Plastic Bag

Ramin Bahrani’s Plastic Bag is a film concerned with the ways everyday objects can become mirrors to human beings' own fight for meaning in the world. Bahrani makes his various points by placing the audience in the mind of a plastic bag, as voiced by director Werner Herzog, as it attempts to find its way back to its ‘maker’ – a faceless woman who had inadvertently become the bag’s mother/creator after picking it up in a department store.

Plastic Bag is a very thoughtful film, focused mostly on the natural rhythms of the world through which the bag passes. Sound and shot design both reflect this simplicity. An apocalyptic event is referenced halfway through the film, but throughout we have heard no human voices, only the bag’s voice, poetic and introspective. The camera seems to follow a simple choreography, gently floating and following the bag with the wind, and emphasizing the brief moments of excitement in between, as when the bag reaches the ‘vortex’ – the North Pacific Garbage Patch – to unite with its fellow travellers.

The film puts the audience into a peaceful state, not at all hysterical, which is a surprise considering the troubling subject matter. The director skilfully avoids making an environmental film, while showing us the heart of the problem with our wasteful society. By taking such care to portray a throwaway item like a plastic bag, Bahrani opens up a kind of empathy for the natural world, and for items like the bag, who have been detached from that world, and transformed into trash. 

Plastic Bag is also unexpectedly emotional. The bag’s search for its lost ‘maker’ – a woman who apparently barely registers the bag’s existence (as is normal) – becomes poignant as the bag realises the futility of its own existence, and accepts its place as an observer of the natural world. Bahrani seems to be suggesting that although objects and animals will reclaim the earth eventually, it will, in the end, be a sad victory.

Image Doubles #1

In starting this series the aim is to highlight a connection between two images (be they written, filmed, etc.) which then forces additional, broader comparisons between their sources. In the first case, Mildred Pierce by Michael Curtiz and Le genou de Claire [Claire's Knee] by Eric Rohmer. 

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Le genou de Claire [Claire's Knee] by Eric Rohmer, 1970:

-I was watching those two lovers, and I thought to myself that every woman has her most vulnerable point. For some it’s the nape of the neck, the waist, the hands. For Claire, in that position, in that light, it was her knee. It was the magnetic pole of my desire, the precise point, where, if I could pursue this desire, I’d have placed my hand.

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Le genou de Claire [Claire's Knee] by Eric Rohmer, 1970:

-The turmoil she arises in me gives me a sort of right over her. 

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Mildred Pierce by Michael Curtiz, 1945:

-I came by to check up on my investment. 
-Well, how do you like it? 
-Delightful.

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Mildred Pierce by Michael Curtiz, 1945:

-You know, using your gams all day hasn’t hurt ‘em a bit.

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Bizarre extracts from year twelve unit plan

1. In Millenium Actress Kon creates a film unit in micro, illustrating various periods of Japanese filmmaking by entering the memories of a retiring actress. Perfect Blue might be seen as the dark end of that history, with Kon describing a society enmeshed in celebrity worship and warping at the seams through the push of technological innovation. Viruses and ever-proliferating liquid life-forms come into play in later Kon films: societal forces given shape and tangible destructive power.

2. Shohei Imamura never liked the representation of Japanese society posed by Ozu, so he made his own. Kitano bleeds genre through a pretty wry form of ‘art film’. In The Eel, Imamura illustrates the downside to Ozu’s modes of familial respect and restraint, but eventually rests on his own version of a similar ideal.

This rectangle of canvas, pitched like a sail at sea

"Thousands of spectators, massed along the quay, experienced this unique spectacle. At the moment when Bonaparte confronts a terrifying storm, aboard the frail bark whose makeshift sail is fashioned from his tricolored flag, the wind whipped up over Antibes. Menacing clouds gathered densely in the sky above, and the abruptly louder sound of waves crashing along the shore accompanied the images. As in a Magritte painting, with one canvas framed by a real sea and genuine storm clouds, each spectator had the Sensurround-style sensation of knowing what Bonaparte felt as he crossed the Mediterranean."

-Glenn Myrent & Georges Langlois, Henri Langlois, first citizen of cinema (trans. Lisa Nesselson)

Shirin

The violence is given weight by the reactions of the women. We are unable to decide for ourselves how to react at the moment of reception of the first image, which is emotion without visual cause. But the sounds are vivid enough that, when paired with the eyes of one of the older women, closing in a disgusted kind of disavowal, we are repositioned. The look is familiar: having seen the actions perhaps many times before, she is still devastated. It's a repeat response for us, due to the context.

Within Shirin we notice three levels: there is Kiarostami's event, and the theatre (living room) in which that event takes place; there is the filmic event, which is any given point during the narrative of the 'film' Shirin and Khosrou (this event is not perceived by the filmed audience, as we later find out, because the film did not exist for the women at that time); and, finally, the external event, which has the narrative moment relating to the history (in our imagination) of a particular woman in a particular shot. This is a personal film. That is, we presume that the weight of this story for this audience is enhanced by personal events. Obvious and common for this to be the case, but there is a particular emphasis here because without the image to dictate either way, we are not able to understand how the screen alone could have such a great effect on a face. Finding that Kiarostami had no film, we perhaps understand a little better. It's not possible. Is there a film which could have such a sustained effect? Not to mention an audience to experience those sustained emotions. In a funny turn, we wonder this at the same that the screen, and, by proxy, Shirin, has its effect on us.

The Circus, City Lights

I can think of only one reason to avoid seeing a movie. That would be to have either the good sense or the arrogance to know exactly what a film is going to deliver, and then to decide that it could only be a waste of time experiencing what you believe you already know. This is as true for avoiding canon as it is for skipping The Happening.

For this reason only, I can understand why I was unaware of the actual power of Chaplin as a filmmaker. I haven’t so much avoided this director, as I have allowed him to exist as a legend, known only by proxy—through snatches of footage, photographs, spoofs, and descendants—never first-hand. This form of understanding came from the common font. There’s a calm inland sea back there. Chaplin filtered down through decades of reverence.

But to see The Circus or City Lights with a crowd is humbling. The children of 2008, watched over by the children of 1928. The man in white ascends from his pit—pilot of the Wurlitzer. He plays his signature, descends. The film starts and Chaplin is an icon again. Without a break in the laughter we are introduced to a profound intimacy—that cinematic sleight-of-hand as we realise two threads have been created in one motion.

I was lucky enough to see the final shot of City Lights unaware of its standing as ‘the greatest piece of acting ever committed to celluloid’—but it’s not so much the power of a singular piece of acting as it is the power of a final note in an impeccable symphony. It is what it is because of what has come before. Perfect cinema, the smile transformed into a wince.

A Woman Under the Influence

Ah, I have seen something--but this is something else.

There are so many of these spectres in the history of cinema, and the first encounter is never disappointing. A myth might be difficult to comprehend, even beyond understanding, but it is always invaluable. I hear the name Cassavetes, it is noted, and I wait until somehow I can come to know it. It’s this way or a gift--like Jacques Rivette, like Marcel Carné, like Claire Denis, like Herzog--delivered despite the ignorance of its receiver. A student is very ignorant, this drives him to learn.

Cassavetes has given me a reason to slow down, or, at least, to consider what I am doing in consuming so many films. To watch a film is really a very easy thing. It can also be incredibly hard, but in its pure form it is simply sitting and thinking. The thinking is guided to an extent, (by some directors more than others) so it can sometimes feel like it is only sitting and watching. Well, that is still a worthwhile way to spend time, but it can feel too easy. And maybe it becomes habit, to watch rather than to think, and then a movie becomes a mark in a tally on the blackboard.

A Woman Under the Influence is a film worth more than its length. It is thirteen hours long in two-and-a-half. It is a world richer than the one I’ve made for myself, but it is not an escape. It is a goading thing, a taunt; but not inspirational, only a possibility. As the simplest, easiest, most achievable philosophy, it seems to justify all ways of life. It says ‘everything is fine,’ ‘Tout Va Bien,’ and is not sarcastic, not fatalistic. It is not blind faith. Evil is present, goodness is present. Tender and cruel--like Pierrot, like Prévert.

There are thousands of these things hidden in plain view. You find one. The rest come pouring out of history like spirits from some golden ark, and the destruction they bring is just amazing. Godard wondered if they wouldn’t play Cassavetes at three a.m. on the TV. Why not? The time was there to fill.

It was filled with money. Why not?

So, this is my introduction. There is a riddle to solve. l’Histoire des Treize. A society is hidden someplace, as were the films. But a camera must be earned.