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Since we must do ... (2)

Continuation and conclusion thus:

In The Mood For Love (2000, Wong Kar-Wai)

Speaking of Bergman, Godard said that there are certain films for which we have to say that approxi: "It the best movies! "And that would be enough. "The truth is their truth. They carry deep within themselves, and yet, the screen splits to each plan to sow to the wind. Tell them: this is the most beautiful films, says it all. (Bergmanorama, Cahiers du Cinema, July 1958) This could be written for In the Mood For Love ; and most films on this list actually, but particularly for Wong Kar-Wai.

The truth of In the Mood For Love is simple, that is, it tends toward the eternal. From a modest gaze but sensual, Kar Wai presents the greatest despair in love, we are sharing all the claustrophobia of an impossible love, with blows of role play and mirror splitting, a framework through gestures and stopping halfway. The staging is traditional and eloquent, each scene is a great assembly and spatial relationship. Just see this scene in a cafe, meeting encounter between two lovers, the first third of the film: he first speaks of her handbag, the plan is remote, as the conversation. But the question on the bag is not quite trivial, he would like to have that for his wife. At this word, "my wife", the plan changes to get closer to her cup of coffee to his lips, looking up at him. It is isolated in the plan. Follows a reverse-field, where they both remain alone in the frame, because through this banal discussion clumsily hides these feelings that neither one nor the other dare not express. Until announces that it wants to turn to ask a question: the camera pans quickly towards him, looks up at her. The sudden movement of the camera translates his emotions, his heart beating suddenly while hoping that she will ask. At the same time, for us this panoramic viewer raises the tension by emphasizing the value of this question, the unspoken words in the dialogues is in the image. But she inquired as to his tie, the conversation resumed and the reverse-field which isolates ditto. Their discussion, however, tends to find their common points, they seek to get by evoking their respective wives and husbands ("My wife in the same bag, my husband at the same tie), but the images and editing shows very well that these words are used instead to remove them, or rather the distance of their love. Thus, always separated by a door, a mirror assembly, when finally a hand approaches another, when the head lands on a shoulder, if that contact brief and simple exalts all their pent-up passion. Indeed, it is the most beautiful films.


Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Bela Tarr)

"We ask the question: on what basis our belief that a harmonic order which relate all final masterpieces really exists? It follows that we should not talk about research, but recognition anti-musical musical, a scandal hidden for centuries, particularly desperate, and we will reveal. Hence this shameful situation, like what all the intervals of the musical masterpieces of centuries are inherently false. This means that the musical expression, the magic of harmony and consonance, is entirely built on false foundations. Yes no doubt we must speak of fraud, although some undecided people are content to talk of compromise. But this compromise is that when the majority of pure musical tone is a mere illusion and that truth, the real pure intervals do not even exist? "That's what

are Werckmeister harmonies for Eszter, a character in the film Tarr: an art fraud. Specifically, he speaks of the range to equal temperament divides the octave into twelve equal segments, the most popular line in the West today, that in fact that is used routinely now for almost two centuries. However, it is simply an agreement: hearing today a part of the 16th century, played by instruments as awarded at the time, as it was headed, and we could not suffer very long that we seem to be a festival of dissonance the instruments and even voices would sound fake. The scandal speaks Eszter is in two stages, first there's almost exclusive use of the tempered scale, ubiquity that educates our ears to a range at the expense of others, yet equally valid, and thus restricts the expressive possibilities of music. More importantly, according to this line says Eszter achieve harmony divine or heavenly, whereas before, with Pythagoras, for example, merely instruments granted "naturally" and even if we were to drop some keys, because we knew that "the harmonies are heavenly domain of the gods . "In arrogance, the man tried to grab all the harmonies, which the tempered scale would, in that it allows all conceivable modulations, but this division of the octave intervals creates distorted which, by Usually, our ears have become accustomed.

For Eszter, the issue is not just artistic, but also theological: it is God himself that we are cut off, or at least of His Creation of Nature, a God that we could not recognize if he deigned to show up. The whale stranded in the village center, is this God, this Nature, which only the main character, Valuska seems to recognize as such, only he stops in front of his eye to pierce the depths of metaphysics. He ends up in an asylum, while the whale is neglected, dying. In the opening scene, already Valuska create a ballet with drunks to simulate a solar eclipse. An eclipse is a moment of darkness occurs in the order of nature, a sort of temporary disruption of the harmony necessary for its maintenance. The scene brought Valuska as sensitive to this order of things, this natural harmony and metaphysics it supports, which is reinforced by its special relationship with the whale. The range in equal temperament imposes an arbitrary order to Nature to make it more pleasing to man, more convenient and easy to handle especially, but there is nothing really natural. The eclipse disturbs the order while in part, it creates disturbance and follies, but it is only temporary. The tempered scale, for now, is constant and there is no indication that we will soon return to a system using multiple lines, it is as if we set aside a whole section of Nature. Moreover, from a false premise, that range is trying to hide the eclipse, in that it enables man to touch all the harmonies, even those that were previously not allowed by instruments tuned naturally. There are two kinds: that of Nature, with its share of chaos, and that of man, which is madness, blindness, by its very nature.

Werckmeister Harmonies shows a moment of chaos, a village living a moment of insanity when the crowd seized the streets and ransacked a hospital madness arising from the mysterious appearance of a prince accompanying fairground. What should we infer from this? There is a natural order which man can not or should not break? Not really: the theory of Werckmeister has claim to mimic a cosmic order, or restore the system by a natural perfection that eludes the man otherwise. The failure of this range, or use, it is this claim to perfection, this desire to match nature then it is only one facet. As long as man is not more modest, says Tarr, as it ignores a part of nature, as obvious as it is, like a whale in the center of a village, he is the victim of folly. Moreover, political systems like communism are not they, in fact, ideas that are meant pure, who profess allegiance to a natural order and justified historically, and that ultimately, as in Hungary and the Balkans, for derail completely? The surreal atmosphere of the film seems less likely for a Hungarian citizen, there is something that takes him to the everyday; but the tempered scale, is it not as a cultural reality?

It is customary to say that Tarr runs clips from ten minutes of scorching virtuosity (he would do more, but the Kodak censorship forcing him this time he says), his director of photography is of the most beautiful, his films are exquisite slowness, Werckmeister Harmonies creates an atmosphere gently surreal, David Lynch said some (but not the two filmmakers share a dreamlike perfume). It should say, more importantly, Tarr seems to reach such a formal perfection that one wonders whether it also is not trying to compete with God.


Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant)

It's been a while since I want to talk about this film, because of several topics discussed here, the relationship of film to reality and abjection rivetienne in particular, I'll probably end up putting myself more seriously than in this short exegesis. For now, note the relationship with Kracauer, as Still Life, not only for the allegory of the Medusa ( Elephant allowing us to conceive the horror of real crimes), but also in its simple relationship to reality. At first mannerist, with its slow, its plans for scrolling clouds and impressionistic soundtrack, Van Sant is actually closer to reality. Unlike the Polytechnique de Villeneuve, for example, Van Sant never try to give meaning to events, it does not use an interpretation (in feminism Villeneuve) to construct his film, instead it has all without prefer one or the other (violent video games, teenagers rejected by others, negligent or absent parents, etc.). In this sense, it retains a certain authenticity of the real, in that it deforms do not fit into a specific pattern. There was a general feeling of this fantastic film that presented the real remains senseless until the end. The characteristic of fantasy is precisely that ambiguity, irresolution: the ghost is not fantastic, but its supposed manifestations, when we hesitate between the supernatural and the assumption of madness. At the end of Elephant, this sense of irresolution is present, something happened that we can not understand and nothing has been done to bring us a satisfactory understanding of track. If we come away overwhelmed Polytechnic is because the topic has been hammered for an hour, because the killer was elected to represent the oppression of women by men is because that 'as a man (in my case) you feel constantly assaulted. But also and especially because this idea is devilishly simplistic, it is a symbol on an event to try to identify more or less arbitrarily. Polytechnic does not call into question this idea has been around for twenty years and he forgets what is real, it can not address than through an ideology that inevitably leads us away from what happened that day. This is not a question of mere reconstruction of the facts, maybe all the gestures are strictly faithful to the real (and I doubt it unimportant), but there is a way to transpose, the film and especially the structure that undermines any sense of reality. What bothers finally in Polytechnic , this is not the events themselves, but this ideology that tries to convince us they support. The feeling fantastic in this film is zero, Villeneuve was clearly resolved and chosen his camp, be it supernatural or madness or whatever.

But I speak of Elephant: I dare say this reality, and particularly events such as those represented in these films. They are fantastic in nature and therefore terribly distressing. Coming out of Elephant, we are not dull like stunned and out of Polytechnic, we are rather anxious in fact, absent from feeling Polytechnic. Specifically, the film does not take us down, as do the hammering of Villeneuve, but upwards. We have the impression of touching lives in Van Sant's film, there's a grace in the staging that is transmitted to the characters and gives them a pardon. In theories of literary fantasy, symbolism can escape the anguish: the ghost is not only factually be foolish, but also ideologically, he does not represent something, or anxiety is soothed by the intellectual game . Leaving aside all symbolism, Van Sant keeps the anxiety remains intact and closer to humans. He did not need a pool of blood rude to tell us what an idiocy as the executioner and the victim is the same thing, its staging, focusing on each character with much attention, so give them equal value. The problems they experience each and every one are also transferable from one to another, we are entitled to a general portrait of adolescence. As a result, Van Sant does not say that the executioner and the victim are interchangeable or two victims of something bigger than themselves, but they are also human. If symptoms of each are equally applicable to the other is that the actions in response are also: some take up arms, others swallow their pain. Both answers are just as humanly possible and if the use of weapons is reprehensible, gesture human remains before being ideological. Therefore

of Elephant we can say that it is a "great film", despite the subject matter or even through, thanks to the distance not just ideological, but respectful that the film employs. Beauty is not just about "beautiful shots" beauty comes first and foremost an ethic, which obviously is embodied in an aesthetic. Elephant is a beautiful film because it is morally right, that is to say closer to this reality that allows us to scrutinize.


Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch)

Unfortunately for us, Lynch has been very little presence in the 2000s. We have at least left his greatest film, one of the strongest reflections and most original on the dream factory that is Hollywood. At first disconcerting, Mulholland Dr. is still easier to decode than Lost Highway or Inland Empire. Lynch played again on a double world, one dream and reality, an unconscious (or subconscious) and a conscious, there is no opposition between these two sides, there is rather interpenetration and entanglement. The first part is a dream, he dreamed by a young woman trying her luck in Hollywood, but is crushed by lack of talent. It is suspected that she expects to be an actress because she won a jitterbug dance contest (where the little old sneering accompanied dance steps) takes the lead to disillusionment hire a hitman to kill his lover and her rival. This story, he must decode the second part built by flashbacks, is not so important to understand, the dream that inspired it, the atmosphere that accompanies most importantly, is eloquent enough. Understand the plot of the film is secondary Lynch, know exactly how the key is found on the bedside table Naomi Watts for example, is useless, what to take is that this key indicates that the killer character in she agreed to perform his contract, and that this key, transposed in the dream, opens a Pandora's box. The second part gives us clues to interpret the dream, but most lies in the dream itself, that is to say the atmosphere evoked by the Hollywood dream and become disoriented nightmare.

By Club Silencio scene, Lynch reveals his art: everything is illusion, everything is magic in the cinema. By revealing the artifice film to us as the characters, Lynch shattered dreams and back to reality, it's time that we will switch from one to another. The character of Naomi Watts, the dreamer, his dream is to play in all aspects of its reality (the Wizard of Oz say, referenced Wild At Heart in ), she tries to give the starring role she can not hold in reality. His dream is the film that Lynch gives us, in that dreams and movies are synonymous, it plays on the codes Hollywood, marrying genres, he gradually perverted the dream of his heroine (so Hollywood) and finally destroy it. As in Blue Velvet there by an interior and exterior (dream vs. reality, conscious vs. subconscious), a world below which resurfaced in time to recall its existence. Hollywood has long been applied to push this as much as possible below, hence the idea entertainment or escape, but Lynch deconstructs the myth to show the ugly workings. Ultimately, this may seem like stereotypical way, the wicked decadent Hollywood upside for happy endings it offers, but the proof is terribly clever and resourceful. The last shot of the film is a reminder of the Club Silencio, therefore the artifice of cinema that Lynch admonition for us to take us back to reality, ours this time, he invites us to draw a parallel with his film. Mulholland Dr. is built on the twin, the perfect party responds to the real part, but the film is essentially a dream, the whole movie that reflects our reality. We must never forget that dream a reality emerges, that fiction has its basis in reality. Forget the dichotomy fiction - real as we often imposes, it is false, and Lynch reminds us constantly.


Tropical Malady (2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

My number one without hesitation, and this since the first viewing at the FNC. The decade was marked by Asia, whether for films in the extreme Miike, rediscovered classicism a Johnny To (no room for him, unfortunately in this list), or this movie extremely slow, contemplative desire, who is darling of festivals and film buffs for some time (missing elsewhere Hirokazu Kore- Eda and Hou Hsiao-Hsien to my list). Apichatpong Weerasethakul, or my friend Joe is the weirdest and most audacious of these filmmakers slowly. The second part of Tropical Malady for me is the narrative cinema who discovers a new path for the virtual abandonment of figuration. The film is cut in half, literally, to break the lights come back in the room for a few moments before the film resumes, as if the film had broken. The second part opens on a new generation, a new aesthetic, giving the impression that the projectionist had the wrong reel, then the correspondence we appear, the allegory is revealed. Note that there is a similarity here with Mulholland Dr. in the construction of narrative, both of which are divided into two, the second part from light, shade, first metaphorically, while both playing on the dream. The second part of Tropical Malady is not really a dream, but it bears all characteristics, the Eastern tale of rare beauty set in a dreamlike atmosphere enchanting. Where Joe stands for Lynch, it is through this abstraction, this abandonment of the human figure (one could always say that the concept of narrative in Lynch is also pretty abstract at times).

Like to In The Mood For Love, Tropical Malady casts a sensual love, each plan breathes desire. The first part shows the budding romance between two young men, most classical, the staging is based on discrete actions to raise tension between the protagonists, until rupture of the film, while one of them disappears mysteriously in the dark to face ... what? A demon inside a repressed homosexuality maybe he should give himself fully to tame her lover? Or is it the waltz love itself becomes chase, the game of seduction transposed into the prey and the predator whose roles are interchangeable, which eventually meet in a final plan to the mystical beauty lightning, as if this tension subsided between the tiger and the soldier was that of love itself? In the experience, especially, that is the answer, in this scene so sensual, languorous in these plans and the soothing sound that evoke the splendor of mesmerizing love.

In the jungle Tropical Malady, the body of man merges into the wild, at times he seems to disappear completely in the dense tangle of vegetation as his silhouette is incorporated into the composition of the images c ' Here is what I call the abandonment of figuration, the film becomes an array of lines and shapes moving, accompanied by a soundtrack using the ultra-rich cyclic repetition of certain sounds to create a nocturnal haunting rhythm. Syndromes and a Century , the latest film by Joe, is structured similarly, abstraction is also included, among others in this plan than ten minutes from a pipe spewing smoke, again with a job hallucinating on the sound (note also that this list includes a majority of films are distinguished by their stunning sound processing). So there in the work of Joe in a new way of thinking about narrative cinema, hence its importance in this new century.

Difference Between Pointe And Ballet

Since we must do ... (1) Antichrist

... so do it well. What do we talk? List of course, one that should crown this decade. I therefore propose my top 10, in two parts, given the length of explanation. I wanted to avoid two to three words that are easy to categorize launches quickly without thinking too much and suggest rather a beginning of analysis, a line of thought, brainstorm that maybe I will finish later. Whenever possible, however, have not seen some of these movies from their theatrical releases. The length of the text accompanying each film has nothing to do with their respective wealth, but more with my memory.

The order is more or less random, except for the first three, my pedestal of the decade. I do not like award titles and playing the comparison, it is really impossible to point with certainty the film of the decade, exercise is especially interesting in retrospect. The list serves as a benchmark, she portrays more of me elsewhere that in recent years because these choices are primarily personal. Finally, while I often criticize the abundance of lists that usually does not exceed their function consumerist (that I have not eaten yet and I'm told most?), This does not prevent me from reading them all and I dote. It is also to avoid falling into that same trap of the simple proposition My favorite cultural analysis to simple classification. Do not look, however, an image of the Noughties, a sociological portrait of the film which ends a decade, and any attempt to circumscribe the latest trends and it's all about heart strokes. So

:


I'm Not There (2007, Todd Haynes)

I'm Not There aptly title: this is not a film about Dylan, even though it it will be ubiquitous. Dylan is a pretext, the canvas from which Todd Haines continues his reflections on identity, and here especially on the identity of the artist in connection with the Others. Far From Heaven equally successful, working the same themes, the inability to really express themselves, prison identity is society, the difficulty of defining for others. "Hell is other people" is the phrase that Haines continues to work from film to film. The

(the) character (s) I'm Not There represent various facets of the same personality is bursting a protagonist in some of its manifestations, but it is not real facets of this artist, rather than those that the company has stuck. There is this unforgettable piece of bravery that summarizes the whole movie, the artwork and the deconstruction of the song Ballad of a Thin Man: Haynes started the sequence by using images explicitly the words of Dylan, it connects to interpretation in fact, the critic played by Greenwood. It feels personally targeted by Jude Dylan, he is put in a cage as critical in a cage by the artist's interpretations: You hand in your ticket And you go watch the Geek Immediately Who walks up to you When he hears you speak And says, "How Does It Feel To Be Such A freak? "For the character of Greenwood, the geek is the artist who exhibited normally takes revenge by turning in turn critical freak like Jude likes to do justly, responding to criticism by other issues , by denying him the right to impose an interpretation, therefore an identity. Then the song stops, and Haynes destroyed everything he has just built: suddenly, the Black Panthers appropriate the song and reverses the interpretation of the critic (the freak, it's blacks ). Who is right? Both interpretations are allowed, and both trap if the artist by looking after it too much to comply with these imposed identities. Dylan, in fact, attempts throughout his career to escape the conventional identities, he plays with them to better thwart them, but society does not want an elusive artist, she wants to categorize, identify, to better assimilate . These identities imposed stifling, where the character of Richard Gere, representation of the artist who seeks to escape from society by taking refuge in his own universe, where even there it will be chased (the dual character of Bruce Greenwood).

The staging works well, Pennebaker pastiche here, here and here Godard Fellini, seeking identity in these styles, seeking to define themselves through these references, these cinematic conventions. At the same time, these references are an illusion, a movie buff to catch if you will, as Dylan himself defies his critics, particularly Jude Cate Blanchett, since Haines is not identified nor Fellini nor to Pennebaker, it does not attempt to say "that's influenced me and who therefore constitute my identity as a filmmaker "He rather plays with cinematic codes to better deconstruct, like Dylan fingered folk, rock, blues, gospel, etc.. Dylan is not a folk singer or a rock singer, he is everything at once, none of that and more, I'm Not There is not a film of Fellini, Godard or there is all this both times, nothing of this and much more.


Still Life (2006, Jia Zhang Ke)

This title is false: on the contrary, in Zhang Ke, it is still in transition, straddling between a quaint world that is lost gradually in a modern world quietly fantastic. So filmmaker movement, change, Zhang Ke is a nostalgic look at a China that goes, whether under the weight of an exaggerated artificiality ( The World ) or water from a river whose level is that rise, result of a dam, so that in a modern Still Life literally drown her past. However, movement is slow, it does not reverse a world in one day, there is a shift patient and gradual, made by planes of infinite patience, attention to these subtle tremors of a world still surviving. An appearance of immobility, but in fact everything moves. Zhang Ke captures what is this fleeting transitional process, which means it is pure cinema, as is Kracauer we discussed here . This tells us that German critic's own film is to capture what's real can not be transmitted otherwise is to say, just a reality in motion. There is also a fantastic feeling in Zhang Ke, which occurs as a modern incomprehensible (monuments taking off, UFOs that streak the sky) as a daily newspaper that escapes us because of its everyday same one to which we Never wear attention, but here we are delivered in all its mysterious glory, as is Kracauer.

We shall see that the majority of that list of movies that play on the fantastic feeling when dealing with dual universe (fiction-reality dream-reality, identity-imposed real identity, former world-modern world, etc.. ) but all these films are far from any dualism: they are films on transition, on what is common to these apparently conflicting worlds. It is therefore of cinema.


Hidden (2005, Michael Haneke)

I have not seen the tape white, but I suspect it could replace Hidden . Haneke, in any case, must appear on all charts respectable. It is indeed the only filmmaker who can create suspense from still shots on an empty street. Is that in Hidden , we never know exactly what we watch, who filmed the images we see. Haneke plays so very clever on the concept of viewpoint to destabilize our viewing position and force us to be an active control, thus to participate more closely in the action, without the comfortable distance that we typically offers fiction.

Much has been said about the anti-colonial message Hidden on his denunciation of the oppression of the Algerians by France: George refuses to be responsible for the actions he has placed child, despite a repressed guilt, like France still refuses his responsibility vis-à-vis the current living conditions of immigrants. George child acting, however, not by racism but just like a child who wants to keep the attention of his parents is not to say that racism, precisely, is a childish reflex? George sees himself assailed by anonymous videos and drawings, his aggressive response is understandable, to some extent. Haneke is not the moralizing that often accused of being, his films are far more nuanced: the actions of George is wrong, he attacked a man from a half-proofs (link terrorism-Iraq is obvious), but at the same time we understand his behavior and we can not condemn him completely. The problem is that he refuses to admit his fault. This discreet handshake in the last shot of the film, between the son of George and Majid, almost imperceptible detail that has caused much ink, would not it an act of optimism for the next generation?

That would ignore the views of this picture, in Haneke's central concept: it is an overall plan and fixed length, recalling the original plan, so a video. This is not a plan omniscient and impersonal merely tell, there is an image shot by a protagonist, the same one (or perhaps another, whatever) who terrorizes George. It's like waking up the monster at the end of a horror film: the beast was believed buried, but she is alive. Who shoots? The unanswered question, which was often discussed. Consider this: the drama occurs unknown when a camera is pointed in a comfortable middle-class couple, their homes are piling up books and videos, their culture. Them, they are used to scan the other, from the comfort of these fictions, but this time they are no longer spectators, they are observed, and this reversal of position does not suit them, because they all have one something to hide at first, but also because they do not accept that call into question their lifestyle while they allow themselves to do good for others (George's attitude toward Majid shows well). Who wants some social conventions and upset by the video if this is Haneke himself? And is it not also specifically at the viewer that this camera is pointing?

The "Who shoots these videos? Is a typical MacGuffin, a lure that is used to link us to the story more conventional thriller. Interest is also the abrupt end tells us quite enough. Videos submitted to George used to wake his guilt, as the film itself seeks to arouse guilt French; even a clue as what Haneke could be the author of these videos. Strangely, there is an implicit criticism of the process itself: it is not videos that agonize as George, it is rather the designs that challenge personally. Haneke addresses a less ferocious on TV in this film and our desensitization to images, but this, in his usual, is not absent, when George and his wife discuss their missing son, he is back Plan-a TV that broadcasts news of the Third World. There are three possible interpretations of this plan, all related: the simplest is that parents are too focused on their personal problems and they forget the rest of the world, while the latter is a consequence, it the dilemma the viewer: what should he look at him, fiction Haneke on a couple in distress or disturbing imagery behind on authentic events? and finally, another consequence: how is it that our eye is hopelessly attracted to this TV in the background while we watch a fiction? Television therefore draws our attention, but at the same time we let in the background (the vast majority of spectators are to be ignored to focus on the couple), that its role: it entertains. This can not be simply a video image that George wakes up, it will be a drawing, image rather than an estate, because the flood of TV buries the difference in abundance, hides the meaning in the differentiation. Haneke's film, and all his movies, is trying to find the primary power of childlike, he wants to give the images a force that denies the television constantly. Considering the visceral impact of his films, one can say he succeeded very well.


Gran Torino (2008, Clint Eastwood)

This choice will probably appear less obvious, but it must be emphasized the impeccable work of Eastwood during this decade: Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby , Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima , Changeling and now Invictus ; Eastwood ample dominates Hollywood. Gran Torino, perhaps less successful than others, remains his most personal and perhaps most important in its own mythology. He finished his career here as an actor with a rare grace and elegance. Eastwood reworks the same character from the Leone westerns, the character he honed role-role, or rather it is morally walk: unnamed killer, he gradually learns to distance themselves from the violence that has made its mark up Unforgiven final where violence is used reluctantly. Gran Torino is a reply to Unforgiven, Eastwood corrects the last time his work: the situation is the same, we must act of revenge because the enemy is too far gone, there will be a duel. In Unforgiven, Eastwood abandons violence that had pushed so far, but in Gran Torino Finally, he made the right choice, he refuses any violent act. The final Gran Torino is very moving in the context of the work of Eastwood and in this sense the symbolism quite supported (Christ figure, the actor who sacrifices himself) is not a caricature: not only the young Vietnamese Eastwood bequeathed his old tank is also to us viewers, it's not just Kowalski who sacrifices himself, Eastwood is itself means that we as his gift, which kills his character as it is officially issued at the end of its stroke which leaves us the way his last teaching. Gran Torino has its faults, but the last act of a player in the paths of the most important American filmography recently, one of the few stars who chose his roles and has worked to make us follow his own thinking and philosophical journey.


I Do not Want To Sleep Alone (2006, Tsai Ming-Liang)

This list is the movie that I remember the least, that I feel less able to analyzed. It seems that we as a problem of distributors Montreal, which seems to deny us our pleasures Asian constantly. To my knowledge, no Ming-liang have been screened in Montreal, outside festival and cinematheque. When will we see her Faces ? I still rage against the lack of Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Hou Hsiao-hsien) in our rooms, the DVD does not do justice to such a great movie, with its transfer botching missed the whole game about colors.

Enough wailing, the memory of this film is not so vague, some plans are embedded in me, but for the final, especially, that I retain the Ming-Liang over another (What time is it there? would equally have been part of this list): no sound, as water on the screen, then the three protagonists appear, drifting on the same mattress floating music takes off, more aesthetic emotion of the decade, a QED title and therefore the work of Ming-Liang, focusing on urban isolation. Need we say more? That Ming-Liang is the largest contemporary cameraman? Tati he revives his way to create subtle visual gags? He shoots better than anyone loneliness? He can embody the music on the screen, giving his pop songs with lyrics seemingly mundane reality and a truth most devastating? Through his paintings anecdotal, Ming-Liang created the best atmospheres bittersweet, he plays with the absurd (in the sense of Camus) and delusional behavior (back all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time) to discuss the modern disillusionment, making it the largest and most important contemporary filmmakers simply.

suite very soon ...

Perrier When Pregnant

Lars Von Trier ... Oh ... It's one of the filmmakers I've admired for years and whom I eventually lost all passion. In my head, he won a time as the largest contemporary cinematic genius before recently becoming more a vile manipulator reaches of anti-Americanism and gear for now stand somewhere between these two extremes. Antichrist, though, I waited, because I like Gainsbourg and Dafoe, because I love horror movies, and do not want a scandal at Cannes?

Maybe to see him in the morning cup of coffee in hand, reduces the strength, because I still looking for that primary and visceral experience that we promised. It's a little danger of that word experience elsewhere: increasingly we hear of the experience of cinema, see a movie like experience. Many critics of the last von Trier (including Roger Ebert ) leave out all the symbolism or the possible interpretation of the film by saying, misogynist or not, Antichrist is an experience, a ride that must try. It is almost a pragmatic argument: the film makes me an effect, no matter where, so that it is valid. It also subjectivism applications as it denies the discussion focus only on feelings, personal of course, since others are bored, see AO Scott . I lean more towards Scott, even if the word boredom is a bit much, the film remains interesting, unless it is awaiting the final act so described and decried that we fear a priori. Finally, defend Antichrist saying it's a powerful experience, it is a point of view as little critical to say that it's a boring film.

It took me a while to find positive reviews and analysis that managed to go beyond the subjective description of a particular experience. There here, there's more here and the same article also points us here. Let

wholesale the argument: he, the character of Willem Dafoe, imprisons her (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in a rational framework in refusing to mourn their son in the gentle irrationality of his inconsolable grief; He represents what condescending paternalism which was used to demean women through the ages. For my part, I do not see how this speech really applies to the character of Dafoe. If the irony of which expressed the face of Von Trier seems obvious therapeutic tool (the childish fear of the pyramid, role playing that are obviously ridiculous nothing to help her, etc..) I more misery to understand what makes him so bad to her. His stoic attitude at the outset is one of listening, he endured the insults and personal attacks without flinching, he just accepts the irrationality of his wife. He even displayed a rather generous gesture when he decided to put aside his own grief to deal fully with the much more difficult for his wife. Stupid decision, it means, what therapist would treat his wife in a situation as difficult, involving them both equally, but this is one of the few mistakes we can charge him. She, however, eventually embody everything she wanted in her thesis report on witchcraft, that is to say, this vision of the woman hysterical, irrational, head of evil, the antichrist whereof (as opposed to moreover, with the Christ figure in what was Emily Watson Breaking the Waves ).


There would be ironic, Von Trier has fun with these pictures just to denounce them. Personally, there is irony or not, I feel completely overwhelmed the discourse: he is trying to convince me that women are evil, or it's wrong to say that the woman is Evil, I think it's been a few decades we are rehashing these ideas. The irony, anyway, I hardly feel (but I guess it is there, as Von Trier Von Trier). Absolutely True example tells us that the codes are grotesque horror film purposely, just to put us at a distance, yet to me they are ridiculous, period. The film is structured in three acts, but he might well have stopped after the first, the two others being variations (thin) on the same theme. Ditto for codes of horror: the music down, the violence, the sequences dream, everything is too front to be efficient. The scene where she hears a cry unknown for example, believing it to his son in distress, is strangely built a sound point of view, the shout is located in the center, as behind the screen, that from the outset we made it clear that this is a hallucination. The scene is long and the cry is always centered at the same noise when it runs in all directions, the scene loses its interest when we understood since, within seconds, there is hallucination, the director does we need more son playing the show in silence, but he will anyway. We can not even share the distress of it because it's so obvious that she hallucinates, his frantic search eventually leave us indifferent. It's a little diagram of the entire film, repetition of ideas and effects that supported the long and exhausting indifferent.

The last act, therefore, seems quite unnecessary and truly pornographic. The violence comes only repeat once more what we hear anyway from the beginning, the monster is released and gives reason for all the talk about which it is supposed irony. There is no reflection on the violence, it is just for effect, for finally doing this horror film. I am fond of this movie, gore and extreme movie, I'm not at my first leg pierced by a crankshaft (you will tell me that after all these texts on abjection and the representation of violence I'm not very consistent - I will return safely). In Antichrist yet shocking violence, not by its excesses, but because it's only there to shock, to show off ostentatiously. Asian films extremes of recent years also offer such violence exhibitionist, whose purpose is to cause as much, but everything has gone back on entertainment in a fun sort of contest of who can be more devious and imaginative in sprawl of this violence. It does not serve a speech she did not symbolic, it exists only for itself. Violence Antichrist used primarily to transcribe into action the ideas previously supported in words, a kind of reification of discourse on women, which makes the blow quite unnecessary as fundamentally repetitive. It is a way to completely insert the nail clubbed disproportionate. Certainly, it is left stunned and disgusted. The problem is in function: it does not bother me they are trying to disgust me just for the pleasure of being disgusted, it's harder to accept when violence was a function can not assume, by his symbolic role (redundant) which borders on the ridiculous (especially since the speech is stale). The last sentence of her (and the movie I think) is something like: "None of This Is" any use at all ", as AO Scott is quite the impression I got out of the projection .


Across Von Trier has reiterated that this film was written during a depression, it is a sort of cure or outlet for the author. One would think in this case that violence is cathartic, or it tends to sublime Burke and Kant, as some images also might suggest, by their representation of a terrifying nature. However, as Von Trier refuses this view, violence is not liberating, it only serves to press again even more despair. The author notes here image (successful elsewhere, such as there are many, the film is not a total disaster) of a plant that He offers it as condolences. Von Trier will zoom on the roots and dirty muddy water of the vase rather than the flowers themselves, he points to the horror of the bottom which supports Venustic top, a little like David Lynch who returns his camera underground at the beginning of Blue Velvet . There is the whole film project, and also its limits: not only point to the ugly, we forget the existence of beauty, which nevertheless serve to enhance the quality of ugly. That is to say that for us to share a despair, or that of his characters, the filmmaker should not shoot the ground, it must also leave us a glimpse of the sky, if only for the veil soon. Like any good suspense, it is necessary that the character has a chance of escape, otherwise the tension dies because his fate is already set, it also here: as we realized in minutes that von Trier is interested only muddy roots, everything that follows becomes uninteresting, it only becomes a festival of overbidding. Moreover, mixing like that a film about despair and a discourse on women as a source of evil, it gives the impression teenager that the author has just been royally dumped by a chick and he wants revenge against the fairer sex in full force ...

More seriously, the dedication to Tarkovsky, frankly ironic it shows both the poverty of speech Von Trier, contrasting with his cynical pessimism that most human of Russian film: in fact, von Trier takes Tarkovsky down. "Nature is Satan's Church" is the antithesis of the whole work of Tarkosvki, for whom nature is God's work, since it is often a source of purification, rebirth and redemption, state absent the whole work Von Trier (though sometimes evokes them, but never without his eternal irony). The plan Antichrist most similar to Tarkovsky is when He stands in tall grass, almost motionless, a gentle wind which thrilled the greenery, and the rain falls suddenly, almost silent. Visually, we are close to Tarkovsky, but symbolically, we are the opposite: the Russian director, the rain comes to wash, it is a source of redemption. At the end of Stalker example, when men abandon their project so close, the rain falls in the building open for cleanse them of their despair, redemption will be offered in the following epilogue. When water falls on him in Antichrist, on the contrary, the feeling of despair is increased, the rain is threatening, it is a premise for a storm (if I remember correctly, the last image before the third chapter before the Apocalypse).


This anti-Tarkovsky makes us understand what is wrong Antichrist, as noted in the text it, but as an aside, as if it were unimportant. Tarkovsky, unlike von Trier, including the Bible and its symbols, he can use them in all their depths, while Von Trier instead relying solely platitudes, obvious that the figures merely reverse (Eden as film horror) or simply evoke mythologise to his psychological drama. The woman thus far is described as the source of evil than as a creative force. This reflection on the creation of cycle life and death, is still more interesting than the simple sociological observation of the dichotomy male / female. From the opening scene, Von Trier linking sex and death, it will take until the female genital finals. There is therefore a Puritanism (male) criticized, especially when she refuses him sex that she needs to express. He forces the discharge, which eventually explode in one of the strongest scenes first, then she asks him to hit her when they finally make love, then in the grand finale Then, however, violence tends to diminish the importance of earlier times, most newspapers and, in my opinion, most addictive, hence also the inadequacy of such violence, making obsolete the foregoing. Von Trier, of course, has nothing the Puritan (although his pessimism is entirely Protestant), while visually it passes all the taboos, penetration and cutting in close-ups, he pushes back by the very form of his film that sexual repression (sexuality obviously being associated with woman, which is blamed for the death of their son since he died while they were making love). That is, at the same time giving back to the woman's importance as a designer and in this sense it is superior to man, or at least more critical. The woman, in Antichrist, is Nature, the chthonic forces and irrational, what the author well remark here, seeing it as a tribute to the woman, while yet it is this vision of woman as witch-Von Trier tends to want to criticize. But there is actually ambiguous as it seems also true that he prefers the path of the irrational woman psychologizing discourse of man, he wants to remind us of our animal nature and primary, all that we share with our Nature mother. There is perhaps a closer relationship with Tarkosvki but the focus is very different: for Russian, irrational side of Nature is not synonymous with violence and bestiality, but rather the expression a spiritual entity that is beyond us and includes us, that we may call God or not, distress or we may even hurt us, yes, but never to the point of destruction. I imagine that von Trier wants to criticize the image of woman as witch-source-of-evil while trying to appreciate what is subtended by the image, that is to say that the appearance unreasonableness be quite decadent vision of the filmmaker, hence the confusion about the misogyny of the film possible. Especially since it must be remembered, original sin is transmitted at birth, so the woman in childbirth sends evil, the two poles are shareholders. Again, it is critical that Von Trier or the image he endorses?

However, I can hardly believe that von Trier has knowingly made a movie so stupidly misogynistic (woman = evil), I think he wants to criticize these images of women that come from the Bible, but the irony is not so obvious: the prologue, for example, True said he absolutely was photographed just as well for us mean that von Trier takes his distance, as seems to me a deep and kitsch unjustified. It's not that black and white advertising and idle emphatic is also mounting Parallel ridiculous (with a dryer, no less!) and the cheap melodrama of the situation. Total irony or bad taste? Hard to say, especially since von Trier has already indulged in something aesthetic mannerism. It makes me think, well, my creative writing teacher at CEGEP (a reference!) Who told me after the session that if I let my somewhat pervasive irony, perhaps I'd end up saying something ... Something like that Antichrist: Often a great formal beauty, but in the service of ideas brought a confused college students in a bric-a-brac of references more or less mastered the hell we are trying to cover under the excuse of irony (and perhaps also the dream, the film wanting to be more metaphorical, mythological than realistic ).

Nadine Jansen Tied Up Vids Jugger

Place the real

I just finished reading the book of Kracauer's Redemption of Physical Reality , an essay that focuses on the special relationship between the real and cinematic image. For Kracauer, the real is the basic tool of cinema (and photography), its unique attribute that radically different from other types of artistic expression. The strength of the photographic image is its ability to capture the ephemeral, changing the details of reality that we overlook in our daily lives.

For me, the book is essential, especially for its epilogue where the author places the film in a philosophical and ideological, especially in a spiritual crisis, a rise of science, a loss of benchmarks often portrayed in the twentieth century emerging. Kracauer spoke in particular of a new tendency to abstraction, to deprive the real aspect of all too concrete for design only in abstract patterns, which is reminiscent of John Saul and his critique of reason , particularly in its approach to technical technicians (technocrats Saul would say) "are interested in functions and values rather than for and loved" (Kracauer), they reason thus abstractions - but this way of thinking is not just the technocrats, we are all responsible, as reflects a common technical language more and more flourishing (how new words are introduced each year in computer only?) In addition to this technicality, there is a relativism increasingly common (and more harmful). The media are partly responsible for this new ideology: to force to pass a variety of views of the most diverse, we are confronted with the fragility of our own. The proliferation of image we are constantly reminded that our position in time and space is unique, that our perceptions are related to this site. But by any relative, any look, we "run the risk of neglecting the very essence of the various value systems that we are exposed" (Kracauer). To really understand value system, a culture, we must engage in it, we must explore the interior, do not look, or just last.

Strangely, this conception of reality in abstract terms comes at a time when we hear more and more materialistic, scientific, pragmatic (in the philosophical sense specific Peirce, James Dewey and others). Science, for example, is interested first and foremost to the real, but to do it off a specific element that analysis out of context, so in an abstraction. By moving away from religion, it has not rushed to embrace real now dusted off its idealistic trappings, it was sent instead to re-wrap it in a new structure dematerializing. Pragmatism and its popularity are clear evidence of this idea in theory, pragmatism is a more than a philosophy, a sort of empirical test that shall undergo any metaphysical system to be considered valid. According to the pragmatists, an idea must lead to action or effect in the real, otherwise it is uninteresting. After Hegel and Kant would say pragmatic philosophy has sunk too far into idealism, to the point of losing sight of reality. William James, however, in his Will to Believe (title says), offers a definition of truth leads to relativism derealizing when he sees any real satisfactory proposal. An idea is true if it satisfies me, regardless of whether you thought the opposite and that you also meet (there are many nuances to do here, for example James talks over a perspectivism, a truth that does you still have not abstracted from its context, but James's position has been criticized as subjectivism and received distressing, by Bertrand Russell and others). So, the Christian religion, for example, is true for me because it makes me act, but this does not prove that God exists, only that belief in Him is true for me. Ultimately, there is a return to reality, by its emphasis on action, which is lost once in a subjective truth. All opinions are good often do we hear today (especially in art for that matter), derives from pragmatism also demonstrating that abstraction unstablizing.

How then reconnect with reality? The movie would it be pragmatic tool par excellence, a kind of idea about the real acting? Why not: the movies, as with the pragmatic, action is essential, since through it we can only have access to the idea, a conscience. As the film, by default, can only represent the surface of things, this is an action, a gesture or movement which can reveal the depth, as with the pragmatic idea is valid if it generates an action. Moreover, pragmatism leads relativism as cinema can supply it because, as we have seen, the media and the image we are accustomed to seeing the world as fragmented, as refracted through various points of view. So there is more of a connection to be made between this method and philosophy that art, both have been born almost simultaneously at the turn of the century and found their strongest expression in America, a country still firmly under construction action-oriented, but the power of cinema than that of pragmatism, or at least should, since it does not advocate a return to reality to escape some idealistic views, it is also the developer of this real.

It must first be said that this quest for the real art is an old notion that seems to find its most complete expression in film - until new technology offers better reproduction of reality (3D can be, but I'm skeptical ). In painting, reality is never directly re-produced, rather it is represented, that is to say imagined, designed, staged. The artist has a total control over all its tools, on its frame that can never be limited by material considerations, its colors, shapes, etc.. For Kracauer, this control inevitably leads us to seek meaning in a painting, an interpretation, as the artist has decided to compulsorily every detail, there must be a meaning behind every gesture. While at the cinema and photography, there is a certain amount of unexpected indeterminacy - an image can even seem totally insignificant. In painting, the material (the real) disappears behind the intention, whereas in the cinema this material remains constant on screen, we are directly confronted.

The film puts us in front of everyday reality in all its banality, without any technical or scientific abstraction, we present reality with the power of its insignificance, the film becomes a cure before the actual disease evanescent, hence the need for exploration of reality more than manipulation, as if reality is too manipulated, too diluted in the arts of directing, the film loses power, it is is theatrical or literary. Robert Flaherty, however, reminds us that "Can not superimpose stories of studio pre-fabricated on real locations without the truth of the background only enhances the artificiality of the story" because the real, the movies will always be stronger than the narrative it serves, there is a universality in the cinematic image that transcends any narrative regionalism. A face that expresses the pain or joy, though the emotion is rooted in a specific narrative, it remains a universal image, without any comprehensible narrative. Similarly for most everyday items like a street furniture, landscape, details of the real image that invade and permeate. Is in the details of everyday life, the "flow of life" (Kracauer) that is the power of cinema.

There is an idea that goes back to what I wrote earlier on realism ( here and here ), that is to say that we appear any realistic narrative minor focuses on daily life, routine and habit, which defies morality and sursignification, a story focusing on the "flow of life." Kracauer also offers that luck is one of the main strengths of cinema, a way to bypass a story by introducing a non-causal, as in Chop Shop, which is composed of repeats, the story clicks because the character main, by chance, sees his sister into prostitution, luck starts the drama. Kracauer connects the film to modern literature, Proust in particular, but also to Joyce and Virginia Wolfe, authors of stream-of-consciousness concerned with the everyday and the anecdotal to the detriment of a clear narrative and clear structured (authors Moreover, inspired by the theories Psychological James, who coined the term stream-of-consciousness, and the writings of his brother, the writer Henry James). Among these authors, the chaos of reality is filtered through the consciousness of their characters, it was ordered by the thought of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses example, as does the cinema. In this regard, Kracauer cites Michel Dard (quotation from human Value film that Kracauer was translated into English and I retranslated into French, did not find the original source): "By withdrawing all things outside their chaos in order to plunge into the chaos of our souls, the film causes large eddies in these [...] "In structuring and chaos, by rearranging the real, the film manages to see what other real shifty.

It performs this function when revealing that the film is most critical because it not only can discover the daily life, these gestures, these objects, such as urban landscapes or natural we usually overlook, but it can also allow us to approach the staggering horror. Kracauer, which I repeat here the words, the film brings the myth of Medusa horrifying monster erect a statue of a person her eyes, she was decapitated by Perseus who, with his shield-mirror can approach avoiding this look. Medusa is the real horror, the terrifying reality that we can not contemplate directly, while monstrous event that we struggle to conceive without shaking. The shield-reflector, the cinema is the means by which we can not only finally approach this horror and actually see, through a single reflection, but also through which we can decapitate the horror, then passing it without the rule, by facing rather the only way possible, that of representation.

I quoted two or three times the famous text on the abjection of Rivette shot in Kapo ; this thesis Kracauer, a priori, seems to oppose it. In fact, these two ideas are far from being contradictory. Rivette does not say that the extermination camps, for example, are unrepresentable (as Lanzmann can do it), he says they are not representable as Pontecorvo did, that is to say by excess aesthetics soothing. Make it acceptable horror (real as well) through a camera movement that denies making it beautiful, that's abjection, like a travesty of reality that Kracauer also denounced. And the latter, when he speaks of Medusa, speaks specifically of archive footage, not a fictionalized representation of horror. It is the image which allows to approach the monster, but the documentary image and true, that which is closest to the real, not a recreation of an extermination camp for example. Kracauer is actually quite close to the Aristotelian catharsis: the picture can we heal from the horror, as representing theater can heal our passions. Redemption of Physical Reality is this ability of the film, the image, when sufficiently steeped in reality, to bring us back to the reality that more and more leaks. Just when the new slogan for Cineplex Odeon that one must undergo before each film: Place to escape ...

How To Swallow With Tonsilitis

From image to simulacra

To begin, recall that my entries inspired by my previous reading of Voltaire's Bastards , an essay by John Saul on the tail of reason in Western society over the last two centuries. So far, I have followed quite closely the thinking of Saul, that I now use instead as a springboard. I had to return to the point of departure is to say, this seemingly bottomless void between film critics and the general public, but I bypassed a little longer, deeper question of just this idea of image dead.

I talked a lot about death in image conformity and uniformity television wrongs that have been criticized as in many Hollywood movies, movies that are said also more television. Should first define this aesthetic television: predominance of dialogue, poor image losing its status as virtually narrative as she only serves to account for the dialogue, which essentially translates into worktops, generally close, with characters frontally, almost no depth of field, quick (three or four seconds per plan), a kind of zero degree of staging so that the image is ultimately useless, distracting eyes to better capture Listening attentively to the words (and words only, since we could also add surround sound minimum). It's all about the aesthetics of the television series, filmed mainly on the radio, or perhaps the theater in close-ups (hence the interpretation outrageous, intolerable to so close), the dramas have all of same vocabulary picture book a little richer. The film accuses the TV usually have bequeathed him an aesthetic as flat, having popularized a type of image so simple that it became difficult to provide images more complex and meaningful. Or, he said that since it is distributed largely outside the halls, it is much smaller than seen on the big screen, it adapts to new conditions by adopting the style of the smaller screen, question does not offend the viewer-house. Thus, for a time the cameras were consistent keeping in mind both the movie format (rectangular) that the television format (square), managing to not put too meaningful elements in the margin, since it will disappear when projected on television. That changes a bit today, with digital displays and greater familiarity in panoramic format, but the difference is superficial: the images are more "beautiful", worked more, while remaining as insignificant.

Ah, this Amadeus, key example of a loss of direction in TV format: the disappearance of the two figures flanking the stage may seem trivial, but the character of Salieri is left, our narrator often like that in this primer, a reminder that we face at the point of view, subtlety lost in 4:3 ...

The main reason behind this line is an especially productivity, Hollywood having given the task of producing vast quantities of images. Unlike television, which as we have seen, requires images by its very nature, in the case of film this is not the medium itself which controls the images, but rather the industry so decided. It should not criticize too much television when we impose an aesthetic borrows its ambitions. Finally, to achieve his ideal of productivity, Hollywood has built a production system where the creative elements (first director and the writer) are used in the same way that a single technician. For, in fact, the average Hollywood director is no more than what we see in movies, that is to say a guy (and almost always a guy for that matter) said that action once from time to time. This is not new: the studios also functioned under the aegis of producers, the real architects of this system. The director, producer if not, can not enter an editing room, he does not participate in the scenario, it is present only on the set where he used to place the camera and direct actors.

David Bordwell, in his blog, discusses here this site maintained by the director in Hollywood. To summarize, the problem is that the filmmakers now turning more and more equipment to protect themselves they say (the notion of "coverage"). Thus, when several cameras filming the same scene, where a AFH, there are still others that provide an accurate picture. Multi-camera filming, however, is not an ideal situation: First, it reduces the choice of camera position, since all cameras must stay off camera. So, all cameras may be placed more or less on the same axis, an issue also comply with these good old 180 degrees, one filming the whole, the other a close-up of the character left, and a third a closeup of the character right. This essentially replaces the traditional method of turning a camera where you started with a comprehensive plan, then redo the scene in close-up, then close, alternating actors. Productivity increased at the expense of creativity of course, since the director has no need to wonder where to place the camera in fact it should rather wonder where to put its three cameras to prevent them from filming each other. It is a game of logic, there is nothing that takes the art. Bordwell cites the photo director of Gladiator , who shot some scenes with seven cameras, explaining his choice with that sublime sentence: "I Was thinking, 'Someone has got to Be Getting Something Good." "Finally, get a good image, that is to say an image technically correct, does more than chance.


This way of filming destroyed more creativity that the director has no say in the assembly. Producers want their directors, stage technicians rather, they filmed several cameras for each scene will have several plans with which they can then play their way to mount the stage as they please. The film is no longer on the set, where no election is finally done, but in the editing room, which belongs to the producer, the very man who also had the final word on the script. Some filmmakers skillfully circumventing traditional problem: Hitchcock's example was mounted directly in the shooting, he turned his scenes and even his plans in an orderly and virtually any way it's filmed so there was only one way to go. John Ford also worked well, Soderbergh now refuses to turn on several cameras. It's actually the only remedy of a non-producer filmmaker who wants to keep some control over his work up his film before turning and turn accordingly, so that the editor did not have too much freedom on equipment. This excludes obviously turning as much as possible "to protect themselves." That explains

largely compliance Hollywood: the filmmakers are interchangeable, leaving only the personality of the producers, if ever, by chance, they have. This way multiple cameras to film actually derives from television sitcoms such as who, as public tours before, using multiple cameras so that actors can play their scenes without interruption. In film, the result is essentially the same type of image (same method, same result?), Only to look more slick, more elaborate lighting and art direction technically flawless. Images of banality frightening, hidden under a veneer aesthetisising.

Obviously, the rational structure wanton described by Saul is not alien to this mode of production denying creativity for the benefit of productivity. However, because the contemporary version appears much more evident in our comprehensive report to the image. We must return here on the relationship between word and image on television among others, governed by our priests and journalists. If words are so important on TV, it is obviously that images are not. Just watching a news report tells us nothing, the images which follow are empty and without content, even to the point where it is impossible to know how new it is. For example in the case of murder or an incident with the victim, the police do not always allow reporters to approach the scene. Obliged to produce images, reporters filming the red ribbon and vehicles in the distance, an image without context that tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening. Only the voice of the reporter informs us, the images serve only to words of support. You can say the same of soap opera: cut the sound and it is impossible to know what happens. It's not quite true of Cinema, Hollywood is still rooted in action, not necessarily in the action film with explosion and everything, but the character is revealed by an act by example. The dialogues are essential for the intelligibility of the work, but it is often possible to understand the tenor of events presented only through the image (which is also due to this famous Hollywood redundancy by which everything must be repeated three times often in the image and sound).

But what happens exactly, tells us this image of a typical newscast?

The problem with these images, empty of content injected by speech, interpreted by the words is that they still give us the impression of being meaningful, or, to be exact they seem to us to attend the event, "as if we were there." Yet without the word, it is impossible to know what, exactly, we participate, but the perfection of mechanical reproduction of reality offered by the photographic image gives us the illusion of direct experience and therefore a greater knowledge of the world. And then, the realism of the photographic image becomes particularly dangerous since it is a misconception purveyor of the world. These images that assail us every day are a sham, merely a mechanical reproduction of a reality that was before the eye of a camera almost by chance, and they are certainly not a source of knowledge.

The image is magical, I wrote in my previous post, she takes us into it to make us experience the world. The dummy also gives the impression that we do see the world, but this is an illusion. All we see is the simulacrum as a sham. Therein lies the danger because, as has been repeated so often (and so) Baudrillard simulacrum which is what has now covered the real point of hiding almost completely, the card which now covers the territory. The problem is not the abundance of images, but the abundance of images, images purporting to involve us in the world when they are merely a reflection of themselves. But the realism of the photographic image is so strong that we are easily absorbed by these simulacra, especially since the words that accompany them invite us. When Saul talks about the artist who can no longer serve as a critical pillar of society, is what he describes is the artist ordered to make the flight, the frills and "beautiful" An artist who embellished, so who is sentenced to sham (beauty is the best way to seduce sham).

Do not overlook the repetitive nature of these images, their redundancy, because the important thing is not the content but the stimuli, sensation. Pictures accompany the words in order to satisfy that thirst audio-visual stimulation, these images are intended as a drug and we consume them as such, as if they allowed us to cross time and space, as if we discovered with them ubiquitous. And like a drug, the consumption is increasing with time, while the pace of these images will increase inexorably. Soon, the average time a plan will be only a fraction of a second, we can not content ourselves with a mere 24 frames per second. The mock

leads us to see a world that is false, which is precisely the simulacrum, which is the rational abstraction, so the structure that enabled its emergence. At rub those paltry force visual look heavier and becomes lazy, he does not need to look to see. But while the picture becomes increasingly pervasive, there is a parallel deterioration of language, as if the opportunities offered by a picture reproducing perfectly the reality supplanted the language as a means of communication or even way of thinking . However, thought needs to be articulated abstraction allowed by the words and in any case these images fail to connect that with the words that accompany them. All Languages poorer, that words like image; how do we communicate then, or rather, what is communicated by these juxtapositions audio-visual?

It is often said that today we learn to read an image faster than before. We see so many images, so young that we can easily capture and decode them, so that we can include a series of images that are only a few seconds. Nonsense, of course. Decode these images we so easily do not ask to be decoded, they give us, through this banality that I blame them, by their total detachment from the real deal. Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown purports to show the genius of Da Vinci highlighting the structural elements of the Mona Lisa, some of which are fairly obvious to anyone who stopped for more than three or four seconds on the canvas. The Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting in the history of art, how is it that we can still be surprised by a detail of an image that we have been overexposed, especially if as is so often said, we are now masters in understanding images?

Film critics often say that Learn to read an image, once done this learning with the tools needed to better appreciate and ultimately criticize. Some knowledge of art history is therefore necessary to appreciate a work. What is true and false: true, insofar as being able to locate a work in context that allows us to better bring out the features. But also false since we work resonates in a personal way, without the context in which they were created intervenes: my favorite movies are movies that have a unique place in history art, but films that have a special place in my story. I would say that this taming of the image is necessary because of our context of overflow and abundance, but we should say, more precisely, that we must not learn to read an image, but to distinguish a living representation of a sham.

Read an image means to learn more technical concepts related to image creation, including the principles of composition, which can be useful but not essential, or even useless. It is possible to understand the content of an image without having to describe more Technically, mentioning only the ideas it raises. We do not need to know how many gold film appreciate Greenaway, or any other conventional notion of proportion, yet its almost always use the frames (especially done in its embedded images). They are not these concepts to be learned, but rather an intuition, emotion may be a sensitivity in any case that is only acquired through a detox, that is to say by prolonged contact with strong images, or simply with real images rather than mock.


I wanted to talk about the abyss-critical audience, I'm still far away ... These paragraphs seem to mean "the critic, however, knows differentiate the image of the dummy so that the public does not know" but frankly I doubt it. First, because some films have a particularly immoral relationship with the image and they are generally acclaimed ( Downfall, Schindler's List more recently here Polytechnic even to this subject text by Andre Habib on Hors Champ ) but also, more Simply because this idea is more theoretical than pragmatic, the difference between the sham and the image "real" is far from being so obvious. In addition, most films produced today have cut almost all ties with reality, they inhabit a fantasy world of cinema. In fact, the cinema has always been a world alongside the reality, but it was attached, the transition is made from one to another (I think this image to fly in Serge Daney Perseverance , but the memory is vague ...) and now the bridges are cut. It seems impossible now talk about reality without a genre: American films of the moment are more politically District 9, which reworks the codes of science fiction to deal with xenophobia, or Inglourious Basterds , which I mentioned here labor image. The reality is dealt with only through the kind of allegory or even a speech on the image, as in these two films. This is especially true in Hollywood, for sure, who hurries to integrate all issues of the day in a known structure, the kind of like State of Play, Thriller ordinary erecting a portrait very lazy journalism paper in decline. To address the world today, this film through references to the cinema of the 70s, he remains in his imagination and referential bubble, confined in the film world, but never dared approach the reality he claims to criticize. I dare

this theory: the public and the critic both appreciate this imaginary world unattached to reality, but in different ways, hence the disagreement. The public feasts on entertainment So fictions away as possible from reality, whose ultimate goal is to have forgotten. The use of a structure reassuring and rational (genus) permits. The criticism, he likes this imaginary world he knows very well, it explores a long time, he is the expert. Him, he treats instead of those films that play in this imaginary world, which construct or deconstruct. State of Play in , what interests him is not the suspense that boast the public, but the fact that it recognizes the codes of the films of Alan J. Pakula. One way or another, we are in both sham and attitudes recognize and appreciate it as such: the public will say frankly that he does not think going to the views that he wants to forget the depressing reality for a while, and it penalizes the simulacrum. The critical way in fun games repositories or continually comparing its securities-games-to-work analyzed the words to those that precede it, acknowledges that the film exists only in his fantasy world, that of cinema - I've never read a newspaper critic who runs a discourse on the image, that is to say who would question the relationship between image and reality. By cons, there is almost always questions about the relationship between image and image, between this film and others. We must believe that whatever the critic knows, the movies, and more.

"The ability of cinema to testify, to be-there-in-the-present, having nearly disappeared, he found himself obliged to invent imaginary worlds to explore the mind. "Said Daney Perseverance in . The cinema, after witnessing the real image, does not testify more than the image by image. Does this mean, like Godard, the film is dead? Or is that Bazin and all others are in the field, it was overvalued the ontology of the image, is what cinema is an art of imagination than of reality? Still following Godard, there is rather pass from one to another, after his failure to testify in history (eg the Holocaust), the image was permanently removed from reality, she sank in the imagination after being unable to represent the Unimaginable. Hence Today the ubiquity of sham ...