The Eye of the Mind
La jetee (1962) is a creation unlike any other. In a luckless future, mankind breaks all rules of time and space as well minded humanity. The enterity of La jettee is a man recalling his loop like life, with beginnings set at its end. The man at helm of the picture, Chris Marker, is a maker in a category almost by himself. In his career, Marker acted as composer of image, political theorist, and narrator.
As a creation La jetee
is the closest in breaking the boundaries of Cinematic forms, as well as
manifesting as a rhythm of fluid thought in still image. La jetee doesn’t flow; it’s arraigned and unfolds like the pages
folding over in a comic book, with narrative focusing on the viewer’s holding. It’s
an action film, a dramatic piece of science fiction and a thriller. The action
and scenes are set with standing and some infrequent barely moving pieces
within a series of photographs and leading a voice-over that takes us seamless
through what could be deciphered as any nonsense. Instead of being just a
collage of imagery, La jetee creates
a sense of memory within the stillness of a photograph. Memory is a photograph,
the shot from the eye. Narrative is Photography in La jetee. Most films disregard the connection between the Camera
and Narrative, some focus in a deep a study, like Barry Lyndon, and others use
Camera as a crutch in offering some support
to the image, instead of validation for its existence. With La jetee Chris Marker broke all the
established rules that had been set in Cinema. The Man who sees his own death the using of the best ends of
Cinema as a dramatic device, in all new ways. The vision in Film with a
Narrator is often distant but informative. La
jetee gives Camera a purpose with the Narration and creates a direct
dramatic narrative using its power of word over image. That mixture can be
crudely put together for things on the level of music videos, and so in doing
so La jetee creates a fascinating
thriller that consumes the audience in its power and perception. The scope is large;
story succinct and an ultimate pay off like a firework, all in less than thirty
minutes. La jetee is a testament to
the power of an image and its use. Lacking any kind of base, or set discipline
within the shaky world of Cinema La jetee
finds a way to exist in perfect form, coincidentally perhaps because it ignores
any real standard previously set.
Eye without
Mind Creative
Documentation
The un-art of Film and the half-hanging camera’s
in cinema des nerfs brut
“We’re
making a composite picture: putting these and those together, and producing
that.” -Search
for Beauty (1934)
sci•ence:(n)
7. skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles.
sci•en•tif•ic:(adj.)
3. regulated by process or conforming to the principles of exact science.
art:(n)
9. skill in conducting a human activity.
cre•ate:(v)
1. to cause, to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally
evolve, or that is not made by ordinary process.
1. Film is Art.
2. Art is a genuine human creation.
3. film is plastic affected by chemicals until
it “exists” as Film.
4. Art does not rest solely on the
responsibility of the artist for creation.
To be an art; a “thing” must first be Art
in its basic form or self or kind, what have you. Falling out of love with
film. I thought I had, until the true nature of Cinema realized itself to me:
the entire encircle of the capturing of the fluid-subject, scream for acknowledgment.
The shortcomings of contemporary cinema rest on movies lack of substance on
screen. The other day I was present for a dance performance. The work was
nothing short of shattering in that I saw the irrelevance of filmmaking as any
kind of art form, where Art is human examination of itself of any kind. A
landscape is only a landscape through Man’s eye. Cinema cannot be based on a
Literary Standard and Cinema selfishly tries to exist even at a second level,
the “Photographic Standard of Art”(which is in itself already close to
nothing); but rather cinema can’t rest comfortably on either level. Cinematic stories
are put togethers of fluid-subjects into actions, scenes and hopefully as a
result, drama. Subject is an examination of self from Man, and Drama comes only
with Subject.
The illustration of subject has had
various forms claim superiority and permanence. To illustrate drama in any
completeness, you need subjects to take apart. “…it is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does
not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence
of academism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing…the
subject is crucial and only subject-matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.” [1]
As abstractionists, Adolf Gottlieb and Mark Rothko had to put structural
components of elements like Subject, at the front of their minds. As a result
their work was powerfully evocative like lightning bursts of form on canvas. The
progression of cinema as a medium, from still photography to “fluid-frames”
allowed for its shapers to put a newly created subject, in between the frames,
that built in the audience’s minds (as well as the subject within the frames).
Many interpreted this as a literary mind state, but over time that idea has
shown not to be the successful in practice. The creation of celluloid is not and cannot be classified as
Art. Despite subjects of all kinds being displayed and mimicked, film can never
offer dynamic lines of hands to the audience.
Capturing the dance on film would not be
capturing the Art itself. What is captured must put forth an overall subject
but have a perspective of relevance as well. The subject of a story are its
narrative, characters and point-of-view. Filming the dancers at their work
would have been irrelevant to any purpose of creating new Art. The application
for the principals of photography i.e. ‘the development of film’ (effecting the
negative, bleaching, adding a fixer, then eventually having the film cut and
dry) is a technical trade, guided by rules and principles entirely outside Mans
election, that governs if it exists or not. The capturing of the dance would
have held it for nostalgic purposes, but the film would not be another Art, rather it would be
Documentation. That Documentation can be cut up and cut in with other documents
to form: Creative Documentation. Creative Documentation can evolve, and it has,
but it’s forever rooted, to its genes, in Documentation and Photography, not
Art.
The way children look at art is how most
look on modernist works, with the general same un-understanding. Modern art is
conceptual and mildly stimulating on the surface and in total good restaurant
décor for masses. Titantic, Avatar,
Gravity and Harry Potter cannot
be argued and are proof that the mass of audiences receive cinema in a certain
way and that way is not artful. Fantasies make up the desire of the audience,
not reflection that Art requires. Merely filming “something” makes both the
Camera and “something” irrelevant and muddled from the mishandling of the
subject, by treating its capture as if it held the same severity as the subject
itself.
Film development is a trade, a skill, and
something that only a determined some could accomplish to its fullness. Abstractionism,
understanding the set boundaries of the craft and dismissing them isn’t resetting
laws, but acknowledging that basic laws of “correctness” exist, because
photography exists in the realm of science not Art. Art, as an essential,
distinctive and peculiar quality; of total manual form, an object of thought
designed and mastered by the nature of the artist, a learned and honed instinct
cannot be anything of a photograph. Art is born to one: selective, unfair and
impossible, mastered by armchair-titans or skilled tradesmen.
Barnett Newman (as another example for
all illustrationists) worked in a visual abstract that was determined and set
by strict mathematics (the broad and lofty mental concepts were strictly bent
around rules and sit along side Issac Newton’s gaze toward the stars, as a
result). Newman’s abstract values were firm in an adherence to a True Language
(strict mathematics) that gives his work a validity and purpose in its abstraction.
Work of purpose is the only work of value, and Film only has purpose when it captures
a (fluid)subject that makes Drama through light, shadow and sound. What Cinema
as Art comes to hinge on is, Structure versus Principle (Art v. Science):
Structure is an organization or arraignment of parts while Principle is a
fundamental rule action, the law of exactitude eliminates the necessary human
structures in Art. Relating a concept of science like strict mathematics to
Drama or creative documentation requires the relevance be reflected.
Films can only tell stories with three unique points of view and as many
created emotional triggers that those bring that can and have to be used. Character,
Camera and Narrator often merge into two points
of view, which gives Cinema the blunt edges we’re inundated with. Audiences
must receive the mind behind the eye as well for a exceptional Cinematic
experience.
The American late 1960’s and early 1970’s
are perfect examples of the almost irrelevant Camera; for example The Graduate while considered great has
a camera that is narrative-less and clever, not accomplished. That era of
American films aspires to mise en scene mastery in the European sense, over
attention paid to the importance and relevance of the Camera as a tool and
voice. The entire era and its filmmakers prided themselves on their focus on
scene and not Camera is the perfect example pointless recreation in Cinema.
