Forest of Bliss, Robert Gardner

It’s unknown (on purpose?) what Gardner’s film, Forest of Bliss is meant to convey. Echoing this, Jonathan P. Parry, an Anthropologist at the London School of Economics writes that he has “an uneasy suspicion” that this film is likely to convey to Western audiences that, “India is an ineffable world apart which must elude our comprehension. No explanation is possible; and all we can do is stand and stare.”

My thought on reading this final paragraph in his Comment on Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (SVA newsletter, Fall 1988) is “Exactly right!”

“Let the camera Roll,” says Parry. And roll it does: through shit, dead bodies, polluted water, up and down stairs, through smoky pyres of burning flesh and in and out of the fog and heavy air along the coast of Benares on the Ganges river in India.

Navigating the film, like navigating the process of death – which is essentially life, isn’t it?–is confusing, and unclear. Meanings change and changes bring new meanings. And, in the end, does it all matter? No one can definitively answer questions such as these. Death is silent, still, personal, unexplainable. Gardner creates beauty in a disgusting–and I’m sure foul smelling–place. He doesn’t lead us with narration, or subtitles, or any text whatsoever. There are no verbal explanations, nor translations. Like death, he remains silent. The film speaks on a sensory level, on a level of feeling and intuition. There are no answers, and metaphorically Gardner represents this with a beautiful film. There are some rituals being played out, but with no explanation. Just death. His camera’s movement in the streets amongst filth, and shit (human and animal) is a metaphor for life amongst death, I believe. The camera climbs and descends stairs, it observers strange rituals, and jumps back and forth with time revealing something yet offering no explanation. Often these visual clues show up again later in some context offering just a modicum of understanding. I see this camera work, and play with time as just like life. In life we have ups and downs. Things don’t make sense, then somehow they do. We step in shit, and it stinks, it thwarts our path, but we keep going. Life is always amongst death.

I also see his film as a metaphor for doing anthropology and specifically fieldwork. What is knowledge? We can ask questions, get answers, translate, and nod up and down, ‘yes.’ But, do we always really understand? In effect, I believe Gardner is saying, no we don’t. We don’t always understand, and sometimes a feeling, that which we have no words for, is somehow more true for one. Maybe the ‘I get it’ feeling is just that–a feeling, but not truth, not knowledge. Some questions and some answers are not to be understood. Meaningless. People don’t go to Benares to ask questions and ponder life. The go to die. Benares is death. No words will make that more palpable. The visuals do.

In Benares the representations of Life cannot be separated from the inevitability of Death. Horror and Bliss are not separate. Just as anywhere, Life and Death are one.

Jean Rouch, The Human Pyramid

Set in the capital Abidjan, 1959, Jean Rouch, in The Human Pyramid, uses no script and only social actors to tell a story of race and friendship among High School seniors.  His goal to understand "what friendship could be with “no racial complexes" between Blacks (Africans) and Whites (French) is brilliantly rendered as we look at the discourse surrounding race from the perspective of innocence. 

In the opening scenes Rouch is present (on the screen) explaining to the students his goal for his ‘experiment.’  He admits to the students that whomever gets ‘picked’ to be the racists, he wants "the racists to talk like racists."  In his psychodrama style of filmmaking, Rouch assembles the cast of characters, all real people (non-professional actors), creates a situation and lets the script be written as it unfolds in front of the camera.  The personalities of the students are not foreshadowed by their “acting.”  Instead, it’s my opinion that Rouch encourages–by his participation and the presence of the camera–emblishment of who they are as people.   He once said words to the effect, that people are more themselves when the camera is rolling than they are when it’s not.

Early on in the film, he tells us, “It is not a true story, it was written as we shot it."  This brings up questions of truth.  If we take that people are being more themselves when the camera is rolling, and the fact that what we are watching is in fact true–we see it, he filmed it, he was there, the students are present, real events are happening in front of the camera–then how ‘not true’ of a story is it?  In fact, I think what is discovered by the characters, and hence the audience, is pure truth.  The most telling proof is in the beginning when he is telling the students that they will not get into trouble for saying things; in essence “being” who it is they are in the film.  The camera rolls.  Rouch has given the green light to be the racist that you are (for example).  I imagine that this outlet was somewhat enlightening for the students.  Along the lines of being open and honest with each other and about each other, it stands to reason a cartharsis might have happened to the students just as one happens to the audience who see their own racist thoughts and fears presented onscreen.

Rouch is my new favorite filmmaker.  He seems to be genuinely compassionate and concerned with the human experiment as it is played out in all its forms here on earth.  His cinéma vérité, psychodrama style of presenting the world, his world (and hence, ours), cannot be considered anything other than genius.

Them and Me, Stéphane Breton

    Blending reflexive, observational, and participatory styles of documentary, Stéphane Breton questions the role of the observer supplanting the audience for himself.   Although the main characters appear to be the visible subjects of the film, the true subject is never seen – except for a glimpse of his hand during a monetary exchange.  Always present, in documentary – and in fiction as well, either tacitly or implicitly – the filmmaker represents his/her self by the subject matter chosen, the direction of the narrative, the statement being made, as well as by creative choices such as the use of black & white, or color, or a host of other options.  Breton questions representation itself in this film. 
   
    Breton lived and worked as an anthropologist among the Wodoni of Papua New Guinea, for many years (undisclosed how many years in this film) learning their language, becoming friends and essentially being accepted as 'family' member.  Although, not all of his trials and exploits are on display here.  Here he seems to be questioning the true nature of his relationship within their society.  What am I to them?  Why have they let me follow them around? What does it mean to be here?  Breton is either ingeniously asking us to question the title, and therefore the notion of documentary as always being a misrepresentation, or he has set out to make a film about 'Them,' and instead, made a film about himself.  The title should be Me and Them.  Or, possibly even Me through Them.  It's unquestionably more about the filmmaker than them. 

    Always handheld, and always narrating – it's his voice we hear the most – the audience becomes him, as he engages in dialogue making such revelatory statements such as:
"This camera is my bow."  (The bow and arrow of the Wodoni is part and parcel to their culture and existence.)
"What I don't like, wheat shames me is what brings us together."  A prejudice remark found only through principle.
"I'll wear them down in the end."  A comment on his tiresome intrusion.
   
    'The Self is only possible through the recognition of The 'Other,''  paraphrased the late Ryszard Kapuscinski of the late Emmanual Lévinas (d. 1995).  This film is an attempt to recognize the filmmakers' self through his subjects.  He has for years invaded their privacy and commanded their attention (although presumably not wanting them to pay him any attention) in attempt to discover what is 'Other' in them – and presumably some other specific anthropological work.  I believe he is questioning an anthropologists' attempts at epistemology, particularly as is gained by his participant-observer status.  By trying to be like them – his camera is his bow, his shame is their shame, his intrusions a need for understanding (Understanding whom? we might ask) – he inadvertently doesn't allow them to be themselves.  How can they?  Who is he, and who are they?  In the end, we don't know who 'they' are, and we quesion who 'he' (read: we) is/are in relation to them.

Belle Eulogy

I had to put Belle to sleep today.  Aka "Little Chickens" she was a great addition to my life, and I will miss her greatly.  RIP Little Chicken.

 

Song of Ceylon Basil Wright, 1934

 A lyrical ethnographic documentary film depicting the cultural and religious customs of the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka.  Originally sent to shoot footage for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, Basil Wright later edited the footage into a poetic film sewn together with beautiful images and sequences exploring the deep spirituality of Ceylonese people.  Wright contrasts a simplicity and complacency with life,  with the imposition of the West and it's ways of commerce.  In essence contrasting the a simple way of life with the lifelessness of western commerce.    The film is divided into four parts, separated with title card as if introducing the movements of a symphony:  "The Buddha," "The Virgin Island," "Voices of Commerce," and the "Apparel of the Gods,"  As a point well made, Wright returns us to the way of life of the Ceylonese without the West in the last 1/4 of the film.
    
In the first "movement" I'm particularly drawn to the scene of the bells ringing.  Normally I don't like bells ringing in movies (just a personal thing).  That sound, high-pitched, tinny and pervasive I'd rather do without.  However, Wright juxtaposes this sound with beauty and as the camera leaves the bells and takes us on a journey suggesting we are riding the sound waves, over the mountain tops, and floating with the clouds, and the birds.  A metaphor for the beauty of a life lived long before the British came. 
    
The criticism of a poetic mode of documentary is it's lack of specificity and it's overly abstractness.  For me, this is precisely what makes this film work.  Poetic documentary of the 1920's reassembled fragments of the world poetically.  Wright, along with John Grierson, recognizes this and assembles his film into a symphony of beauty, and pointedness.