Let's Get Irrelevant!

Is this a film or filmed theater? Bergman struggled monumentally with the same
fundamental problem as Ibsen: how to bring the elemental fury of the inner world
alive for a viewing audience. His answer was through dramatic precision and
sublime acting.

I hope everybody has missed me and has been enjoying J. Knecht's mapping of the intellectual universe. For those of you keeping score at home, he argues that an enlightened view of aesthetics precludes "understanding" and "explication" and, instead, relentlessly returns our attention to the question of new forms. (Is it better to say "expands our horizons"?) Because of the inherent problem of evaluating new forms with old methodologies, Knecht is apt to dismiss authority and the highly-acclaimed while slyly substituting contemplation of his own pet canon. Fortunately, he is usually correct and mostly self-deprecating. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not getting bored!

I've decided to go against everything that everyone holds sacred and to create a Power Ranking of Great Directors based on my current mood of magical whimsy. Hold your venom, you bagel-eating philistines! It's all in the name of unsettling your biases and inflaming your passions. Here we go!

The rules: This is a Power Rankings analagous to preseason sports rankings that project a team or player's overall value based on various categories, such as passing yards or turnovers. Most art critics have an inherent problem with the term "Greatest" but I think it's mostly due to laziness. Surely we can agree, for example, that Rembrandt is a greater painter than Gaugin and we can point to several formal categories in which Rembrandt's best paintings simply surpass or transcend the works of the latter. I am likewise attempting to formalize a discussion of "top" directors by uniformly applying a formula for greatness while remaining open to changing the terms or the relative value of these aesthetic categories.

The criteria:

a) FORM: a signature style that reveals innovation or technical/artistic mastery of the mechanical aspects of filmmaking (i.e. visual, sound, editing)

b) THEME: complex, mature development and expression of thematic material (objective weight/value of specific thematic motifs deemed to be irrelevant)

c) ACTING/DRAMA/STORYTELLING: consistency and refinement of acting performances; emotional resonance of internal narrative/characters (possibly a red herring but I propose that narrative filmmaking is superior to documentary for the reason that fiction is superior to journalism; I propose that all great directors choose narrative for this reason to formally exploit this distinction between truth and artifice as a primary vehicle for their expression; therefore, I posit that a director's handling and development of characters and the internal dramatic narrative is paramount to the success and scale of his achievement)

d) KNOWLEDGE/CONCRETENESS/REALITY: hear me out--a great director offers so much more than technical innovation, thematic richness and human drama, she brings a refined appreciation for the details of the world, concrete knowledge of things and situations that is rapidly being lost in the ironically named "information age." Surely, Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without his immense understanding of politics and the law, trade and commerce, farming, fashion, history and the military. A director certainly need not be a scholar but, like Rilke's angels, she is bound by the same mission as the returning traveler: to impress and edify us with intimate knowledge of the world.

DIRECTOR POWER RANKINGS

10. Ingmar Bergman

Formal Greatness: C+

Thematic Greatness: A-

Dramatic Greatness: A+

Greatness of Knowledge: B

Several honorable mentions neglected here in favor of Bergman (Angelopoulos, Dreyer, Fellini, Herzog, Hou, Marker, Mizoguchi, Renoir, Wong), largely due to incomplete viewing. But on the other hand, how can you argue with Bergman's inclusion? Even though I have not seen half of his films, Bergman is in my estimation, along with Ozu, the supreme master of classical dramatic narrative form. Not a bad performance in either oeuvre and many, many legendary ones. His heralded theater roots provided him with the gifts of pacing, dialogue, composition and a knack for handling actors. Nevertheless, these roots themselves had to eventually be outgrown and his work with his actors become the true focal point of his enterprise before Bergman became truly "great."

Even with Nyqvist at his side, Bergman's genius for theatrical realization always overshadows his formal/technical innovation. Deft with comedy, spectacle and the most intense drama, he has a visual tendency towards prettified symbolism a la Seventh Seal. (Strangely, I find the narrative structure of Bergman's early and middle films virtually indistinguishable from the Kurosawa's pot-boilers.) Hard to complain when a film is as satisfying as Wild Strawberries, however, Persona seems to mark a conscious shift in Bergman's priorities towards resolving his themes through other possible means, culminating somewhat in the refined lavishness of Cries and Whispers.

In my mind, Scenes From a Marriage ultimately surpasses Persona as his experimental masterpiece, not through technical innovation, but through the relentless insistence on distance and performance. These two formal innovations are Bergman's greatest achievement in that by loosening the restrictions of time and delving ever deeper into his actor's souls, Bergman arrives at a cinema (albeit originally intended for television) that at last matches the ferocity of his themes (faith, suffering, the distant promise of love) with an experience for the viewer that roughly mirrors the rawness and discomfort of his characters. The title, for me, marks a radical departure from Bergman's comfort zone of formalized drama and instead evokes the kind of actorly exercises with which he would be equally familiar, but perhaps less willing to film. But instead of merely watching pretty actors suffer and torture each other, we become complicit through time and closeup in their momentary flashes of emotion and insight. (The standard here is not "rawness" of acting but the use to which that acting is put and I see no reason to draw comparisons to the acting in Cassavetes, which is equally superior.)

Knowledge of the world in Bergman is mostly limited to the internal realm of the yearning soul (can that really be called knowledge?) and the relationships between men and women. His example lets me illustrate the inverse connection between the strength of his "themes" and his "knowledge." Themes such as solitude, suffering and the existence of God hint to a form of artistic transcendence that demands not only intellectual rigor but a great degree of innovation to avoid mere signification and involve the viewer in a lived experience of transcendence. Bresson has much the same project and he tackles it through rigorous editing and dramatic minimalism. Bergman, on the other hand, tends to show people in anguish and doubt, paralyzed or inflamed by their passions. He tends, in other words, to act his themes out. Although no one can question the authenticity or rigor of Bergman's examination of faith, I am saying here that his expression of this theme tends to be less than, say Bresson's or Dreyer's who sometimes achieve a kind of epiphany for the viewer through the power of the image or editing, rather than the power of the drama. That, to me, is another order of genius. Bergman's merit, I think, comes, like a solid veteran, from his unflinching dedication to his themes.

As a result, I rate Bergman's contribution of knowledge to be only average. He shows us intimate rituals and daily, lived interiors but I can't help but feel it's all set decoration. Has he ever been genuinely interested in the work people do, for example, outside of the relationships they trap us in or the way they symbolically reflect our souls? (Thus the profusion of professors, priests and maidens.) His actors and his sets are always so handsome and impeccably dressed; in other words--artificial. On the other hand, by Fanny and Alexander, all of Bergman's dramatic, symbolic tendencies seem to culminate in a kind of Hamlet-esque reflection of itself that is singularly beguiling. The layered orchestration of family life, ritual and fantasy in this film approaches the highest achievements of Tarkovsky and Kiarostami for me. I cannot help but wish that, like Fellini, he occassionally indulged in more childish reflection instead of trying to be so grownup.

Ultimately, his actors are Bergman's shining achievement. Through his devotion to their bold and nuanced performances, Bergman lays bare the inner lives of men and women as the cinematic counterpart to D.H. Lawrence (or at least August Strindberg).

Let Slip the Dogs of Misunderstanding

The films of Wong Kar-Wai come closest to breaking the kinesthetic

boundaries of cinema through their visual emphasis on tactility--the

clash of textures--and Wong's elliptical narrative and editing style.

Surely no good can come of this vague generalizing about "representations of women" among major European filmmakers... though, in spirit, of course i sympathize with the grandeur of your initial premise: that with the passing of Bergman and Antonioni, we've lost two of the most generous, penetrating, nuanced and multivalent perspectives on the subject of women in the history of film. But we're attempting to cut a pretty wide path through a particularly thorny patch of the cultural landscape, no?

I'm the last person in the world who wants to get bogged down in a pseudo-feminist/post-postmodern debate about "male gazes," "logocentric canons," or suitably pro-women agendas; however, i think we should again shift the attention away from questions of excellence or validation towards creating an understanding of the methodologies or aesthetics at work. You've offered a fine point of departure, i think, in your appreciation of Antonioni and L'Avventura in particular. Also in your dissenting opinion about Rohmer. It's neither here nor there for us to try to convince others that there are or are not other film artists out there doing similarly fine work; however, the thing is whether we can first agree on a common language of interpretation. To wit:

You: In short, Rohmer makes women strange by keeping them at a distance, Antonioni and Bergman let their actors show what they really are, and if it looks strange, so be it.

I guess what i'm looking for from you is a clearer statement of HOW you think Bergman or Antonioni (but also, presumably, Cassavetes, Fassbinder, Ozu, Renoir) are able to "show what (women) really are." I think your Nostalghia treatise is exemplary in that regard, but i wonder if you could summarize your stance in the context of these other two directors.

Now for my rousing defense of Denis, Wong and Rohmer and my woeful admission that i really didn't put much thought into this particular assemblage of pro-gyno power. Nevertheless, the gauntlet has been cast before me; i relish its import.

There's a school of thought that says we should be able to recognize the difference between a work of art made by a woman as opposed to one created by a man because of some fundamental difference in form, not content. Something about the way the authorial consciousness is formed or the way constructive values are differently applied in practice. I have always felt: hogwash! but a couple films by Claire Denis have me doubting my opinion.

I think I've raved to everyone i know about Nenette and Boni but it's almost impossible to see anywhere or even find. Luckily for us, we have the internet and Youtube. I hope I'm up to this but here's a scene from the movie which does, i think, everything you claim that Antonioni does in his masterpiece:

Please, please, please, please work.

In Nenette and Boni, but also in Beau Travail and Vendredi Soir, her camera is exceptionally patient, observant, nuanced and sensual. Why is this different from a music video? Because, as in the case with Wong Kar-Wai, Denis' aesthetic is not, as it is sometimes crassly assumed to be, aimed at being merely "attractive." I mean, just look at the thing for godssake! The first time you watch it, it's possible you might simply take it for a typical Hollywood "meet-cute" with Vincent Gallo gamely checking out a shy but seemingly willing Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. But the length of the shots is problematic, for one. In particular, the length at which we hold finally on VB-T as "the Baker's Wife" seems to run counter to the first rule of narrative propulsion: keep the story moving.

The more you watch her uncomfortably avoiding then meeting the camera's (and ostensibly Vince Gallo's character's) gaze, the more we are taken OUT of the narrative and into the immediacy of the preganant moment. Wow. We get to actually watch this woman's mannerisms, the toothiness of her grin, her neck, the charming journey from a toothy grin to compusure to the eruption of a smile. In other words: we actually get to observe this woman (who? the Baker's Wife? or Valeri Bruni-T?) being herself.

Sigh. I can already hear the Mulvey-ian clamor at my back: male gaze! male gaze! objectification! Sigh. If you call that objectifying, you must think that DaVinci was a lecher. Objectifying is when it doesn't matter who the person is as long as she's/it's a woman. Who could ever reduplicate Valeria's performance? It would have to be someone who was just as playful, self-conscious, cheerful, shy and optimistic as her. Even then, would she have the same masculine jaw and the same flash in her eyes? There's another scene from this movie discussed at length at Reverseshot.com which is worth reading. Also with VaIery B-T. I don't agree exactly with the specific semiotic reading of the scene but i stand firmly in agreement with the author's appreciation of Denis' sophisticated and nuanced technique.

Here's the link:

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/nenette_and_boni

I might add that Denis does something very, very unusual and, i think, different from what a male director would do. In both scenes, as Hoover also points out, she gives a slightly unbalanced emphasis to the female subject over the male. Unbalanced in terms of time on screen. However, and i think this gives the lie to the whole "male gaze" issue, there really is no unbalance in terms of significance or priority in terms of point of view.

In my clip, for example, we linger longer on the woman but watch again at how the camera does that pan-up-the-body thing to Vince Gallo. Then, we hold on him waaay longer than we need to in order to get the point that he's checking her out. It's as if the director herself were taking Vince Gallo in just in the same way he is taking in his future wife. And, in fact, we can't help but notice the angularity of his features, the decidedly un-sailor like facial hair, and those eyes... After watching fixedly, we even see him recede from the camera, ostensibly to take in more of his subject.

It's a nice little counterpoint to her performance, don't you think? I mean, she sort of steals the scene--because of her charm, her beauty, her performance--but there's no way to construct some kind of hierarchy in terms of prioritized POV without stretching the limits of logic. The watched is no less powerful or strongly identified than the watcher: she's just prettier. But even that is probably false since it overlooks the powerful stylistic symmetry of his neat, white uniform and her delicate, blue top; his slightly unkempt hairiness and her revealing neckline and unblemished skin; his comic-sad eyes and her comic-happy expressions; his unwavering stare and her repeated attempts to meet it. That, my friends, is fucking art!

I'm fucking exhausted from writing that, by the way. Can I write part two about Wong and Rohmer later? Also, I want to see if my embedding worked... more later.

Bergman and Antonioni

Dan, this entry is for no one else but you. I think we've had our fair share of discussions about these two in the past, but also more or less skirted questions of their greatness while acknowledging their impact and influence; my guess is this had more to do with the relative assurance of their places in the pantheon of great directors. Perhaps now, however, our feelings about these two deserve to be explicitly stated for the record. I don't particularly feel the need to be overly reverential, but, as Geoff just wrote to me, What a weird fucking day!

BTW, can you believe the month started with the passing of Edward Yang and ended with Bergman and Antonioni passing on the same day?

Shall I begin?

I feel more comfortable talking about Bergman since I have known him the longest and returned to him at various points in my aesthetic upbringing. Is it cliche to say that I was introduced to European art cinema through the Seventh Seal? I rented the thing from the library and if I'm not mistaken, it was in a shiny silver box with the famous last scene on the cover. I think I rented it because I had heard some mention of the "playing chess with death" scene and that sort of overt allegory was attractive to me at the age of 16 or whatever I was.

My reaction: I loved it. To this day I don't see what people's complaints are about the thing being either too morose (it's textured and frequently comic), too pretentious (it's a frickin' allegory!) or too maudlin (Von Sydow is counterpointed by Bjornstrand; Jof's naivite by his wife's virtue). It's far from his best or most poignant but it's almost the perfect litmus test to see if someone is gonna be open to foreign films. On the one hand, it follows pretty conventional narrative structure (despite its unusual subject matter), the acting is of course great and varied, and there's lots of memorable images. Kurosawa--the other best entree into foreign film--does much the same. On the other hand, it's dark. Different characters represent conflicting ideologies about life and death. And beneath it all, Bergman is, I think, beginning to experiment with a kind of visual/dramatic flattening technique that reminds me a lot of Dreyer--but only in retrospect.

What I mean is Seventh Seal has this very obvious Strindbergian quality--slightly over the top characterization, extreme emotional states, dark subject matter--but the key internal drama usually plays best in relief i.e. when the context is otherwise flat or unattenuated. I'm thinking of the visuals in Seventh Seal and how many of the memorable scenes are set against plain or flat backgrounds. Block and the Squire give a number of passionate soliloquies, I think, delivered in almost two-dimensional space. Like Dreyer's Joan. I can't say for sure, but looking ahead to his other films, I don't think this visual reduction is the old playwright's trick of merely giving the stage to the actor to inflate his presence: I believe Bergman is working in, visually, negative space which is to culminate in Persona. He is beginning to experiment with the counterpoint between the direst of human emotions--despair, grief, remorse--and the suggestiveness of an unresponsive, inanimate, inhuman world.

By contrast, see how lush and vividly backgrounded (word?) the rustic, comic scenes with Jof and his wife or Plog, the blacksmith play out. Bergman handles these scenes deftly, but conventionally. I think it is because as an artist he is just coming to grips with his themes and perhaps having to overcome his own aptitude for filmed drama. Compare this with the barely discernible distinction between comedy and tragedy in Fanny and Alexander. At his peak, then--Scenes of a Marriage, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander--Bergman no longer needs to rely on mere visual flattening. He has resolved this problem as a dramatist and director by somehow elevating the mundane details of daily life without any detriment to the pathos and anguish of his protagonists. Am I making any sense?

I think of the elaborate and ornate interiors of those movies and it reminds me of a poem from Rilke:

Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

Bergman moves, I think, from the need to show his figures' desperate isolation against the relief of a bleak, cold world in most of his black and white films to showing virtually the same existential plight, but in a world of domestic engagement. Is it any surprise that Nykvist is his prime accomplice in this? Nykvist, who could make a snowdrift sparkle or, conversely, make naked flesh seem dull as alabaster, allowed Bergman, I think, to move away finally from the depiction of negative space to the suggestion of this same space through his story, his actors and his camera. That's it, I think. I'm kind of free-styling it here but I think that's Berman's highest achievement for me. I mean, is there anything more devastating in film than Ullmann and Josephson's repeated embraces in Marriage? They are that way, not because of any heightened attenuation but because they seem to occur right in the middle of busily lived, tragically common lives. The rarest of achievements.

The rarest of genius.