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 ...
