Sans toit ni loi
I remember a scene in an Indian film, I think it was from the 50s or 60s, and I think it was Ray, a very long take of a dusty road, either from the point of view of the back of the moving truck viewing the receding landscape, or from someone in the landscape watching the truck recede (can't remember which, though I think it's a small boy who's either in the truck or at the end of the road). This scene was mentioned in a talk at a conference back in 2002, citing its importance in the history of cinema (don't remember the speaker, though he/she [he?] was some sort of film scholar). While watching another film that uses a similar shot structure (Housekeeping, 1983, dir. Bill Forsyth), I wanted so much to remember more of that scene, whether it ended the film or not, etc.
The book on which Forsyth's film is based was the subject of my first real seminar paper, so my memory of it has been sullied by the intervening years and the changes in my, well, everything: tastes, values, desires, needs. After watching the film again earlier this week, I dug around in all my bookcases and boxes to try to find my mass-market copy of the novel (no luck) - I must have either given it or thrown it away. The latter seems more likely to me, since as I read passages of it again this afternoon (bought a used copy earlier today), I found myself wincing a little at the language, even as I could recite along with the narrator some of the lines from memory. Why did I find it compelling, I was/am asking myself. I didn't understand it at the time, but I think the distaste the professor of that seminar had for that novel was well-founded: I don't remember if he actually called it kitsch, but that's the sense of it for me now. A little maudlin, a little Thomas Kincaid, a little Gunne Sax, however much higher-brow and full of biblical allusions. I'm sure I'm being unfair in a number of ways I don't care enough to enumerate.
I don't think the kitch has translated into Forsyth's film, though. It's simply made, more about figures in the landscape than either individually. Parallel lines approximate each other throughout:
I love how close the camera is, when a wider shot would have gotten the girls in the same frame as the long lines of string to which they're attached. It's a crying shame no-one has remastered it for DVD (click here to complain to Criterion Collection, I did!). And were I in charge of such, I'd make sure absolutely none of the cover copy, nor any of the advertising copy, nor any copy associated with the release whatever, used the adjective "eccentric" to describe Sylvie.
It's interesting to think of this film in terms of Alain Tanner's 1979 Messidor, of their different approaches to timelessness and, uh, revolutionary ideals. Both tell stories of transience and precarity amid "conventional" society and mores, though the Tanner might be more pragmatic (honest?) in its class politics. The Sylvie Foster Fisher Memorial International Film festival would also feature Agnes Varda's Vagabond (released two years after Housekeeping) and perhaps Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008). I would resolutely exclude Thelma and Louise and any number of folie-à-deux murdering-sister/lover thrillers (I'm looking at you, Heavenly Creatures). Anyway.
Ruth in the frozen meadow. Ruth is forever following Sylvie, whose stride is both taciturn and sprightly. Ruth is forever behind.
If I were to write more on the film, I'd tie it to KSR and huckleberry people....
Related: article on "restrictive cartography" and new technologies (GPS, etc.) doesn't mention Google being sued for bad walking directions, which is what I immediately thought of on reading the article's first paragraph. Shows you what I know!
The book on which Forsyth's film is based was the subject of my first real seminar paper, so my memory of it has been sullied by the intervening years and the changes in my, well, everything: tastes, values, desires, needs. After watching the film again earlier this week, I dug around in all my bookcases and boxes to try to find my mass-market copy of the novel (no luck) - I must have either given it or thrown it away. The latter seems more likely to me, since as I read passages of it again this afternoon (bought a used copy earlier today), I found myself wincing a little at the language, even as I could recite along with the narrator some of the lines from memory. Why did I find it compelling, I was/am asking myself. I didn't understand it at the time, but I think the distaste the professor of that seminar had for that novel was well-founded: I don't remember if he actually called it kitsch, but that's the sense of it for me now. A little maudlin, a little Thomas Kincaid, a little Gunne Sax, however much higher-brow and full of biblical allusions. I'm sure I'm being unfair in a number of ways I don't care enough to enumerate.
I don't think the kitch has translated into Forsyth's film, though. It's simply made, more about figures in the landscape than either individually. Parallel lines approximate each other throughout:
I love how close the camera is, when a wider shot would have gotten the girls in the same frame as the long lines of string to which they're attached. It's a crying shame no-one has remastered it for DVD (click here to complain to Criterion Collection, I did!). And were I in charge of such, I'd make sure absolutely none of the cover copy, nor any of the advertising copy, nor any copy associated with the release whatever, used the adjective "eccentric" to describe Sylvie.
It's interesting to think of this film in terms of Alain Tanner's 1979 Messidor, of their different approaches to timelessness and, uh, revolutionary ideals. Both tell stories of transience and precarity amid "conventional" society and mores, though the Tanner might be more pragmatic (honest?) in its class politics. The Sylvie Foster Fisher Memorial International Film festival would also feature Agnes Varda's Vagabond (released two years after Housekeeping) and perhaps Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008). I would resolutely exclude Thelma and Louise and any number of folie-à-deux murdering-sister/lover thrillers (I'm looking at you, Heavenly Creatures). Anyway.
Ruth in the frozen meadow. Ruth is forever following Sylvie, whose stride is both taciturn and sprightly. Ruth is forever behind.
If I were to write more on the film, I'd tie it to KSR and huckleberry people....
Related: article on "restrictive cartography" and new technologies (GPS, etc.) doesn't mention Google being sued for bad walking directions, which is what I immediately thought of on reading the article's first paragraph. Shows you what I know!