UP

UP the new 3D animation from Pixar is at one and the same time a simple and beautiful love story and an exploration of the medium of animation. 3D is used here not as an effect but as an enhancement, a way of transforming the artifice and artificiality of animation into a narrative of an old man's love of his deceased wife. The old man struggles with modernity, with change and with urbanization. His search for a lost Eden is really a search for his lost childhood. In fact the film is about the symbols and objects that make up and give meaning to life at any age. Well worth a visit to the theater.

Photographic Fictions

There is an empty space between Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye (which invests every look with fantasy and converts every fantasy into a series of images) and the technological determinism of László Moholy-Nagy (a member of the Russian constructivist movement of the 1920’s): “Photography, then, imparts a heightened, or [in so far as our eyes are concerned] increased, power of sight in terms of time and space. A plain, matter-of-fact enumeration of the specific photographic elements — purely technical, not artistic, elements — will be enough to enable us to divine the power latent in them, and prognosticate to what they lead.” Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Moholy-Nagy (New York: Praeger, 1970) 52.

For Moholy-Nagy the activity of taking photographs and looking at them, encourages the human eye to evolve into a new state, with radically new goals. Moholy-Nagy proposes close parallels between the technological language of photography and such terms as, abstract seeing, exact seeing, rapid seeing, slow seeing, intensified seeing, penetrative seeing, simultaneous seeing and distorted seeing. To him these exemplify new configurations of human sight generated out of the relationship of technology and human activity. The camera so to speak is woven into the eye and it is Moholy-Nagy’s contention that the eye must as a result, change. A direct line is established between picture-taking, the image, vision (as response) and thought. This is in part why Moholy-Nagy privileges the scientific importance of photography and trivializes its artistic role. In contrast to Bataille, for whom the word and the image are located in the imaginary and for whom the imaginary is, so to speak, located in the eye, Moholy-Nagy seeks truth as the epistemological grounding for what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable as image. “the real photographer has a great social responsibility. He has to work with these given technical means which cannot be accomplished by any other method. This work is the exact reproduction of everyday facts, without distortion or adulteration. This means that he must work for sharpness and accuracy. The standard of value in photography must be measured, not merely by photographic esthetics, but the human-social intensity of the optical representation.” (Kostelanetz 56)

The quote above must be understood as one of the key assumptions in the description of photography as a medium, the melding of scientific and aesthetic concerns around ideas of representation, the attempted fusion of technology and the eye. Moholy-Nagy anticipated the pivotal role of photography in generating scopic regimes which would validate cultural presumptions of truth. He could not have anticipated the way photography would evolve as a distinctive marker for temporal shifts, as an integral and strategic respondant and creator of historical discourses. Yet, he would have been aware that he was in fact creating a context for the photographic image which locates its truth value in the power of its reproductive aesthetic and its instrumental role. And he would have known that he was following the Cartesian imperative to rid the world of its optical illusions, to find truth in the visible and to make the visible truthful. For Moholy-Nagy, the mental, the physical and the real gain their strength from the image. The image becomes that schematic point of reference which allows technology to transcend the inconsistencies and weaknesses of the human eye. His was as much a technical as a pedagogical imperative. The aim was to use the image to teach some basic truths about the human condition, to strip away those categories of seeing which the “eye” of everyday life imposes on human subjectivity. In positing such a direct link between knowing and seeing, Moholy-Nagy makes use of a model of mind which enframes knowledge as visual and which constructs the mind as a mirror of the world around it. That model continues to resonate with some power in present day discussions of images, particularly with respect to the role of images in the media. Joel Snyder dissects the ideology which underpins this conception of the image in “Picturing Vision,” The Language of Images ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) 219-246.

ADORATION: Atom Egoyan's new film

“Adoration,” the new film by Atom Egoyan is a profound and extended exploration of language and memory through the eyes of a young teenager. In particular, the film tries to understand what happens to a child who cannot comprehend the death of his parents other than through the fragments and ellipses of conversations and comments by relatives and friends.

This is a deeply psychoanalytic film. It is psychoanalytic not because as some critics have suggested it is a coming of age film. Rather, each character has to come to terms with their own role dealing with trauma both within their families and as observers.

The psychoanalyst is the viewer who has to delve into the contradictory narratives that the characters use to justify their state of mind and relations with each other. But, viewers cannot solve the issues, cannot intervene and must struggle on their own with the implications of losing control over the evolution of the story. In some senses, this mirrors the challenges of the main characters. They cannot exert control over their memories or even put those memories into some kind of clear order. It takes an outsider, in this case Sabine a teacher to reestablish some sense of direction for the family.

As R.D. Laing once put it, the problem with families is that everyone has a different point of view of the same experiences, and each person feels that their point of view is the correct one. As a result, families are always in conflict with the memories that they share.

In this case, the child has no memory of his parent’s death other than through the metaphors given to him by his Uncle and his grandfather. The latter blames Simon’s father, Sami for killing his daughter.

What is a child to make of this? The idealizations of memory clash with the realities of a world infected by violence, much of it arbitrary. What if the death of his parents was the result of a terrorist act? Is it preferable to believe that his mother died because of a momentary mistake or because someone perpetrated an act of terror? How does a child interpret the trauma of events like September 11th in the context of personal experiences? How do impersonal events become personal? And what role does the Internet play in opening up the personal struggles of a teenager to the discourses of strangers?

As Simon delves into what turns out to be a true story about a terrorist who sends his pregnant wife on a plane with a bomb designed to destroy it, he learns through the comments of friends and others, that death by whatever means is never romantic. He learns that each person has his or her own history. He discovers the paradoxes of personal discourses, intertwined with myths and illusions and this enables him to make sense of his own history.

It is within this context that Atom Egoyan explores the complex terrain of the conflicts in the Middle East. The death of a couple in a car crash is elevated into a cultural clash. The film tests the boundaries of what can and cannot be said about the conflicts between different ethnic groups bound to ideologies that they often don’t understand. This too is about history and memory. How does hatred develop and why? Simon’s grandfather expresses the classic prejudices of someone who neither understands what he is saying nor the general implications of his words most of which inevitably lead to violence. His violence is discursive. Words matter and more often than not they are used to hurt those whom we do not understand.

Language is this rich space, this fundamental tool of communications that we as a culture have developed and also perverted. It doesn’t matter if it is the Internet or a family supper, what we say and how we say it affects not only how we perceive the world but also how we act within it.

Simon creates a story encouraged by Sabine his teacher that slowly takes on a life of its own. He uses the story to channel his confusion about his parent’s death into a convenient narrative that quite ironically fits into a preconceived cultural pattern in which the accidents of life have to be framed by some sort of rationale. As Simon learns that the value of life lies beyond the trauma of his parent’s death, he decides to purge his grandfather’s influence on him by burning something that was of great value to his grandfather. Simon also burns the Nokia cell phone that he had been using to film a series of interviews with his grandfather before his death. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. The cell phone slowly melts, the images on it pixelate, and Simon’s memories are channeled to a new level.

In one of his best books, “We Have Never Been Modern,” Bruno Latour explains that even though time moves forward, history is not so much about the past, as it is about the many ways in which the past and the present always converge. “Adoration” explores this seemingly endless clash between the past, our interpretation of it, and the implications of not putting a personal stamp on the ways in which we interpret our own histories. Truth is the crucial arbiter here. How do we gain access to the truth? Is it through images? Is it through the Internet? Is it through the eyes of a child? Where are the boundaries between innocence and insight?

In the final analysis history can never be reversed. The events of the past such as the death of Simon’s parents cannot be undone. This is the source of endless trauma and unless we can manage it, the trauma takes over not only our daily lives, not only our fantasies but also becomes the very basis upon which we interact with our families and friends.

Much of what we learn in childhood is channeled through the words of our parents and relatives. Many of our memories are the memories of others. The transformation of memory into a discourse we can control is the thematic core of Egoyan’s film. “Adoration” is a masterful story of how this process of transformation and regaining control changes Simon, but it is also an important statement about the bridges that have to be built between childhood and adulthood. Throughout the film there is one constant that unites everyone and it is the violin that his mother played. The acoustics of the violin are like the human voice. In a scene that unites the narrative, (and which we see twice), Simon’s mother stands at the edge of a pier playing a beautiful piece. In the first instance the witness is Simon as a teenager. In the second, it is Simon with his father on the fateful day of his mother’s death. Both instances clash and unite with each other. Time is conflated. All that is left is the plaintiff cry of the violin. Music is always about the evocation of memories.

A Review of Chelsea Girls by Andy Warhol + Video-Puce (in French)

Two PDF's from the distant past. In 1967, Take One Film Magazine published some interesting and important articles on the cinema. It was an independent magazine, one of the few in Canada at the time to take film seriously as an object of study and criticism. I reviewed the Andy Warhol film, Chelsea Girls after a trip to New York. The PDF Download file is available here.

In 1985, I published a piece on the relationship between images, dot-matrix printing and computer technologies. The PDF Download file is available here. This article is in French and was original published in the Journal, Copie Zero.

The Class - A Film with no class

The Class directed by Laurent Cantet won the Palme D'Or at Cannes and is in the running for best Foreign Film at the Oscars in 2009.

Since I consider this to be one of the worst films I have ever seen, and since it has received a 94 rating on Metacritic, I feel impelled to explain my very negative reaction to the film.

Aside from the endless stereotyping, the poor acting, the 'faux' realism, the impoverished use of the camera, the sheer banality of the setting, and the lack of insight about learning and education, why does this film fail so miserably?

First, there is the hubris of the writer of the film, François Bégaudeau (based on his book) also insisting that he be the main actor. This leads to the rather ironic situation of an actor who cannot act supposedly adding realism to the setting because realism, in the eyes of Cantet is obviously premised on amateurism. The more amateur, the more likely the characters will be believed. It is clear that he has learned nothing from the last decade of 'reality' TV. It is also clear that neither Bégaudeau nor Cantet have ever watched any of the films and television shows that have come out over the last twenty-five years that have as their central theme, the classroom and by extension the educational experience. Many of the young actors in this film are so poorly directed that they reveal the sheer artifice of the script with nearly every word that they say.

Second, Cantet, obviously decided that a moving camera was the best way to shoot for realism. So, the camera jumps around like news broadcasts do and like MTV used to with music videos from 1985-1995. This style, now a cliché offers nothing of substance to the thematics of the film.

What are those thematics? French society is now diverse. Their educational system is made up of well-meaning teachers who have yet to come to grips with the challenges of multiculturalism. Black students from Mali like soccer. Moroccan students like their national team. Some girls are aggressive for no apparent reason and others are intelligent but not in the right way. Oh yes, one of the black students shoots some photographs and momentarily becomes a hero before he is thrown out for undisciplined behaviour.

There are many shots of the heroic Bégaudeau playing teacher against increasingly difficult odds in a series of lengthy sequences that are notable for their sheer lack of insight into the characters let alone the teacher. There are the usual ill-informed comments about gay people accompanied by laughter on the part of the students that makes them seem to be idiots which is by the way, the outcome of the film.

At the end, the students are just not capable of really learning except for a few naturally gifted ones. There is the usual, conventional stereotype of the Chinese student who against all the odds actually applies himself and is able to answer the 'difficult' questions posed by the teacher. The banality is heightened to perhaps its greatest level of superficiality by the depiction of the school Principal who could have walked out of 50 films of the last two decades, some even from France.

What happened here? Well, this film is the cutting edge of a major crisis in the cinema. Perhaps the filmmakers and the writer don't watch much contemporary film and television. Perhaps, they were self-consciously engaging in depicting banality by reproducing it. Perhaps they were critiquing that banality. Even if I were to grant them that latitude, the film has very little to say. The crisis is in this false conception that realism is derived from and dependent upon truth. Neither documentaries nor fiction films can ever escape the conundrums of realism versus narrative. From a structural point of view, both genres share many different elements which is why a Clint Eastwood film on Iwo Jima can end up being more 'realistic' than many documentaries.

This is not the place to enter in this lengthy and historically important debate. Suffice to say, that Cantet seems to be uninterested in exploring either the medium he is using, the story he is telling or the audiences he is addressing. This is the result of an aversion to history, theory and creative engagement.

Mark Olson wrote the following in the LA Times last December: "In focusing on a single class, filled with kids from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, captured with a documentary immediacy, the film finds a snapping, pinging rhythm to present the classroom sequences, a seesaw balance between creative chaos and genuine disorder. Perhaps never before has a film been able to wring such drama from diagramming sentences and discussing the fine points of proper verb tenses." I would challenge the readers of this web site to make a list of all the films that you have seen over the years that deals with the classroom experience. Olson can only say this because he has not examined that history.

Cantet in one of many interviews claims that the film reflects the diversity of France. It does reflect precisely the superficial stereotypes of ethnic diversity with nary a moment of insight into the families we encounter through their children. This sad reductive film makes almost no use of the student actors who could have, by virtue of their own lives recounted some things of great interest to us all. I would suggest that Cantet and his crew and his writer watch "High School" by Frederick Wiseman, a film that struggles to find not one, but many voices in the maelstrom of the learning process in school. The film was made 41 years ago.
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Comment by Monique

Needless to say I have a very different take on La classe.

Despite what you perceive as the endless stereotyping, the poor acting, the faux realism, the impoverished use of the camera, the sheer banality of the setting, and the lack of insight about learning and education, I saw in the film vestiges of my own experience as a high school student in Quebec. While I was growing up in the sixties in Quebec, the Catholic Church controlled education. However, in so many ways the presence of France loomed larger than the Church. This came through in obvious ways such as in textbooks, or examples given to understand the world such as the land mass of France fits twenty times in the land mass of Quebec (something that I have never forgotten), and other such esoteric facts. And then there were numerous but perhaps more subtle ways that France as a superior country loomed as the subtext of education in Quebec at that time.

For me one of the most poignant moments in the film is when the teacher tries to teach Rimbaud which was clearly intended to highlight the gap between him and the students. The gap was not only because Rimbaud holds such an influence on French literature and art but because he represents a certain idea of education which fails to take in to account the value and richness of the student's experience.