La Jetee – Chris Marker – 16mm film, Black and White

There are still images of destruction and a voiceover telling the story of how before World War 3 Paris was blown up. The context of this story is that there were experiments carried out on prisoners, and that this is the story of one of those prisoners.

One aspect about this visual style that immediately strikes me is the expressive capability of the seemingly very constrained and limited nature of using a succession of still images “glued” together with a paste of sound. Without the sound, this would just be a photographic montage, but with it, the images are melded together into something almost like a cinematic experience, but somehow outside of this, and to me almost more interesting in its stylistic rebellion.

It is revealed that the unique and defining attribute of a prisoner fit for this type of experimentation is a man glued to images of the past; fixated only on images of the past, enabling him possibly to live in the past and subsequently bring back supplies (the actual (?) goal of the experimenters?). That this information, being the essential premise of this story, is conveyed entirely by the words of the voiceover, illustrates just how powerful the spoken word is in this type of experimental narrative.

The sound design contributes greatly to building and sustaining the experiential tension experienced by the viewer, counterbalancing what might otherwise be a deficit in the poignancy of the cinematic narrative brought about by the altered paradigm from a standard full-motion film, of a sequence of still images. In other words, I think the sound design contributes the intensity that might be lacking as a result of the stylistic attributes of the visual stream of information in the film. One example of this is the hammering thumping sound that builds the tension we imagine the main character of the prisoner to be feeling in his striving to achieve lucid experience of the past.

The shifting perspectives of the visual elements of this film are particularly intriguing. In the first portions of this film, the images displayed are of a 3rd person feel, displaying in an ambiguous space the experimenters and the prisoner. As the film shifts to feature the experiences of the prisoner in the “past”, the visuals shift to what he sees — first person. This makes sense conceptually because it is his dream, his imagination, his experience. He sees the girl, but she doesn’t see him, because he is dreaming her in a ‘timeless world in the past’. When they ‘meet on the 30th day’, he finally appears in the images, interacting with the girl. This indicates a shift in perspective; He has gone from observing his imaginings – watching his dreams play back – to actually being able to affect them and place himself in them. Interestingly, the visual style really makes conceptual sense; the main character is imagining a (or his) past, trying to make it vivid enough (and place himself lucidly enough in it) to make it actually real. The fractured nature of the still image sequence complements this idea, and contributes to a feel of broken reality, almost as if his experience of reality is just not as real as reality, but that he is trying very very hard to make this thing, which he is imagining, as real as he possibly can. Thus, if full motion film is presented as an analogue of ‘reality’, then fractured images represents an imagined or dreamlike perception of reality. There is a conflict in the film between these two perceptions of reality, mirrored in the visual conflict in the film between the fractured motion of the still image-sequence style and our desire to see full motion

“Time builds around them.” She asks about his combat necklace from the beginning of the war; he is from the future. He falls back into his own time, and they give him another shot to send him back. He knows that she is dead in his own world. Everyone else is dead.

I have the definite feeling watching this that each image was chosen with very careful consideration of emotive properties, and aesthetics, and purpose in progression of storyline. Crossfades are still used between stills to convey a sense of motion, or progression.

There is a sudden flash of near-realtime motion! The girl lying on the bed, her head, her arm, a pillow. How fitting that the very focus of this man’s imaginary (?) perception of reality should come the absolute closest to being real, in representation. This seems to represent the point in his own experience that he becomes unsure about which reality is more real for him, his life as a prisoner being experimented upon, or his dream of his imagined past.

On the 20th day, they visit an ageless animal museum together. Now he can stay there without trouble.

Marker is definitely using the visual style as a conceptual device in the telling of the story.

The girl welcomes the visitor who comes and goes as a natural phenomenon. Then he made out how they were going to shift him into the future.

At the heart of this sci-fi film there is a love story. Men from the world in the future also travelled through time. They accepted him, but he wanted to be with the girl in the past.

The man with glasses. This man is hinted to be the head-experimenter (06:50).

He saw himself die as a child. The man with the glasses is present there, at his death. What does this mean? I need to watch this again to succeed at a legitimate interpretation. This film, despite being only 26 minutes long is a perfect little nugget of a story.

very very interesting …
the animation style is very much precognitive of early and mid-era Japanese science fiction ‘anime’ (e.g., Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, etc). There are few if any examples of this type of animation from Russia during modern times that I know of; I wonder how it came to be that this was produced then in 1981, and what effect the economic conditions of the time had in bringing this about… if any?

there is a slow, matter of fact way of introducing the world and characters in this futuristic science fiction animation. They are not sensationalizing the fact that the technology and sociological and conditions they present are fantastical, they are presenting it as fact. This seems to go over particularly well because it seems plausible, like good science fiction should be. (and they use the word parsecs!)

the subtitling is not very good, containing improper grammar and english language constructions… but it doesn’t negatively impact the story as much as having inauthentic hollywood voice-replacement adr would…

the elongated forms of the characters are typical of japanese anime also.

the sounds of the spacecraft are rather brilliantly composed, if slightly 70s scifi in stylings. The music is also exceptionally good.

they are questing after new and interesting “strange animals” for the zoo at moscow! on other planets! it is rather exceedingly bizarre…. but awesome! becaues awesome is the most descriptive and meaningful word ever… you should work on creating concrete statements without ambiguous phrases implying you think they are interesting without reason. yey metacognition!

the “chatterer”‘s voice is ring modulated! the sound effects and processing are rather innovative and at times truly remarkable.

Is the whole animation an allegory of the conflict between USA and Russia?

2006-10-12
Hard Candy (2005) – feature length narrative film

This film is about a 14 year old girl who meets a guy on the internet. I think it could easily go in the direction of sensationalizing the dangers of meeting people on the internet and how all of them are bad! just like dateline NBC! blah! but so far, it seems to be taking at least a somewhat matter-of-fact approach to it. On the other hand, it is taking place in a complete fantasy-land. Is it realistic what is happening? doubtful! maybe.

There is a predominance of close-up shots. Only rarely when there is a scene change is there a wide shot, and rarely is it repeated, reprised, or lengthy. The movie has a “hip” editing style that reminds me of 21 grams. There have been a couple of almost experimental moments, like the pixilation shot of the trees moving when they get to his house.

I know nothing about her family! or where she is coming from! or anything! bah!.

hehe, who is taking advantage of whom?? this appears to be the dialectical question this film makes a point of constantly probing. This is reinforced now (22:04) with the scene after he wakes up from passing out being tied up in a chair (apparently by the girl… whose name I don’t know).
oo! playtime is over!
ahh! the truth is revealed. The girl actually hates goldfrapp! amazing. Okay, you should stop making stupid observations and type something intelligent in this film journal! it is, like… student originated studies, right? yah.

woah! (30:16) there is a ton of experimentation with coloring going on! Color temperature shifting with the mood of the characters! That is a very interesting experimental tactic in narrative film which I have not seen (or noticed) before.

Le Dernier Combat (1983) – Luc Besson

The beginning is an interesting way of introducing the somewhat dytopian world of the film: the main character having sex with a blowup doll. We soon discover that the world is a giant sand-dune, and the few survivors (of course having old broken down cars) struggle for water, and consist entirely of members of the gender Male.

There is no semantic dialogue, though the film is full of and relies on diegetic sounds. This is an interesting tactic, and fits well with the exploratory, solitary, procedural actions that the characters follow to lead out the story.

It’s interesting how when there is no dialogue, the ambiguity of the interactions of characters lends poignancy and increased engagement with what is going on, because the viewer is wondering what things mean, and trying to find answers to these questions by postulation in his/her own mind.

The doctor character is keeping a woman locked up, probably more kept safe than imprisoned. the reason (i would wager) he is feeding and being somewhat kind to the main character guy is that he is going to try to use him for breeding material, which implies that it is common for males to be sterile in addition to being unable to speak.

This really bothers me. One moment in this movie there is glorious ambient thundering boom sounds coming from the sky beautifully saturating the scene with ominiousness and a sense of intense dystopian otherworldliness, and then suddenly there’s a chase or fight scene between the main character and his arch-nemesis guy, and 80′s style bass-jazz funk starts playing, and it completely destroys the atmosphere. Good lord, pay attention to the use of music in your film and if its appropriate or not. i must admit this film has subtlety though. alot of subtlety. (always gloved hand, cut off finger of boss guy in white suite, final event = revenge and cutting off finger and throwing it to worker people. )

Avalon (2001) – Mamoru Oshii

This is a live action film by the director and writer (?) of the first Ghost in the Shell anime movie. I am very interested to see how his style carries over into the realm of live action, and how he directs a film of similar, but interestingly unique subject matter. The thematic material is reminiscent of The Matrix and ExistenZ (Cronenburg), and yet has its own unique little twist on things. The visual style reminds me of Mirror Mask, but is a precursor, and thus is quite remarkable for the time it was made, though obviously has seen no wide release nor recognized popularity; I had to resort to the eDonkey network to find an XviD copy of it ripped and distributed from a PAL DVD with French-dubbed audio. Onward:

Interesting sound design: on the first sequence introductory of the game world with conventional (though exceedingly sepia-toned!) battle scenes intermixed with entirely unconventional death and destruction scenes containing disintigrating “digital aesthetic” bodies and machinery, there is a constant droning though musical synth-like undertone. This may be being used to introduce this all in a way that seems more fantastical or awe-inspiring, or perhaps just to blend the whole game-intro montage together in a way that is less abrupt. I’m not sure. The “otherworldliness” of the game environment is also reinforced periodically by the complete lack of environmental sound. Often there is just gunfire and shouts, and then a scene with just the music (which has altered into classical instrumentation now), and just silence, no birds chirping, or wind blowing to establish a sense of place.

LOG OFF:
in the real world, there is a predomiinance of the color green, as in the game world there was a predominance of orange-ish color. The style of the image actually consists of chroma-blurring, I think, because the shape of the forms of objects in the frame (their edge lines) remain distinct, and yet there is a halo of the color of the object surrounding the edge line in a blurry transparent fuzz. This looks really neat, and makes (even the images of “reality”) look synthetic and alien, yet smoothly blurred and sexy.

There is an Interesting alteration in sound environment the moment reality hits us: the first sound we notice is the humming of machinery pervasively intruding through the walls. When the main character Ash gets up, the sounds of her movements are very subdued compared to this environmental sound — a harsh contrast to the previous environment, where environmental sounds were suppressed, and the character sounds were amplified to an extreme!

The retro-tech characteristics of the film are interesting in this case because they seem to provide the implication that all other technology in the reality of the world are unimportant compared to the reality of the game.

The character that plays “Ash” is really well-cast I think, because she is a complete bad-ass in Avalon-reality, yet when she comes back into the real world, and makes stew for her beloved dog, she has a timid aura about her, almost fragile.

The end makes a statement about what the true reality is. I’m not sure I understand exactly what the statement says yet. There are 3 levels – the reality that Ash lives in as a regular person, the level of “Avalon” regular game play, and the level of “Avalon” “Reality”, where the “unreturned” game players, whose physical bodies remain in the base reality, live in glorious true-life color. Intriguing.