DESTINO

DESTINO
Directed by Dominique Monfery, written by Salvador Dalí and
John Hench, USA, 2003, 6min

It was 1945 when Spanish painter Salvador Dali and Walt Disney began working on Destino; ten months later the Project stopped. Some said Destino’s production halted due to budget reasons, others said the film deviated from Disney’s original idea. It took 58 years for the film to finally premier at the Annecy International Animation Festival (June, 2003).

The plot of the animated short is very simple: the struggle of two lovers to be together. But it is told in a very unconventional –surreal– way. For six minutes a woman and a man-statue, who comes to life, dance and morph in a Dali style world. Dali’s paintings (think of Persistence of the Memory) always had rhythm and motion to them; Destino finally gives us that motion. But, that motion can be confusing for other people.

As in art, people can interpret Destino in many different ways. Some of the elements remind me of Un Chien Andalou, a moon rising from behind the clouds as they rapidly move let to right, a close-up of a hand with ants coming out of the palm, and French men in black suits riding bikes. In a way, Destino is less bizarre than Un Chien Andalou and “easier” to interpret. The scenario is ever changing and moving keeping the two apart. Dali’s signature limp watches seem to represent the pain the lovers live each minute they are separated and how eternal each of those minutes can feel.

Each of the 6min feel and look like Dali, not a frame of Disney, but only18sec of the short were created by him. A team 25 artists worked on the final piece for two years; they only had Dali’s story boards and paintings and his wife Gala’s journal. Monfrey’s team succeeded at recreating Dali’s style and designing the missing pieces. Since it’s premier in 2003 the short has been screened in museums but that year the short was screened before Disney’s feature Lady Killers*. In the screening I attended, the audience didn’t really know what to do with it, makes wonder would the reaction had been back in 1946.

*At least in Latin America, I don’t know about the US.
**Destino is expected to be released in DVD in November, 2008

THE FOLLOW

THE FOLLOW
D: Wong Kar-wai, USA, 2001, approx. 9 minutes
Source: BMW Films, no longer available

A driver is hired by a movie star's assistant to follow the star's girlfriend (wife? lover?), who he suspects of infidelity. He tracks her, and narrates the nature of such tailing as he chases her around Los Angeles. He tracks her to LAX, where she tries to catch a plane to Rio de Janeiro, which is delayed. In a visually poetic moment, the driver breaks his own rule ("don't get too close") for a moment, only to discover something about the nature of this woman's relationship.

The Follow is a gorgeous film, typical of Wong Kar-wai's moving work in features such as In the Mood for Love and 2046. Upon its web-only release in 2001, however, it was also part of a larger series of works: The Hire featured five short films produced by David Fincher and directed by different directions with only two common elements, the unnamed Driver (played by Clive Owen) and the cars, all BMWs. Indeed all five films were part of an interesting commercial campaign called BMW films where the "films" themselves used the cars in fascinating ways, often involving car chases (like in this one) and sometimes even causing the cars to crash. The clear, cool nature of both Owen and the car exuded from these films, and vice-versa. More than the other four in the series, Wong's film also directly related these shorts to the concept of the art film, which can allow us to consider the nature of the audience that these films -- and likewise the cars -- are marketed to. Do those of us who watch these kind of films want to buy BMWs? Can we afford them?

The Follow therefore walks a fascinatingly fine line between "film" and "commercial." The series as a whole could be accessed under the very name "film" and played at the Cannes Film Festival; all the players involved (actors, directors, etc.) are related to film as well, and the budgets for these pieces certainly was along similar lines with commercials. And yet, these "films" won CLIO awards for best commercial pieces which naturally showcase the ubiquitous cars which handle rather nicely. This invites us to consider the nature of the commercial at all: where does the concept of the "film" begin and end?

SOUR DEATH BALLS

SOUR DEATH BALLS
D: Jessica Yu, USA, 1993, approx. 4 minutes.
Source: Wholphin Volume 2
Featured in the Telluride Film Festival 1993.

The premise of this film couldn’t get much simpler: director Yu offers candy to a variety of people and films their reactions – once they quickly discover that she has deceived them into trying the Asian “delicacy” Sour Death Balls. A series of head-shots in sepia-and-white accompanied by a jazzy score, the film seems almost too simple.

Such simplicity highlights each person’s face as the candy’s taste slowly registers – and the piece is just long enough for the viewer to simply break down and laugh along with these poor victims. The looks the kids give are particularly priceless and I love the little girl who spits it out only to put it back in her mouth (because, you know, it’s candy!). The score provides a wonderful guideline for editing as well, which remains brisk and buoyant. Here is a case where if the film had gone one for much longer, the impact would be dimished. Instead, Sour Death Balls remains pure fun.

There is a question as to whether this is a documentary. Certainly, with its lack of any discernable plot, this is a model experimental film – but, given its register of everyday life, could it also be a doc? Yu herself would gain great recognition for prowess in the form, winning the Best Documentary Short Oscar for Breathing Lessons. (She memorably said upon receiving the Award, “It’s a new reality when your dress cost more than your movie.”) I would venture to say that this isn’t a documentary, precisely because of intention: it seems that documentaries have a greater “purpose” behind them than this one intends (a statement which I hope doesn’t slight the movie at all). I open this question up to debate in the comments, however – how do you feel about the possibility of its status as a documentary?

DUCK AMUCK

DUCK AMUCK
D: Chuck Jones, USA, 1953, approx. 7 minutes.

Duck Amuck is one of the great cinematic treasures of the United States. At face value, it is unadulterated fun (on a personal level, bringing me back instantly to memories of my youth watching Saturday morning cartoons). When I was in college, I had the pleasure of meeting the master, Chuck Jones, who said that he and his colleagues never made these films for kids, nor did they make them to satisfy anyone else: they did it to crack themselves up.

So it says something about the group at the Termite Terrace that many of these throwaway shorts shown in front of Warner Brothers movies should be so terribly sophisticated. Duck Amuck is hilarious chaos on screen -- and yet the very reasons why it is so hysterically funny come from how much we as viewers know about film. The short is about -- well, nothing. Literally. Poor Daffy Duck starts acting in what seems to be a send-up of The Scarlet Pimpernel when all of a suddent the background changes. He seems confused, then shrugs and starts over as another character to fit the scene. Everything after this point pits Daffy's desperate attempts to get a story (any story!) going against an unseen illustrator/director, who keeps changing everything about the filming, seemingly at random. The sound disappears. The scene disappears. Daffy himself disappears, to return in a different form entirely. The art, however, makes the majority of the film appear as an uninterrupted single take (with several cuts toward the end). We laugh at what we see, because we recognize that this isn't supposed to be what we see. "This is a close-up??" Daffy screams for the far-off deserted island -- and we know it's not a close-up, but rather an iris-in, even if we aren't familiar with the cinematic terminology out of hand.

Towards the end of the film, Jones does something particularly radical with the screen image. While trying to reason with the illustrator, all of a suden the top of the screen caves in. This seems simple, but the effect is rather sophisticated: in effect, Jones eliminates the screen. By that, I mean the rectangle that allows us to comprehend everything that happens in movies to begin with. This both demonstrates the pliable power behind animation that would prove implausible in live action -- and that higher film theory can be demonstrated with wit beyond compare. In just over six minutes (as he did over and over again), Chuck Jones demonstrates his intelligent mastery of the form and how utterly effective the short film can be. Not to mention that such shorts can also be, well, fun. Think of how utterly disappointing the feature-length Looney Tunes films have been and you'll know what I mean.

POR PRIMERA VEZ (FOR THE FIRST TIME)

POR PRIMERA VEZ (FOR THE FIRST TIME)
D: Octavio Cortázar, Cuba, 1968, approx. 9 minutes.
(Note: The embedded clip does not have subtitles.)

In the early 1960s, Fidel Castro placed a large emphasis on combating illiteracy in Cuba, particularly starting in 1961 during the "Year of Education." For Castro in particular, however, "literacy" did not only refer to the ability to read words in books, newspapers and magazines: the phrase also applied to audiovisual materials such as movies, radio and television. This forward-thinking vision led directly to the genesis of ICAIC, the Cuban Institute for Cinematographic Arts and Industry. Much as thousands of people from Havana and other cities went to the countryside to teach people how to read, so too did a fleet of cine-móviles bring movies to places that otherwise had no knowledge of cinema.

Por Primera Vez follows one cine-móvil crew to a very rural town in 1968. The idea is rather simple: interview some townspeople about what they think about this weird concept of "movies," then show them experiencing a movie. The novelty here naturally comes in large part from the subject itself: even Cubans would have been surprised to find people who knew absolutely nothing about the mere concept of cinema. Cortázar's documentary uniquely demonstrates a genuine tone toward his subjects that surprisingly does not exploit the subjects, even as we are allowed to laugh with (at?) their ignorance; perhaps this is because we quickly realize that, inexperienced with media as these people are, this particular situation will quickly be remedied. At first confirming whatever suspicions we have about the so-called "Third World," the end of the film goes beyond any political, economic or social statements to revel in the joy that cinema brings, a joy that (in our jaded age in 2008) we sometimes forget.

Or is this not political? Truth be told, this documentary was released in 1968, a banner year for Cuban filmmaking with a number of landmark features, including Humbeto Solás Lucía and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's masterpiece Memorias del subdesarrollo. All of these films -- Por primera vez included -- were deliberately created around this time, however, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Cuban revolution; all of these films toured widely throughout Latin America and elsewhere. Each provided a complex glimpse at the Cuban reality of 1968, challenging the outside notion that independent thought was verboten under Communism. At the same time, as evidence of the above, these films could also be viewed as a type of propaganda. In this way, Por primera vez is perhaps the most subversive of all of these films, its "simple" message and happy ending masking -- or proving -- the very message the Cuban government wanted to portray.

Camera

CAMERA
D: David Cronenberg, Canada, 2000, approx. 7 minutes.
Source: Viderdrome (Criterion Collection version)

A narrator starts to tell a story off-camera: "One day, the children brought home a camera." It's a simple statement; it starts simply, with a man -- no, not a man: an actor. Images of the children with the camera are intercut with images of a nice gentleman with graying hair, shot with a video camera in medium shot. As he continues, however, the (video) camera starts to push forward, so that the man is in close-up when he announces something unexpected: "When you look at it in a cold light, photography is death."

Camera continues a fascinating interplay of images as the actor delivers a monologue about the "dangers" that the Camera proposes. The children matter-of-factly do all the tasks needed to make a movie: check lights, process film, measure the f-stop; these are all shot in a very matter-of-fact manner as well, with relatively "normal" lighting and camera distances. These are all in stark contrast to the images of the actor, who the video camera moves into shots so close that we as viewers feel uncomfortable. The actor appears unattractive, even sinister: the light from the windows appears too harsh, his eyebrows are thick and menacing. The actor is also edited in an odd manner: often, we are presented with jump cuts to sudden extreme close-ups of his eyes. The images are not necessarily horrific, yet the tone established throughout this piece is horrific.

In many ways, Camera is an interesting precursor to Cronenberg's 2005 feature film A History of Violence, which cannily comments on the movies in a similar way. In that film, scenes of violence and gore which would otherwise titillate the viewer are presented in a stark, cold manner than unnerves even the most seasoned viewers, making us question the very nature of the horror film genre. (One can argue he this is a common preoccupation for the director, also seen in eXistenZ, Naked Lunch and especially the brilliant Videodrome, which also featured Leslie Carlson, the actor featured here.) In Camera, Cronenberg does not present any gore and yet the whole film is structured to terrify. I particularly like this piece because the link between photography and death so clearly derives from Roland Barthes' tragically final work Camera Lucida. These ideas were not academic for Barthes: the work is inspired by his mother's death, and every photograph of her does not remind him of the joy that her life brought, but instead serves to mock him, reminding him that she is dead. Cronenberg highlights something very similar: the life captured by motion pictures only demonstrates that such moments cannot be repeated and taunt us with what once was and can never be again.

Camera becomes truly haunting in the last minute or so, when the children bring the large, old 35mm camera into the room with the actor. They apply make-up, change everything around and then a young boy (bespectacled, like Cronenberg) says, "Action." And suddenly, the image changes: it is warm, gorgeous, widescreen. And suddenly we realize that the harshness of everything that has come before is largely due to the use of video instead of film. (This section was actually filmed with the very camera seen throughout the short.) And yet, as soft and beautiful as this looks/sounds/feels, we are acutely aware of everything that the actor has noted before this. He repeats his initial line -- "One day, the children brought home a camera" -- but the line is changed, no longer innocent. And this time, the shot hangs on just a little too long. It catches the actor's face in a private moment: in the last seconds of the film, Carlson's face breaks for just a moment, his eyes watering and distant, filled with despair. The film cuts away to black -- and the effect is terrifying. Can we watch movies again the same way?

This entry is cross-posted as part of the Movies About Movies Blogathon hosted at GoatDogBlog -- please feel free to visit the other entries listed on that site. New entries on short films will appear here every day until December 11th, with students starting to post next weekend. Please visit here often -- and comment on the students' work, since they earn extra credit for more comments!

don't dream, it's over...

The Short Films Blog comes back to life on Monday, August 25th...

A Handy Guide to Blog Postings

Here are individual links to all the films discussed within this blog, arranged here alphabetically:

Week One: Narrative Shorts

• Enoch Arden
  
• The Fall of the the House of Usher
  
• First Date
• Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life
  
• The Most Beautiful Man in the World
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
  
• Peluca
  
• Stick (Fed Ex ad)
  

Week Two: Experimental Shorts

• The Alphabet
• Cut
• Experimental 1
  
• Eye Like a Strange Balloon
• Jane Lloyd
• Offon
  
• Quietus
  
• Smothered Dreams
  

Week Three: Selections from Omnibus Films

• from Before the Rain
  
• from Go
  
• from New York Stories
• from Short Cuts
• from Sin City
• from Subway Stories
  
• from Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her
  
• from Twilight Zone: The Movie
  

Week Four: Non-American Shorts

• A Alma do Negocio (Brazil)
  
• O Branco (Brazil)
• Dekalog, Szesc (Poland)
  
• Fait d'Hiver (Belgium)
• Picc Mi (Senegal)
  
• Venice Beach (Korea)
• Die Zwoelfte Stunde (Eine Nacht des Grauens) (Wales)
  

Week Five: Documentary or Animated Shorts

• Luxo, Jr. (anim)
• Plymptoons (anim)
• Pyramid Song (anim)
  
• Das Rad (Rocks) (anim)
• The Rest is Silence (doc)
• Super Squatter (anim)
  
• This Way Out (doc)
  

This Way Out

THIS WAY OUT
Director Jill Burnett, Toronto, Canada, 32 minutes 2004
VHS 7736

Before the opening credits or titles screens are even presented, the audience is bombarded with a montage of shocking stock footage and disturbing newspaper clippings. The first sequence features men yelling in a foreign language, "Come on, you people! Kill kill kill kill the faggot." In another sequence, men are handcuffed together and led toward a certain doom as they try desperately to cover their faces. Another shot shows a young man beaten to the ground by a mob as cops casually tell the mob "that's enough." At the end of this montage is a soundless black and white image of a young woman with short hair and a sign that reads "CAN'T LIVE IN THE CLOSET."

The filmmaker then cuts to a black screen with the words "this way out" written in a simple white font. The title then appears to grow on the screen foreshadowing the expansion of this topic within the next 32 minutes and symbolizing the movement of these people out of these harsh situations.

"People say that Brazil is an open country, but I have a different idea," states the first subject of this documentary, a lesbian and former reporter from Brazil who recounts her story directly to the camera in segments throughout the documentary. She reveals her rise to fame and success as a closeted reporter in her native country, her rape by a chauvinist news director, her disownment by her family, and her move and acceptance in the United States. Her story ultimately ends with her riding off with her roommate on a motorcycle to city hall to receive her citizenship papers.

This documentary also features the stories of a gay man from Pakistan and a gay man from Kenya. Like the Brazilian woman, they explain how they came out and then escaped out of homophobic societies and found comfort in America. In their countries, they explain how gay men are prosecuted and disowned. The Kenyan man's story is further complicated by his father's profession as a minister.

During all of their stories, the filmmaker intermixes shots of them sitting and talking to the camera with sequences of them walking around San Francisco (separately). These shots feature the subjects (no names were used) avoiding eye contact with the camera, interacting with friends, and looking introspective. Their voiceovers plague the sequences with dialogue that often has nothing to do with the visual we are getting. It appears that these scenes were inserted to keep the documentary from being too stale or seeming like a mere interview. However, this is not effective. These sequences were obviously shot for this purpose alone, adds very little to the short film, and simply seems heavy-handed. Further, there are no recreation of events, so sometimes we are given shots of similar scenes. For example, as the Brazilian speaks of her motorcycle ride to city hall with her roommate we get the image of a person driving away from the camera on a motorcycle alone. Though this initially appears to be appropriate, the image we see is actually only one person on a bike and I am not even certain it is a woman. Thus the image is not truly "documenting" the actual event. It would have been better to actually witness a gay refugee going to city hall to get citizenship. However, this was probably not possible as it appears the filming of the interviews happened first and then the filmmaker found matching images.

This Way Out is important because it features many hot button issues that our society is currently addressing such as issues of identity, illegal aliens in the U.S., and "don't ask, don't tell" policies. This film not only brings up class issues of the documentary as a genre but also our class discussion of film as national identity. This film is a documentary in that it educates and captures real people's true life stories. It utilizes talking heads and stock footage to get at its core concerns. It affirms America as an open and gay-friendly nation as a whole, one that ironically has - at least in three instances - granted asylum to those in desperate need. This film appears to contradict what many people would feel America's policies are concerning gay rights and immigration. However, it is interesting that this film was funded through Toronto, therefore making it a Canadian film which ironically praises America. It also portrays the subject's native countries in a negative light. It is interesting that throughout the film we do get shots of these other countries, however they are always general and probably obtained indirectly.

The best part of this documentary are the stories themselves, they are gripping and eye-opening. However, as a short film, there is a lot left to be desired.

"DAS RAD"

Name of film: “DAS RAD” (“Rocks”)
Director/Writer: Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel, Heidi Wittlinger
Country: Germany
Year of production: 2003
Length: 8 minutes
Source: DVD 878 (75th Annual Academy Awards: Short Films)

The primitive beats of a bongo and the Spanish thrum of a guitar bridges a black screen and its opening credits with an establishing shot that dollies right to reveal a mountain peak and the valley it overlooks. This non-diegetic music stops with the first words of dialogue, which come from a pile of rocks named Yule. He addresses the pile of rocks to his right. “Look at this, Kew. I think there’s another one back there,” he says, pointing at some new growth on his back. Kew, absent-minded, swings his pile over to Yule and begins to peel lichen from the dorsal side of Yule’s shoulder when his attention shifts to growing activity in the valley.

The pair sits next to a dead tree that has cast its branches like tentacles or the spines of an umbrella over the two of them. The tree remains static while everything else seems involved in a frenzy of change: clouds rush across the sky with an insistence that turns the ubiquitous color of sky from blue to mottled gray; pine trees make split-second progress from seedling to full-grown specimen; lichen and moss scuttle across the landscape and Yule’s broad abdominal section as if working against a deadline to carpet the whole mountain before the end of the world.

It becomes apparent, however, that the film takes place closer to the beginning of the world or, rather, of human history. By the time Kew notices activity in the valley and asks, “What are they up to down there?” it is clear that he refers to a village in its infant and primitive stages. A much closer shot of the valley depicts simple A-frame wooden houses that jump like the pine trees into immediate existence, confirming the sensation that all this activity is frenetic because time itself is in fast-forward. How fast one is not sure, but fast enough to reveal a world in which anything that does not have the longevity of a tree or a rock or a wooden A-frame, or the patience to stand very still for a long time, will make no appearance.

Just as, in fact, rock people move too slowly to exist on a human plane, humans move much too quickly to register with the rocks. But the film makes clear the fact that despite appearances both these worlds very much exist, and at that not independently one of another. After Kew makes his discovery of the valley’s activity, the timing of the world slows to normal and reveals a blue sky and a Neanderthal man in the background taking whacks with a primitive axe at a pine tree. The thump of stone against trunk provides the soundtrack for another man’s discovery, in the foreground, of Kew, now a static pile of rocks, and the enigma of a free-standing stone that, in fast-forward, Kew was busy spinning for fun.

This stone—this plaything that helps Kew pass a few minutes—becomes a source of epiphany for Kew and a segue into the main conflict: the threat to the earth of rapid and rabid human development. As time regains its initial velocity, and Kew continues to spin his round, flat stone, the valley’s activity increases and expands. A church or castle appears on a neighboring hill, more houses sprout, and a dirt road rips across the mountain pass just next to the dead tree and our two protagonists. Kew notices the road after a bit, but not the movement that flashes along it, and moves to its edge to roll his stone back and forth without comprehending the purpose of the trail. That comprehension comes only after time slows and the frame catches the broad-brimmed hat of a man struggling with his handcart to attain the peak of the pass, just before which one of the wooden wheels catches a rock at a fatal angle and breaks. The man exchanges the damaged wheel for a spare, with a requisite string of colloquial complaints that contemporizes the film for today’s tire-changing audience, and moves on. Kew exchanges his stone for the comparably shaped castaway cartwheel just after time speeds back up and begins his back-and-forth play with it. Call this play research, because it precedes Kew’s epiphany: “This is brilliant! They’re building the paths for these things!” says Kew as he displays the broken wheel. Yule looks confused. Kew attempts to explain: “That is . . . that is locomotion, . . . that is transport. Here the path, the town, invention, . . . development!”

Kew has put into abstract terms and a celebratory tone the philosophy of modern progress and the achievements of industrial society, which we now celebrate. But development as an end in itself soon, in terms of rock-time, proves disastrous for the earth. As the rate of development increases the spread of human lichen becomes almost tangible, like fog. Once pavement replaces the dirt path vehicular traffic becomes so persistent that it hovers in blurred view to the left of Yule and Kew. The messages on a billboard flash like a high-speed music-video montage, and the once-wooden village mutates into a metropolis of rising skyscrapers that rush across the valley and up toward Yule and Kew, now shocked and unprotected near the spot where the ancient tree was uprooted to make way for an elevated highway. The rush of high-rise construction, set to the accompaniment of those same opening primitive bongo beats, all allegro, rolls toward the mountain under a darkening sky—a visual trope for the threat that development poses the earth.

The medium of this film is key to the success of its message: to depict the end of the world in a fantastical and humorous form like animation, in addition to making the depiction more feasible, is to sweeten the polarizing subject matter just enough to make it palatable to a wide audience. This film presents a magical world for those of us who come and go so quickly (the impermanent human), but not a fictional one. It is our world in high speed, and this Claymation depiction of it reveals at once our own meaningless temporality and the hefty impact of human life in aggregate upon the earth, that big, round, living rock. Even the anthropomorphized rock piles, as fantastical as they of course are, represent a perspective consistent with a world familiar and real: Kew and Yule represent the earth’s perspective. And humans, they’re like lichen, that annoying and unsympathetic growth that spreads across the broad abdomen of the earth as if working against a deadline to carpet the whole landscape before the end of the world.

It is not clear how this world ends, but that it ends is clear. Most striking, however, is that for our two protagonists the end of the world is instantaneous and incidental. When every looming skyscraper, which, to the rocks, only just made a rapid and threatening appearance, disappears in a bold and fleeting rumble (of earthquake? of A-bomb?) awe-faced Kew looks at awe-faced Yule, ponders for a moment what might have just happened and its possible significance (Yule says, “That was lucky”), and says as green reclaims the valley and the mountain pass, “I hate to say it but your head is covered in moss again.”

This exchange between Yule (“That was lucky”) and Kew (“your head is covered in moss”) contains the paradox of the film. Yule’s statement expresses the earth’s vulnerability, while Kew’s expresses its relative indifference in the grand scheme of its life cycle to human presence. These views are not mutually exclusive, but they are conflicting, and they seem to represent a political conflict extant in human society today. Some believe that the world is too big for humans to have any lasting effect, and others believe the earth to be a living organism as sensitive to human exponential growth and industrial action as any one of its constitutive parts. Some see the earth as impervious rock; others as a softer constituent, like clay.

The literal translation of the title of this student film, “Das Rad,” is “The Wheel.” The official U.S. title, “Rocks,” is appropriate for several reasons. It cooperates with the medium of the film and also invokes the protagonists and the perspective they represent. It misses, however, a major theme that “The Wheel” captures, namely the consequences of an industrial and technological trajectory that justifies development for its own sake alone. The wheel, that symbolic celebrity (along with fire) of human advancement, expresses that theme and the spin of the earth that enacts a cycle so nascent to life and sometimes so anesthetized, at least in modern society, as to fade into obscurity behind the blurry ribbon of cars on a road.

The Rest is Silence

The Rest is Silence, Andrew Henderson, 2005, Scotland, 10 minutes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A4638585

This film traces an unclaimed body from a police station to the grave. In the opening scene, the camera moves across a dark room lit by a suspended light bulb above a metal table. An extreme close-up reveals a police form for the “sudden death” of a male. A police officer and two men in lab coats move a covered corpse from stretcher to morgue refrigerator (I actually googled this because the term “refrigerator” didn’t seem appropriate, but appears legitimate on a few websites). The only sounds are those of the metal stretcher moving into the fridge. The camera then cuts to a close-up of metal instruments. We see an empty scale before the camera moves down to the corpse’s feet. A pathologist examines a hand, while speaking (indiscernible) into a tape recorder. He appears almost cheery, digging away at the body and speaking with others over a disconcerting drilling noise. He removes an organ and weighs it. After the autopsy, a woman hoses down the body’s feet and later, the head before they move the body into a body bag and placed in the back of black hearse.

In the next frame, we see a dark, empty church. Lights suspended from the ceiling flicker on one by one, somewhat reminiscent of the opening shot of the dark room. A priest leads the funeral procession; men in black suits rest the wooden coffin at the altar, while a woman places white flowers next to it. The camera quickly cuts to the priest’s eulogy. His words are the only discernable words in the entire film. He mentions that though we don’t know the particulars of the death, “we trust that God knows all there is to know.” As the camera backs away slowly, it reveals the completely vacant pews and also literally distances the viewer from the coffin. This emptiness adds a feeling of loneliness and the anonymity almost makes you feel as though you are watching your own funeral.

The coffin is then wheeled to a crematorium. Two people shove the coffin into a red-hot oven and monitor the cremation on computers. Later, a woman shakes the metal container of bones into a sort of grinder and we hear the (again, disconcerting) sound of the machine grinding away. She collects the ashes and places them in a plain metal box, then a paper bag and finally, they are placed in a cardboard box.

The body’s travels through the red-hot oven are juxtaposed with its arrival at a snow-covered cemetery. A cross stands on a small hill near the lone visible tomb. A cemetery worker slides the tomb lid off and places the box of ashes inside the vacant hole. The only sounds are the crunching of snow and the alignment of the stone cover. After the worker secures the lid and completes the burial, the white snow fades into a white screen with 1:45 seconds left. The text “The Rest is Silence” appears and then disappears. The credits then play in silence.

I picked this film because it is an unusual documentary in many ways, especially since there is no real dialogue. It answers a question (what happens to an unclaimed corpse?) through observation, rather than explanation. A typical documentary might involve interviews with the police officers involved or a step-by-step explanation of the autopsy from the pathologist. Through the silence and few sounds we hear, one almost has the feeling of “hearing” the last earthly sounds associated with death. This approach gives the film a more artistic than scientific feel throughout and fits in with Paul Giametti's assertion that, “Documentarists believe that they're not creating a world so much as reporting on the one that already exists…Many documentaries deliberately keep the structure of their films simple and unobtrusive. They want their version of the facts to suggest the same apparent randomness of life itself”(356). We see how the anonymous body passes through the hands of equally anonymous people, without a sense that the camera's presence is interfering with the people and their work. Regardless of whether one dies alone like this man, or surrounded by family, the fact is that a body will usually pass through many or all of these environments. While this has universal appeal, we also get a glimpse into the unique lives of the people who work in this world, one that most people find mysterious or morbid. There seems to be a mix of reverence (the woman gently washing the man’s head, the priest’s words) and a feeling of “just doing my job”( the shoving of the coffin, the pathologist’s smile) in this environment.

This film could be comforting in the sense that no one really dies alone, and that everyone deserves a respectful burial, the detachment from both the body (and the other people in this film), as well as the cold, bare, quiet resting place also creates
a palpable sense of loneliness.


Awards: Winner of Frank Copplestone Award for Best First Time Director
at the Celtic Film & Television Festival 2006

Plymptoons

PLYMPTOONS
D: Bill Plympton, 1990, 6:45 minutes
Source: VHS tape called “The Complete Works of Bill Plympton”

After considerable searching, I used a tape the Professor brought to class and used a selection as an example. The selection from the tape that I have used is called “Plymptoons.” The look of these shorts that are line drawings filled in with color pencils are avant garde in that they are a departure from the animation of such standards as Disney. Of the twenty or so different works in the complete set I choose Plymptoons, which gives the impression that there are funny like cartoons from which their name has evolved. Some are funny, some are bizarre but they are all thought provoking.

For instance, there is a short called evolution. In the first frame there is a crouching ape leaning over his knuckles. He slowly rises into an erect man. But he is only as such for an instant. Immediately, he slowly morphs into a football player bending down to a crouching positiowhich is the exact image of the initial frame that we saw. The irony of a wild ape changing into an athlete is effective, and one that is very funny to women. If one is criticized with humor and can recognize themselves, any criticism will not be hurtful

The early mob sketch is just bizarre. A lone cowboy is sitting on a horse in the middle of the range. We assume that he could be casing the joint, namely sizing up a herd of someone else’s cattle or hiding from other bad guys. In a scene that has been seen in every gangster films, such as The Godfather or Casino,the getaway car is blown up. In the twisted mind of Plympton, the lone cowboy and his faithful horse explode. The sheer visceral aspect of the act is gruesome if in reality, but a Plymptoon would be acceptably hilarious.

In 1968, when Bill Plympton started his career as a cartoonist, his visions were avant garde. They are very effective because they could show impossible situations like someone raising their eye glasses with the cartoon eye imbedded in the lenses in order to scratch their nose. Anyone who has ever tried to scratch their nose with their glasses on, sees the advantage of raising their glasses to scratch their nose. Impossible scenario? I do believe that people love to do just that.

Submitted by Debbie Zukas