f e a t u r e
f e a t u r e
Towards a grey world : from Apollo 13 to Apollo 18
panggung tak bisa ia terima sebagai pengalaman panggung belaka. Serangan Kechiche tidak hanya berlangsung dalam narasi, ia juga memaksa penonton menggeser posisi duduk berkalikali. Sudah benarkah cara pandang kita yang seperti “ini”? Keberpihakan pada karakter aristokrat akan bermakna rasis, keberpihakan kepada Saartje tentu juga tak tertanggungkan, sebab dalam posisi apapun, perempuan pendiam ini selalu ada dalam posisi yang dirugikan. Alih-alih melawan, Saartje seperti memasuki fase masokistik yang melenakan.
Photo Courtesy MK2 Productions
Di akhir hidupnya, Saartje menderita penyakit seksual. Ketika Saartje mati, para dokter mengambil alih jasadnya, memilah organ tubuhnya, mengawetkan otaknya, lalu mempersembahkan tubuh Saartje ke hadirat majelis ilmiah yang mulia. “Hadirin,” terang seorang dokter, “Perhatikan labia pada vaginanya, spesies ini menyerupai kera sebelum evolusi sempurna manusia.” Maka Kechiche seperti mengajak penonton filmnya mengerutkan kening. Penis siapakah yang merajam labia itu bila bukan penis putih yang dilema ?. Siapakah yang mengebiri hidup perempuan itu bila bukan sang peradaban durjana?. *** Bila kita perhatikan karya-karya humanis Jean Renoir, kita selalu menemukan bukti bahwa selalu ada alasan di balik setiap tindakan manusia. Bukan alasan transendental, melainkan alasan yang datang dari manusia itu sendiri. Pandangan manusia terhadap sesamanya seringkali salah, sebab pandangan, seringkali tidak mempertimbangkan alasan. Sineas Korea Hong Sang-soo membawa pandangan menjadi setingkat lebih kompleks. Dalam film-film Hong Sang-soo, pandangan tidak lagi menjadi masalah internal naratif, melainkan menjadi masalah penonton dan karakter-dalamfilm sebagai objek yang mereka tatap. Seringkali, twist dalam film Hong Sang-soo lahir dari kesalah-pahaman penonton terhadap perangai satu dua karakter. Semua karakter bisa jadi adalah manusia normal dan freak pada saat yang bersamaan, penonton hanya bisa memutuskan lewat cara mereka memandang. Bagaimanapun, sebelum melihat ke sana, The Elephant Man dan Black Venus patut dijajaki sebagai medan latihan berprasangka, dalam sinema, dan dalam dunia nyata pada akhirnya. Genre horor dan freak cinema akan terus dibuat orang. Horor menguasai penontonnya lewat ketakutan. Freak cinema mengaduk perasaan penontonnya lewat sensasi kelainan dan gerak konstan antara jijik dan kasihan. Freak cinema merelakan diri dikuasai sepenuhnya oleh pandangan penonton. Sekarang masalahnya, bila kuasa memandang ada pada kita, kita bisa sebijak apa?
*co founder dan editor CinemaPoetica.com
80 FOVEA#0 2012
From 13 to 18, the tone has switched from a belief in human solidarity to a radical suspicion and mistrust. We are facing an era of a disorientation about the goals of science and governments.
Pada paruh kedua film, Kechiche menambah intensitas kesadisannya. Orang-orang di sekitar Saartje mulai memperlakukannya sebagai objek fetish. Seluruh bagian tubuh Saartjie bebas disentuh oleh siapa saja tanpa sanggup ia lawan. Harkatnya sebagai manusia tetap bergelung kedinginan di belakang label profesi seniman panggung. Bekerja di sebuah “salon”, Saartje harus menerapkan taktik peluk berbayar pada para lelaki berduit yang ditundukkan nafsu.
By Sylvain Dal
W
e are all probably well aware that the 90’s were very different from the previous decades. Gone was the flower power generation of the 60’s, gone was the community spirit and rebellion of the 70’s, gone were the casualness and the golden boys of the 80’s. Since then it has become more difficult for me to distinguish the changes. Of course, there is the arrival of the now omnipresent internet, but that asides, were the ‘00s so different ?. Is there a further change occurring in the ‘10s ?. Is it because I became young adult in the 90’s, or is it a case of shortsightedness ?. Maybe time will tell.
So, let’s start pragmatically, playing a little game of 7 ( or more ) differences. Or as Dr Dre would say, what’s the difference between me and you ?
Nonetheless, recently, I was utterly struck by a movie that made me think there might be a paradigmatic shift between the ‘90s and the ‘10s. Let’s call him to the witness box : Apollo 18. You might call it a B-movie without risking to get sued. And, honestly, it has some traces of Z-movie DNA. But my point is : it’s a good witness of our times. To properly show his face, i would like here to confront him, in the very same field, with a gem of the ‘90s : Apollo 13, by Ron Howard.
Well, that’s what Gonzalo wants you to believe. 18 is supposed to look like a patch of CCTV and lo-fi images, presumably escaped from the wreck of the mission. A discerning eye soon realizes that this pretended lo-fi quality is achieved with what i suppose to be a highly priced software, a posttreatment of decent HD shots. In the end you get a spastic fuzz of jumping cuts, fake end of rushes and grainy stains, unfocused empty shots at rocks.
Everyone knows this movie, as part of the now classical Tom Hanks canon, along Forest Gump, Green Mile, Philadelphia, Cast Away, and Saving Private Ryan. One line synopsis : astronauts are heading for the moon, but get confronted with many technical problems that they have to solve with their team to land safe on earth. True story, has to be remembered. The mission Apollo 18 on the other hand, has never existed, but the movie by the same name would like to make us believe it has, was never revealed, and would have been a bloody case of alien encounter, organized by DOD ( Department of Defence ). For the record, this movie is from 2011, made by hitherto unknown Gonzalo Lopez Gallego.
First of all, one that screams through the screen : the texture of the image. 13 was still using the highest quality, 35mm images. All clean and shiny, with a real DOP ( Director of Photography, not to be confused with aforementioned DOD ). The one kind for which it’s nice to have a 2m large hi-res TV set. In 18, you are falling from hyper-realistic heaven into hell.
These images are actually overproduced and desperately trying to look like what you see on CNN since 20 years. It looks like what we are now taking for ‘the real stuff’. The problem is, we are so much used of that trick already ( thanks to Blair Witch Project, Redacted and Cloverfield ) that we become immediately suspicious. 18 is trying to make us believe the reality of its subject by producing fake real images. It’s all about simulacrum. Whereas 13 was assuming its narration of real events. You already see the confusion emerging. Second point is the context mentioned in the movie. 13 starts very concisely by reminding us that what happened in those years was : USA versus Soviet Union. That was it,
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