In the last edition of the Friday Film Focus I wrote about the idea of voyeurism in film, the role that an audience takes on when they buy a ticket or press play, and the potential that characters and images can have to speak powerfully to a discerning audience. I suggested that as film goers we ought to be patient with images and characters in films, to let them speak and breathe and I suggested that when we fail to do this we undercut the potential power of those filmic elements.

This week I would like to discuss the responsibilities of the filmmakers.

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Recently, German filmmaker Michael Haneke (Cache) released in the U.S. an English language, shot-for-shot re-make of his cult hit Funny Games. In both cases the film is an excessively violent, even horrific story about a suburban family who is tortured by killers who harm people simply for fun. Due to its fairly high profile release, the recent version has become quite controversial for its extreme content. However, Haneke, whose films have long been filled with matters of social import, says that he made the film as a statement against Hollywood’s treatment of violence and sexual behavior. Haneke hopes that the film challenges filmmakers to re-think the way they have heretofore dealt with and depicted violence on screen. He has gone so far as to compare the way that typical Hollywood fare treats violence with pornography, suggesting that both try to “make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable.”

Well, yeah, but… isn’t there another way?

Perhaps, but how many will be as effective? Essentially, Haneke has taken something that is typically consumable on screen — violence — and made it un-consumable. Thus what is truly horrific in real life is also horrific to watch. This is a profound development. Of course, it is also an extreme view-point and one that will not be readily accepted by filmmakers or film-goers.

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One of the most important film scholars ever, Andre Bazin - a french culture critic who is most responsible for introducing the idea of film studies to universities and who was a pre-eminent pioneer in the world of cinematic scholarship, believed that the purpose of film was to depict — as Louis Gianetti wrote on Bazin in his book “Understanding Movies” — “… the poetic implications of ordinary people, events, and places.” Gianetti went on to write that to Bazin “…the essence of reality, he believed, lies in its ambiguity. To capture this ambiguity the filmmaker must be modest and self-effacing, a patient observer willing to follow where reality leads. The film artists that Bazin admired most… were those whose movies reflect a sense of wonder before the mysteries of reality.”

In other words, Bazin believed that the role of the filmmaker is to depict the opposites and ambiguities inherent in life in such a way that inspires or challenges the viewer. Bazin himself was a firm believer in the wonder of the universe as a created entity and believed that it is the role of the filmmaker to reveal to his or her audience that wonder as best he can.

But what is important is how the filmmaker goes about trying to do this. It will not happen when a filmmaker exploits the elements of nature according to his own desires or conventions for under such circumstances the elements themselves can no longer be true to their own nature (but rather a fabricated nature, relevant and natural only to the filmmaker himself), nor will it happen when a filmmaker seeks to manipulate the audience to feel a certain way or believe a certain thing, for then the audience is no longer seeing existence as it really is, but rather as he or she wants them to see it. The first job of the filmmaker, then, is to observe the world, then to let the audience observe it through carefully designed and placed artifice. Truly effective filmmaking is achieved through dialectical synthesis: a complete and consistent depiction of the continuities of real time and space such that the ambiguities and inconsisties of existence are rendered accessible to the viewer.

Thus, filmmaking may be formalistic but only so long as the film depicts real life, and the people and places that make it up, accurately. Camera work, dialogue, editing, music, and direction, may be “odd” or “strange” or unconventional so long as the subject matter - whether nature, violence, a kiss or a conversation - is represented as it truly exists or according to its true nature and properties. If this is not the case then the experience that the viewer may otherwise have through the film is severely limited. For if a tree is depicted as something other than a tree it will not behave as a tree would behave and if it does not behave as a tree would behave then it will not be able to inspire or empower or challenge a viewer the way a tree otherwise would. Dare I say: truth is truth.

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With these ideas in mind let us return to Haneke’s Funny Games. If Bazin’s film theory is indeed correct then Haneke is doing us a great service for he is depicting real life as it really is. Yes, his subject matter is gruesome, even un-watchable. But is this neccessarily a bad thing? Well, that is where being a discerning film-goer comes becomes important. Of course, the irony cuts deeply: in speaking out against the manipulation and exploitation of viewers and nature inherent in Hollywood violence, Haneke is, himself, exploiting the audience in his own way. He means well but whether or not Haneke’s motives were noble or whether Bazin’s theories were correct, each of us must come to a piece of art and discern to what extent it will (or can) change us in a positive (or negative) way; we each must determine our own threshold. In other words, we each must take the time to carefully consider the nature of art and what its purpose ought to be and then apply that conclusion to our own experience.

And thats the beauty of dialogue. Dangerous, inspiring, beautiful dialogue. So come, lets talk.

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FILMS WHICH FULFILL BAZIN’S THEORIES:

Bazin was a great enthusiast for the films of the Italian neo-realists, film-makers who worked in the wake of World War II and were, therefore, forced to work with fewer resources due to a depressed and desolated Italian economy. They worked with non-actors and were some of the first successful film-makers to get out of the studio and film in real, natural settings with natural lighting.

One of the films he loved was THE BICYCLE THIEVES a film from 1948 by Vittorio De Sica about a lower class man in Rome who spends a day with his son searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bike. The film is heartbreaking and beautiful. One of the greatest film ever made.

See also: the films of Terrence Malick, David Gordon Green, and Jim Jarmusch.

For a more challenging experience see the work of the following filmmakers:
Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, and Francois Truffaut.

David Kern enjoys southern gothic literature, folk music, and green tea. Mythical figures intrigue him and he has an unnatural affection for cinema. For more of his film reviews go to www.besidethequeue.wordpress.com

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.