one scene that does not change is the scene where X and A are out in the courtyard against the base of a statue. X is feelin' all up on A and while she seems into it for like three seconds, she tells him to leave her alone. After this, all events are subject to change and we get multiple versions of the same events.

Much like the odd shots of peoples images reflecting off of mirrors and shiny objects, we get an obscure view of everything that happens after the event at the statue. What makes logical sense to me in this movie is that X is traumatized by being shot down by A and after wards cannot escape a series of what if situations in his dreams. He keeps creating and recreating events in his dream so that he gets the girl. He is stuck in the mansion, which we get a feeling of through the repetitive dialogue, and can only escape his nightmare with the woman that he is seeking. Because this is a dream A also becomes subject to X's will and ends up leaving with him.

This feels like James Bond's worst nightmare to me because;
1. He is British and therefore hates French.
2. Is stuck in a French Mansion.
3. Does not get the girl.
Everyone in the film is really well dressed and look like they were pulled straight from a Bond film. We also get a feel for this series of what if situations that the bond character creates because he is shot down by the girl is the formality of their speech. In class we talked about listening to the French dialogue and how they always talk to each other in an extremely formal fashion which could hint to their never getting past the initial hook up phase.

The article on how this movie relates to Descartes was really an interesting read. The courtyard above is apparently a product of Cartesian thought. The symmetry and angular shapes go to the thought that the mind, being a non-physical entity, sees nature as raw material for people to superimpose their ideas on nature. The gardens would be construct into angular shapes that are anything but what would appear in nature. Which is also interesting considering how often this picture shows up in the film. It is almost as if the director is trying to tell the viewer that everything there in the film is subject to X's mind, and is not what actually happened.