Nuri Bilge Ceylan interview (Climates)

My notes on radio broadcast : L'avventura on France Culture with Laure Adler. (offline now)

FORMATION

• Inspired by Antonioni : L'Eclisse, L'Avventura, La Notte. (Not especially in Climates though).
• Formating experience when seeing at 16 yold Bergman's The Silence (1963). Then difficulty to track down more Bergman films (not available in Turkey).
• Autobiography by Roman Polanski was a transforming experience, that gave him an impulse to become filmmaker.
• Discovery of Antonioni, Bresson, Ozu, Bergman at the London Cinematheque.
• Quits film school after 2 years out of 4, to start making cinema. Learns filmmaking by staring in a short movie for a friend.

AUTEUR

• Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a totally independent auteur : screenwriter, producer, camera operator, editor, set designer, director of photography, actor. A filmmaker must learn how to do every trade in cinema not to be slave of standard technique and be able to create a sophisticated film [Bergman said the same thing]. Creativity starts where standard formula ends. He wants to be creative at every stage of the production.
• He was originaly photographer which helped him to understand the technique of cinema.
• Use of non-actors (his family) : he likes their spontaneity potential, their resource to give something fresh.

WORLD VISION

• Turkey : NBC is a Solitary person, not political bond with Turkey, no special connection with other turkish filmmakers Yilmaz Güney (Yol), so he has the feeling he could live in any country and do the same kind of cinema. Though, he doesn't want to live elsewhere.
• Iran : The image of Iran changed thanks to Kiarostami and iranian cinema. He thinks people in Iran are like in the movies.
• Likewise Turkey's art offer a new perspective to the world.
• Humanistic, meditative, contemplative cinema. Looking at the world through plan sequence. Lots to contemplate, to see in the film. Little dialogue and action.
• Lots of things happen between people and their relationship with nature. Perception of time, of seasons = cosmic influence on people's lives. Wind, wave in the sea, snow, sun beam... elements of nature remind man of being a tiny dot in the universe, which alters our relation to suffering.
• Off-centering of self, learning of self-identity. NBC likes his characters to lie, and that the audience be active to figure the smallest gesture that betrays this lie. In Hollywood cinema we usually believe everything the hero says, and he doesn't like that.

"I hate to explain, to insist, to convince : the audience shall guess. (...) I think the point of view of a film should be close to life. As if you observe a couple of strangers in a cafe, trying to figure their relationship, their problems." interview in Libération (01-17-2007)

"People who talk too much always bothered me. Most of is being said is hollow. (...) I never liked when feelings and reflexions are expressed through dialog. I prefer to make my characters say unsignificant things, while the underlaying subtext reveals their feelings and reflexions. I like to show everybody's real-life weaknesses, this superficial side of us." Interview in Les Inrockuptibles (01-16-2007)

FILMOGRAPHY

• Clouds of May (1999) was compared to Kiarostami by critics. Life of rural people, joy of contemplating nature.
• Uzak (2002) Istanbul under snow. Shot in NBC's own appartment. Watching Uzak is like watching a scientist experiment to observe humans like lab animals. Mamut: solitary and depressive afraid of being invaded by a stranger. Mutic game between the 2 men. Problems of vital space. Solitude, despair, delusion. Sounds of nature. Sounds interacts even image is still.

CLIMATES (2006)

• Couple fighting to figure if they will part or not. Played by real-life couple of the auteur.
• Ebru co-wrote the scenario, she was involved in the project at the beguining so him and her were meant to be in the film.
• Male POV : man is mean, indecise, violent, seductor and woman more innocent, fragile by contrast. Every man by instinct is interested by his friend's girlfriend. 10 commendments "thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife" = Men's competition (unsaid tendency): "I scored more (women) than you".
• The fact that at the ending the woman is to the East, in the snow, alone, helps the man to love her more because she needs security.
• HD is the future of cinema whether we like it or not, so better as well master it now. Freedom of images, corrected colors. He filmed some beautiful steadycam shots for Climates but he dropped them all on the editing table to only keep stationary shots, because they didn't feel right. Echo with the still photographer in him.

Another contribution to the "Contemplative Cinema" blogathon at Unspoken Cinema.

Gus Van Sant on Bela Tarr

Another contribution to the "Contemplative Cinema blogathon" at Unspoken Cinema.

My notes on Gus Van Sant's text "The camera is a machine", written for the 2001 Bela Tarr retrospective at the NYC MoMA. Published in French in Trafic #50 (summer 2004)

Upon viewing Damnation (1988), Satantango (1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Gus Van Sant reconsiders the cinematographic grammar and the influence of History (industrial revolution age) on the birth of cinema.

The films of Bela Tarr follow one of many singular paths that Cinema could have adopted if the mainstream hadn't been formated by industrial necessities. His work shows a new genuine and fruitful orientation, a cinema radicaly new starting over at its point of departure. And this cinema could only be born outside our western culture.

Bela Tarr seems to be influenced by the stationary views of steam engine machines from the XIXth century. [Reference to the famous Lumière brothers' seminal film : L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1895)]

He learnt cinema from its origin as if Modernist Cinema never existed.

In Werckmeister Harmonies there is a 5 min long shot of a mob storming down a street to go burn down a hospital. A spectator asked Bela Tarr why this shot had to last so long and he replied sincerly :

• "because the street to cross was that long"

[Which is the same answer Tsai Ming-liang did about the length of the opening shot of The Wayward Cloud, where we watch two women cross an underground tunnel, end to end, in wide angle.]

Without the shortcuts and ellipsis of the conventional vocabulary that would tell us : "The crowd moves forward", instead with emphasis on the lyrism and poetry, by sharing ideas his long take says : "The protesters progress, grimacing, raising high up their torches, some marching in synchronized rhythm, some not, sometimes turning round and movnig around, and once arrived they had come a long way."

Bela Tarr's work has an organic and contemplative approach rather than truncated and contemporary. We couldn't find this manner of contemplating life in an ordinary modern film. His films are so much closezr to the daily life rhythms that it appears we witness the birth of a new cinema. Bela Tarr is one of the few filmmakers truly visionary.

Over There : documenting contemplation

2nd post for the Contemplative Cinema Blogathon at Unspoken Cinema.

Continuation from Là-bas (2006/Chantal Akerman/Belgium/France)

In February 2005, Chantal Akerman is asked to make a documentary on Israel. Taking position, shaping a vision is complicated. She's afraid to picture this difficult nation too lightly, to give an uneducated judgment of the conflict, to oversimplify politics at work. Not belonging to Israel is also a worry. She doesn't feel at home and she can't identify her peers either. These are the dilemmas Akerman contemplates hampered by the inhibition of her neurotic denial. Although reluctant to confront a caricatural banality of long-lived clichés, she installs a camera in her rented appartment nonetheless and lets it capture life through the windows.

The reflexion about the conception thus becomes part of the documentary itself, like a very personal meta-film, which turns out to be a creative justification on the impossibility to produce satisfying images. The limitations of cinema, as a regard, in descriptive explanations. What Akerman can't bring herself to say, the strict formality of her montage reveals it. This contemplative aesthetic takes a long pause to ponder, through the physicality of wait and silences (in place of intellectualized polemics), over the state of being in Israel, the resentment of exil, the uprooting of dispora. The ambivalent Jewish fate.

The cinematic space and the auteur's scope, in a symbiotic analogy, are both divided in four constructs layered in depth: Inside, Frontier, Outside, Away.

Her spontaneous, neurotic seclusion, takes a political dimension in the context of her own double exil. She's first exiled from motherland, Israel, because her family lives in Europe, and she's exiled again, as a foreigner, once in Tel Aviv because she can't pretend to be Israeli. A feeling of being elsewhere, always out of place.

She's a child of the second generation. Her mother bears the wounds of the death camps in her flesh, Chantal does in her subconscious. She says if she had been raised in Israel she would have ran around with the other kids in the street, but in Bruxelles, going out was forbidden and she watched the kids from her window. In this film, again, she assumes the childhood conditioning and watches from behind closed windows.

INSIDE (Exil) : Bunker-appartment, safe hideout, passive observation, centrality, immobility. She is in Tel Aviv, but the closed doors make her appartment an alien territory, away from Israel, which only shows out of the windows. A microcosm in truncated details, out of context. All screens pulled down on the windows create a camera obscura, the reality from outside filters in through the gaps. We're in Plato's myth of the cave : the silhouettes at the windows are the only reality she knows of Israel.

FRONTIER (Curtain) : Initial distanciation from her environment, ambiguity conceal/reveal, overframing. The large bay-window filling the screen, replaces the cinema screen, stands for a TV screen to display movies or the News. Relating her experience to the theatre audience.

OUTSIDE (Street) : Homeland, heartland, motherland, Tel Aviv, Israel. The first layer is the invisible street down below that emits a muffled ambient noise (sound without visual). The second layer across the void, is the facade of the building, replicating/mirroring her "inside", only as seen from outside, behind their walls and curtains (partial visual without sound). Each window is a TV screen to contemplate, with its own "soap opera" with recurrant characters.

AWAY (The world) : Ideal hope. Immense, global, invisible macrocosm, out of reach, impossible to grasp. Represented by 3 elements. The planes in the sky, going to another exil. The sea, open on all sides, the polar opposite of her cealed bunker. The phone line connecting to friendly voices, breaking the exil, folding space, canceling the distances.

* * *

Sous le ciel lumineux de son pays natal (2001/Franssou Prenant/France)
A companion film to Akerman's documentary would be a similar work by Franssou Prenant who tells her return to Beyrout in Lebbanon (on the other side of the Israeli border). She interviews her friends, off-screen, who stayed there and recall her memories from before the war, her impressions of the changes, against a handheld reportage through the streets.

La-bas (2006/Akerman)

This post is my contribution to the Contemplative Cinema Blogathon. Check Unspoken Cinema for all the updated contributions and the roundtable discussions with other participants.


Là-bas / Over There (2006/Chantal Akerman/Belgium/France) ***

The film starts and ends inside someone's empty living room, respecting the rules of dramatic unity (one space, one time, one action). A precautionary look at what's happening outside. The shots are always static and patiently pursued in long takes. If the framing is artisticaly composed, it lets however the audience's gaze wander around and select our own acumen. Little action animates this quiet scrutiny of the neighborhood, from various angles, through the straw-screens. A textured curtain of proximity and disconnection. Lacking any hint of a narrative subject, these silent images denounce the passivity and voyeurism of a cinema viewer, which strangely echos the filmmaker's own state of mind in Israel.

After a while, mundane noises announce a presence we'll never see. As we imagine her making coffee in the kitchen, eating fruits, walking around, typing on her laptop, Akerman invites us to share a slice of her dailylife and witness her self-imposed seclusion. Thus the camera isn't Akerman's own eye, but a supervisor planted next to her. It rolls, nonchalant, as she stays off-screen doing other things.
Her voiceover commentary will come later to incorporate her developping ideas. She talks about triviality (food, traveling, mood, work, family memories) in a diary fashion. It could be an essay film in-progress, observing itself being made. From the notes, to denial, to idle shooting, to making of, to meta-documentary, to film. All in one.

A phonecall in French, with her mother or a friend, explicits her situation : she's fine, a little tired, her stomach was sick, she has work to do. Another phonecall in Hebrew and English, with a local friend, says she'd rather stay home. Three interlaced idioms remind us the communication barrier in a foreign land. From this remote sanctuary, the phone links to the world, literaly, all the way to Belgium, and right outside in the city. It's her only human contact. Our only context to the film. And an opportunity for a diegetic monolog.

Shortage of food imposes a leap to the shops. Not the israeli salads! they made her sick... This upset stomach could be a psychosomatic symptom due to her resistance to go out, or a subconscious incompatibility. Everything seems to approve her self-imprisonment. Her vocal introspection shares with us the irony of these coincidences.

All the while the digital camera peeks views of the buildings across the narrow street of her only landscape, over-framed by the curtains. Her neighbors become the involuntary protagonists. Through recurring shots of extensive length, we get to familiarize with some of them appearing now and then at the windows. There is an old retired couple up there, watering the plants every day. Noises of cars driving in and out. An old lady smoking on a tiny balcony. Children shouting nearby. A group of people in the street.

We can only imagine the words of their conversation. We listen what we can't see off-screen, we see what we can't hear. Our senses are dissociated. The mind will reconstitute the puzzle of a larger reality. Our voyeurism projects a judgement on them as we profile their supposed personality. These shots unroll silently, patiently, waiting for something to show up, or not.

And the montage cuts from this window to that balcony, like if skipping channel on a TV. They are like small silent films, from a surveillance camera. The almost-real-time contemplation translates the apprehension of dailylife rhythm in this quarter. We are there. We live there.

The sun drags the shadows across the facade, from underexposed to overexposed. The intensity of daylight evolves and creates a new environment, more or less oppressive. Texture, color, depth constantly vary.

The images fabricate a de-facto narration, in the absence of a stated plot, because they contain their own fragmented stories, those of real-life people, an intimate microcosm. The scarcity of sightings makes the observation riveting and the wait rewarding. At the antipode of Rear Window, Akerman recreates a dramatic tension out of nothing (what's already there) with her frame.

Them on one side, and her on the other end, and us. The narrow field of the tele-lens, the minimalism of details, transcend the archetypal features of a neighborhood, so we can relate to this confrontation to the "Other" painted in universal tableaux.

On her exceptional visit to the beach, we can at last breath the open air. Same contemplative static shots observing from the distance the stroll in the sand of an orthodox family and tourists alike. Both the people and the filmmaker face the horizon. Over there. One always dreams of a hopeful elsewhere. The titular "Over There" that meant Israel from a european perspective, here, in turn, names the world beyond the sea : Europe, home, USA.

Just when she returns from the shop, she learns about a bomb attack on the beach, around the corner. Akerman is under shock in her appartment, and doesn't stigmatize the incident in spectacular pictures like the Israeli news. This bomb hides in words to us.

The phone rings again and she lies about her fear to appease her friends. The shot angles are the same routine but the atmosphere is more severe and the tone more serious. She notes her aunt Ruth in Bruxelles and her friend's mother in Tel Aviv both commited suicide around the same time. Why suicide in Israel just like everywhere else? Isn't it the promised Land?

The film is making itself in the camera magazine, overcoming her initial reticence. The intuition of the filmmaker succeeds where her intellect backpedalled.

continued in another post ...

Berlin Festival 2006 - Forum
(s) +++ (w) +++ (m) +++ (i) ++ (c) ++

TOP 2006

I'm reluctant to make my top this year because I don't have a favorite masterpiece... I feel I have yet to watch the best ones this year (Lynch, Tsai, Weerasethakul, Jia, Hong Sang-soo...).

I agree with Andy Horbal's blame of the list-mania, but I'd like to argue against "capsule summary" that simplify the opinion in few words as a year-end reminder. I'd rather post a bare list that functions as a mere barometer and can be compared with others. It shows how the year was perceived differently by critics, or how distribution was limited. A neutral assessment of the warmest recommendations.

Only 10 titles on my list got an official distribution in France, and most of the time a narrow exposition. Only 4 French films, truly original and inspired (one of them is made by a japanese director). 4 debut feature-length directors. 3 Documentaries.
But these are challenging films more interesting than the "commercial auteurs". I think they are exemplary formaly and thematically, to which I give more credit than the comfortable mannerism of older auteurs doing what they master within the safe codes of the genre. I think they deserve more support from critics and cinephiles, and should inspire future cinema to be more creative.

20 films, roughly in preferential order :

• Our Daily Bread (2005/Nikolaus Geyrhalter/Autriche) DOC
• Fantasma (2006/Lisandro Alonso/Argentine)
• Lights in the dusk (2006/Aki Kaurismäki/Finlande)
• Climates (2006/Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Turkey)
• Dans Paris (2006/Christophe Honoré/France)
• Drawing Restraint 9 (2005/Matthew Barney/USA)
• Ten Canoes (2006/Rolf de Heer/Peter/Australie)
• Juventude em Marcha / Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa/Portugal)
• Hamaca paraguaya (2006/Paz Encina/Paraguay) Debut
• La science des rêves (2006/Michel Gondry/France)
• Into Great Silence (2006/Gröning/Germany) DOC Debut
• Là-bas (2006/Chantal Akerman/Belgique) DOC
• Sommer '04 (2006/Krohmer/Allemagne)
• Flandres (2006/Bruno Dumont/France)
• Un couple parfait (2005/Nobuhiro Suwa/France)
• 12h08 East of Bucarest (2006/Corneliu Porumboiu/Romanie) Debut
• Sangre (2006/amat Escalante/Mexique) Debut
• Zemastan / It's Winter (2006/Rafi Pitts/Iran)
• Sehnsucht (2006/Valeska Grisebach/Autriche)
• Drama/Mex (2006/Gerardo Naranjo/Mexique)

Special Mentions : Bamako (2006/Sissako/Mali); Volver (2006/Almodovar/Spain) ; Klimt (2006/Ruiz/France); Conversations with Other Women (2005/Canosa/UK); To Get To Heaven First You Have To Die (2006/Usmonov/Tadjikistan); Coeurs (2006/Resnais/France); Renaissance (2006/Volckman/France); La Tourneuse de pages (2006/Dercourt/France); Requiem (2006/Schmid/Germany); 4h30 (2005/Royston Tan/Singapour); Anche Libero va bene (2006/Stuart/Italy); La Raison du Plus Faible (2006/Belvaux/Belgium); Tristram Shandy (2005/Winterbottom/UK); Two Thirty 7 (2006/Thalluri/Australia); Paprika (2006/Kon/Japan); Bubble (2006/Soderbergh/USA)

On my list last year : Lazarescu; The Sun; L'Enfant; Three Times; Battle in Heaven; Manderlay...

Major unseen potential nominees : Inland Empire; Still Life + Dong; Syndromes and a Century; I Don't Want to Sleep Alone; Woman on the Beach; Iraq in Fragments; Oxhide; The Power of Nightmares; Rescue Dawn; White Diamond; The Boss of It All; Half Nelson...

DIGEST : Décembre 2006

Unreviewed screenings, current reading, links, recommendations, free talk, questions, thoughts, informal conversation, anything... comments welcome

>> updates below (sticky entry for a month)

The blog war will not take place

Looking back on the Film Criticism Blogathon. Comments on As a Preface: Andy's Letters to the "Young Turks" 3:1 (Or something), Andy Horbal's contribution at No More Marriage!

Andy Horbal interestingly compares the emergence of the online community of Film Bloggers to the historical split of Cahiers critics with the establishment of classic criticism in the 50ies in France. There is indeed a generational confrontation between the seasonned professionals who worked all their life in the print world and the digital generation of homegrown film buffs who are born with TV, videotapes and DVDs. Their tastes, viewing habit, references and practice clash. But if the internet promises a technological turning point, I wonder if the press can become outdated this easily by amateurs.
I certainly agree the complacency of the populist weekly press has given up on true insightful analysis to discredit the values of critical thinking. However could we rely on the blogosphere to take over the job and wage a groundbreaking revolution like the Nouvelle Vague did?

There is no lack of potential online, some bloggers are superior critics to what we can read in newspapers. But the democratic blogosphere is an anarchical system in itself and we cannot consider "bloggers", in general, the next form of criticism that will make everything else obsolete like Bazin's Cahiers did. So when I hear the word "bloggers" tossed around like an end-all argument solution, I'm worried. "Blog" equals to "rant without credential", so this is far from "criticism".
Either bloggers want to dump the baby with the bathwater, and get rid of the idea of "critical evaluation" altogether, no need for legitimacy then. Or bloggers want to invent a new way to criticism, more informal, but not acultural.

The blogosphere as it is now is far too messy to produce any relevant upgrade of the critical reflexion. Individuals could however, but not as a mass movement under the banner of "everybody's word matter". If the internet does kill the press, it will declare the victory of demagoguery, the rule of "common feelings" and uneducated opinions. I don't care if analytical criticism has less influence on the box office than the fads of the "word-of-mouse", it's not the point. If the B.O. and the mass blogs win, criticism will die that's all; there will not be a new form of "criticism" without values that will come out of this. This is not the future I want to see happening for film writing.

Sure it is necessary to talk back to the old farts who dismiss bloggers without knowing anything about the internet, but we won't gain credibility by opposing the blogosphere to the press. As flawed and tasteless as it is, the long established system of print writers will always have the upper hand. So I'm not surprised they chuckle in contempt when bloggers suggest a duel. The terrain to fight is not technological (digital v. ink), but it's the generational discrepency. The cultural battle is one that could be won online today.

Truffaut's famous Politique des Auteurs article was a bold provocation that had the knowledge, the inspiration, the intuition, the genius to offer a sustainable theory that would direct the birth of a new era. Where is the blogosphere manifesto today?

Bloggers claim to power is based on the weight of the virtual multitude. The blogosphere evolved from a tool that was there. It might be the expression of a public demand for information-sharing, but there is no conscious design to replace the establishment with revolutionary values. All they do is to pretend they are print critics without education, writing skills or film culture... Far from revolutionary, it's a reactionary and degrading tabula rasa. Of course this type of summary opinions is easier to swallow for the anti-intellectual crowd (a reader demographic that didn't read the press anyway).

My point is that the "blogosphere", as an abstract entity, doesn't consitute a solid, organised, willfull alternative to the press. So the "Bloggers v. Critics" war is absurd. If we want to impose a certain credibility online, we'll have to define the new generation of critics by something more substantial and more refined than just "bloggers". The blogosphere is only a tool used for best or for worst. The vast majority of bloggers is useless as far as the constitution of a new culture is concerned. I believe the hope for future criticism is in the fresh blood, the new perspective, the 21st century culture of images. That's what the old critics have hard time to catch on, and understand. But just because bloggers are more familiar with the tools doesn't mean they have the critical standards to understand them better than educated critics.

The blogosphere is a success of popularity, not so much of quality. What I'd like to see announcing the revolution of the blogosphere era is not Truffaut's manifesto, but the equivalent of Bazin's "Ontology of the cinematographic image" for the web : the ontology of the blogosphere journalism.

I'm not interested to fight to impose "online diaries" as the substitute to the press. Film bloggers must earn credibility through hardwork and discipline. Criticism is not intuitive and improvisational, unless you're a genius. So "helping our case to earn legitimacy" as Andy says, first means to dissociate the insight from the mindless chattering. Thus the "online film critics community" makes more sense than just "bloggers", which includes all sorts of blogs more or less meaningful.

Sorry to sound so negative and elitist like that, but the popular enthousiasm for an informal "blogosphere" to become more meaningful than the press is something that can only hurt the level of film culture. Being open-minded and lowbrow inclined is one thing, but to consume free-for-all movies without reflexive distance is not criticism anymore.

The blog war will not take place... until proper weapons are developped by bloggers, for bloggers and appropriating the true potential of the internet-multimedia technology.

Andy's 5 recommendations (Exploring, Linking, Creating, Debating, Supporting) are perfect to lead on the right way for legit online critics. I've been too long so that will be for another post.

La Condition Critique

Notes from : La Condition Critique by Maurice Blanchot (in Le Nouvel Observateur #6, 1950, republished in Trafic #2)

Even if critics think little, they comment, give interpretations, are opened to the world. Criticism is daily, fugitive, instantaneous, versatile like time passing by. It is motion and becoming. Its role is to disolve solemnity and the abrupt, secluded character of film works through daily life reflexion that has respect for nothing.

Critics shall not have proper art or personal talent : they shall not be self-centered, they are a regard, anonymous, impersonal, vagabond. Anonymous, irresponsable, presence without tomorrow, someone who never says "I", the powerful echo of a word expressed by noone.

The task of the critic is becoming one (antagonistic moment of the work of art). The critic is the outside, while the art is a closed intimity, jealous, denying outside. Critics shall therefore contradict the instinct of art. But shall go near, to understand, to betray (great effort of comprehension).

The most faithful interpretation is the most inaccurate one because it opens art to the truth of common light, whereas the "raison d'être" of art (its essence) is to stay away from versimilitude, to escape truth.

The critics excessively dedicated to the intimity of art, eventually reach obscurity and denies themselves. No longer the capricious will of present moment shines briefly on the art (or neglected by it), and retrieve whatever they want. But they become supporters of culture and make art timeless.

Critical Fallacy 6 : Mannerism

Susan Sontag : "It would be hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. On this issue a pious consensus prevails. … In the practice of criticism, though, the old antithesis lives on, virtually unassailed. Most of the same critics who disclaim, in passing, the notion that style is an accessory to content maintain the duality whenever they apply themselves to particular works of literature. … Many critics appear not to realize this. They think themselves sufficiently protected by a theoretical disclaimer on the vulgar filtering-off of style from content, all the while their judgments continue to reinforce precisely what they are, in theory, eager to deny." cited at Jahsonic

I know it's awkward for me to pin down mannerism because I can't write in English, and I'm not even a good writer in French. But I'm against style on principle, not to justify or excuse my own lazy and deficiant wordsmith. Actually I feel more comfortable developping content and ideas in criticism in a foreign language precisely because I don't have the possibility to resort to self-indulgent formulas that plague the French intellectual criticism where nice words worth better than ideas or even substitute them. Although the low brow reviewing is not immune to ready-made clichés. Too often words precede ideas. When you start a sentence, or when you use a certain verb, there is a selected possibilities to follow up that are engraved in the collective culture, a series of clichés embedding consensual ideas into catch phrases. Critics believe they said it all when they come up with a nice sentence while there is nothing really new or actually pertinent to the film at hand below the stylish surface.

bradstevens : "I've always believed that film criticism should be approached responsibly, not as an opportunity for stylish displays of wit that end up trivialising both writer and film. I expect film critics to inform or educate, not entertain." at a_film_by

Criticism is a literary genre and I would have nothing against this practice if it was only the icing that does not replace meaning. The reason it's dangerous and that this fallacy should be pointed out here is that most readers are duped by the icing and since they found entertainment in reading believe the critics did a good job. Mannerism breeds routine, apathy, mindlessness. Readers are happy with "word-dropping", "bon mots", and it spares them the bore of an extended demonstration or the underlaying reflexion overlooked by the critic.

Luis Buñuel : "I loath pedantism and jargon. I happened to laugh to tears when reading certain articles in Cahiers du cinéma."

In a recent article, Charles Tesson (former editor at Cahiers) compiled a list of such "generally accepted ideas" that French critics enjoy themselves with : Dictionnaire des idées reçues de la critique (in Panic #4, july 2006) denouncing these self-satisfied, superior, ridicule, smart-ass, hype sophisms.
He points out to certain absurd word combination, tautology ("rigor of construction"), pleonasm ("classic shot-countershot", "impression of reality"). He warns against denegation that spells in words something that shouldn't be brought to the reader's attention even if disabled by the negative form ("The film is not..."). He's annoyed by the trivialization of great theories through adjectivation ("Deuleuzian", "Derridian"). He calls the emptiness of some overused expressions ("debauchery of special effects", "return to real", "curious alchemy", "magnificent movie", "Death of cinema", "Subtil cinema"). If it was clever the first time, it becomes tired and voided of its sense when repeated at every opportunity and sometimes in the wrong instances. Others examples are typically French, or locale jokes, so don't translate well.

Clive James (NYT) : "To know what can't be shown by the gag writers, however, you have to know about a world beyond the movies. But the best critics do, as this book proves; because when we say that the nontheorists are the better writers, that's what we mean. That extra edge that a good writer has is a knowledge of the world, transmuted into a style."

Clive James on the rest of us -- we're doomed (at a_film_by) follow up discussion

My preference goes to rich and precise vocabulary detailing one's mind (closer to the film's reality, which is accuracy not mannerism) than the use of ready-made phrases or the elaboration of stylistic/rhetoric hallucinations (offsetting from reality). Literary skills could go two ways, one is to refine descriptions, one is to evoke a fertile imagination. The former (respectful, insightful, helpful) should never be overwhelmed by the the latter (dubious, extravagant, risky), especially when the credibility of the critic's taste is in question. If two trusted critics disagree frontaly on a film I want to see, how could I tell which one best assumes my perspective if they can only be compared by their style? It's the contrary for the journalists of course who prefer to entertain the reader nomatter what the film is, rather than to engage in an adequate reflexion on cinema.

Anthony Lane (The New Yorker/Nobody's Perfect) : "The primary task of the critic, and no one has surpassed Miss Kael in this regard, is the recreation of texture, filing a sensory report of the kind of experience they will have if they decide to buy a ticket. A review should give off some reek of the concession stand." at Undercurrent

When a good writer with a contradictory taste talks lyrically about a film I haven't seen, I'm particularly warry of stylistic flare focusing on abstract/general appreciation rather than specific evidences... It's easy for the positive review to emphasizes solely on hyperbolic enthousiasm that informs one of many possible experiences of that film. Excess of literary style celebrates the individual emotional reaction of one person as if it was any indication of what every reader will feel themselves.

What is a spellbinding story? What is a haunting movie? What is a mesmerizing performance? What is a riveting plot? Translating a film into appreciative adjectives assumes we believe anything the critic says without the need for an analytical demonstration or any kind of descriptive evidences that would corroborate this summary opinion. First they are impersonal abstract wordings and could apply to any movie, taken out of context, copied and pasted ad infinitum. Second they are evaluative (on an unspecified scale of values) instead of qualitiative (to characterize a certain detail defining THIS film in particular). Perfect quote-ables.

It could be a relative adjective without referential comparison : "it's great/bad, believe me"; unverifiable gradation (praise, success, quality level) "it's the best film of... [insert director, year, country]".

And finally we have the professional jargon (ellitist technical words), abbreviations (acronym, hip shorthands, truncated titles) -- see Variety!, metaphors (themed vocabulary calling all the funny expressions linked to the film's topic) -- see David Edelstein's review of The Devil Wears Prada, puns (smarty wordplay, jokes with the title or actor/character's names) ...

This fits in the larger rhetorical questions : Can words incarnate the multimedia experience of cinema? And what exactly do readers imagine when reading chosen words? What is the gap between the reader experience and the viewer experience? Don't critics manipulate this gap with stylish obfuscation to push their opinions?

Jonathan Rosenbaum : "although initially [Moving Places] had a very negative effect on my career in film criticism, because it wasn’t film criticism and it wasn’t something that could pave the way toward a career in film criticism. I was naïve enough to believe it was a road out of film criticism. I still have a side of me that has an interest in literary writing." Interview at The House Nextdoor

Mannerism could be the vertue of a certain kind of impressionistic criticism, but I leave that to others to chant its glory because this series only deals with the flawed habits of critics. So please defend mannerism in the comments if you wish, to offer a more balanced view.

See other entries in the Critical Fallacy series on the sidebar menu.

Defining a critic

The Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon hosted by Andy Horbal Check others' contributions and comments at No More Marriages!
all weekend (Friday, December 1 - Sunday, December 3)

I'll probably post more later, but here's for starters, a compilation of aphorisms by critics, directors or writers trying to define what is a "film critic".

"The undefined place where the critic stands. When I was a critic, I thought a film, to be accomplished, should express simultaneously an idea of the world and an idea of cinema. Today, I expect the film I watch to express either the joy to make movies, or the anxiety to make movies and I don't care for everything in between, i.e. all films that do not vibrate."
"Anybody can become critic of cinema; the candidates don't need a tenth of knowledge required for literary, musical or painting critics. A filmmaker today shall accept the idea that his/her work will be eventually judged by someone who hadn't ever seen a Murnau film."
François Truffaut (French critic-filmmaker), "A quoi rêve les critiques?" in Les Films de ma Vie (1975)

* * *

"Oeuvres are of infinite solitude; to grasp a work of art, nothing is worse than the word of criticism." Rainer Maria Rilke (German poet)

* * *

"The critic is meant to make see and make listen" Jean-Louis Bory (French critic)

* * *

"I don't believe, as a matter of criticism, in the existence of objective truths or more exactly, I value more contradictory judgments that constrain me to consolidate mine, rather than the confirmation of my principles by weak arguments." Cahiers #44, 1955.
"The critic is meant to continue -- as much as possible within the readers' intelligence and sensibility -- the shock of the work of art."
"Don't be so severe with the film, put yourself in the shoes of the filmmaker, and find out his/her motivations"
André Bazin (French critic)

* * *

"The best in criticism, it's the dialogue that is, sometimes, established with the radio audience or the reader. Business as much profitable when your point of view is disputed by the contestant. Critical dialogue and tea for two."
"We write our critiques for filmmakers first. Readers shouldn't feleft outout though. They are asked to bear witness, we feel more liberated in presence of a third party to express our sentiments."
"Paraphrasing Flaubert: to be a critic of cinema, one shouldn't know personally filmmakers, actresses, producers... But we know some of them! That's the problem."
"A critic : a resistant -- to pressure, to fad, to consensus"
Michel Boujut (French critic), La Promenade du critique, 1996

* * *

"To be a disinhibited critic, one should be a creator in becoming" François Weyergans (French critic)

* * *

"Every competent critic is an aspiring filmmaker" Roger Leenhardt (French critic)

* * *

"A critic is someone who shoots at his own regiment" Jules Renard (French writer) cited in Godard's Nouvelle Vague

* * *

"To be a critic is to be able to reflect on films. The question of criticism is this : shall criticism evolve because the status of cinema has changed?" Jean-Michel Frodon (French critic)

* * *

"What is annoying, isn't that a critic suggests reservations on our films. It's the manner, the tone, the facile and demagogical use of controversial tricks : this semantic of hatred and contempt." Patrice Leconte (French filmmaker), infamous letter against French critics in 1999.

* * *

"To me, criticism is included in cinema. There is no art without commentary." Robert Guédiguian (French filmmaker)

* * *

"The 'critic' of cinema [in the popular press] (often not a specialist, but a journalist from the "culture" pages) is no longer delegated by the community of readers to the front line of cinema, (s)he is the inert "mirror" of the supposed social class of such readership, and is the commercial target of this publication. He/she is commanded to scout for films that will give readers a pleasant, gratifying image of the imaginary demographic they supposedly belong to, of which the publication is the mirror, rather than the spearhead." Alain Bergala (French critic), Cinemas Vol 6, N°2/3, 1996.

* * *

"Like/Like not : matters to nobody; this, apparently, is meaningless. Meanwhile all this means : my body is not the same as yours. Thus, within this anarchy of taste and distaste, kind of distrait mesh, little by little is outlined the figure of a corporeal enigma, calling complicity or irritation. Here begins the intimidation of the body, forcing the other to bear liberally, to remain silent and courteous before pleasures and denials that (s)he doesn't share." Roland Barthes (French semotician), 1975

* * *

"Criticism is the art of Love. It is the fruit of a passion that is not self-devoured, but aspires to control a vigilante lucidity. It consists in a tireless research of harmony within the couple passion-lucidity." Jean Douchet (French critic), Cahiers #126, 1961.

* * *

"Criticism is a business of provocation rather than conviction. Its best role is to call forth, about a film, some reactions, preferably violent, in the reader." Louis Seguin (French critic), Cahiers, 1969.

* * *

"The efficiency of criticism relies on nothing but the seduction of words" Michel Mourlet (French critic), Cahiers #163, 1960.

* * *

"The critical judgment constitutes the only cultural valuation. The artist exists only under the look of the critic. Artists don't exist without commentary! Death of commentary means the disappearance of the artist." Michel Ciment (French critic), 1999.

* * *

"Criticism is hermeneutic by vocation, normative by fatality, impressionistic by facility and aesthetic in practice." René Prédal (French cinema historian), 2004

* * *

"Open criticism gets its efficiency and its fecundity from its ability to discussion and welcoming." Raymond Barkan (French critic), Cinéma 60, #45.

* * *

"My definition of a good critic is somebody who communicates their enthusiasm for work they find of merit, without ruining the option of you, the reader, also discovering the film's merits. " Lisa Nesselson (American critic), Variety

* * *

"The role of the film critic is to write well, or speak well. A critic is someone who I think should try to tell a story about the film that they're reviewing. And the story can be the story of their response to it, the story of their coming to understand that film, coming to a position on it." Adrian Martin (Australian critic), Undercurrent #1, 2006

p.s. Sorry for the approximate translation. Now what are your thoughts provoked by these phrases? Add other quotes if you have more, I'm always interested in these kind of encapsulated thoughts. Thanks.

[EDIT : See also Citations sur la critique]

Another Counter-Canon

Counter-Canon : another viewing recommendation list

From the reaction of Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity to the articles in Film Comment by Paul Schrader on the construction of a highbrow canon, I'm tempted to propose my own "counter-canon" (as coined by Zach), even though my knowledge of film history isn't wide and deep enough to allow me to do so. But I guess it's always possible to find criminally under-represented (alternative) gems when we talk about canonical masterpieces. I don't think a canon can be representative with 60 titles out of thousands of great films out there, much less for a counter-canon meant to open new leads into non-trumpetted territories, so I pushed the limit to 111 (arbitrarily) to give some room. I don't have the viewing history to make a top1000 like Rosenbaum yet. I'm not sure they are really original, but I hope there will be at least a couple of new gems new to you, that you will adore discovering. Only prime material that floored me and revealed inspired ways to form cinema. Although I tried to leave out the familiar films critically acclaimed in every academic Canon. So the complete oeuvre of Bergman, Ozu, Kurosawa, Bresson, Maya Deren, and the Soviet Montage will not make the final cut, only because most advanced cinephiles already know them.

An anti-canon, an alternative breech into offbeat cinema territories, the favorite milestones from my subjective journey through cinephilia :

Counter-Canon Gems anti establishment
(111 recommendations ranked chronologicaly) :

• Jean-Daniel Pollet essay-films (France) = Méditerranée (1963); Le Horla (1966); Tu imagines Robinson (1967); L'Ordre (1973); Pour Mémoire (la forge) (1978); Dieu sait quoi (1994); Ceux d'en face (2001)
• Spring of Prague (Czech New Wave) complete oeuvre : (Fruits of Paradise; Peter and Pavla; The Party and the Guests; Loves of a Blonde; Daisies; Ucho; Long Live the Republic; Marketa Lazarová; Intimate Lighting; The Cremator; Closely Watched Trains; Nobody Will Laugh; Hop Side Story; Transport From Paradise; Higher Principle; Romeo, Julie a Tma...)
  
• Leaves from Satan's Book (1921/Carl T. Dreyer/Denmark)
• The Phantom Carriage / Körkarlen (1921/Victor Sjöström/Sweden)
• La Roue (1923/Abel Gance/France)
• Secrets of a Soul (1926/Georg Wilhelm Pabst/Germany)
• Finis terrae (1929/Jean Epstein/France)
  
• The Salt of Svanetia (1930/Mikhail Kalatozov/Russia)
• The Glass Eye / L'Oeil de verre (1930/Lili Brik/Russia)
• Bezhin Meadow / Bezhin lug (1937/Eisenstein/Russia)
• Ye ban ge sheng / Song at Midnight (1937/Weibang Ma-Xu/China)
  
• L'Espoir (1945/Malraux/Peskine/Spain)
  
• Ryoju / The Hunting Rifle (1961/Heinosuke Gosho/Japan)
• Le Feu Follet (1963/Louis Malle/France)
• Pasazerka (1963/Munk/Poland)
• Un roi sans divertissement (1963/François Leterrier/France)
• Film (1965/Alan Schneider/Samuel Beckett/USA) Short
• Cul-de-sac (1966/Roman Polanski/Poland)
• Faraon / Pharaoh (1966/Jerzy Kawalerowicz/Poland)
• Irezumi / Tattoo (1966/Masumura Yasuzo/Japon)
• Ningen Johatsu / A Man Vanishes (1967/Imamura Shohei/Japon) DOC
• Faces (1968/John Cassavetes/USA)
• Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968/Alain Resnais/France)
• Coming Apart (1969/Milton Moses Ginsberg/USA)
• Invasión (1969/Hugo Santiago/Argentina)
• Korol Lir / King Lear (1969/Kozintsev/Russia)
  
• Days and Nights in the Forest (1970/Satyajit Ray/India)
• The Ceremony (1971/Oshima Nagisa/Japan)
• Le Moindre Geste (1971/Fernand Deligny/France)
• Viva La Muerte (1971/Fernando Arrabal/Tunisia)
• Wanda (1971/Barbara Loden/USA)
• Le Journal d'un suicidé (1972/Stanislav Stanojevic/France)
• Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972/Maurice Pialat/France)
• El Castillo de la pureza / Castle of Purity (1973/Arturo Ripstein/Mexico)
• The Holy Mountain (1973/Alejandro Jodorowski/Mexico)
• The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973/Wojciech Has/Poland)
• Edvard Munch (1974/Peter Watkins/UK)
• India Song (1975/Marguerite Duras/France)
• Impressions de la Haute Mongolie (1976/Dalí/Montes-Baquer/Germany) DOC
• Le plein de super (1976/Alain Cavalier/France)
• Twenty Days Without War (1976/Aleksei German/Russia)
• Dossier 51 (1978/Deville/FR)
• In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978/Guy Debord/France) DOC
  
• Shoah (1985/Claude Lanzmann/France) DOC
• Le Déclin de l'empire américain (1986/Denys Arcand/Canada)
• Mauvais Sang / Bad Blood (1986/Leos Carax/France)
• L'homme qui plantait des arbres (1987/Back/Canada) Short Anim
• Lonely Human Voice (1987/Alexandr Sokurov/Russia)
• Out of Rosenheim / Baghdad Café (1987/Percy Adlon/Germany)
• Akira (1988/Katsuhiro Ôtomo/Japan) Anim
• The Eye above the well (1988/Johan van der Keuken/Netherlands) DOC
• Elephant (1989/Alan Clarke/UK) Short
  
• C'est arrivé près de chez vous / Man Bites Dog (1992/Belvaux/Belgium)
• De Noorderlingen / The Northerners (1992/van Warmerdam/Netherlands)
• Sátántangó (1994/Bela Tarr/Hungary)
• [Safe] (1995/Todd Haynes/USA)
• Das Schloß / The Castle (1997/Michael Haneke/Austria)
• Généalogies d'un Crime (1997/Raoul Ruiz/France)
• Lost Highway (1997/David Lynch/USA)
• Pokój saren / Roes' Room (1997/Lech Majewski/Poland)
• Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998/Martin Arnold/Austria) Short
• The Flowers of Shanghai (1998/Hou Hsiao-hsien/Taiwan)
• Idioterne (1998/Von Trier/Denmark)
• Paris, mon petit corps est bien las de ce monde (1998/Pressant/France)
• Juha (1999/Aki Kaurismaki/Finland)
  
• Father and Daughter (2000/Michael Dudok de Wit/UK) Short Anim
• The Heart of the World (2000/Guy Maddin/Canada) Short
• In Absentia (2000/Quay Brothers/UK) Short Anim
• Songs from Second Floor (2000/Andersson/Denmark)
• Sous le Sable (2000/François Ozon/France)
• Altyn Kyrghol / My Brother Silk Road (2001/Marat Sarulu/Kyrgyzstan)
• Copy Shop (2001/Virgil Widrich/Austria) Short
• The Cinemascope Trilogy : L'arrivée / Outer Space / Dream work (1998-2002/Peter Tscherkassky/Austria) Shorts
• Cremaster Cycle (1995-2002/Matthew Barney/USA)
• De l 'autre côté / From the Other Side (2002/Akerman/France) DOC
• Decasia (2002/Bill Morrison/USA) DOC
• Dolls (2002/Kitano Takeshi/Japan)
• Hukkle! (2002/György Pálfi/Hungary)
• Japon (2002/Carlos Reygadas/Mexico)
• L'Homme Sans l'Occident (2002/Raymond Depardon/France)
• Los Muertos (2003/Lisandro Alonso/Argentina)
• The Brown Bunny (2003/Vincent Gallo/USA)
• Reconstruction (2003/Christoffer Boe/Denmark)
• Struggle (2003/Ruth Madder/Austria)
• Tiexi Qu : West of Tracks (2003/Wang Bing/China) DOC
• Vozvrashcheniye / The Return (2003/Andrei Zvyagintsev/Russia)
• 2046 (2004/Wong Kar-wai/HK)
• La Blessure (2004/Nicolas Klotz/Belgium)
• Our Daily Bread (2005/Nikolaus Geyrhalter/Germany) DOC
• The Wayward Cloud (2005/Tsai Ming-liang/Taiwan)
  

EDIT : adding 7 films by Jean-Daniel Pollet I had forgotten, and taking out 7 films that were too "classic".

Critical Fallacy 5 : Complacency

To put it plainly, "complacency" is the contrary of "being critical". It's the censorship of the Political Correctness mentality.

Some critics claim to write only on movies they liked to communicate an honest enthusiasm rather than a bitter resentment. Although favorable reviews always sound complacent to detractors. Except a chosen few masterpieces, every movie could/should/must be engaged both on its strong and weak aspects, to create a balanced, credible critical assessment.

• The Partisan Review Tradition (a_film_by)

Because of the lack of cinema culture and the domination of marketing brainwashing, critics fill a gap that isn't their job, which is to nurse, champion and promote the underexposed or panned movies... But critics aren't supposed to do P.R., that would be a conflict of interest (another installment of this series). Even back in the time of Bazin (40-50ies in France), instead of fully dedicating their time and writings to criticize and evaluate movies, critics had to advocate certain neglected auteurs, notify their screenings, drag the audience in, say a lot of good things about the film and overstate an hyperbolic enthusiasm... Where is the critical thinking when there is too much praise? The point isn't to pick a challenger and feel gratified if it scores a big B.O.

Klaus Eder : "That we write about this film and not another one, is dictated by the strategy of the distributors. They decide if and when to release a film, and we react and become a part of their strategy, whether we wish to or not. Specialist magazines fortunately have a bit more freedom and distance from the marketing system." Undercurrent #1

Criticism should, in theory, be disconnected from the commercial distribution and success of a film. Ok, maybe newspapers worry about the appeal to readership productivity of reviews, but the press doesn't define the ethics of criticism. Although they may decide whether a critic gets exposition, the compromise with aesthetic standards defines the critic's personality and complacency.
News journalists have the same duty to truth, whether it is pleasant to hear or not, but unlike critics they could/should remain neutral. The word "criticism" often implies "negative comment", because a critical judgment precisely denotes the flaws and weaknesses in a film, or else there is nothing to say but congratulations. There is a fine line between "respectful" and "complacent"... which will always be argued from a subjective standpoint. It's not easy to voice out a critical mind if it's going to hurt someone's pride or feelings, although some people enjoy just that, and think the most vociferous they are the most feared their "authority" will be (those controversial slanders aren't sound arguments).

The other side of this coin reminds us that "art is difficult and criticism is easy". Even the worst film, collective achievement of many artists and technicians, requires more work than the best movie review! So, due respect for the hardworking, yes, but partisanship, pontification, apologia, flattery, connivance, conformism, political correctness... no.
The spectrum of the film critic press shows variable tolerance to complacency, from specialized revues (filmcraft only) to glamour info-tainment (star system promotion), and some aim to be balanced or neutral, others just make their living of press-junket bribery, cover photo deals, indulgent interviews, advertisement/sponsors, mass-appeal to the point of being integer part of the marketing machine.
Promotional interviews (is there any other kind? these guys only meet the press when they have something to sell)
Certain films do deserve a humble, admirative, unconditional praise... sometimes the critic is useless in front of cinema genius. But looking at the reviews it's like there is at least one masterpiece each week! movies that are quickly forgotten after the award season.

Exclusive Online Search

Screenville's Cinema-specific web search engine (see sidebar too)

Thanks to Robert Davis at Errata who pointed to this new feature at Google co-op, I've created my own selection of URLs (170 sites exclusively with film criticism material so far [EDIT June 2008: 262]) to look up cinema-specific topics on Google, which helps to browse the internet archive of film bloggers and online publications with only relevant results.

The problem with Google, is that the search engine is based on "word spotting" instead of "topic related filtering". Google returns all pages where the words required are found, but it doesn't mean the acception of the word matches your query, or that the words are in the same sentence or in the same article. Sometimes funny word strings lead to your page, because the text in the Google cache is scanned indifferently when several posts are showing on the front page. That's one of the reasons why I took out the post content from my index page on this blog, so that the text of each post is archived on its own specific page. And it also keep my post and the comments on the same page. I guess the words used in the links of the sidebar also alter the scanning of the blog frontpage by search engines.

So now Google adds some intelligence in their search results by asking users to qualify the pages, and restrict searches on a predefined thematic list, exclusive, or weighted among an all web search. Although there is no RSS feed on Google co-op, to keep track live on a feed aggregator of your favorite recurrent query... which is very useful.

I couldn't embed the search button within this post, so the results are hosted over at Google.

Let me know if the search results prove to be more fruitful and pertinent than usual. I will tweak the settings, add/remove URLs, as I figure how to improve the relevance and richness of cinema queries.

Try :

• Errata: Search selected sites on Google Co-op
• Online Film Search Engine Google Co-op compilation from 52 video-providers online [EDIT June 2008: 66] (for short films, videos, commercials, trailers...)
• Google Blog Search (film criticism) RSS feed
• Technorati Blog Search (film criticism) RSS feed
• Andy horbal's Film Blogs, Etc. on Google Co-op
  

Pan's Tests

Continuation from page 1 and 2. Pan's Labyrinth (2006/Del Toro)

Pan's magic book. Ofelia can only read it when she's alone (i.e. without adults/unbelievers around) because its pages are blank and a magic ink forms letters and drawings. The book is empty because Ofelia creates her own fantasy. After reading over and over her old books, she's now prepared to write her own story. The insect mistaken for a fairy, is named as such by Ofelia herself (she initiated this fantasy by projecting her imagination onto a detail of the real world, the fantasy world doesn't come to her, she spells out the magic identity of a common insect).

Pan orders 3 symbolic tasks to the young cursed princess who lost immortality. A crescent on her shoulder proves the unbelievable prophecy. Fable of regressive initiation, from an abominable reality to the retreat of an idyllic fantasy, from orphan to recomposed family, from unbearable life to dreamlike death. War killed the child, her innocence, her world. A painful and sudden transition to adulthood.

Pan's 3 tasks (dreamwork analysis) :

1) First Test
A giant toad lives under the roots of the biggest tree in the forest, and made it die out. Ofelia shall toss 3 magic stones into its mouth and retrieve a golden key from its guts.

This is a test of fear domination (dark hole with bugs, disgusting monster), and transgression of parental authority (runaway, dirty fancy clothes, late to dinner). Ofelia spells it out under the tree : "you don't scare me, I'm the princess". She also says "Look at you, you're so fat, aren't you ashamed to live under there and eat bugs?". I wonder if the 3 magic balls are the pills given by the doctor to her mother, and through fantasy she allows herself to blame her mother (for her deformed pregnant belly). The key is usually a male sexual symbol, if found inside the toad's belly, maybe it's an allegory for the fecondation of her mother by Vidal, which she disagrees and secretly wishes the abortion (the toad expels out its guts and deflates). She also says at the beginning of the film that the baby is the reason her mother is sick, so all this (Vidal and the baby) takes her mother away from her. She craves to return when she was the only center of attention, before the new baby, before her father died (ideal situation she finds again in death, in the final scene).
Only that she wears the fancy dress her mother wanted Ofelia to wear for the official dinner with her step-father. She wears a "princess gown", but doesn't want to make her stepfather happy so she's drawn to disobey : her dress is all dirty (to hurt her mother) and she's late (to hurt Vidal who is maniac with punctuality). The test is a success for her fantasy mission (she earns credit), but it's disastrous in the real world (punished).
This first task is her first attempt to help cure her mother by taking out the baby (out of anger).

Interlude (1)

Ofelia cannot go on with her next task because her mother is sick. When she opens the magic book, red ink forms a bloody uterus (like a Roshach inkblot test), and fills the page with red. Like a divination, Ofelia foresees the next scene when Carmen loses blood. Maybe this traumatic experience has to do with the first menstruation of a girl (blood, entering womanhood, fecundity, association with mother's pregnancy, pain).
Pan, impatient, comes to remind her duty. Then offers a mandrake (foetus symbol) that will cure Carmen if placed under her bed, bathed in milk and fed with 2 drops of blood every day (echo of the 2 drops of drug prescribed by the doctor in real world). This vegetal foetus evokes the doppleganger substitutions in Ferrara's Body Snatcher (1993).

2) Second Test

Magic chalk that opens passages to another dimension (symbol of her desire to get out of this world). Hourglass (time symbol referring to Vidal's obsession). One of three safe (wooden, iron, silver, or something like that) to open with the golden key (reminds of the choice for the right Grail, which is not the shiniest), and find the dagger for the final sacrifice (mirrors Mercedes' knife that will stab Vidal). Feast table temptation (interdiction to eat anything, echo of her punishment after first task).
Pale Man : Ogre threat to enforce the interdiction through terror ("what lives there is not human" says Pan). 2 fairies die to save Ofelia because she fell into temptation.
Pale Man is a peculiar monster, scary looking but slow and handicapped (no ears, eyes in his palms). Del Toro explains the orbits in his hands are christlike stigmata, but the symbolism is more complicated. It's disturbingly analogous to the aspect of a phallus (floppy bare skin, bold head, it's called "Pale Man"). The association to treat temptation (grape) from a pervert, the illustrations on the wall of the Pale Man chasing children, devouring them... suggests discreetly a sexual/incestuous molestation in symbolic form (maybe Vidal, although this subplot is very shy). Next to the stoic monster lays a pile of children shoes, remnant of his past victims (a shocking sight recalling the imagery of extermination camps).
Ofelia eats grape from the forbidden table (original sin of the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Bible = loss of innocence, shame of nudity, sexual guilt of mortals), thus fails her task, but surprisingly manages to escape the monster by opening another door after the hourglass exhausted (which is a contradiction of the rules imposed upfront by Pan, apparently threats and orders aren't as incorruptible as in traditional fairytales... re-interpretation and last minute changes are always welcome).

Interlude (2)

Ofelia hands over the dagger, but confesses eating the grape, Pan is furious and abandons her, she will never be immortal. Although the mandrake dried up, Carmen feels better, the doctor can't explain this remission. Vidal finds out, and Carmen throws the root in the fire "Magic doesn't exist!" she says, and she suddenly falls very ill again. Vidal had just killed the doctor so Carmen won't be saved... only the baby survives. Ofelia, orphan, is definitely separated from her past, and her mother who compromised with the evil side, now her surrogate mother, Mercedes takes over, and she can fully embrace the rebel side (denial of order, passage to clandestinity).

3) The sacrifice

The final task is to bring the baby to the altar where Pan will shed his blood to re-open the gates of Ofelia's kingdom and grant her immortality. Test of faith (in Pan) v. reason (of her heart). But she refuses, and like Vidal had to choose between saving Carmen or his son, Ofelia offers her life in exchange to save the baby (saved twice from death by the mimetic sacrifice of both Carmen and Ofelia).
Del Toro makes a special twist of the Bible's archetypical sacrifice. Abraham surrenders his reasoning to pure blind faith when God asked him to kill his only son Isaac. The philosophy of this act is not the horror of murdering one's own child, but the absolute trust in a superior Good that man cannot foresee and shall not question. In fact God stops the sword to spare Isaac's life once Abraham has proven his faith to comply without arguing. But Del Toro turns this reference upside down, and questions the faith in a superior messenger and the application of solemn promise (dispute of unjust orders). A 12 yold girl doubts the command from the god Pan, who purposely tricked her to follow a deviant order. The film makes a case for the sovereignty of the individual's choice, and even suggests God can be fallible.

Pan's fantasy

Continuation from first page : Pan's Labyrinth (2006/Del Toro)

Guillermo del Toro composes an odd mixture of neo-fairytale... The film is introduced by Ofelia's classic books of medieval fairytale, with traditional drawings (like Grimm or Andersen). But the encounter of a concrete fantasy in the real world is most unusual in the traditional fairytales. Although we can find many elements borrowed from various sources which original meanings are slightly altered.

Maya : "Pan, who self-effacingly refers to himself as a faun, when in truth he is a lord of the earth with a ram's crown, scented with leaf-molded earth, chthonic to his bark-encrusted core." The Evening Class

• Pan is a god from the Greek mythology (not the fantasy of fairytales), the god of Nature, and looks like a satyr, with goat legs and horns. The head of the bed of Ofelia's mother features the head of Pan, half hidden by pillows and we only see the spiraling horns emerging.
• Fauns however are demi-god from the roman mythology, looking like humans with horse ears and a tail.
• There is a reference to Echo, the Greek nymph, when Ofelia visits the pit in the middle of the labyrinth for the first time with the fairy, she calls "Echo" to play with the acoustic. Echo was killed by Pan because her voice could make every man fall in love.
• The fairy first appears under the form of a praying mantis (without front hooks) coming out of a carved stone looking more Aztec than Celtic this time.
• Other reference for creature design : Arthur Rackham
• The labyrinth is gothic from the XIIth century (Chartres cathedral) and is in fact a symbolic procession rather than a maze, because there is only one possible way. This 11 rings labyrinth (Christian) is a more elaborate version of the 7 rings labyrinth (Celtic).
• At the center of the labyrinth, steps go down into the pit, where a smaller labyrinth is carved in the ground and at the center stands a Celtic-type megalith. This stone is sculpted with a head of Pan, and a curious addition of a Christian figure, the virgin Mary with a baby Jesus in her arms, which Pan identifies as Ofelia (messiah prophecy in the film), princess of this magic kingdom, but refuses to talk about the baby (we assume the baby was the sacrifice Pan expected to re-open the gates before the full moon). This bit is quite confusing in Del Toro's fabricated mythology.

Like in fairytales, Ofelia becomes the hero of an initiating adventure, Pan reveals to her she's the princess of a secret underworld, and she must pass 3 tests before the full moon to save her kingdom from destruction, and become immortal again in the land of magic creatures.

Here we have the desire of delirious escapism children look for in fairytales, they are keen to imagine they have been adopted and are in fact of a noble descent, with superior powers. The infantile megalomania of being the center of the world, and being the last resort to save the world. The parallel with the war makes this regular passion for fairytales all the more relevant to Ofelia, who lost her father, and whose mother married a cold-blooded torturer of the fascist army. I think she misses her father and summons an ambiguous father figure in the person of Pan. To her mother she says Pan is very old and smells earth, which could mean he's been exhumed from the grave. The underworld is the world of the dead, where she meets her dead parents in the end. Of course the final scene shows Pan at the court of the underworld kingdom, with Ofelia's father on his throne, so they are two separate characters. But Pan could be the fatherly friend linking her to her father. On the other hand, the film installs a mimetic parallel between captain Vidal (real world) and Pan (fantasy world).

Filiation trauma

Vidal is tied to an inescapable fate inherited through the heroic death of his father. The pocket-watch of his father (that reminds me of a subplot in Pulp Fiction) literally makes every second of his life a preparation for a brave death. He is obsessed with punctuality, which is a derivation of this paternal legacy, and a control-freak who imposes his meticulousity onto everyone around him. His only goal is to perpetuate this overwhelming ascendant onto his newborn son, to transmit the pocket-watch and the anxiety by fulfilling his destiny and die like his father. This perspective overrules his love for his wife (and her life), his responsibility for his step-girl (and her life), and even his loyalty to Franco, as his final words will be to negotiate the transmission of this filial bound with the rebels. However the rebels deny him this last will, and promise instead that the baby will never know about his father. And the film ends there on the creation of a new orphan.

Coincidently, Vidal is orphan like Ofelia. Their parallel struggle to live up to the ideal of a gone father makes their love-hate confrontation more interesting. This tension could be caused by the mysterious link between Vidal and her father's death (murder?), Ofelia being a living image of his late rival. And Ofelia obviously refuses to see anyone replace her beloved father.

Although I would expect the symbolism of Ofelia's fantasy to reflect this quest of a missing father, but nothing in the legend really refers to a father figure, and her late father appears in the last scene without any symbolic/dramatic build up...

Pan is the only father figure available to Ofelia to unload her father affliction and repair a dysfunctional family balance. Yet his persona is obscure and untrustworthy. Mercedes warns her against fauns, and her mother flat out denies the existence of fantasy creatures, establishing the critical dilemma to choose between fantasy (immortality, fun, adventure, friends, childhood) and reality (adults, mother, step-father, fear, war, death).

In spite of the scary look, Ofelia feels strangely attracted to Pan (a satyr known to seduce and trick mortals). After all, he promises her immortality and a magic kingdom. Although in Del Toro's world Pan is good, his devious side reveals to have been a test to check how much Ofelia was ready to follow her heart even if it contradicted recommendations made by dear friends of hers. With the minimized role of her mother (even her death is overlooked), Ofelia's journey is mostly independent, in solitude, and the only authority regulating her life comes from Vidal and Pan.

More on Pan's Tests next...

Pan's Labyrinth (2006/del Toro)

El Laberinto del Fauno / Pan's Labyrinth (2006/Guillermo del Toro/Spain) ++

Opening Sequence : Slow travelling forward (swirling?) on a girl laying on the ground with blood leaking from her nose, her head half tilted toward us. Heavy breathing.
This is a glimpse of the last shot of the film, playing backward (the blood appears to creeps back into her nose, which is more a digital special effect than a backward footage I think).

Spain 1944, fascist army of Franco still struggles to put out the underground guerilla of the republican fighters hidden in the mountains. Interesting historical context reminded by David D'Arcy at GreenCine :

"Bear in mind that this story is set against the background of a war that was won by Spanish fascists, killing millions of civilians and forcing many more into exile, all with the support of Hitler and Mussolini."

and acquarello at Strictly Film School :

"Set in 1944, the year that the annals of history have officially annotated as the year that the Republicans were defeated, thus marking the end of the civil war, reality proves less than neatly conclusive as the insurgency rages on (and would continue for nearly two decades), the resistance fighters fortifying their strongholds in the mountains with the covert aid of sympathetic villagers."

Guillermo del Toro rehashes the same concerns developped in El Espinazo del diablo / The Devil's backbone (2001), that mixed supernatural and the horror of war in a world of orphans confronted to unjust discipline (in 1939 at the end of the civil war), written after Pan's Labyrinth (which took 10 years for greenlight).

It's interesting to note the absence of a religious reference/character in Pan's Labyrinth, despite the arguable role of Church in supporting Franco. As acquarello quotes, Guillermo del Toro said the hand-eyed Pale Man was inspired by the stigmatas from christianity, so this would be the clerical figure disguised under a cryptic allegory (which is also inspired by Goya's Saturn Devouring one of his Children).

Ofelia, a 12 yold girl who lost her father during the war, is drawn with her mother, Carmen, outside of the city by a severe step-father, Vidal (captain in Franco's army), who is the father of the baby Carmen is about to deliver. Although the mother is only a secondary character, her illness doesn't give her much speaking parts, she doesn't make the end of the film either, and Mercedes, the servant, becomes a surrogate mother, trusted, affectionate advisor. Her father is dead, so he's out of the picture (or is he?), and the step-father is dominant, even if the father-daughter relationship is very limited and filled with mutual hate. And the rebels are also distant secondary characters. Thus the main characters (Vidal, Pan, Mercedes, Ofelia), forming the nucleus family model (dad-mom-girl) are strangers each playing a role that isn't theirs. The dad role being shared between captain Vidal and Pan (who I suspect is the dream reincarnation of her dead father).

The war trauma and political turmoil in Spain is translated in this allegory of a dysfunctional family. Ofelia, on the fence between a fairytale books populated childhood (metaphor of peace and innocence) and the conflicts of adolescence with parents (metaphor of the violence of war, of resistance and breaking up with an authoriarian regime). The film is a symbolic lesson on the moral consequences, in life and death, of a blind submission to orders or a reasonned defiance to constraints based on terror.

A principle illustrated many times in the story, both in the real world and in the fantasy world, with almost each main characters, and slightly different results according to the purity of their mind. Ofelia disobeys her mother to accomplish her first test, ignores Pan to stay with her mother, contradicts the fairies suggestion to pick the right safe, disobeys Pan to eat the grape, defies the captain to kidnap the baby, and finally turns back on Pan to give the baby back to the captain. The doctor disobeys the captain to end the suffering of the tortured prisonner and thus risks his own life. Mercedes disobeys the captain to help the resistance despite the threat of torture and death.

The test of rebellion is always risky and balances the higher moral ground of a heroic sacrifice of one's life v. a submissive/coward life condoning the evil happening around. The heart of success in a resistance against the almighty despotic machine is self-sacrifice in the hope to save a better life for future generations.

[EDIT] Bringing up past history today in Spain, after the 3-11-2004 terror attack in Madrid, could be a reminder of the legitimacy of resistance and the blindness of a standing army following narrowminded orders... The reference to Gulf War 2 is not too far fetched. And the point of view chosen by Del Toro to observe this war from the (evil) side of the official army, matches the position of Spain in Irak, in the Bush cohalition, against the local guerilla fighting against the oppressor.

The Western genre influence on the direction of war sequences is made obvious by the cavalry, the smoke clouds raising from the forest, the way Vidal checks the rebels' abandonned campfire to tell how many they are, and the attack of the locomotive. Like in a Western, the point of view of the renegades (republican resistance) remains invisible, they always come out of nowhere and their whereabouts is a mystery, while the film follow the regular army (fascists) in their footsteps. Only the men in uniforms are evil and the homeless rebels are the freedom fighters. A reversal of cinematic values. Since Ofelia's mother married a fascist captain, our protagonist lives among the evil forces, and gives the film an original perspective on this war to denounces the cruelty of fascists from within their ranks.

Unlike André Malraux' L'Espoir (1945) about an earlier battle (circa 1937) of the same war filmed entirely from the perspective of the resistance, hidden in the mountains and organising commando operations against an impersonal army. Malraux's direction is incomparably more poetical and cinematic of course.

I don't understand Guillermo del Toro's experiment with the faux-transition to link 2 (cutaway) scenes in a seamless lateral travelling... it doesn't quite work and shows off virtuosity rather than bring a meaningful reading to the visual language.

The systematical mirroring of real-world adult activity and the re-enactment in the child's fantasy crypted by unconscious dreamwork might seem a little heavyhanded, but ultimately proves to carry a coherent symbolism (except for a few compromise to silly melodramatic cues).

Guillermo del Toro does a better job than Gilliam's desastrous Brothers Grimm (2004) to adapt the fairytale mythology and explore its function in children's personality construction, and its re-interpretation of a reality too overwhelming to comprehend. Here the special FX are seamless (except for the line of sight of the young actress) and original prostethics are very inventive.

Although this tale is too gruesome for kids and too naive for grown ups, which makes a weird combination that hurts both targeted audiences. The compromises to mix 2 incompatible genres ultimately result in an average movie without spirit. For instance, the labyrinth (borrowed to the Chartres cathedral) is too literal, too concrete. It wasn't necessary to prove its existence by the words of Mercedes, or to film the girl with adults there. The power of imagination to generate a wonderland out of nothing, in the girl's dream or pretend game with imaginary friends, leaves the doubt for the audience. It's a mistake to overstate its reality, since the film diegesis already show us it's there, while the image in a film carries a fruitful plurality of interpretations (past memory, dream, wishful thinking, fiction, illustration, metaphor). The Brazil inspired ending also commits a fatal error, by draging the captain, then the rebels, into the labyrinth, and showing the captain's viewpoint of Ofelia talking to an invisible Pan. Is it that only naive children can see magic creatures or is it that she's insane? This shot is too literal and breaks the suspension of disbelief like if the filmmaker estranged his protagonist 2 minutes before the end.

Ofelia slowly sinks into her fantasy world as she quits the world of livings to the tune of a lullaby, like in Gilliam's Brazil (1984), where it suited the schizophreniac demise of the adult protagonist (european cut), and fails completely the fantasy belief of childhood in Pan's Labyrinth. If there is a way to film the meeting of adult's and children's perception it was the wrong choice there. Gilliam's latest film, Tideland (2005), also strives to confront childhood fantasy and adult reality, and end up with this odd cross-genre with a gruesome puerile triffle...

The film also borrows from the imagery of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland, exemplified by the pretty dress she wears in the forest, the descent in the pit, and her talking to imaginary friends.

The melo ending contradicts the active rhythm of the film. When Mercedes sees Ofelia shot on the ground, you'd think she would call for help, carry her in the house, try to save her life... but as if she instantly figures it's too late, she starts to sing a lullaby like if it was the only thing to do. Melodramatic cinema always has convenient ways to deal with the most effective dramatic situations, if not the most realistic. Sometimes they want us to care for the urgency, then we feel empathy for the protagonist's survival, but if it's a glorious ending, the urgency is immediately discarded to make us focus on the courage in death and the prospect of a shiny after-life.
There is a time to root for life and a time to enjoy death. This trick is also used with the stuttering guy's torture to illustrate how death is preferable to survival in certain cases (although he was a disposable secondary character anyway). The death of the main protagonist, an innocent child, was a bolder narrative move. But I still think it was filmed wrongly, even if her death is suggested in the very opening sequence of the film.

The archetypes aren't as manichaean as they seem. The ambiguity in each character makes the fable more interesting even if it was meant for suspense purpose.
Conversly the dramatic structure and the psychological situations aren't always one-sided. For instance the nazi-like captain is shown like an attentionate husband and father (forcing Carmen to use a wheelchair against her will for her health, and brave in defeat when he hands over his baby to the rebels when they execute him). Also the rebels are shown shooting dead at point blank the wounded soldiers, like the fascists did, no mercy, no prisonners. The magic creatures are also faillible (the fairies pick the wrong safe, the wicked Pan lies, changes his mind or plays deception game) which contrasts with the usual clearcut good/evil sides in fairytales where everyone's power is defined upfront and doesn't disappoint.

I wasn't impressed by the sound effects... there is a rich work (excesssive most of the time though) to create original sounds for the fantasy world, but contrary to the creative integration of visual special effects, sounds are triggered on cue to announce a character everytime they move whether they should make noise or not. I thought it was far too systematic, and lacked the moderation of an harmonious atmospherical soundtrack.

But what actually interested me most was the magic and the fantasy, structured by the symbolic (psychoanalitical dreamwork) tests Pan orders to Ofelia (which I will examine in the next posts : Pan's Fantasy & Pan's Tests)

(s) ++ (w) ++ (m) ++ (i) +++ (c) ++

Consensual criteria for a good critic

Notes from La Critique de cinéma by René Prédal, 2004.

What defines film criticism is to talk about films and ponder over the nature of cinema. The existence of criticism implies the artistic characteristics of cinema : dissociation of the artistic value from the movie budget, ambitions and commercial success. The critic is meant to ignore the public reception and speculate on the film's meaning in art history (its value in duration and immanence).

4 main criteria :

1. Love of Cinema : passion + curiosity (for discoveries and novelties). Watching a lot of movies.
2. Culture : expert of cinema history (1000 or 2000 essential films to know to be able to relativize the creativity/skill of new movies against past production) + deep general culture (arts and real world, which is the source of cinema inspiration)
3. Cinema technique knowledge
4. Writing Quality : style, communicative enthousiasm, readable, clarity, pedagogy.

And also :

• 5) Sensibility : emotion. To develop affectivity even for disliked movies.
• 6) Stance without prejudice : Judgement rooted in critical theory trends without rigid ideology.
• 7) Objectivity : no influence by the majority of opinions, nor by personal mood/instinct.
• 8) Sense of hierarchy (values) : Being able to make pertinent comparisons. Freedom and independance of thinking, against the editorial line, other critics and social fads)

This is the theory, but unfortunately... "the reviews we read in newspapers don't talk about cinema, they only account for the topic, the situations and characters." F. Gévaudan (Cinéma 83, #300, déc. 1983)
-- The development of video with easy access to repeat viewing should help critics to develop a deeper analysis, but it only serves to scholars. Weekly reviewers write a critique after one viewing (or 2 at best).
-- National traditions : study of acting performance is almost never considered in France, while gesture analysis, eyes, voice intonations are largely developped in the USA.
-- Mentality imposed by the timeframe :

• Political interpretation was the exclusive entry point during the cold war and witch hunt.
• Then spiritualist and moral analysis, or taste, offer multiple readings (mise-en-scene, topic, genre, ambition) because everyone realized cinema cannot change the world. Informational criticism seeks the key-significance, raison d'être of the film, its humane value. (R. Guyonnet, Le métier de critique, Esprit, #6, juin 1960)
• Feyredoun Hoveyda suggests the aesthetic value of film is the only viewpoint possible, opposed to the key-significance. "I like extreme opinions. Since each can only defend his/her own truth, it's vain to stay in the middle ground, because a film is only the combination of a limited number of elements skillfuly organized. Thus what is the point to balance good v. bad scenes, or form v. content? This comes down to decomposing the artwork and doesn't grasp its globality because the whole is different from the sum of its parts. The thought of a filmmaker is revealed through its mise-en-scene (Politique des Auteurs)" (Les tâches du soleil, Cahiers du Cinéma, #110, aug. 1960)

Related:

• Good critic / bad critic (contra-contrarianism 5)