What is special about Marco Tullio Giordana's "I Cento Passi"?
Cento Passi (one hundred steps) is a film which depicts the notoreity of Mafia, an evil of Italia Meridionale (South Italy). While introducing we foreigners to Elementi di Civiltà of Italian life, our professor took great efforts to screen this movie for us. Peppino Impastato, a real character in history, fought against the mafia in Cinisi, a region in Sicilia, and finally became a martyr for his cause. It's a history-based film, no doubt. But what was the appeal of the film? Was the film trying faithfully to reproduce history and to make a judgement on the good and evil of social and political life of 1960s? If the film was trying to show matrydom how's it different from the epocal event of crucifixion of Christ? Isn't it time for us to give a new interpretation to this epocal event?
There is a shot in the film which depicts the summary of the film's objectives: Peppino plans to contest the elections. During the election campaign for Peppino the campaign vehicle enters a street where it was blocked for a moment on the road by a herd of sheeps/goats. The person who was announcing with the microphone gives a spontaneous remark: "andate controcorrente" (go against the flow). The crowd is always like a herd of sheep, no doubt. For Peppino, who tried to motivate the people of Cinisi to speak against the notoreity of Mafia, the people were like animals; without language. But that is all... Going against the societal norms and becoming a martyr - this is an old model. It's time to think about a power with the king's head cut-off (quote-unquote).
One can easily juxtapose I Cento Passi with the 'finally hero wins' movies in Indian languages. They are much more successful in fulfilling their objectives - pure entertainment. After all, which is more convincing: individual heroism in history or heroic struggle in movies?
Postscript: India can be easily stereotyped. Scenes of sexual liberation and mastery over pleasure was intertwined with Indian music (Sitar) in Cento Passi. Sitar is played when a white lady in Indian Salwar, who seems to have explored 'the hidden India', is shown to be leading Peppino to a friend of her's to make a new collaboration with former's Radio Aut.
Showing posts with label Film review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film review. Show all posts
Monday, August 07, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Reverse Visuals
While watching movies I have always tried to get out of the influences of narrative sequencing of stories. For this reason, I have always loved those visual presentations which go out of the framework of narrative story telling. We have witnessed many attempts in films along this direction. Abbas Kiarostami's earthquake trilogy as well as his 'Close-UP', for example, has tried to intertwine the cinematic world with the real world (I like to call the latter as 'a world without a camera'). There are other movie experiments too, where we see the visuality of the characters transforming itself to the visuality of the film audience at the expense of losing their own perceiving subject somewhere between the camera and their eyes [eg. Kazhcha (a malayalam movie of 2004; kazhcha means vision)]. All these are human experiences which are beautifully transformed to the screen and which finally made us say that visuals are not merely our objects of perception but our perceiving mechanism itself.
Watching 'Vismayathumbathu' (Meaning: on the edge of astonishment) I am exalted by a different possibility for visuals. The film not only has the potential to challenge the usual patterning of our thoughts vis-a-vis narrative story telling but it shows how visuality has occupied a domain of its own independent of our perceptional sequencing. The film is about spirits, extra sensory perception and enigmatic happenings. But the novelty is that the characters seem to be bewildered by the enigma of the visuals rather than by the incomprehensible powers of human spirit. For anyone who tries to view this movie in terms of the psychological processes which function as the backbone of the story, the film is just a story with a beginning and an end. It's true that unexplained psychological processes are the ones that have given the story its thread. But it would be rather idiotic to learn about ESP through a popular film than from expert practitioners.
Having prepared to give up the 'psychological' of visuality we are indeed faced with the question of 'sense.' Sense is something solid in narrative cinema which makes it mandatory for the events in a film to follow a chronological sequence. Language supplements the visuals by always appearing after them as a commentary to the cinematic time that has elapsed. In short, the possibility of a reverse visual is always forgotten to the extent that sense is considered to rest on the forward
succession, the pointing forward, of language. It is the potential of this reverse visual which is properly utilized by Vismayathumbathu. The spirit of a human who has been in a coma for a long time tries to recall the past events that have led her to this fate. The spirit cannot however recollect whether the person It represents is dead or alive. The characters who mediates this spirit with the outside world
finally summarize that the events have led to her death. For the audience, this is the story sketched by language. Actor Mukesh announcing to the world, "Reetha is murdered. The investigative column (about the disappearance of the former and published by a daily) ends here."
At this point reverse visuals come to the fore and lead the characters. These visuals follow a path of their own which is neither accessible to memory nor to the good sense in language. The usual sequencing and teleos of visuals are questioned by the reverse visuals. They are able to show death first and the actual process of dying the next, not as flashback but as a major reverse in our sense. One may ask what is the effect of all this. But don't you feel that the (a)cumulation of good
sense in language has a lot to do with the sequencing of cause and effect?
Click here or here for synopsis and review of the film.
Watching 'Vismayathumbathu' (Meaning: on the edge of astonishment) I am exalted by a different possibility for visuals. The film not only has the potential to challenge the usual patterning of our thoughts vis-a-vis narrative story telling but it shows how visuality has occupied a domain of its own independent of our perceptional sequencing. The film is about spirits, extra sensory perception and enigmatic happenings. But the novelty is that the characters seem to be bewildered by the enigma of the visuals rather than by the incomprehensible powers of human spirit. For anyone who tries to view this movie in terms of the psychological processes which function as the backbone of the story, the film is just a story with a beginning and an end. It's true that unexplained psychological processes are the ones that have given the story its thread. But it would be rather idiotic to learn about ESP through a popular film than from expert practitioners.
Having prepared to give up the 'psychological' of visuality we are indeed faced with the question of 'sense.' Sense is something solid in narrative cinema which makes it mandatory for the events in a film to follow a chronological sequence. Language supplements the visuals by always appearing after them as a commentary to the cinematic time that has elapsed. In short, the possibility of a reverse visual is always forgotten to the extent that sense is considered to rest on the forward
succession, the pointing forward, of language. It is the potential of this reverse visual which is properly utilized by Vismayathumbathu. The spirit of a human who has been in a coma for a long time tries to recall the past events that have led her to this fate. The spirit cannot however recollect whether the person It represents is dead or alive. The characters who mediates this spirit with the outside world
finally summarize that the events have led to her death. For the audience, this is the story sketched by language. Actor Mukesh announcing to the world, "Reetha is murdered. The investigative column (about the disappearance of the former and published by a daily) ends here."
At this point reverse visuals come to the fore and lead the characters. These visuals follow a path of their own which is neither accessible to memory nor to the good sense in language. The usual sequencing and teleos of visuals are questioned by the reverse visuals. They are able to show death first and the actual process of dying the next, not as flashback but as a major reverse in our sense. One may ask what is the effect of all this. But don't you feel that the (a)cumulation of good
sense in language has a lot to do with the sequencing of cause and effect?
Click here or here for synopsis and review of the film.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
A review of Io Non Ho Paura
Io Non Ho Paura – The Music of Surfaces
Instead of being psychological, the word ‘paura’ can be better connected with ‘pausa’ which has its roots in Greek paùo (stop). The likeness in the semantic feel of both the words, ‘paura’ and ‘pausa’ is also arguable to an extent: ‘to stop’ and ‘to be afraid’. But it is music, which conceptualize ‘pausa’ in its infinite dimension. In musical terms ‘pausa’ is a "^" or "v" mark over or under note or rest that is to be lengthened indefinitely” (Oxford Dictionary).
"Io non ho paura" (INHP) is the indefinite music of childhood. The film juxtaposes the music of the sky, of the fields, of ants and reptiles with depths. The dichotomy is between childhood and adulthood or more to say, between surfaces and depths. "Let not anything stop me (pausa), I am not scared (paura)" could be the driving force of INHP.
Rhetoric in reviews can do promotional work for a film by explaining it with filmic jargons which are supposedly helpful to the viewers in their viewing. The relationship between these views and the film they review is based on those conceptual structures they attribute in the film. Thus, to view a film in a psychoanalytic way or giving a feminist reading to a film is to delineate those figures and meanings in the film which are attributed to be feministic or psychoanalytical. Such reviews fall in the traditional category or criticism and fail to demonstrate the deconstructive ‘being’ of the film itself. For a discerning viewer of INHP, the well in which the boy is held hostage is a clear analogy of human subconscious as explained by Psychoanalysis. The film makes this clearer when Michele asks the boy whether his father’s name is also Pino, same as that of Michele’s own father. In other words, Michele discovering the boy in the well is his first insight into his own subconscious mind.
The possibility would have found its endpoint there, with subconscious holding the prominent meaning throughout the body of the film; with man being the hostage of his own subconscious; a neurotic but, obedient functionary himself. But the film expresses its deconstructive ‘being’ when depths are later juxtaposed with the music of surfaces. Gilles Deleuze quotes from Michel Tournier’s Friday in his The Logic of Sense: "It is a strange prejudice which sets a higher value on depth than on breadth, and which accepts 'superficial' as meaning not 'of wide extent' but of 'little depth', whereas 'deep', on the other hand, signifies 'of great depth', and not 'of small surface.'"
Besides, INHP wants to reveal the power of movement against the depths of stagnation. The boy held hostage is taken out from the well to the world outside, to meander and nothing more. The movement here is different from the preplanned motion of 'action films'. The movement here is nomadic, superficial and even schizophrenic. "A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic on Psychoanalyst’s couch" (Deleuze, Capitalism and Schizophrenia). On every mode, INHP’s violence is against Psychoanalytically defined human being and the symbols that appear in the film have a different telos when compared to their use in the definition of unconscious by traditional Psychology.
Visit this blog for a different take on this film: Jay's Movie Blog
Io Non Ho Paura is directed by Gabriele Salvatores.
The article was completed on 5th October 2005
Instead of being psychological, the word ‘paura’ can be better connected with ‘pausa’ which has its roots in Greek paùo (stop). The likeness in the semantic feel of both the words, ‘paura’ and ‘pausa’ is also arguable to an extent: ‘to stop’ and ‘to be afraid’. But it is music, which conceptualize ‘pausa’ in its infinite dimension. In musical terms ‘pausa’ is a "^" or "v" mark over or under note or rest that is to be lengthened indefinitely” (Oxford Dictionary).
"Io non ho paura" (INHP) is the indefinite music of childhood. The film juxtaposes the music of the sky, of the fields, of ants and reptiles with depths. The dichotomy is between childhood and adulthood or more to say, between surfaces and depths. "Let not anything stop me (pausa), I am not scared (paura)" could be the driving force of INHP.
Rhetoric in reviews can do promotional work for a film by explaining it with filmic jargons which are supposedly helpful to the viewers in their viewing. The relationship between these views and the film they review is based on those conceptual structures they attribute in the film. Thus, to view a film in a psychoanalytic way or giving a feminist reading to a film is to delineate those figures and meanings in the film which are attributed to be feministic or psychoanalytical. Such reviews fall in the traditional category or criticism and fail to demonstrate the deconstructive ‘being’ of the film itself. For a discerning viewer of INHP, the well in which the boy is held hostage is a clear analogy of human subconscious as explained by Psychoanalysis. The film makes this clearer when Michele asks the boy whether his father’s name is also Pino, same as that of Michele’s own father. In other words, Michele discovering the boy in the well is his first insight into his own subconscious mind.
The possibility would have found its endpoint there, with subconscious holding the prominent meaning throughout the body of the film; with man being the hostage of his own subconscious; a neurotic but, obedient functionary himself. But the film expresses its deconstructive ‘being’ when depths are later juxtaposed with the music of surfaces. Gilles Deleuze quotes from Michel Tournier’s Friday in his The Logic of Sense: "It is a strange prejudice which sets a higher value on depth than on breadth, and which accepts 'superficial' as meaning not 'of wide extent' but of 'little depth', whereas 'deep', on the other hand, signifies 'of great depth', and not 'of small surface.'"
Besides, INHP wants to reveal the power of movement against the depths of stagnation. The boy held hostage is taken out from the well to the world outside, to meander and nothing more. The movement here is different from the preplanned motion of 'action films'. The movement here is nomadic, superficial and even schizophrenic. "A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic on Psychoanalyst’s couch" (Deleuze, Capitalism and Schizophrenia). On every mode, INHP’s violence is against Psychoanalytically defined human being and the symbols that appear in the film have a different telos when compared to their use in the definition of unconscious by traditional Psychology.
Visit this blog for a different take on this film: Jay's Movie Blog
Io Non Ho Paura is directed by Gabriele Salvatores.
The article was completed on 5th October 2005
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