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Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

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The Story of a Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

The Cheat is a 54 year old man sitting in a café writing his memoirs. He has lived a life of cheating, and it has benefited him greatly, although now he has turned straight. From the age of 12 cheating has done him good. Starting when he stole a few coins from the register in his families shop. His punishment was not being part of the mushroom feast the rest of the family partook in. The mushrooms turned out to be poisonous and killed the entire family sans The Cheat. He lives an eventful life starting from being a bellhop as a boy in Paris. Elevator operator at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, where he has an affair with an older countess. He gets pulled into the army in WWI, but luckily gets injured quickly and is out of combat for the rest of the war. After the war he meets a beautiful thief whom he partners with for a while, before becoming a professional card cheat.

Only in the rarely seen frame story of The Cheat writing his memoirs do we hear actors talking to each other. In the flashback telling of The Cheat's life, no dialogue is heard. Instead it is all being narrated by The Cheat. It is practically a silent movie with narration instead of intertitles. This allows the movie to have a breakneck pace, which even now feels fast. The pace fits well with the witty and sarcastic nature of The Cheat's version of his own life story. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that way of telling the story. Because it does feel to me like the movie was made 10 years too late, and then just had the voice over narration tacked on instead of intertitles. But it is a very entertaining movie, and the whole movie is made with that mode of story telling in mind, and the movie goes all in on it. Guitry also mixes picture, words and enunciation very well, how well done the editing and timing is have to be respected. This particular story probably couldn't have been told in another either, because it has been build with the style in mind. In the end I think I quite like how it was done here, because everything is executed so well. But I also think it is good that the fast pace means the movie just lasted 80 minutes. Because I also think it's a style that wears out its welcome after a while.

A few fun notes about this film, is that I'm quite sure Orson Welles has seen it, and was quite a fan of it. The use of voiceover narration as a big part of the story telling is something Welles also used in The Magnificent Ambersons. And the unusual practice of having Guitry introduce the actors and crew with voiceover narration is also something that Welles has "stolen". In The Trial Welles narrates the end credits rather than just having them play across the screen. It is not as elaborate as it is done here with the faux behind-the-scenes footage.
 
I just realised I forgot to pick a new movie. So my next pick will be Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt.
 
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The Story of a Cheat (1936) Directed by Sacha Guitry

Now in middle age, The Cheat (Sacha Guitry) writes his memoirs in a cafe as we watch flashbacks of his life on screen from his youth where he learns that cheating can pay off to much later when he finally gives up his rather genteel life of crime and goes straight. In 81 minutes, I could not believe how much happens to this guy. Not only does the movie overflow with incidents, it happens at a frenetic pace. I don't believe that I have seen a Sacha Guitry film before though I did recognize him. Via mostly voiceovers, he provides nearly all the dialogue in the film. His story could have been told in a darker way, but instead it unfolds in a manner that is for the most part jaunty, urbane, witty (I love how he escaped death by mushroom), sophisticated, breezy. The real interest here isn't the story so much as how it is told. For obvious reasons, using voiceovers in not an ideal way to construct a movie. The device can get quickly tedious. Somehow that doesn't happen here, largely because once I got into the rhythm of the film, I just had to go with the flow; otherwise, it would have been like trying to step off a speeding train. So I just let the movie carry me along at its rapid pace. The camerawork is amazing. Especially early on, Guitry uses the camera like it is a hyperactive child who can't sit still longer than a couple of seconds. It is roaming around everywhere, trying to see everything, and I didn't know what it was going to do next. When there are rare moments of relative repose, then movement within the frame becomes very busy as no one can seem to hold a facial expression without mugging a bit. To some extent, I felt that maybe Guitry hadn't adjusted to talkies yet and preferred the silent film approach where expressions on people's faces often stood in for dialogue. Whatever the case, I felt like I couldn't blink or I might miss something. In addition, mid-range and close-ups are on occasion shot from an angle that is just slightly higher or just slightly lower than is usually done by other directors, a technique that forced me to alter my perspective as well. On top of which some of Guitry's editing occurs at a rock video clip. Movement, movement, movement. Nothing about this movie can sit still for very long.

The overall effect, though, is very pleasing, if a little exhausting. But I never felt that I was in anything but good hands. There was one strikingly erotic sequence involving a beautiful blonde, a bath and a bathrobe that was just perfectly executed, tantalizing but brief. And there is a subversive element to the film, a kind of cheerful amorality, that I also found very attractive. I think it is safe to say that as a movie director, Sacha Guitry is one of a kind.

subtitles
 
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The Story of a Cheat
Guitry (1936)
“Did that mean the others died because they were honest?”

An older man sits in a park and recounts his life story. As a young boy in a family of 12, he gets in trouble after stealing from the family store’s till. As punishment, he’s denied a tasty dinner of freshly foraged mushrooms. Lucky him! The mushrooms were poisonous and his entire family dies. From here a life philosophy of sorts forms. The Cheat, as he’s credited, begins a jaunty, vagabond life bouncing from long-lost relatives to working as a bellboy to military service to becoming a croupier. He falls in and out of ... well, not really love ... admiration, lust ... In an unexpected twist it seems the old woman next to him in the cafe is the Countess who took his virginity. The memory remains a fond one for her. But the Cheat won’t be tied down. Another lover proves to be an even shrewder schemer than he. All tales and roads lead back that cafe table and the revelation that despite his scoundrel ways, he actually lost everything while gaming honestly with an old war buddy — a fact that amuses him more than anyone else.

Guitry wrote, directed and stars in this is an endlessly witty and inventive tale. It starts right from the top as Guitry breaks the fourth wall and introduces his entire cast and crew before the actual story begins. It’s a meta touch long before such terminology was in use. He starts talking then and rarely shuts up. Probably 90% of the movie is his voice over, being our storyteller, our guide on his tale of schemes and misadventures. Occasionally there’s pops back to the current time and cafe and the interactions there. The rapid summation he provides the countess at the movie’s climax is laugh-out-loud funny. The humor is often a surprisingly modern affair too given that it hails from the mid-1930s.

I was familiar with Guitry only by reputation. Others clearly know him well. I'll second Jevo's observation about Welles. Wes Anderson also came to mine. This was my first viewing experience. If this is any indication, I look forward to more. A fun, fast-paced outing.
 
Au hasard Balthazar (1966) - A fine film, although I expected a bit more with the high acclaim this movie has received since its release. Showing the life of a donkey, Balthazar, and some of the men and women who drift in and out of his life, I was more touched by the silent shots of Balthazar and other animals, eyes more lively than those of the humans who own them. I also appreciate the patience Bresson shows when shooting his donkey, allowing the viewer to indulge quirks such as the perking of ears, the blinking of his eyes, the sound of his hooves upon the asphalt ground. Considering he is the focal point of the film, I did not have an issue with the characters being one-dimensional or not being privy to more intricate details regarding their lives. Ultimately, it does not matter. Nor does it justify any action. For most of the film, the viewer engages the plot from the Donkey's point of view and it is synchronic that we are only allowed certain bits and pieces of the story as many scenes, while related, drift along as if only a moment in time. I don't think the acting was always great, as the delivery was sometimes a bit wooden, instead of merely empty or dispirited, but I also do not believe it was helped by what I felt was a sometimes choppy fluidity to the scene order. Some of the later monologues were very good, especially a misanthropic one by a rich grain dealer as he chastises Marie's father desire for honor while she is taking refuge in his downtrodden home. Another great moment (perhaps the best in the film) is when Marie's mother tiredly refuses to lend Balthazar to Gerard, calling the animal a saint. The ending is an emotional whallop (and perfection is achieved with a shot showing Balthazar flinching as he's shot, instead of the actual act itself) and while I can see how the sheeps appear obvious and cliche, I'm not so sure that it is meant to represent humans beings (or if it is, in an insulting way) but their white colors and common dance around the dying donkey was very beautiful. I understand this is a bleak film, but man, I'm re-reading Blood Meridian right now, and this film is sweet as ice cream compared to the vivid nightmare that is Blood Meridian. Balthazar lived the high life compared to some of the animals in that book!

Also, this is cool:

 
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Winchester by Jeremy Blake. Though it is inspired by the same haunted house, it is not to be confused with the Helen Mirren/haunted house vehicle of the same name from a few years ago.



Anyone see it? It looks horrible. But you never know. Anyway, I did provide a link for the Blake flick, so no excuses.

So what was I thinking picking this? Actually, it was another MOTW pick that brought me here. We've seen Blake's work before in this thread. Remember Punch Drunk Love?



I fell for those abstract interludes and found that it was Blake, not P.T. Anderson, who was responsible for their creation, so I had to check out his other work. Also had to go back to kihei's memorably nasty review of Punch Drunk Love, just to make sure he had nothing bad to say about them. He didn't. Whew!

So what's going on here? We alternate back and forth between two different "locations". There's the real world, or maybe more appropriately the man-made, mechanical world, represented by a static black-and-white shot, likely a still photo, of an old mansion while hearing only the click-clacking of what sounds to be a film projector. The camera zooms us into some kind of a portal--could be a bullet hole, could be a vagina--but next we know we're in another world of constantly changing colors and shapes accompanied by eerie, spooky music. Is it the spirit world? The afterworld? Doesn't look so bad as we tour its hallways. Rorschach test images and glimpses of shadowy riflemen challenge us to make some kind of meaning of it all, but eventually we're pulled back into the real world of black and white.

On the surface, Winchester is eighteen minutes of eye candy--candy with a hard crunchy outside and soft creamy middle. It continually repeats, so you can have just one candy or you can have the whole box. There's nothing saccharine about its mood however. These can be mind-altering bon bons.
 
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Winchester
Blake (2002)
**film gear noises**

I knew nothing about this going in.

Thing one: When I saw the title, I made an immediate association to the bad Helen Mirren horror movie a few years back about the supposedly haunted Winchester house ... lo and behold.

Thing two: As I was watching, the morphing, dripping, shifting color patterns reminded me of some of the transitions used by Paul Thomas Anderson in Punch Drunk Love ... again, lo and behold.

So it turns out this impressionistic short treads the same ground as #1 and in my post viewing research, Jeremy Blake actually did do the art that PTA used in Punch Drunk Love so my guts were right about #2 as well. I start with these two facts and lucky associations on my part because beyond that there isn’t much concrete given the nature of this abstract creation.

As per instructions, I sat through multiple repetitions of the 18 minute short. The version I found online had three cycles so I buckled down and went through it. Now here I am typing away. Sometimes there’s a delay for me between viewing and solidifying my thoughts in writing. Not this time. I wanted to get right to it. I certainly see it as a ghost story (the YouTube descriptor tipped me a little into that direction but I think I would have gotten there on my own, especially with the repeated viewings). It’s a transfixing melange of sight and sound. The only clearly discernable pictures are of the house, which appears clear, then shimmers, then fades, ghostly figures coming and going. All this gives way to a montage of color and shapes. There’s almost a Rorschach test quality to the images if we’re being literal. Some things stand out, at least to me. Men with guns. Music and sound shifts to an almost circus music (this again made me recall Punch Drunk Love which also put circus-like themes to use). It’s an eerie experience. By my third time through I thought I was seeing demon faces amid the splatters. Autumn leaves. Even an American flag (or an American-like flag). Am I alone? Does that even matter?

A challenge for me for sure. I’m very not well versed in this realm of art. But I plan to venture into the other parts of this trilogy.
 
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Winchester (2002) Directed by Jeremy Blake

When I first saw Winchester a few weeks ago, my immediate reaction was "I wonder what Susan Sontag would make of this." Back in the 60s' Sontag wrote a series of controversial essays, collected in her watershed work Against Interpretation, that rocked the rather academic world of aesthetic theory. These essays, primarily two of them, On Style and Against Interpretaion, hit with an impact that is still felt and debated to this day. For anyone not familiar with her work, I have included a long excerpt from the end of her Against Interpretation essay, which states her position better than any gist that I could write trying to describe her aesthetic stance.

But programmatic avant-gardism—which has meant, mostly, experiments with form at the expense of content—is not the only defense against the infestation of art by interpretations. At least, I hope not. For this would be to commit art to being perpetually on the run. (It also perpetuates the very distinction between form and content which is, ultimately, an illusion.) Ideally, it is possible to elude the interpreters in another way, by making works of art whose surface is so unified and clean, whose momentum is so rapid, whose address is so direct that the work can be…just what it is. Is this possible now? It does happen in films, I believe. This is why cinema is the most alive, the most exciting, the most important of all art forms right now. Perhaps the way one tells how alive a particular art form is, is by the latitude it gives for making mistakes in it, and still being good. For example, a few of the films of Bergman—though crammed with lame messages about the modern spirit, thereby inviting interpretations—still triumph over the pretentious intentions of their director. In Winter Light and The Silence, the beauty and visual sophistication of the images subvert before our eyes the callow pseudointellectuality of the story and some of the dialogue. (The most remarkable instance of this sort of discrepancy is the work of D. W. Griffith.) In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret. Many old Hollywood films, like those of Cukor, Walsh, Hawks, and countless other directors, have this liberating antisymbolic quality, no less than the best work of the new European directors, like Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim, Godard’s Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Olmi’s The Fiancés.

The fact that films have not been overrun by interpreters is in part due simply to the newness of cinema as an art. It also owes to the happy accident that films for such a long time were just movies; in other words, that they were understood to be part of mass, as opposed to high, culture, and were left alone by most people with minds. Then, too, there is always something other than content in the cinema to grab hold of, for those who want to analyze. For the cinema, unlike the novel, possesses a vocabulary of forms—the explicit, complex, and discussable technology of camera movements, cutting, and composition of the frame that goes into the making of a film.

What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place?

What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary—a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary—for forms. The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form....

Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. This seems even harder to do than formal analysis. Some of Manny Farber’s film criticism, Dorothy Van Ghent’s essay “The Dickens World: A View from Todgers’,” Randall Jarrell’s essay on Walt Whitman are among the rare examples of what I mean. These are essays which reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.

Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art-and in criticism today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are. This is the greatness of, for example, the films of Bresson and Ozu and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not. It reinforces the principle of redundancy that is the principal affliction of modem life.

Once upon a time (a time when high art was scarce), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to interpret works of art. Now it is not. What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture. Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modem life-its material plenitude, its forms of narration. Perhaps film criticism will be the occasion of a breakthrough here, since films are primarily a visual form, yet they are also a subdivision of literature. 10 sheer crowdedness-conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed.

What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art-and, by analogy, our own experience-more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. 10

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.
Click to expand...

So what would Sontag make of Winchester? I can only say what I think of it looking through the lens that Sontag provides above. I would argue that Winchester is mostly an abstract work of juxtaposition and flow between a realistic images of a house that are treated in various ways that mitigate their realism and abstract images that are a phantasmagoria of colour and transformation. The title Winchester suggests a reference to a particular house (or, perhaps, a particular weapon) that has a legendary or fantastical reputation. Exactly what the relationship between the art work and the house in question is, however, cannot be deduced with any degree of certainty whatsoever. Meaning is completely in the mind of the individual viewer who may feel compelled to piece together the fragments and their inclusion of abstract human forms holding weapons in some fashion that creates a story or narrative. While it can be argued that the film invites such speculation, it is impossible to determine the intent of the work on the basis of viewing the work itself. Repeated viewings do not alter these perceptions; indeed, the assertion that repeated viewings are worthwhile may itself be fanciful, even mischievous. The juxtaposition of different types of images is perhaps irresistible in a work of this nature, but the surface is not deeply immersive. As an art object, I found it is similar to a poem that one finds initially captivating but whose fascination eventually wears thin as one discovers that there is nothing profound about it. As a one-off, however, it was pleasurable to observe in the short term.

It's hard to write about an art object this way, though, in truth, I'm not even sure that I have reflected Sontag's approach in any way that Sontag would approve of. Her theory does definitely provide me with a different way of looking at art, though--one that is probably good to address when sorting through initial impressions of any given work. In her article, Sontag mentions that film, being, then, still a relatively new art form, lent itself better than the other arts to an "against interpretation" approach. I think this approach suits some of Godard's later works especially well and probably would be a fascinating way to look at a movie like Last Year at Marienbad, one of my favourite movies, again. In my opinoin, the work that Sontag's approach fits to a tee is The Double Life of Veronique, a staple among my top five favourite movies since I first saw it upon its release in 1991. I resisted interpreting that movie, which is about a young woman who realizes that their is an identical copy of herself out there somewhere, from the word go. To me, the film addresses feelings that are deeply felt but that can't be put into words. And that is precisely what Kieslowski accomplishes in the movie with brilliantly sympathetic direction and a deft touch. It defies language to adequately capture what goes on in that movie in any given scene or in its entirely. Yet those feelings are as real to me as any concrete object that I can think of. To my way of thinking, an ideal "review" of that film would just list a series of adjectives--haunting, ephemeral, inexplicable, sensual, melancholic, unknown, somber, asynchronous, mysterious, beautiful--and leave it at that. If people found that list interesting, they would watch it; if not, they wouldn't. That would be the best job I could do in service of that film, and I would just leave it at that. Other than a bare plot summary and comments similar to the above, I would not begin to try to "interpret" that film. It would be a disservice to its art. I'm only partially sure of what Sontag's term, an erotics of art, might be, but I am nonetheless absolutely certain that The Double Life of Veronique would be a prime example of such an aesthetic..
 
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Winchester by Jeremy Blake (2005) - The sort of film that makes one wish conventional cinema put more of an emphasis on sound and texture. Not to say that all of it worked - it didn't. But I appreciate the attention to detail and structure, even if I found some of the juxtapositions and color schemes garish and unattractive. I had no interest in its meaning but this is a work where I believe its meaning is only important to its creator and if of no interest whatsoever to the viewer. Its appeal isn't there during an initial viewing. Not a perfect work in and of itself, but I found it inspiring in how a more conventional storyteller could widen his/her palette towards more unorthodox forms of storytelling (if storytelling there is) and disallow restraints on their instincts, especially since an artist can get by without knowledge and on instinct alone. One doesn't need to copy or even like an aesthetic to be inspired or curious. I think this film constitutes one of those cases for me. It's worth a look.
 
kihei said:
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Winchester (2002) Directed by Jeremy Blake

When I first saw Winchester a few weeks ago, my immediate reaction was "I wonder what Susan Sontag would make of this." Back in the 60s' Sontag wrote a series of controversial essays, collected in her watershed work Against Interpretation, that rocked the rather academic world of aesthetic theory. These essays, primarily two of them, On Style and Against Interpretaion, hit with an impact that is still felt and debated to this day. For anyone not familiar with her work, I have included a long excerpt from the end of her Against Interpretation essay, which states her position better than any gist that I could write trying to describe her aesthetic stance.



So what would Sontag make of Winchester? I can only say what I think of it looking through the lens that Sontag provides above. I would argue that Winchester is mostly an abstract work of juxtaposition and flow between a realistic images of a house that are treated in various ways that mitigate their realism and abstract images that are a phantasmagoria of colour and transformation. The title Winchester suggests a reference to a particular house (or, perhaps, a particular weapon) that has a legendary or fantastical reputation. Exactly what the relationship between the art work and the house in question is, however, cannot be deduced with any degree of certainty whatsoever. Meaning is completely in the mind of the individual viewer who may feel compelled to piece together the fragments and their inclusion of abstract human forms holding weapons in some fashion that creates a story or narrative. While it can be argued that the film invites such speculation, it is impossible to determine the intent of the work on the basis of viewing the work itself. Repeated viewings do not alter these perceptions; indeed, the assertion that repeated viewings are worthwhile may itself be fanciful, even mischievous. The juxtaposition of different types of images is perhaps irresistible in a work of this nature, but the surface is not deeply immersive. As an art object, I found it is similar to a poem that one finds initially captivating but whose fascination eventually wears thin as one discovers that there is nothing profound about it. As a one-off, however, it was pleasurable to observe in the short term.

It's hard to write about an art object this way, though, in truth, I'm not even sure that I have reflected Sontag's approach in any way that Sontag would approve of. Her theory does definitely provide me with a different way of looking at art, though--one that is probably good to address when sorting through initial impressions of any given work. In her article, Sontag mentions that film, being, then, still a relatively new art form, lent itself better than the other arts to an "against interpretation" approach. I think this approach suits some of Godard's later works especially well and probably would be a fascinating way to look at a movie like Last Year at Marienbad, one of my favourite movies, again. In my opinoin, the work that Sontag's approach fits to a tee is The Double Life of Veronique, a staple among my top five favourite movies since I first saw it upon its release in 1991. I resisted interpreting that movie, which is about a young woman who realizes that their is an identical copy of herself out there somewhere, from the word go. To me, the film addresses feelings that are deeply felt but that can't be put into words. And that is precisely what Kieslowski accomplishes in the movie with brilliantly sympathetic direction and a deft touch. It defies language to adequately capture what goes on in that movie in any given scene or in its entirely. Yet those feelings are as real to me as any concrete object that I can think of. To my way of thinking, an ideal "review" of that film would just list a series of adjectives--haunting, ephemeral, inexplicable, sensual, melancholic, unknown, somber, asynchronous, mysterious, beautiful--and leave it at that. If people found that list interesting, they would watch it; if not, they wouldn't. That would be the best job I could do in service of that film, and I would just leave it at that. Other than a bare plot summary and comments similar to the above, I would not begin to try to "interpret" that film. It would be a disservice to its art. I'm only partially sure of what Sontag's term, an erotics of art, might be, but I am nonetheless absolutely certain that The Double Life of Veronique would be a prime example of such an aesthetic..
Click to expand...

I think that Sontag's early position, like many things that got out of early poststructuralism (or like so many of the likewise positions going against the obvious), was mostly aiming at polemics and weren't meant to be taken literally - or otherwise wouldn't stand the test of reason. For example, on one hand, she blames interpretation and interpretative texts for usurping the place of the work it interprets, but on the other, she favors acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. Push this idea to its limits and what you end up with is Borges' map, which would literally take the Empire's place. Also, she proposes that the distinction between form and content is an illusion, but insist on the importance of putting content aside and focusing on appearance and form in order to avoid the arrogance of interpretation. Luckily, her essay wasn't titled Against Contradiction.

What should be understood about Against Interpretation (and it's been a really long while since I've read it), is mostly a rejection - like you'd find in Lyotard and most postmodernist - of metanarratives that could be applied to the reception/interpretation of a given work. Mostly classical readings, but also anything that would get close to a freudian or historical analysis of a work of art. She still favors formalist readings of works of art. There is no possible way to read something, be it art or the kleenex box or the red light on the corner of a street, without interpretation. Now if that interpretation can reach the meaning of an art work, that's where the discussion begins to be interesting. Before the death of the author, critics tend to situate meaning in that author's intention. Eco situates the meaning in the text, Barthes in the reader, and Sontag, in the experience of the text. All of these require interpretation.
 
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Violenza Domestica said:
I think that Sontag's early position, like many things that got out of early poststructuralism (or like so many of the likewise positions going against the obvious), was mostly aiming at polemics and weren't meant to be taken literally - or otherwise wouldn't stand the test of reason. For example, on one hand, she blames interpretation and interpretative texts for usurping the place of the work it interprets, but on the other, she favors acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. Push this idea to its limits and what you end up with is Borges' map, which would literally take the Empire's place. Also, she proposes that the distinction between form and content is an illusion, but insist on the importance of putting content aside and focusing on appearance and form in order to avoid the arrogance of interpretation. Luckily, her essay wasn't titled Against Contradiction.

What should be understood about Against Interpretation (and it's been a really long while since I've read it), is mostly a rejection - like you'd find in Lyotard and most postmodernist - of metanarratives that could be applied to the reception/interpretation of a given work. Mostly classical readings, but also anything that would get close to a freudian or historical analysis of a work of art. She still favors formalist readings of works of art. There is no possible way to read something, be it art or the kleenex box or the red light on the corner of a street, without interpretation. Now if that interpretation can reach the meaning of an art work, that's where the discussion begins to be interesting. Before the death of the author, critics tend to situate meaning in that author's intention. Eco situates the meaning in the text, Barthes in the reader, and Sontag, in the experience of the text. All of these require interpretation.
Click to expand...

I took Sontag's piece as meaning interpretation in the sense of intellectual/societal meaning. I.e., works of practical (philosophical?) ideas.
 
kihei said:
restricted


Winchester (2002) Directed by Jeremy Blake

When I first saw Winchester a few weeks ago, my immediate reaction was "I wonder what Susan Sontag would make of this." Back in the 60s' Sontag wrote a series of controversial essays, collected in her watershed work Against Interpretation, that rocked the rather academic world of aesthetic theory. These essays, primarily two of them, On Style and Against Interpretaion, hit with an impact that is still felt and debated to this day. For anyone not familiar with her work, I have included a long excerpt from the end of her Against Interpretation essay, which states her position better than any gist that I could write trying to describe her aesthetic stance.



So what would Sontag make of Winchester? I can only say what I think of it looking through the lens that Sontag provides above. I would argue that Winchester is mostly an abstract work of juxtaposition and flow between a realistic images of a house that are treated in various ways that mitigate their realism and abstract images that are a phantasmagoria of colour and transformation. The title Winchester suggests a reference to a particular house (or, perhaps, a particular weapon) that has a legendary or fantastical reputation. Exactly what the relationship between the art work and the house in question is, however, cannot be deduced with any degree of certainty whatsoever. Meaning is completely in the mind of the individual viewer who may feel compelled to piece together the fragments and their inclusion of abstract human forms holding weapons in some fashion that creates a story or narrative. While it can be argued that the film invites such speculation, it is impossible to determine the intent of the work on the basis of viewing the work itself. Repeated viewings do not alter these perceptions; indeed, the assertion that repeated viewings are worthwhile may itself be fanciful, even mischievous. The juxtaposition of different types of images is perhaps irresistible in a work of this nature, but the surface is not deeply immersive. As an art object, I found it is similar to a poem that one finds initially captivating but whose fascination eventually wears thin as one discovers that there is nothing profound about it. As a one-off, however, it was pleasurable to observe in the short term.

It's hard to write about an art object this way, though, in truth, I'm not even sure that I have reflected Sontag's approach in any way that Sontag would approve of. Her theory does definitely provide me with a different way of looking at art, though--one that is probably good to address when sorting through initial impressions of any given work. In her article, Sontag mentions that film, being, then, still a relatively new art form, lent itself better than the other arts to an "against interpretation" approach. I think this approach suits some of Godard's later works especially well and probably would be a fascinating way to look at a movie like Last Year at Marienbad, one of my favourite movies, again. In my opinoin, the work that Sontag's approach fits to a tee is The Double Life of Veronique, a staple among my top five favourite movies since I first saw it upon its release in 1991. I resisted interpreting that movie, which is about a young woman who realizes that their is an identical copy of herself out there somewhere, from the word go. To me, the film addresses feelings that are deeply felt but that can't be put into words. And that is precisely what Kieslowski accomplishes in the movie with brilliantly sympathetic direction and a deft touch. It defies language to adequately capture what goes on in that movie in any given scene or in its entirely. Yet those feelings are as real to me as any concrete object that I can think of. To my way of thinking, an ideal "review" of that film would just list a series of adjectives--haunting, ephemeral, inexplicable, sensual, melancholic, unknown, somber, asynchronous, mysterious, beautiful--and leave it at that. If people found that list interesting, they would watch it; if not, they wouldn't. That would be the best job I could do in service of that film, and I would just leave it at that. Other than a bare plot summary and comments similar to the above, I would not begin to try to "interpret" that film. It would be a disservice to its art. I'm only partially sure of what Sontag's term, an erotics of art, might be, but I am nonetheless absolutely certain that The Double Life of Veronique would be a prime example of such an aesthetic..
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Jeez, if I knowed you was bringing Susan to the club, I woulda found a clean shirt. Maybe shaved. What a fox! :naughty: Love it when she talks dirty.

Anyway, my Sontag interpretation is that some understanding of an art work's messaging is necessary in order to discuss how it is reinforced by its technique--the sensory element which ought to be the critic's focus. We shouldn't mind a reasonable amount of interpretation, as long as there's no "mucking about in it". An updated/dumbed down version of her essay might be titled Against Spoilers.

As for Winchester, Jeremy Blake provided an interpretation of his own for a gallery that was showing it:

Winchester is the first in a series of short continuously looping films inspired by my interest in the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. The mansion is an architectural wonder constructed by Sara Winchester — widow of the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune — over the course of 38 years, beginning in the late 1800s. After suffering the premature death of her husband and child, Winchester, informed by a deep belief in Spiritualism, decided that the angry spirits of those struck down by her family’s guns had cursed her. An advisor agreed, and suggested that she build an enormously large house — an endeavor that would both accommodate good spirits and ward off evil ones with the sounds of never-ending construction. The result is a sprawling mansion, well outfitted for the undead with staircases going nowhere, doorways leading out into open air several stories above ground, and miles of darkened hallways to roam.

This DVD work, which combines static 16mm shots of old photographs of the house, hundreds of ink drawings, and intricate frame-by-frame digital retouching, is meant to provide an abstract or emotional tour — not so much of the architecture, but of some of the more fearful chambers of Sarah Winchester’s mind. Paranoiac glimpses of shadowy gunfighters, painterly gunshot wounds blossoming into Rorschach tests, and a spectral and embattled American flag derived from an old Winchester advertisement are all made visible to the careful observer.

My interest in this site is rooted in an understanding that the Winchester Mystery House is more than just a monument to one person’s eccentric fears; it is the formal outcome of a narrative pile-up. Several mythic strands are knotted together in order to justify this architectural free-for-all, the most significant of which are fundamental to American national identity. The figure of the gunfighter (whether lawman or outlaw) who facilitates spiritual regeneration through violence is treated with reverent fear here, as are the ghosts of his victims. The drive to expand into new territory plays a vital role in Winchester’s conception of the house as well, although in this case the need for expansion is informed by morbidity. The Protestant ethic, which anticipates not just earthly but also spiritual rewards for hard work, has perhaps never been more fervently expressed — in this case as a kind of exaggeration which proves the power of the rule. The pursuit of happiness (or at least the pursuit of freedom from anxiety and guilt) is also energetically engaged, although here by someone for whom it has proven elusive. In many respects I think the Winchester Mystery House is a most hyper-American of places, and Sara Winchester a sort of “director of homeland security” in her vigil to protect against unseen threats.
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You don't often find artists explaining their work so openly. Most are coy about it, and I can understand why--it's a bit like asking a magician to explain his tricks. They'd prefer to let their work speak for itself, but Blake doesn't seem to mind.

He once told an interviewer that he'd be interested in making a Hollywood film some day. That would have been interesting to see. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen--Blake took his own life in 2007, two weeks after his partner did the same. Wonder if he ever drops by the Winchester house.
 
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