segundo trabalho escrito para a Middlesex University.
Não me agrada particularmente. Mas aí está.
An issue that consistently occupied my mind through all the lectures and seminars during these weeks was truthfulness in the artistic creation. By this, I refer to the honesty of the artist in choosing certain creative devices in presenting his work to an audience, knowing that his approach will influence the audience’s reading. As early as the first references to McConnell’s five basic storylines and the following analysis of different ways in which to tell stories, my thoughts on this matter came less promptly, much more pensively and pondering. I argued firstly the validity of a work whose structural narrative conveyed a moral message contrary to the images it glorified. I refer to the paradoxal construction of the Western. After the following screenings - Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-Tung, Hong Kong, 1987), Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, Mali/Burkina Faso, 1987) - I dwelt on the purpose of strategies that would convey a precise director’s view in spite of involving or not the audience at an emotional level. Yet, it was the viewing (and consequent seminar discussion) of Ken Loach’s Ladybird Ladybird (United Kingdom, 1994) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (United Kingdom, 2006) that stirred this internal discussion, as it brought along the question of realism and the consequences of the choices that filmmakers do, in a medium that is distributed in mass. These questions are what I will elaborate on in the next paragraphs.
Firstly, as I said, I will focus on the paradoxes of the structural narrative of the Western. As Schatz argues, supported by Lévi-Strauss’ theories, genre films subscribe to the label of cultural mythmaking since they have a set narrative structure that serves ‘to defuse threats to the social order and thereby to provide some logical coherence to that order’, among other purposes. Kitse’s antinominial grid, which was studied in the lectures, presented the Western’s structural narrative as a continuous fight between two opposing forces – the wild west and civilized east – in which the hero, as described by Wright , ‘uses his savage skills to combat savagery, hence to protect and defend the interests of a civilized community which eventually accepts him and which he eventually decides to join’. This means that Hollywood’s Western filmmaking created a myth – one that has surpassed any other version of that historical period, as accurate as it may be recognised – in which an independent free spirit sacrifices himself for the freedom of knowledge and order. The same symbols that Hollywood fabricated, embellished into stardom and engraved in American national identity are the ones that it sacrifices for the coming of its own civilization. This is one of the greatest examples of the terrible power that the cinematic medium holds on people’s shared conscience.
As one grasps the extension of this manipulation – mainly because it has never been a matter of fact or falsity –, the questions that arise all relate to the ethical validity of works that are now produced as realistic accounts of the present and cannot be seen as anything more than realist works and, therefore, showing a determined perspective on the object matter. In Samantha Lay’s expositive paragraphs on realism and the cinema , she explains that, for adding movement and sound to the ability of capturing life as it is (i.e. actually adding the space and time dimensions to the representation) film became for many theorists, such as Siegfried Kracauer, the unique medium ‘capable of representing the real and should do so with as little artifice as possible’ . However, while there is the theoretical possibility of a cinematic construction that objectively captures a reality, it is practically impossible for it to stand as an objective account of any event as it will always be a given perspective of a happening.
At this point are introduced the considerations upon the viewing of Chinese Ghost Story and Yeelen. These concern technical aspects of a director’s creation and their effects. These two films featured completely opposite shooting styles, acting and soundtrack performances to achieve very different responses from the audience. Chinese Ghost Story used short-timed, medium to close-up shots, with canted angles, segment shooting and composition that preceded movement to engage the audience emotionally and provoke gasps and sighs; whereas Yeelen had long wide-shots where characters roamed the land or sat comfortably telling stories to one another to allow the audience to take their time in those places and actually experience their permanence. Both of them were unmistakably fictions and had no pretence on reality – which means their directors were free to use any stylistic devices to tell their stories – and, even given concessions for being non-western films with specific local symbolisms and narrative codes, these two pieces of work can be watched and understood (be it at a superficial level) by anyone from any place of the world.
My point is that cinematic language evolved in order to convey certain messages and get determined responses – the Kuleshov effect experiences and Eisenstein’s theories were most determinant in this development – but it is up to the filmmaker to use them according to what he intends to portray. Film is not, as Kracauer intended, the most objective medium; in fact, for exactly the same characteristics he pointed out as ideal for objectivity, I would point out as ideal for subjectivity – to be able to control not just a single but multiple perspectives of an object-matter presents a more subjective view of the object-matter precisely because of the choices of perspective which are implied. In cinematic terms, a successful filmmaker will decide who the audience will support and what argument it will agree with at the end.
In Ken Loach’s films, there is the pretense that the camera is invisible and events are shown as they supposedly took place. Even though the two films watched in the screenings had very different themes – one being a melodrama and the other a historical representation – both were shot in the same continuity style way that allows the audience to engage in what is happening on the screen and forget we are not actually there. So, whereas Ladybird Ladybird focuses on the dramatic story of an ordinary woman in the present, living under the same regulations that we do, in The Wind that Shakes the Barley we follow the birth of the IRA and its struggle for Irish independence. In both of them Loach uses a television aesthetic and certain melodramatic devices of narrative, camera and soundtrack that very subtly lead the audience through the midst of the controversy presented in the films to support the character and the view he wants us to. He has often been criticized by that characteristic though, even in spite of it, his films are still under-distributed in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, Loach’s films have the power to move and impress for they so subtly place our alliances where he wants them to belong – and he has been able to create quite a national discussion, after the release of Cathy Come Home, in 1966. At an academic level, he is frowned upon for this liability – how to read Loach’s films as realist when the camera is so pointedly directed in his films, whereas in most realist films filmmakers exceed themselves in finding ways to make the camera more objective? Loach is one of those filmmakers that have a consistent production of work that covers many themes of present and past issues with a very deliberate and overtly socialist agenda and uses of cinematic strategies to mirror society as he wants it to be seen. The complete subversion of the actual historical truth that we have observed in the Western is but the extreme reaction that can be provoked by Loach’s films, whether they were more consistently and widely distributed. The issue, however, is whether his work has any validity if he as an artist sees himself in a trap where he has to lie and deceive to get his view approved. MacCabe describes it in his considerations on classic realist text : ‘The classic realist text (a heavily ‘closed’ discourse) cannot deal with the real in its contradictions and in the same movement it fixes the subject in a point of view from which everything becomes obvious’ – so in Ladybird Ladybird we are shown the couple’s perspective of the story, we see how they are not completely blameless for their misfortune but we empathise with them simply because we see the story from their point of view; also, in The Wind that Shakes the Barley, it is Damien who we follow, the brother that did not want to fight but would not surrender until a socialist republic government was established in Ireland.
Drawing onto conclusions, there is not much I would say in a definite tone. Even though these considerations on Loach strike me negatively, one might argue that it is an artistic creation, therefore, it should be expected to be a subversion of reality as the artistic project is a process by which the artist absorbs, transforms and recreates in order to express his conclusions. The realist project has a very difficult task in achieving this and fallacies like those in the works of Loach are expected to appear, not only in the cinematic medium but in other modes of expression. However, the question remains if it is not more important for the artist to be honest with his creation and the audience than to get his message across.
Não me agrada particularmente. Mas aí está.
An issue that consistently occupied my mind through all the lectures and seminars during these weeks was truthfulness in the artistic creation. By this, I refer to the honesty of the artist in choosing certain creative devices in presenting his work to an audience, knowing that his approach will influence the audience’s reading. As early as the first references to McConnell’s five basic storylines and the following analysis of different ways in which to tell stories, my thoughts on this matter came less promptly, much more pensively and pondering. I argued firstly the validity of a work whose structural narrative conveyed a moral message contrary to the images it glorified. I refer to the paradoxal construction of the Western. After the following screenings - Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-Tung, Hong Kong, 1987), Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, Mali/Burkina Faso, 1987) - I dwelt on the purpose of strategies that would convey a precise director’s view in spite of involving or not the audience at an emotional level. Yet, it was the viewing (and consequent seminar discussion) of Ken Loach’s Ladybird Ladybird (United Kingdom, 1994) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (United Kingdom, 2006) that stirred this internal discussion, as it brought along the question of realism and the consequences of the choices that filmmakers do, in a medium that is distributed in mass. These questions are what I will elaborate on in the next paragraphs.
Firstly, as I said, I will focus on the paradoxes of the structural narrative of the Western. As Schatz argues, supported by Lévi-Strauss’ theories, genre films subscribe to the label of cultural mythmaking since they have a set narrative structure that serves ‘to defuse threats to the social order and thereby to provide some logical coherence to that order’, among other purposes. Kitse’s antinominial grid, which was studied in the lectures, presented the Western’s structural narrative as a continuous fight between two opposing forces – the wild west and civilized east – in which the hero, as described by Wright , ‘uses his savage skills to combat savagery, hence to protect and defend the interests of a civilized community which eventually accepts him and which he eventually decides to join’. This means that Hollywood’s Western filmmaking created a myth – one that has surpassed any other version of that historical period, as accurate as it may be recognised – in which an independent free spirit sacrifices himself for the freedom of knowledge and order. The same symbols that Hollywood fabricated, embellished into stardom and engraved in American national identity are the ones that it sacrifices for the coming of its own civilization. This is one of the greatest examples of the terrible power that the cinematic medium holds on people’s shared conscience.
As one grasps the extension of this manipulation – mainly because it has never been a matter of fact or falsity –, the questions that arise all relate to the ethical validity of works that are now produced as realistic accounts of the present and cannot be seen as anything more than realist works and, therefore, showing a determined perspective on the object matter. In Samantha Lay’s expositive paragraphs on realism and the cinema , she explains that, for adding movement and sound to the ability of capturing life as it is (i.e. actually adding the space and time dimensions to the representation) film became for many theorists, such as Siegfried Kracauer, the unique medium ‘capable of representing the real and should do so with as little artifice as possible’ . However, while there is the theoretical possibility of a cinematic construction that objectively captures a reality, it is practically impossible for it to stand as an objective account of any event as it will always be a given perspective of a happening.
At this point are introduced the considerations upon the viewing of Chinese Ghost Story and Yeelen. These concern technical aspects of a director’s creation and their effects. These two films featured completely opposite shooting styles, acting and soundtrack performances to achieve very different responses from the audience. Chinese Ghost Story used short-timed, medium to close-up shots, with canted angles, segment shooting and composition that preceded movement to engage the audience emotionally and provoke gasps and sighs; whereas Yeelen had long wide-shots where characters roamed the land or sat comfortably telling stories to one another to allow the audience to take their time in those places and actually experience their permanence. Both of them were unmistakably fictions and had no pretence on reality – which means their directors were free to use any stylistic devices to tell their stories – and, even given concessions for being non-western films with specific local symbolisms and narrative codes, these two pieces of work can be watched and understood (be it at a superficial level) by anyone from any place of the world.
My point is that cinematic language evolved in order to convey certain messages and get determined responses – the Kuleshov effect experiences and Eisenstein’s theories were most determinant in this development – but it is up to the filmmaker to use them according to what he intends to portray. Film is not, as Kracauer intended, the most objective medium; in fact, for exactly the same characteristics he pointed out as ideal for objectivity, I would point out as ideal for subjectivity – to be able to control not just a single but multiple perspectives of an object-matter presents a more subjective view of the object-matter precisely because of the choices of perspective which are implied. In cinematic terms, a successful filmmaker will decide who the audience will support and what argument it will agree with at the end.
In Ken Loach’s films, there is the pretense that the camera is invisible and events are shown as they supposedly took place. Even though the two films watched in the screenings had very different themes – one being a melodrama and the other a historical representation – both were shot in the same continuity style way that allows the audience to engage in what is happening on the screen and forget we are not actually there. So, whereas Ladybird Ladybird focuses on the dramatic story of an ordinary woman in the present, living under the same regulations that we do, in The Wind that Shakes the Barley we follow the birth of the IRA and its struggle for Irish independence. In both of them Loach uses a television aesthetic and certain melodramatic devices of narrative, camera and soundtrack that very subtly lead the audience through the midst of the controversy presented in the films to support the character and the view he wants us to. He has often been criticized by that characteristic though, even in spite of it, his films are still under-distributed in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, Loach’s films have the power to move and impress for they so subtly place our alliances where he wants them to belong – and he has been able to create quite a national discussion, after the release of Cathy Come Home, in 1966. At an academic level, he is frowned upon for this liability – how to read Loach’s films as realist when the camera is so pointedly directed in his films, whereas in most realist films filmmakers exceed themselves in finding ways to make the camera more objective? Loach is one of those filmmakers that have a consistent production of work that covers many themes of present and past issues with a very deliberate and overtly socialist agenda and uses of cinematic strategies to mirror society as he wants it to be seen. The complete subversion of the actual historical truth that we have observed in the Western is but the extreme reaction that can be provoked by Loach’s films, whether they were more consistently and widely distributed. The issue, however, is whether his work has any validity if he as an artist sees himself in a trap where he has to lie and deceive to get his view approved. MacCabe describes it in his considerations on classic realist text : ‘The classic realist text (a heavily ‘closed’ discourse) cannot deal with the real in its contradictions and in the same movement it fixes the subject in a point of view from which everything becomes obvious’ – so in Ladybird Ladybird we are shown the couple’s perspective of the story, we see how they are not completely blameless for their misfortune but we empathise with them simply because we see the story from their point of view; also, in The Wind that Shakes the Barley, it is Damien who we follow, the brother that did not want to fight but would not surrender until a socialist republic government was established in Ireland.
Drawing onto conclusions, there is not much I would say in a definite tone. Even though these considerations on Loach strike me negatively, one might argue that it is an artistic creation, therefore, it should be expected to be a subversion of reality as the artistic project is a process by which the artist absorbs, transforms and recreates in order to express his conclusions. The realist project has a very difficult task in achieving this and fallacies like those in the works of Loach are expected to appear, not only in the cinematic medium but in other modes of expression. However, the question remains if it is not more important for the artist to be honest with his creation and the audience than to get his message across.
1 comment:
Não está nada mau! Quando chegares dizes-me a nota...
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