Damnation

Bela Tarr’s Damnation is a mundane exploration of life. The film’s long shots force the viewer to ponder each doleful portrait that Tarr paints. The main character, whose name is unknown to us, is very hard to approach. This confusion comes from his action and emotion. He is oppressed by a fate that he seems to loathe. This might possibly be an economical, social, or familial issue within the main character, an issue that we never really get to the bottom of. By the end of the film, in his distraught disposition, the main character is reduced to an animalistic behavior, barking at a pack of dogs and circling them on all fours.

Tarr pays meticulous heed to the shyest details. This visual and temporal depth that Tarr emphasizes comments directly on life. The film’s narrative layout is extremely unique. He supports his simple narrative with abstruse poetic dialogue. The dialogue is sparsely spread across film. The long shots do not manipulate us in the way a rapid succession of shots might. Here we are forced to observe the main character rather than replace (or become) him. This detachment makes this film all the more foreign to us. The film not only separates us via the dominance of long shots, but also from Tarr’s use of a dark and despotic setting, which is often flooded with rains that visually mute the physical details of characters and the setting. The setting is characterized as a sort Beckett-esque landscape that is desolate and deprived of life’s vivacity.

Throughout the film there is an eeriness that peruses each scene. This strange shadow of despair forces the viewer to confront the many metaphysical questions of life. Tarr never provides us with a resolute conclusion; he only steps into this brief moment, a slim fraction, of life. What do we experience from this? All of these questions in the film force us to make phenomenological juxtapositions and connections. Despite the fact that Tarr never directly imposes his own metaphysical opinion onto the viewer, he does compel us with the bleakness of reality in this fraction of time (and person’s life) that he has decided to portray.

Another important aspect of the film is in the sound. Sound is important because it is the emotional counterpart to the film's dialogue. The film, for the most part, is diegetically scored. For example, music comes from the woman's singing, or a man playing the accordion. This aural pan from non-diegetic sound to a realization that it is diegetic (i.e., seeing the musician) is important. It creates a metaphor for wisdom and experience (this layerage of knowing/expecting). Half way through the film we are conditioned to this diegetic extension (or diegetic surprise) and before we even see the musician we are already wondering where the artist might appear in the scene.

The Wounds

The film The Wounds (1998) by director Srdjan Dragojevic’s is an extraordinary depiction of the internal struggles of crime and corruption in Serbia. The fantastical nature of The Wounds exploits the glorification of violence in the media and society in general. The two main characters of the film, Pinki and Kraut, go down the narrow path of crime. They are influenced by the work of Dickie, a gangster, who uses and abuses the boys in order to toughen them up. The film opens up with Pinki and Kraut driving in the midst of a parade. Most of the film toggles from the past and cuts to them in the parade. After we travel through their history we arrive back at the festival. This takes us to the film’s final location, the cemetery. Pinki and Kraut, like all of the other gangsters in the film, resolve their issues with absolute violence. They impose a very chaotic rationale onto the viewer’s perception. Their complete disregard for everything reaches violent extremes; we see them as vessels of power and destruction that, in the end, turn destruction in on themselves.

This destructive and distorted point of view is further emphasized by the camera work and editing of the film. The rapid succession of cuts, distortion of time, and constantly burgeoning intensity all support the film’s dramatic nature. The film’s explosive impulsivity rejoins the mindset of the two main characters. The synthesis between action and construction embody the intensity of the perceptive present. It tunes into the vivacity of survival when every moment seems to be endangered. Dragojevic emphasizes this despondent aspect of the film, which reflects that generation, one that is forced to become more animalistic, fighting and killing one another for power and survival. This discontent also comments on the ethnic tensions in Serbia.

Pinki and Kraut idealize the criminal lifestyle. This dangerous behavior and carelessness is what ultimately ends up killing them. What stands out most for me is the media’s interference in the criminal issues. This explores the appalling veneration toward violence and crime in America, whose media influences a large portion of the world (via the news media, and Hollywood films). What we witness is a reflection of how these fictional (Hollywood stylized) accounts of violence vie for a real account (in some foreign countries). When Kraut and Pinki go on the talk show they exploit the exploiters by creating a horrifically violent scene over public television. This blatant depiction of the horrors of crime counteracts the show’s adoration of crime. It also shows how the media will expose anything that sells, even if that means glorifying criminals, so long as it generates a large enough audience. These criminological ideals of power and destruction are a way to repress peoples of society. What it masks are the numerous political problems of the Serbian government, and it emphasizes the replication of a criminal mass (of those who are criminal and those who are dominated by criminals).

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Cristi Puiu’s most recent film, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), is a bleak and enduring look into the conditions of the Romanian health system. The film opens up to Mr. Lazarescu looking nauseous and weak. Lazarescu’s headache dominates the pain and suffering that he’s forced to bear throughout the film. The pain begins in his stomach and eventually consumes his mind. His aching stomach leads him to believe that it is an ulcer problem because he has a medical history, specifically a surgery, involving a stomach ulcer. His self-diagnosis however is constantly ignored because each person he encounters has his or her own “medical” opinion about his condition. Many people (nurses, doctors, family, neighbors) resolve that the issue is not his stomach ulcer but instead correlated to his drinking habits. Lazarescu’s visceral illness shows how the body affects the mind. For instance, as his condition worsens his “mind” output also deteriorates. We witness this deterioration as we impatiently wait with him and the nurse in these various hospitals. We are forced to contemplate not only his suffering but also our own temporal fate.

We learn that throughout the day Lazarescu uses both medication and alcohol in attempts to suppress his nauseating condition. The attempts however are ineffective, and by the end of the night Lazarescu is calling for an ambulance. The peculiar thing about this part of the film is that his desire to receive treatment isn’t at all urgent. He never directly asks for an ambulance to arrive right away; instead it is his neighbor who has to finally call, demanding an ambulance, and acknowledging the seriousness of Lazarescu’s illness. Lazarescu’s patience might be because he is accustomed to the third rate medical assistance provided to citizens in Romania. The film on a whole addresses these issues of debt, power, and bureaucratic dysfunction that exist in Romania.

The long takes and lengthy duration of the film exposes us to this sense of hopelessness that many Romanians are forced to live under day in a day out. The film’s intensity lies in our impatience toward the system of bureaucratic hierarchy and social destitution made apparent in the film. This reality Puiu emphasizes both cinematographically and narratively. The film directly comments on the stereotypical medical film or show. In these depictions the medical world is glamorized and the doctors and nurses are glorified for their devoted contributions. This however is not the reality, doctors and nurses are as much human as Lazarescu, and they also have everyday problems both at work and at home. The long takes (shots) of the film don’t just emphasize Lazarescu long lugubrious wait but also the long and exhausting hours that doctors and nurses invest in their jobs, which are often under-paying and or under-staffed, making shifts more strenuous and workers tenuous (again, an instance where physical deterioration influences the mind or psychology of a person). Another important cinematographic element of the film is Puiu’s use of hand-held camera movement. The rigid and jerky camera movement creates a sort of uneasiness within the viewer. This in effect creates a very visceral experience and influences the viewer to feel as discomposed as Lazarescu.

Lazarescu’s character is important because his character is average. The various faults and vices of Lazarescu at times hinder his treatment and service provided for him. Puiu uses this character to generate sympathy, not because Lazarescu is a “good guy”, but because Lazarescu is an ordinary elder. This demographic is a dominating part of the population that Puiu is trying to voice about. Moreover, he emphasizes the numerous troubles and tribulations of Lazarescu, which relates the audience to their problems as well. Lazarescu is a human being, and should not deserve to be tossed from one health institution to the next. However, the reality is that he is a living, breathing, dying individual who is being ignored and such is the case for so many others.

The Oak

In the film The Oak Romanian director Lucian Pintilie explores those last stages of the slowly waning and degenerating Romanian Communist system. This film is extremely unique because it is a fresh glance into Romanian arts and culture, which for the most part is relatively hard to find. In the world of visual and performing arts Pintilie is most known for his direction in theater. Made in 1993, The Oak takes place in the ‘80s, in the late years of communism. Romania was one of the last countries to dissolve the harsh Stalinist policies. The film provides an examination of the (Ceausescu’s) internally repressive and economically deteriorating regime. We trail the main character, Nela, on a sort of pilgrimage that she has following the death of her father.

The narrative of the film takes us from the death of Nela’s father to the end when she buries her father’s ashes next to an oak tree. From one angle of the film, Pintilie examines the territory between male and female. In this perspective we weave together and set apart the relationships between Nela and Mitica, Nela and her father, and the relationship between Nela’s parents. The relationship between Nela and Mitica begins in the hospital, when Nela finds out that Mitica arrived in her defense while she was being raped by a group of ruffians. Both characters seem to commonly contain the same aversion toward their political state of affairs. This behavior prompts them to vividly display their aggravation and discontent. For example, in the opening scene, Nela at the death of her father reacts in a moving outburst against her sister, against her father, and even against herself. Here she shouts furiously at her sister and sets a fire in front of the door of her father’s apartment. Pintilie shows how many Romanian are forced to displace their anger because the weight of oppression and financial deficit is so much to bear.

For Nela, discontent arrives when the government refuses to assist her father with the costs for his medication. This is Pintilie’s comment on Ceausescu’s inability to properly provide Romanian peoples with adequate health services and medicine. He comments further on the system when we learn about Mitica. Mitica is exact opposite of the procedures instituted by the strange bureaucracy of the regime. His compassion compels him to attend to the needs of those around him despite the lack of supplies available to him. Throughout the film he argues and criticizes the decisions of his higher-ups. This behavior gets him into some trouble; however, ironically the same hierarchy of bureaucrats who jail him end up releasing him as a returned favor for his services as a doctor.

Another aspect of the film is how Pintilie explores the emotional efficacy of family and, in Nela’s case, the importance of her relationship with her father. Throughout her pilgrimage, Nela carries along with her the ashes of her father, which happen to be stored in a Nescafe container. The Nescafe container is a clear representation of commodification and the capitalist system; it is an emblem of what her father initially fought to resist against, consequently in the name of a regime that does little for him. We learn about the powerful relationship Nela had with her father. We learn that when her parents divorced she went with her father, and her sister went with their mother. Her attachment explores the importance of communication and union involved in the human condition. The communist ideology is about community and connectivity, however despairingly this film shows how the social and political conditions are quite the opposite. This emphasizes the discreet severity of the violence that manifests in the system, a system that ignores ethics in the concern for maintaining power. This is explicitly depicted in the end when a busload of children are sacrificed (murdered) by their government, the very institution that is supposed to be in their defense, in order to minimize conflict issues with terrorist groups and the spread of revolutionary ideas. We see how the government’s duty does not lie in serving its people; instead the people are submissive to the government. The Oak ends in an odd manner when Nela and Mitica remark on their disinterest in the “normal,” saying they hope they have a child who is not normal. This is an idea that is embraced throughout the film. Take for instance Nela’s job with children who are not seen as normal but regarded as special. Pintilie sees the future in the hands of the youth. And if they are to adhere to the “normal” then they would accept all of the hegemony and deceit that goes along with the Ceausescu regime. But Pintilie, as abovementioned, resolves this by closing the film with the Nela and Mitica’s powerful revulsion for these “norms”.

Lunacy

The 2005 film Lunacy is Jan Svankmajer’s surreal examination of ideological extremes. Prior to the film Svankmajer, himself, addresses the audience prefacing the story’s distinct exposition of what he sees as the three models of extremes. The first extreme is absolute freedom; the second extreme is of absolute authority; and the final model is a combination of two, a mélange of extremes, which he states is “the madhouse that we live in today.”

He portrays these extremes using none other than the infamous Marquis de Sade. The instability of the characters, such as Marquis, brings into question the veracity of perception. Svankmajer shows how the way in which we perceive is hinged off the system we adhere to, i.e. our ideological stance. As the film develops sanity becomes more and more detached, and the depersonalizing nature of the film becomes more knowable as it evolves. We see how complete anarchy and complete authority pan out in the ideological scheme of things.

Our understanding of Marquis’ purpose in relation to Berlot is rather trivial throughout the entire film. Marquis explains that because their childhood experiences are alike he feels inclined to communicate with Berlot. This attempt to associate with Berlot however actually involves him exposing Berlot to a bizarre, anarchistic lifestyle. We go through the entire film with Marquis and yet we never become attached to his character, instead we distance our emotions from him.

Marquis’ sadistic, hyperrational logic dominates the first two-thirds of the film. Here we see his mental instability conflicts with his idea of liberty. He feels that complete liberty is the only rational way to live. However, absolute liberty is a paradox because if complete liberty exists then people have liberty to hinder or harm the liberty of others thereby creating a situation where someone does not have complete liberty; this ultimately suggests survival of the fittest.

The concept of anarchy is further exhibited within the mental hospital. At first glance, when we enter the hospital, it seems like the hospital is run amok. However, soon thereafter, we learn that the hospital’s philosophy encourages complete anarchy; this is then debunked when we later learn the frenzy isn’t the hospital’s ideology but the rather the patients’. Marquis and the actual doctor both exploit the two extremes of absolute freedom, and absolute authority. Svankmajer displays for us the uncanny practice involved in the extremes of power (independent or authoritative power).

The Marquis psychologically manipulates the patients, using his hyperrational logic to brainwash the others into accepting complete anarchy. A good example of this is when Marquis does a tableau vivant of a Delacroix’s painting “Liberty leading the people”. At this time, he also has a monologue where he reiterates his perverse and twisted logic of absolute freedom. Marquis also, in his anarchistic rationale, tests people faith by denigrating the existence of God, using the problem of evil as partial basis for his argument.

Svankmajer’s concoction of stop-motion with live action uniquely displays the film’s surreal content. He orchestrates his stop-motion sequences using many fleshy and meaty materials. These emphasize how much the body influences the mind. The body here seems to be represented by these pieces of meat, along with a mix of other anatomical features. These animated materials seem to summarize in short sequences the acts that precede it. Svankmajer contextualizes human action in these interludes, metaphorically representing the physiological aspect of human nature, which involves physical desires. These physical desires however are often conflicted with and influenced by socio-political institution. Take, for instance, the system of complete control. Svankmajer displays this when the slabs of meat are attached to strings like marionettes, this displays the lack of freedom in a system of authority. Overall Svankmajer seems to use these short sequences to portray human actions from a detached point of view, looking at our behavior from a symbolic perspective where our actions become the actions of normal inanimate objects, pieces of meat (which at one time contributed to the animation of an animal, as muscle).

A Short Film About Killing

A Short Film About Killing (1988) is Kieslowski’s feature film, which originally came out of his Decalogue series. The film focuses on particular moral dilemmas attached to both the law, and human nature. Human action and human responsibility are brought to forefront of the film. Kieslowski forces us to pass judgment over the issue. The film’s bleak content frames the film with a particular harshness that imposes the issue of capital punishment on the film. Throughout the film we are forced to apply our own ethics to the characters’ actions.

The film’s aesthetic content reveals a second level to the film. Aspects such as cinematography, color, lighting, editing etc support the film’s distinct mysteriousness. Take for instance the film’s tint, which saturates different forms of light with a greenish coloring. The tint doesn’t necessarily distort any of the features of the film, but rather it sets a particular tone. The film contains this very tainted green, almost polluted looking wash that furthers the film’s gloomy aura. The colors also work simultaneously with Kieslowski’s particular use of lighting. He focuses on shadows and shading in order to frame the film as though it is almost unreal, even nightmarish. Here Kieslowski limits our perception so that we can’t quite make out certain peripheral details. This speaks specifically to the film in that it focuses on individual perception as opposed to cultural (or collective) perception, on such topics as ethics. We are provided with certain details some of which people do not normally witness. Take for example, the five minute long act of killing itself. Other details of the film are muddled and or distorted in symbols.

Kieslowski uses symbols and motifs throughout the film. Take, for instance, the cat that is hanged in the beginning of the film. This opens up the film’s harsh and cold portrayal. The film ends with Jacek, the main character, hung. Should we imply that his hanging is in someway analogous to that of the cat? Why invite these connections? Kieslowski seems to be framing chance images that invite the viewer to create connections between symbols and motifs. Another instance of this indistinct symbolism is the devil-head that swings from the taxi’s rear-view mirror. Many of these symbols however are either lost in their cultural context, or ambiguously representative of multiple connections.

Kieslowski camera work is also very specific and effectively adds to the film’s intensity. Many of his shots are at skewed angles, or tangled behind objects. This gives us a very voyeuristic feel, as if we are peeking in on the characters in the film. Many of the tight and cluttered shots work together with the emptiness of the green filters and limited lighting to add to that mysterious emotion that Kieslowski imposes on the viewer. These tight shots also create a more intimate relationship between the viewer and the film. For instance, Kieslowski, in numerous shots, has Jacek’s face dominate the entire shot. This tight attention to Jacek’s emotion, or lack thereof, links us closer to the issue Kieslowski is trying to display. He seems to be trying to capture the essence of the unsympathetic reality of not only homicide but also of life and death in general. The taxi driver, although he was a rude person, did not in any way deserve to die. And even after Jacek is dead we do not really feel resolved, instead we feel very empty because we come out of the film realizing how bleak the world actually is.

Provincial Actors

Angieszka Holland’s 1979 film Provincial Actors intimately explores the numerous struggles between a cast of actors under the harsh censorship policies in Poland at the time. We see this repression throughout the film as the director unabashedly chops lines out of the play. The main character of the film, and lead role in the play, Chris, however frequently counters the director’s censorship. His role embodies that late 70s sentiment of laboring resistance against the political disparity. This is also what ultimately led to the Solidarity movement, which formed in 1980. The movement was hinged on national pride, non-violence, and advocating social change.

Chris uses his popularity and position in the play to question the director’s exhibition of power and censorship. He tries to convince the rest of the cast about the issue however they are unresponsive to it. Even his wife ignores his complaints. This is either because she knows that nothing will change because they are just provincial actors, or because she is oblivious to his concerns. I can’t imagine that his wife is completely numb to the political atrocities. It seems, perhaps, that she feels so oppressed by the system that their reaction against it will only afford them trouble. In the end Chris continues to battle censorship issues in the theatre. We know this because the director confronts Chris about reciting lines that were edited out. The director in response belittles Chris saying that his resistance is worthless because no one even notices the significance of the lines he’s reciting. This could imply that the majority is deceived by governmental hegemony.

Another important aspect of the film includes the relationship between Chris and his wife, Anna. This explores more intimately how communist oppression effected the population on an individual level. The play ultimately forces the couple apart. This is because Chris is so preoccupied with the political conditions and pressures for him to conform to the censorial oppression. Anna’s only response to his reaction against the play is when she suggests that he should leave the play. She’s not quite keen on the system he is trying to undermine. This might suggest her reluctance to become resistant herself; this is because she is as oppressed as everyone else in the film. However, despite her reluctance, she does have a strong social role in the film. She independently resists Chris whenever he shows dominance over her. For instance, we he orders her to make sandwiches she directly confronts him about it. In another scene, Chris, in an exhibition of power, slaps her on the face. Here, he loses control of his emotions. All of the pressure that he feels he is bearing to conform forces him to buckle and he inflicts his pain onto his wife.

The elder neighbor is a brief but important character. He seems to be an active embodiment of such themes as aging and temporality, as well as social and generational differences. His suicide is displayed in a very bleak and abrupt manner. We only get a quick glimpse of his plummeting body through the apartment window. His death ultimately remarks on the human condition in relation to the social and political system. Holland explores the desolate, despairing and wreak mystery that is our existence.