I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2006)

I’ve always been attracted to films that operate along the lines of a poem. By stripping a movie of narrative concerns and traditional methods of structure and development, what can be achieved, usually through minimalism, is a blowing wide open of possibilities. I’m speaking of style, meaning, and transcendence—notions that can be flattened in a closed system of a three-act narrative.

And I’m not just refering to that most famous of art-house conventions, the “open ending” (which, puzzlingly, is still a point of frustration for movie-goers). No, this type of film that I’m talking about could be said to have an open everything. They have endings, for sure. Just not the kind that achieves simple closure, but the kind of ending that requires some work and patience from the viewer.

A good recent example of this type of film is Kelly Reichardt’s OLD JOY, which follows two old friends reunited for a road trip to visit some hot springs. The film is marked by a lot of quiet passages, a lot of unfocused conversation, but most of all by its lack of a clear moment of epiphany that one might expect form this type of film. Rather, the slow reveal of thoughts and images between the two characters collect into a poetic experience: less logical, more meditative. What may at first seem to be a series of unrelated events and scenes, can usually, hopefully, by the final shot, with some viewer synthesis, allow the full sweep of the work to be realized.

More purely a poetic film is Tsai Ming-Liang’s I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE. The film is built on the oddly desperate actions of disaffected characters, who don’t say much to each other, but do a lot to each other. The film takes up the concern of raw human connection across borders and genders—but for an American audience, the cultural critiques at play here are difficult to parse. Like most Tsai films, though, the head-on, personally direct gestures of the characters, coupled with stark, contemplative pacing create a universally understandable film.

Moving through gorgeously photographed urban settings, the film is ultimately about the struggle to relate to each other in an increasingly isolating world, and finding the connection through questionable, often hamfisted, means. Whether emotional union is achieved by the characters in the film is unclear, but it certainly leaves the viewer with striking, indelible images. As the central figure of the film—tellingly, often unconscious—floats downstream flanked by his two self-appointed watchers (lovers? opportunists? needy loners?), the overall effect is one of connection by way of proximity, which isn’t always undesirable, and usually necessary in life.

INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch, 2006, USA)

I just saw for the second time David Lynch’s video opus INLAND EMPIRE, part of a midnight Lynch series at the IFC Center. In many ways it was the optimal venue to see this movie: with a crowd, at a special screening, held beyond exhaustion (it was after 3 when the movie let out). Mostly, though, the screening was an oppurtunity for a close viewing of an incredible and puzzling film which I had already seen once.

A note about repeat viewings: Most of my favorite films ever, I have watched twice, usually in close succession. Not because I missed something, or didn’t “get it.” But because a good film usually holds a lot of mystery, can pass by the perceptive gaze without enough cognizance, and is usually just the beginning of getting into the work. I think all short-form “experimental” films should be screened at least twice in a row. This is the way we did it in film school during class workshops and critiques. “Project it again!” I recall a professor shouting, before even beginning to discuss the film critically. The method allows one pass for perception, a gleaning of aesthetic and mood, a swallowing whole. The second pass for closer reading and consideration—a chance to expound theories and crack codes.

That said, after my second run of INLAND EMPIRE, I was convinced, although not right away, at the power and completion of this movie. Firstly, I’m confounded by the claims that this film is essentially randomly constructed, with a disjointed series of dreamlike scenes. Certainly the film is non-linear, and an amalgam of styles, ideas, and set-peices—but the film actually uses a different logic of connectiveness than one might be used to. Rather than using plot or characterization as development, even abandoned the notion of cause-and-effect, INLAND EMPIRE instead plays out as an emotional progression, using instead referential linkages (mystery objects, like a silk with a hole burned though, a screwdriver, and that damned monkey) to tie the movie together. More subconscious than conscious, the logic extends across settings and tonal planes, and is a mostly exhilarating ride, if the viewer is up to it. And by the time that final act arrives, with the big, emotional song accompanied by a montage of moments from the film-world, it’s hard not feel some kind of denoument has taken place.

Also noteworthy—in this film more than Lynch’s recent work (most likely a product of self-funding)—is the interest in experimental imagery and abstraction. Lynch has spoken widely about his love of the imperfect nature of video, it’s ease of use, but also with the mystery that it instills within the image. By not allowing the viewer to know exactly what is happening, one of Lynch’s most important techniques gets direct, imagery-influenced currency. Utilizing darkness, blurred contrasts, relentless hand-held vision, untrained focus, and a careful, purposely use of video effects, reveals an interest in mostly ungraceful media forms for largely grace-infused (a hardknock grace, sometimes) content: this is Lynch’s great tension, whereby he juggles high art, and pop (including Hollywood chic), by way of risky melodrama and avant garde cinema.

Take for evidence, despite all the chair-squirming scenes and nap-inducing meandering, the true filmic transcendence he can achieve. Recall that most affecting of scenes in the movie (you know the one: Laura Dern dying, homeless Hollywood, one-legged prostitutes, “No more blue tomorrows.”) When the scene concludes, and we have the big pull-back, revealing the set and camera, the actors leaving, we must not feel cheated (as in the classic groaner, “It was all a dream”), because the motive is not to sweep the rug out from under movie magic, but rather it is revelation. It reminds us that magic moments like this happen all the time, whether “real” or scripted doesn’t matter, because even in the movies, it’s really happening. Anyone who has worked on a film set is familiar with this feeling: watching a drama unfold in pure, silent, isolation only to get shuttered back to reality with the call of “cut.” Even dream logic is human logic, something we all relate to. To diminish it for a lack of real world applicability is to not understand the real world, or human emotion and motives.

For all its linkages, the movie actually appears as an improvisation—which it largely is. Anyone who has read about the film knows that it began with Laura Dern’s improvisational interview monologue. Watching closely, you can even see Dern’s eyes searching for her next subject. This speech quite literally lays the groundwork for the emotional thrust of the film, and most of its narrative points, too. Working without a script (Lynch wrote dialogue for scenes the day of), or improvising scenes is nothing new to cinema. Lynch just uses those as his principal modes of expression here, and rather than using improvisation to fill in or aid his work, he let it guide the film wherever it would go. It’s a truly brave technique, and for someone like Lynch with so much creative energy and spirit, it is essential for an unmediated expressive cinema. This is pure Lynch.

SIDE/WALK/SHUTTLE (Ernie Gehr, 1991, USA)

I recently got to have the chance to see Ernie Gehr present two of his most famous works at the Museum of Modern Art, including a remastered, 35mm blow-up of his seminal film from the 70′s, SERENE VELOCITY. I was more excited to view for the second time his later (made in the 90′s), and for me, superior and without all that baggage, film SIDE/WALK/SHUTTLE.

Like much of Gehr’s work, the film is a carefully constructed, determinedly minimalist example of the kind of work that helped define the Structural Film style. The thing that I find uncommonly memorable in Gehr’s films from this movement, however, is the inescapable human element he imbued in them—by way of a seeking, often hand-held camera; simple, almost rote, editing; and his intuitive, environmentally-informed, shooting strategy. To hear Gehr speak about his work, he almost uses his amateurism as a technique, a way to avoid the common traps of movie-making, and to create a unique cinematic experience. And when his technique is at full blossom, which I believe it is in this film, he creates a distinctly human-formed space that’s easy to get lost in.

The film is near an hour of footage shot from inside a glass elevator, and the resulting view is one of a cityscape in constant flux—with perspective, scale, and direction being shifted, reversed, slanted. It’s an exhilarating and disorienting study in slow-motion weightlessness, as the elevator travels up and down, and the camera holds on certain angles, or follows buildings, or engages in subtle shifts. It all combines to make a gravity-defying space impossible to ground oneself in.

Although the film looks very structured, Gehr stressed his open-ended work methods. Driven by necessity, he described smuggling his camera aboard the elevator, and working from makeshift notes jotted down on previous rides. “If you try to control everything in the frame,” he said during the Q & A session, “you create a dead work to start with.” He went on to encourage one to let a film “breathe,” and to remain open to accidents. It is this mindset, I believe, which make Gehr’s contribution to Structual Film, and American filmmaking at large, so devastatingly affecting.

PARANOID PARK (Gus Van Sant, 2007, USA)

The new feature by Gus Van Sant stars nonprofessional actors from Portland, mostly high schoolers who were cast from MySpace. On why he likes working with young people, Van Sant professed during his Q & A session, that for teenagers, “pretending is part of their lives.” And casting from an online networking site makes sense, too, as he went on to describe how he likes characters who can tell a story in their face.

After working in the Hollywood model for years, it’s refreshing to hear a filmmaker talk about being so open to new ideas, to work via new methods, and to be so carefree in his filmmaking. Which isn’t to say the results are sloppy or malformed—rather they are joyously free. When we watch Van Sant’s now trademark wandering camera drift in and out of focus, even up and down f-stops, it’s hard not to give in to the moments of pure lightness of being.

Certainly besides being told with faces, this is a film told with air. The way a girl’s hair flows across the frame in a (potentially disastrous, but eventually transcendant) sex scene, the way the long grasses are parted before the camera in a character’s walk into seclusion, and of course the lyrical skateborading footage. Here, the filmstock changes from 35mm to Super 8, as Van Sant used footage shot by the teenagers themselves on skateboards, rendered in mobile, grainy interludes.

Working from a novel—in fact, the film is framed by a narrated journal passage—the film is able to stick to story conventions, while also molded to fit the true life aesthetic. Van Sant confessed to not shooting his film in the traditional method, that is to shoot scenes all the way through from a variety of angles and to put the film together in the editing room. Instead, he often took only one shot of a scene, choosing to follow his on-set instincts, and to create the film on location. In this way, the film is truly alive, and that energy is present, mostly in the poetic, usually hand-held, cinematography.

UNTITLED (FOR DAVID GATTEN) (Phil Solomon, 2005, USA)

In 1966, Susan Sontag wrote that nothing can’t be represented by cinema. Maybe the updated version of that concept could be that today there is nothing that can’t be represented by video games. With the rise of realism in technology, experimental filmmakers have been utilizing and manipulating video games for artistic ends more and more. And with the mirroring of real life in games like The Sims, the medium provides an ideal backdrop for cinematic development.

Taking a video game world to its pure and inexpressible end is a technique that has been achieved by hacking (Cory Archangel’s SUPER MARIO CLOUDS comes to mind), but with the more immersive worlds provided by newer games, sometimes no hacking is needed.

Such is the case with the recent work of Phil Solomon shown at this year’s Views of the Avant Garde, part of the New York Film Festival. UNTITLED (FOR DAVID GATTEN) is the first of three haunting new movies which are taken directly from Grand Theft Auto gameplay. Simply put, the works take banal game world excursions to a heightened emotional sense of landscape, and our (or the avatar’s) presence.

In UNTITLED, we watch from behind a first person avatar as he stands before what could be an apacolyptic storm in a barren landscape. Randomly (realistically?) coded movements and breathing register in the figure, but mostly he remains still as the landscape churns around him. The effect is one of unexpected empathy—Solomon has charged the scenes with more humanity than a lot of mainstream films do with actual humans.

The scenes captured were found at the frontiers of the video game landscape, (where the filmmaker’s avatar wandered “without mission, without murder” according to Solomon’s own program notes), re-purposing the game, and reaching an illogical conclusion: The heart still beats at the edge of town.