I recently finished a draft of a novel which follows a lone woman mentally cast adrift by the news of her father’s suicide. Her grief manifests in a strange obsession with the town of Strasbourg where she decides on a whim to stay over the winter. In one part of the novel, my character looks into the concept of Fernweh, though really it was as … Continue reading Fernweh and The Green Ray
One of my favourite scenes in cinema is, in fact, not really a scene at all but a moment; a collection of three shots that has very little to do with the overall narrative but everything to do with the humanity questioned in the film. The film is Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue (1994) and the moment is when Juliette Binoche, playing a woman in … Continue reading Skin On Stone – Grief in Three Colours: Blue (1994)
On a rock, there sits a man lost in thought. Or perhaps he is not thinking at all and is instead letting the landscape around him fill his thoughts unconsciously. Werner Herzog’s 1976 film, Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas), has one of the director’s strongest opening set of images as the main character of the film sits in a foggy Bavarian landscape with life … Continue reading Heart Of Glass (1976) – Optimism in Destruction
Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. – Rebecca Solnit Late last year, I watched two films back-to-back that effectively spoke of one very particular theme. Viewing Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) followed by Dennis Hopper’s directorial debut The Last Movie (1971) highlighted a number of unavoidable connections between the films. Both films … Continue reading Sex and the Landscape
On watching all of Patrick Keiller’s “Robinson” trilogy of films recently, it struck home how effectively stillness within a visual frame can traverse the geographical plain and recreate a journey that is both political and sociological. This, of course, goes to the heart filmmaking itself, the relationships with cuts especially and its portrayal of time, space and movement within a diegetic reality all being key … Continue reading Stasis In London (1994) – Patrick Keiller.
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972) is a perfect example of a narrative film fragmenting into surreal dreamscapes. From its title alone, Luis Buñuel’s obvious target is middle-class idolatry but, for a film full of incredibly stark images, there is one visual motif which stands out from the other surrealist political attacks. Discreet is punctuated, whether in dreams or reality (or perhaps both), by … Continue reading The Nowhere Road in The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972)
On finishing W.G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants (1992), it felt as if some loose connection to a recent film or book was left hanging mid-air. The narrative of Sebald’s novel is split into the stories of four émigrés, all seemingly interconnected by a multitude of strange images but chiefly by their fleeing from the rise of Nazi Germany. The connection didn’t seem to be so … Continue reading Ghosts in the Ice
Jean-Luc Godard always had an interest in the relationship between politics and the spaces it influences. The topographies of modernity happened to coincide with his sharp turn towards cinematic political questioning, in films such as Tout Va Bien (1972), La Chinoise (1967), and Week-end (1967), looking in particular at a factory, an inner-city flat/Maoist commune, and a busy roadway. These spaces provided more than a backdrop for Godard’s political arguments: they seemed to actually … Continue reading Libidinal Circuits
British cinema is obsessed with the effect of location upon the individual. In fact, it wouldn’t be so sweeping to suggest that large swaths of culture born on these isles stems from the idea that the individual can be deeply molded by their surroundings and any fictional drama from Albion will be bare the aesthetics of its areas as far more than a setting. While … Continue reading Fear And Loathing In The Countryside – Withnail And I (1987).
In last month’s issue of Sight & Sound (November, 2015) Nick James details his relationship with the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky in line with the season of films he’s curated for the BFI. Though the article is chiefly surrounding Tarkovsky’s (vast) legacy, one aspect in particular caught my attention whilst reading. He refers to a scene from Tarkovsky’s 1975 film, Mirror, which partly accounted for … Continue reading The Breeze In The Grass – Elemental Realisation in Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).
Celluloid Wicker Man 