TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
When I got acquainted with the films of Carlos Reygadas, and this happened at the very end of the new millenium, they ended up in a dense intellectual row of other art-house, author’s, endependent, festival and other films that came to our viewers with a little delay. The first pictures of the Mexican did not make a special impression on me. In Japón (2002) there was too much suffering for the author in the age of instant electronic reproduction and replicas of other indie author’s works, on the age of the death of the author and the triumph of text, canvas and sounds.
In the Battle in Heaven (2005), social order/repression, gender issues, the pain of the «colonial wound», the dichotomy of Creoles and Mestizos, were not part of my arsenal of hobbies at that moment, so the second Reygadas film also went into oblivion of endless viewings. All this could have gone on for quite a long time and to no avail, and Reygadas would have remained in my personal evaluation series as a director who, once again, from another bell tower (this time, from the Mexican one), is trying to say something, to do something important in the era of the devaluation of any word and image, but one day there was a turning point. I watched Silent light and Post Tenebras Lux, which Reygadas managed to film in 2007 and 2012 respectively. These two films allowed me to look at the work of the Mexan director not only from a different critical angle, but also completely in tune with my inner needs. Moreover, as always, he could place his accents himself, to any viewer. Someone focused on moral quests or philosophical depths, and someone, a before, on the social, economic,
10
PROLEGOMENA TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
theological or gender problems of modern society. Everyone’s willl and a field for intellectual activity and reflection.
Much of his journey was close to me. Independence from public and private funding, instead of self-financing at first, no fear of learning and taking from others, no fear of copying accusations, willingness to take risks in a new business, for the sake of new experience, for the sake of self-discovery and awareness of the accuracy of the position taken and the point on own spiritual map of the world, putting in order their own value system of coordinates. Themes, dramaturgy, directing method also impressed. Starting your creative path-search as an independent director, experimenting without looking back at producers and viewers is one thing, another thing, to continue this path after recognition, after festival victories and entering a certain identifiable circle by both critics and directors and festival bosses of creators, but at the same time continue the work begun, your way. Reygadas continues his campaign against commercial cinema and against festival-performative art even now, after five films. And, despite this fact, his works are regular participants in the most prestigious film forums. Silent Light received the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and was also awarded prizes at several other film festivals; in the same place in Cannes in 2012 for Post Tenebras Lux, the light of Reygadas received the prize for best director, and the film Our Time in 2019, although it turned out to be «out of tune» with the time of the majority and it was «rolled» past all the prizes, however, participated in the Venice Film Festival and was even nominated for the Golden Lion.
The Mexican is not afraid to be not an elitist, not an
11
PROLEGOMENA TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
author’s, not a cinephile director, and at the same time, to this day, one cannot find a single hot-news that Reygadas is negotiating with his «big brother», with Hollywood. Both subjects of modern cinema delicately and quietly bypass each other, suspecting in advance that they have too little in common to start a conversation about joint cinema.
Finely balancing between the secular and the religious, between silence and the profane language loved by the intellectual masses, between everyday religiosity and the transcendental, between social time and the time of being, between the space of vanity and the space of transition on the border of the limbus, Reygadas continues to resist the profane demands of the profane and aggressive time. While the bulk of world cinema: producers, directors, festivals, secret founders and gray cardinals of film fashion and film trends, about the cinematic masses consumed by the final product, continue to stubbornly develop themes of a social nature: refugees, migrants, wars, ecology, health, transsexuality, economy. Social practices and activities that have long penetrated cinema and are now even more actively penetrating criticism and analysis of cinema often remind me of the theory of the «panopticon» by Jeremiah Bentham¹, which he interpreted as a prison, as a way of social control and self-control. Cinema turns from the Spirit, which blows where it wants, into therapeutic practices, the task of which is to evoke the necessary reactions at the right moments and, with the help of a tuned catharsis, remove social tension from the viewers.
In the sea of methods, methods and methodologies that were rich in the first century of cinema and the last century of
12
PROLEGOMENA TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
the second millennium, I see only two methods or approaches to which all other methodological and other constructions are subject. I am talking about extensive and intensive methods or knowledge of the world and life through cinema. The first is associated with such institutions, knowledge as sociology, psychology, economics, gender and sex, history and politics, violence and totalitarianism, ideas and ideology, various areas of modern philosophy that suffer from a behaviourist approach. To the second, which is close to me, I attribute everything that is related to the development of the Spirit, with the help of a creative act, and, in my opinion, the above institutions and knowledge, unfortunately, dissecting a person externally and internally and considering life itself from all possible angles (stimulus reaction), do not meet the requirements of the Spirit. It can be said that even after the collapse of the Soviet experiment and the devaluation of the Marxist theory in the world, the principle of Marx still dominates, I am talking about the relationship between the «base» and the «superstructure». While the whole complex set of institutions, knowledge and methods in modern life should be just a small superstructure on the continent of Spirit. And in my subjective opinion, Carlos Reygadas in his cinema is engaged in this devaluation of the mechanical Marxian «basis», raising a person along the axis of vertical Time. In the era of coming outs and «public sincerity» (a term with a negative connotation for me), Reygadas uses personal, family dramas, problems, words, deeds, as a way to talk about the universal in understandable language, in contrast to the same Trier, who even a film about his own creative crisis veils in the folds of the drama of the apocalypse
13
on the globe.
«He thinks a lot about the transience of existence, so he doesn’t want to waste his time on things he doesn’t need»². He spends a lot of time on the realization of his film, and therefore has the right to demand from the viewer a certain alienation from the bustle of time, from idleness and entertainment, for the sake of two hours of contemplation and reaching the border of the»transcendental. Therefore, a certain amount of time does not interfere and does not harm his films, just as this or that material, input data is eliminated at the production stage, so the viewer is eliminated at the demonstration stage. Why does a person need all the kingdoms of the world when he has no love in his heart? It is possible to paraphrase the apostle in this way. «…movies continue in time when they have a certain quality. Rossellini, Bergman, Mizoguchi they are all dead, but their films go on»³, says Carlos Reygadas.
Considering the issue of everyday religiosity in this book, I came to the conclusion that globalisation is also, in a sense, a new everyday religiosity that can explain to a person the world around him and through which he is ready to smooth out the internal conflicts of his existence. And the cinema of Reygadas has features of a globally universal character that can attract any viewer in any corner of the planet, but also repel both a resident of Lapland and an indigenous inhabitant of the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, therefore it is impossible to call Reygadas purely Mexican, his lingua franca is understandable to every seeker.
In the mid 1920-s. of the last century, André Malraux, in his early novel La Tentation de l'Occident (The Temptation of the West), writes about a contemporary European who entered
14
PROLEGOMENA TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
PROLEGOMENA TO THE FILMS OF CARLOS REYGADAS
into a period of conflict with «his civilisation or reality …»⁴. Crises that the European begins to face from the beginning of the 20th century and earlier, wherever he is, always have common features and reasons. And being on the mainland, and traveling through the colonies in the clothes of a real «safari man»⁵, the European, first of all, is looking for traces or origins of the new time, which so easily decomposed all the meanings of his life into blades. That’s why Carlos Reygadas interests me apart from the rest of Mexican cinema. Whatever he says in an interview about
In order to avoid discussing «mexicanism», the contradictions of red mothers and white fathers, his perspective, nevertheless, is predominantly that of a European who has entered into conflict with the reality of modernity and his own time. Even the internal problems of the country are somehow seen or manifested through the global conflict of the mismatch between time and the individual, the asynchrony of their coexistence. Reygadas embarks on constant journeys, but now not to colonial Africa, Asia, and Spanish America, but to the borders of existence, to the limbo where the European, awakened by the whistles of locomotives and the roar of printing presses, finds himself stuck between times. Carlos Reygadas once set out in search of the New Time, perhaps not realizing that these quests were destined neither to cease nor to be crowned with success.
The limb of Time or the limb of Transition is the boundary, i. e. the end of one state and the beginning of another, the beginning of the transcendent and, conversely, the end of the transcendent and the beginning of being, depending on
15
the angle of the beholder’s gaze. The narrative of diegesis is captured by the camera at such a deep or primary level that it acquires the properties of a document or real diegesis, capable of not only competing with reality, but also enriching and spiritualising it.
Reygadas» cinema is trying to go beyond the classical framework of cinema as an archive of memory and social practices and turn cinema into a perceptual time machine capable of not delivering a person to any historical point, but through the actualisation and re-experiencing of this point again, to enter or approach the transcendental.
The book has 6 chapters, as well as the Preface and End Prolegomena… and Coda, respectively. The structure of the book is based on the chronological-film principle, i. e., in each chapter, a specific film is considered as they are released on the screen. Despite the fact that each chapter is devoted to a specific film, their analysis forced me to turn in parallel to other films by Reygadas, in order to compare and compare certain markers or tropes that, in my opinion, are common to the work of Carlos Reygadas. So, for example, the first chapter is devoted not only to a specific film, but also to some themestropes of Reygadas» creativity, which in one way or another manifest themselves in the director’s work and will manifest themselves in other chapters. Such, for example, are the themes or plots of Nature, Children, the Chronotope of the House, etc., and, of course, Time, as the main, plot-and meaning-forming character of all Reygadas» paintings. The last sixth chapter analyses the film Ordet (The Word) (1955) by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, who, according to the Mexican director
16
himself, is one of those who had a great influence on him. The analysis of the Word is made in relation to the work of Reygadas and his markers and paths.
I express my gratitude for the support and patience of my wife Hanna, son Milorad and daughter Zlata, whose embellished this book.
MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
I am more inclined to contemplate reality. I approach it more like an animal, like a child, to a greater extent than an adult, mature person, who knows how to ponder about life, knows how to draw conclusions.
Andrei Tarkovsky.6
NATURE — THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
If we look at the filmography of the director, we can see a certain regularity or simple mathematical fact: out of five standalone feature films, four of them, in one way or another, take place outside of the city, in the realm of Nature, except for the second film, Battle in Heaven (2005), where the events unfold in the bustling city of Mexico. Moreover, the capital city is portrayed dichotomously: on one hand, there are large highrise office blocks, the ant colonies of life, with the presence of poverty, not literally; and on the other hand, there are wealthy neighborhoods, predominantly white, although poverty is not excluded there either. «This opposition is further emphasized through the film’s sound design. In contrast to the concatenation of car engines and beeping horns heard (in the ant colonies of life areas — Y.V.) throughout the film, this traffi c-free area is acoustically translated into an idyllic atmosphere».7 «I am concerned that the foundation be authentic because I believe that the act of creation carries the idea of transformation, of creating new meaning. And if you start with something false, then you turn these new meanings into something false, and then that falsehood means nothing. On the other hand, if you start
20
NATURE - THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
with something genuine, you can transform it in a way that it carries significance. In this sense, I am very interested in natural landscapes. I have no interest in renting a studio and turning it into a fake pharmacy, and then shooting a fantastic film there».8 Carlos Reygadas» purity of meaning is explained by his approach, which applies not only to nature but to any external fixation. Brazilian film critic Ivonete Pinto even writes that nature is the main protagonist in the Mexican director's films, and «although religion and sex are united in their thematic preferences, nature is the driving force behind his thought, encompassing all kinds of sub-themes or sub-categories».⁹
The escape of the unnamed Hero from the urban, crowded jungles is completely understandable, although it does evoke a strange feeling, especially after watching the majority of the film Japón (2002). The thing is, the harsh, precise, repressive world of the city, despite its listed and countless unlisted drawbacks, does not evoke irritation and disappointment. Alongside its harshness and precision, there exists an anthropological structurality, a diffuse dichotomy that eases existence. In contrast, the world of the province contains many elements that have a great potential to scare, repulse, and warn brutal children, grotesque adults, chthonic nature, and more. Javier M. Miyres characterizes this opposition as follows in his dissertation: «The city is represented by tunnels, cars, confusion, repetition, speed… The countryside in the film, necessary for the protagonist as a source of reality, does not guarantee the desired reality itself, but predisposes to the possibility of somehow trying to emotionally return to the symbolic essence or the past, to a more intimate way of perceiving time and the world».10 The urban world is a territory of action and repetition, while the province is a world of contemplation.
21
However, the material in the province is less structured and organized, harboring many potentials for violence, chance, and revelation. This hidden violence and lack of structure can also be observed in the film Post Tenebras Lux (2012), where the urban dichotomy is present at the level of the wealthy ranches and impoverished villages. The white hero's house named Juan attracts hidden natural forces that materialize through the local inhabitants. The house serves as a beacon of order and whiteness amidst the chaos of nature, which by definition is destined to claim this piece, this fragment of emptiness, order, and structure, revealing a miracle to the world. In Battle in Heaven, this power sprouts within Marcos, the protagonist of the film. Half white, half indigenous, half city-dweller, half wild, he becomes a battleground within himself, where Nature carves a path through the emptiness inside a person.
When examining the issues of Mexican society in the contemporary era, particularly in the post-revolutionary period since 1910, amidst the prevailing neoliberalism in Mexican political and social life (the reforms of the late 1980-s and early 1990-s), Sabino Luévano cites Sánchez Prado regarding the film Japón: «this radical reconfiguration of existing discourses on the provincial (rural) in Mexican cinema is not entirely new. Unlike canonical notions of internal territories as places of backwardness or anti-modernity, Japan breaks free from the cinematographic traditions of mexicanism and transforms it into a space where the modern individual encounters secular forms of the spiritual and the sublime».11 Furthermore, Sabino Luévano adds: «In Reygadas» films, both urban and rural spaces act as generators of contact with the spiritual and the sublime. Because the gaze upon the world is more important here than
22
1. THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER
NATURE - THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
the territory itself, which we can call mystical, sensory, spiritual, or sublime».12 Nature is represented not as an object of conquest, akin to new lands or the New World, which humans discover, settle, and reshape to fit their needs, but, on the contrary, in Reygadas» paintings, Nature emerges as a place of the Creator's presence, the Cosmos (take your pick), which has just breathed life into it. «It no longer serves as mere scenic „backdrops“», as Rick Warner aptly put it.13 Nature, simultaneously newborn and ancient, unstructured, with infinite mysteries and spaces for the exploration of human beings, in other words, in contact with the viewer through Reygadas» characters and protagonists, Nature becomes a subject, objectifying those who look at it. The effect of immanence of something or someone (see above: take your pick) in nature arises, whose presence often remains not so much unnoticed as denied in our enclosed (solipsistic) everydayness, in our finite experience. Indeed, Nature returns or attempts to return existence to a pre-history state, to a state preceding present experience, to a state of anticipation and the possibility of miracle. The world unfolds before the viewer in a nohauntingly simple manner, transforming the viewer into a Nietzschean cow, peacefully grazing in the meadow, devoid of any sense of time and history. This can be felt in the eight-minute prologue of Post Tenebras Lux and is also present in the shots of the prologue and epilogue in the film Silent Light, where the sunrise and sunset frame the story of love, sin, and the miracle of resurrection. Nature, as if from hiding places, takes out trump cards and presents them to man, trump cards of reverse conquest, reverse movement in the development of vast, devastated territories within man. It is as if nature is groping for the switch that is responsible in man for supplying the tension of historical time.
23
Being intimately connected to the surrounding landscape, Reigadas, the «vacquero,» says: «Living in the countryside and working with cows it's what I've been doing since I was a boy, and it's something I'm terribly fond of», which, apparently, influenced his perception and portrayal of the Spirit of Nature in his paintings.14
Within the frames of mountains, forests, prairies, or whatever they may be called, there exists a Cosmos, which, with its wide-open eyes of loss, fear, threat, or deprivation, gazes back at humanity, reflecting human emotions. There is a meeting of the macrocosm with the microcosm, where it becomes difficult to discern who plays what role. Does humanity represent the entire universe, or is the universe the inner world of an individual? But within this mutual reflection lies a secret harmony, where there is no need to determine who occupies the central place in the ontological pyramid. An effect of reverse perspective arises, as Pavel Florensky wrote about in his in his text about icon painting.15 To reiterate, Nature in Reigadas` frames holds a specific meaning. It does not oppose the city, nor does it carry a set of religious spiritual constants as opposition to the soulless, secular inhabitants of the metropolis. However, it still stands apart, with a dual meaning. It possesses a certain selfhood, a second existence hidden beneath its simple green biological mantle. And it is in this absence of opposition to the stone city that its strength lies, in the very Bergsonian duration (which is skillfully captured and displayed in Reigadas» long shots), in the hidden potentiality inherent in infinity. Nature in the frames of Reigadas` works lacks didactics and moral lessons. It simply exists, extending within and beyond the frame, in the consciousness of the perceptive and disarmed viewer. And if there is something oppositional within it,
24
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 1.
NATURE - THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
it is to the world of human creations and artifacts. Perhaps, even in the frames of nature, there is a reverse perspective turned towards us. It is Nature and its forces that look at us and understand us. According to Brazilian researcher Mariana Cunha, the construction of the film's «physical space as an element that decentralizes the human, placing nature, animals, and humans as subjects, creates an immanent cinema».16 In Nature lies the potential of a different time and a preceding history, or pre-history. For example, in the film Post Tenebras Lux, in the scene where a local resident cuts down a huge tree, there is a clear sense of reverse perspective when Nature within the frame, with trees and mountains, silently gazes at us amidst the quiet sounds of a chainsaw.
Paul Schrader, when asked about Reigadas» style, whether it is slow or transcendental, states that the Mexican filmmaker is closer to the transcendent style.17 However, it can be said that there is a mix of slowness and transcendence in his work. This conclusion arises from how nature and humans «sound» in his films, always being dichotomous or ambivalent, carrying traits of both the physical and the metaphysical, the slow and constant (immanent) and the transcendental. In one interview, Reigadas refuses to consider himself religious, unlike his favorite Carl Theodor Dreyer, and identifies himself more in the vein of Dostoevsky: «If, for Dreyer, the metaphysical aspect of faith is most essential, for me it is the sensual, human aspect. Dreyer made parables, but my primary goal is to capture the beauty of the world, which many have ceased to notice.»18
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, reflecting in his book «1926. Ein Jahr am Rand der Zei» («In 1926: Living on the Edge of Time») on the dichotomy of the «immanent-transcendent» within the framework of analyzing philosophical ideologies, specifically the
25
* «The new science brings us to a deeper understanding of divine power and even begins to give us a natural explanation of the supernatural."
Excerpt from Carl Theodor Dreyer's interview with Film Culture magazine (1957, no. 7). Quote by: Rozenbaum J. Mise en Scène as Miracle in Dreyer’s Ordet. Available from: https://www. jonathanrosen baum.net/2019/07/ mise-en-scene-asmiracle-in-dreyersordet/
CHAPTER 1.
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
triumph of matter over spirit in the 20th century, emphasizes that «Nature and science are the dominant contexts for transforming classical transcendent concepts into immanent ones».19 On the contrary, Carlos Reygadas takes a different approach. The director, who often emphasizes his non-religiosity in interviews, attempts to translate the inherently immanent nature into the realm of the transcendent while outwardly maintaining secular positions. By bringing the transcendent closer to scientific knowledge, which makes new discoveries and finds hope in stable and possibly infinite development, Reygadas approaches Dreyer.* However, the final point is not entirely clear and blurred, as the outcome may be rooted in traditional, religious consciousness. Perhaps transcendence will eventually be able to penetrate through VR technologies and other achievements in the virtualreplicative world, which Andre Bazin, Robert Bresson with Georges Bernanos naturally could not even guess. But today, transcendence is increasingly being expelled to the outskirts of the global village. For now.
Tiago de Luca, approaching Reigadas» films from a different angle, considers them as a synthesis of cinematic realism and sensory perception. He points out, for example, Reigadas» use of long shots, which he argues create «phenomenal reality is heightened to sensory effect».20 According to De Luca, «Reigadas» sensuous realism aims to generate an unexpected experience for the viewer through intensely indexical images and unwritten representations that are «infused with the phenomenological presence of spontaneous reality».21 And just above, at the very beginning of his work, De Luca connects such an perception of films with the specific impact of long shots, depth of sharpness, and non-professional performers. In other
26
NATURE - THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES
words, the perception/impact of the film depends not so much on «manipulative strategies such as intellectual montage (Eisenstein) or excessive artifice (German Expressionism), cinematic realism also derives from clearly defi ned, but by no means exclusive, aesthetic decisions».22
Mikhail Yampolsky, in his book «Through the Dim Glass: 20 Chapters of Uncertainty» explores the visual manifestations in contemporary culture (the face, formlessness, shape, and uncertainty, etc.) and refers to this perception of aesthetic decisions as an expressive perspective: «…Bechterev believed that perception is always associated with memory and easily transitions into imagination. The brain no longer perceives images, representations of life, but receives impulses from the movement of the eye within the chaos of life. Essentially, we are talking about a transition from a representational model of art to an expressive one. By entering into the situation and submitting to its internal dynamics, the cinematic eye takes the place of the „cause“ of what is happening (later we will see that for Reygadas, this function can be performed by the movie camera Y.V.). It gains access to the expressive self-revelation of life. Perception ceases to be passive and solely visual, but becomes essentially kinesthetic». And further: «This essentially refers to the old philosophical Leibnizian apperception, which adds the memory of previous experiences to immediate perception. Without this addition, a person cannot name the object they see. Without the connection of centrifugal and centripetal forces and the resulting reflex combinations, the brain cannot function. The Bekhterevian model was closely associated with the old metaphysical tradition. Representation transcends time and combines the present with the past, thus giving us a certain synthesis of reality,
27
CHAPTER 1.
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
a synthesis of ontological nature.23 In Reygadas» frames, Nature acquires such potential or capacity, the potential or possibility of wonder, carrying the information or the «memory of previous experiences» of humanity, leading the individual from a rationalsecular, representational world to the realm of metaphysics. Thus, Nature in Reygadas» films serves as a «memory of previous experience» that has been lost due to the scientific conquest of the world and the departure from patriarchal, traditional ways of human life. This same theme, albeit in a broader understanding of nature as a combination of anthropological and biological factors of life, was also the focus of attention for Carl Theodor Dreyer. Firstly, Nature takes on the role of a subject capable of forming an ambivalent pair with the human being. Secondly, within this subjectivity, the dual properties of nature manifest themselves. On the one hand, its immanent qualities are revealed, such as the presence of external forces (the Cosmos, Destiny). On the other hand, from a human perspective, it possesses transcendental characteristics that expand human existence and propel it towards the eternal, the knowable and the unknowable Absolute, opening up the possibility of wonder. At the moment when Nature gazes into us, paradoxically, through this intense gaze, we are granted the opportunity to penetrate into Nature itself and see it in a way we never do, to see it from within, to see ourselves.
28
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE ABORIGINALS - AS THE "UNLIVED PART OF EVERY LIVED EXPERIENCE."
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE ABORIGINALS
— AS THE «UNLIVED PART OF EVERY LIVED EXPERIENCE.»
Gilles Deleuze, in the second part of his work «Cinema 2: The Time-Image,» writes about a new type of characters that, in my conclusion, require a new type of performers: «A new type of characters has emerged in the new cinema. Precisely because what happens to them doesn't belong to them, only partially concerns them, they can extract from the events an irreducible part of what is happening: this part of inexhaustible possibilities constitutes the unbearable, intolerable fate of the visionary. This calls for a new type of actors: not only non-professional actors, with whom early neorealism established a connection, but also those who could be called non-actors or, more accurately, „medium-actors,“ capable not so much of acting as of seeing and directing vision, and, in addition, of remaining mute or sustaining any endless conversation, except engaging in dialogue.»24
Something similar happens with non-professional actors in the films of Carlos Reygadas. Whether they perform their typical roles diligently and with love, or indifferently, they do not strive to be better (more professional). In this case, as with nature, a reverse perspective arises where it is not the spectators who watch them, but they make the spectators entertain them (reverse shoot). As if in this entertainment, in this optical trick, there is a great suggestively-ontological secret hidden. They become similar to the rough-hewn types of Pasolini, who turned into signs. «I am not interested in actors. The only time they interest me is when I use an actor to play an actor. For example, I never use extras in my films because they are just fools. Their faces are disfigured by living their whole lives in "Cinecitta",
29
* «Even such a superficial description of the basic aspects of minimalismo allows it to be associated with slow cinema:
surrounded by whores who are constantly swirling around. When I was filming The Gospel According to St. Matthew, I would go and personally select each extra, one by one, among the peasants and villagers near the locations where we were shooting», said Pasolini in an interview. However, mimesis in Regadas» works disintegrates under the pressure of other aesthetic and ethical tasks, where diégèsis predominates, almost like a documentary snapshot in which the non-actor finds it easier to exist. Easier, in the sense that they are embraced by the viewer not as a mimetic trick, but as a diégètic sign.25 The narrative of diégèsis is captured by the camera at such a profound or primary level that it acquires the properties of a document or real diégèsis, capable not only of competing with reality but also enriching and spiritualizing it.
Many researchers, following the trends of authorial cinema, have seen in the archetype «authenticity» and «truth» rather than physiological reality: «The contemporary director C. Reygadas entrusted the roles of indigenous people to the local residents themselves, which ensured the film's authenticity, almost documentary-like quality, sought for any mimetic objectivity (cinema is an imitative art to an even greater extent than theater)».26 Polish researcher Bolesław Racięski, who analyzes transnational cinema, believes that this approach to acting, in conjunction with other features of slow cinema such as long shots, visual and plastic minimalism, and laconically lighting, indicates a «transnational tren»», that is, the presence of universal elements in contemporary film language.* And in this remark by B. Racięski, there is a significant amount of truth.
If many directors and critics have acknowledged the difficulties of capturing both a professional actor and an extra or background character within a single frame, Reygadas
30
CHAPTER
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
1.
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE ABORIGINALS - AS THE "UNLIVED PART OF EVERY LIVED EXPERIENCE."
utilizes this difficulty as a dramaturgically conflict. He considers this incongruity, the impossibility of unifying them, as the foundational conflict for the characters in his films such as Japón, Battle in Heaven, and Our Time. These characters experience visible or invisible, spoken or unspoken conflicts with everyday reality, with the un-experienced Present. The protagonist is compelled to renounce individualism (to share it with the audience in the movie theater) and to relinquish the hypertrophy of the internal and fluid world of the «I» in pursuit of the transcendent, harmony, and the divine. Often, the faces of non-actors and extras, as signs of non-mimetic writing, speak to us about the futility of treatment without giving up individuality. «Professional actors impede the director’s efforts to create something entirely unique, a „complete self-contained world,“ be-cause professional actors, paradoxically, never really leave the viewer’s world. Or said differently, non-actors uphold the distance between art and life that the theatricality of professional actors threatens to eliminate. Non-actors who, much like „dogs, a sunset or a tree,“ are „deeper“ and more „sophisticated“ than professional actors», — expresses Reygadas in one interview.27 Regarding his approach to working with non-professional actors, non-actors, the Mexican director says: «If you read my scripts, you will see how clearly all the dialogues are written. For example, in Japón, there is a scene with a worker who starts singing during the destruction of a barn. This person was with us from the very beginning, but I heard him singing and asked him to sing in this scene. But when the camera started rolling, he started singing a completely different song and kept singing for 3-4 minutes instead of 20 seconds. I left the episode as it was because it seemed better that way.»28 Reygadas is describing, as I understand
a transnational phenomenon, represented by directors from various countries (e.g. China, Argentina, Hungary, Thailand), who make their films thanks to the support of foreign funds, and aim to screen them at international festivals of art cinema.». Citation by: Racięski, B. Mexican Minimalist Cinema: Articulating the (Trans)national.
Transmissions:
Journal of Film and Media Studies. 2016, VOL.1, NO. 2, P. 122.
31
it, his attempt to minimally interfere with the nature of the reality being created, or in this case, emerging. And this aligns the Mexican director with the French philosopher André Bazin, who claimed: «If an event is so self-sufficient that the director does not need to highlight it using various camera angles and special setups, then it has achieved that perfect clarity that allows art to discard the mask from nature, which finally resembles it… If the highest naturalness and the sensation of accidental observation during the unfolding of events are the result of an entire aesthetic system that exists, being invisible, then ultimately this becomes possible thanks to the initial concept of the screenplay. The disappearance of the actor, the disappearance of the director?» Also the «disappearance of the plot,» which further unites Regadas» method with Bazin's theory.29 It should be noted that the plot, not that it is completely absent in Reygadas» films, it is present but not explicitly revealed. It should be noted that the plot, not that it is completely absent in Reygadas» films, it is present but not explicitly revealed. It means that it is not exaggerated for the viewer's attention and consciousness, but rather simplified. For example, in Japón, «there is a fairly simple, ordinary narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end. And yet, this narrative arc is mostly advanced through the image.»30
Authentic Mexican archetypes, which can be found in the works of Diego Rivera or the monumental artist Siqueiros, seamlessly integrate into the visual fabric of the director's narrative, permeating it as images or visual signs that penetrate the essence, transforming and translucent/illuminating it for a metaphysical gaze. The role of nature and indigenous archetypes is to erase the significance and tragedy of reality, or in other words, the task of the sign (image) is to deconstruct
32
CHAPTER
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
1.
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE ABORIGINALS - AS THE "UNLIVED PART OF EVERY LIVED EXPERIENCE."
mimesis, narrative lines, and dramaturgically structures not only of artistic mimesis but also of life itself. To reveal how, as extracted from non-existence through the transformation of silver particles on photographic paper or film, another world, an elusive other world, «because the main thing is not description but vision», to borrow the words of Robert Bresson.* And if we cannot do without Bresson, let us mention a fragment of his interview regarding the actors» performances in the film L'Argent (Money, 1983): «From the very first seconds of working on my first film, my actresses (there were only women in the film) suddenly ceased to be personalities, and there was absolutely nothing left of what I had envisioned.»31 «…I suppose it's because of their external, superficial manner of speaking and meaningless gestures… I love working with unknown people, I love it when they surprise me. My extras never disappoint me. I constantly discover something new in them that I couldn't have imagined, but that fulfills my intentions.»32 According to Bresson, the use of a typecast, nonactor in a film enables a movement from the surface to the depth of life, which I referred to as the deconstruction of mimesis. «What is important is not what they show me, but what they hide from me, and especially, what they do not even suspect in themselves.»33 This mysterious «do not assume» as it seems to me is a phenomenological transcendental knowledge, the presence in the everyday life of a person. And the main task of the archetype is to ensure that the viewer cannot identify themselves with any character. It is necessary for the viewer to remain in a solitary objectivity, in critical solipsism, which will not allow them to participate in the events unfolding on the screen, but will provide an opportunity to delve deeper into the narrative and progress towards the Space of limbo.
* Robert Bresson talked about his first feature film, Les Anges du péché (Angels of Sin), which he made in 1943, in which all the leading roles were played by women actresses.
33
However, clear anti-parallels can be observed between the archetypes of Bresson and Reygadas. The archetype in Bresson's films is cold, frozen, and closed, meaning it is highly subjective and directed inward. On the other hand, the archetype in Reygadas» films is extraverted, fully revealed in a 180-degree manner, material and ready to intervene in the viewer's reality, inviting them to experience the unexperienced part of their lived experiences, opening a path to the Present according to Giorgio Agamben.34 In his essay on the films Ordet and Silent Light, Rick Warner employs Deleuze's term of actor-mediums and situates Reygadas at the intersection of two phenomena in cinema. «It is a unique combination of the Bressonian model and nonprofessional performers of the neorealist era, two performance styles rooted in the long history of contemplative cinema.»35
Let's turn from Robert Bresson's phenomenology to André Bazin's neorealism. He had a similar thought about non-actors in his 1949 article dedicated to Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948): «No actors, no plot, no direction; in short, in the ideal aesthetic illusion of reality no cinema».36 Essentially, out of the three components of Bazin's «ideal cinema», Reygadas often clearly exhibits the first one: without actors, the second one: without a plot, although it is weakened but still present (meaning weakened plot connections), which cannot be said about the direction. Remember his words about the script, which he tries to adhere to. Moreover, Reygadas often makes frequent appearances in his own films, starting with a small cameo in Japan and culminating in the leading role in Our Time. When asked by Anton Dolin from «Iskusstvo Kino» (Cinema Art) magazine about actors, Carlos Reygadas stated: «I couldn't find better performers for these roles than my children and my wife. As for myself,
34
MEMORY
CHAPTER 1. THE
OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE ABORIGINALS - AS THE "UNLIVED PART OF EVERY LIVED EXPERIENCE."
it's not so easy to find someone who can ride a horse and look natural while simultaneously being believable as an intellectual or a writer. I searched! I didn't find anyone. You know that I play the lead role, but most viewers won't be aware of it. And they won't care.»37 The poet and vaquero Juan, portrayed by filmmaker and vaquero Reygadas in the film Our Time, unrecognized by anyone except intellectuals worldwide, surrounded by and immersed in a nature devoid of prior experience, with bulls and horses with sleek sides, and the archetypes of Riviera and Siqueiros, with hypertrophied muscles and hyperbolized facial features. A nonactor and the director of the film, alienated from reality, from the «events, collisions» of life, as noted by film critic Zara Abdullaeva. He becomes entangled in a love triangle, simultaneously taking and giving life, assuming a «critical position… embodying the fundamental „time-image“ explored by Gilles Deleuze in his book „Cinema“.38 According to Zara Abdullaeva, the critical position lies in the fact that the tail of time wags the dog, our human life, and not the other way around. And to leave no doubt, let us bring together Zara Abdullaeva's quote with a citation from Giorgio Agamben's short essay on the Everyday and the Ordinary as the Present, without the discoveries of the transcendental: „…to be contemporaries means above all to be courageous. (Don't such archetypes exist in Reygadas“ films? Y.V.). For to be contemporary means not only to peer into the darkness of the epoch but also to possess the ability to perceive, within that darkness, the light directed towards us but receding into infinity… our time, the present time, is not only the most remote — it is by no means capable of reaching us… a contemporary is not only someone who, while perceiving the darkness of the present, apprehends in it an unremitting light, but also someone who,
35
dividing and interrupting time, is capable of transforming it and bringing it into relation with other times, of reading in them an unspeakable history, of „quoting“ it as necessary, in no way borne by a subjective judgement but in accordance with a claim.»39 In summarizing the discussion on non-actors in Carlos Reygadas» films, it is essential to emphasize that the performer in the films of the Mexican director is primarily a sign, a symbol whose task is not to entertain the viewer but to force them (non-actors) see their own (spectators) reflection and the pure Present through the deconstruction of mimesis and the narrative pathos of «living the un-lived part of the lived».
CHILDREN PRE-HISTORY OF TIME
In every Reygadas film, there are children. Children are one of the chronotopes of Reygadas» cinema, along with the chronotope of the home, which we will discuss later. In the film Japón, for example, on the 4th minute, immediately after the protagonist's fleeing journey from the crowded Mexico City, a boy with a wounded bird appears. Settled under a tree in a Tarkovsky-esque style, the boy watches as the limping protagonist decapitates the bird.In a 2003 interview, two weeks after the release of Japón, Reygadas confessed that the location in the state of Hidalgo, where the shooting of his first film took place, was not chosen by chance. «The roots of Japón lie in my deep childhood: who you are, how you see the world. The thing is, my great-grandfather had a house in Hidalgo, and as a child, I used to go there, just like the hunters in the beginning of the film. The hunters were my father and me, and we hunted my first pigeon when I was 13 years old near that same jagüey tree. I also
36
THE MEMORY
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 1.
OF
CHILDREN - PRE-HISTORY OF TIME
had to pick up injured pigeons hidden beneath some maguey plants. It was then that I confronted the dilemma of life: how could a child kill a pigeon? I remember the warmth of its tender body, I saw how beautiful it was as a living creature, and my instincts blocked the intention to kill it. But in the end, I still did it because it was my duty as a hunter, and I accepted it.»40 The film Post Tenebras Lux begins with a symbiosis of Nature and Children. A little girl, surrounded by dogs, runs through fields, jumps in puddles, and herds sheep. However, darkness of the present approaches rain, thunderstorm, and thick twilight engulf her. One could use Johannes» words from Carl Theodor Dreyer's film Ordet and say that it is the arrival of the one who «comes with hourglasses». In Reygadas» most recent film to date, Our Time, children appear in several episodes, such as on the shore of an ocean, lake, or river. In Silent Light, there is a scene where children in a minibus watch the video-show of French chansonnier Jacques Brel and participate in morning family prayers, among other moments. In Japón, as I mentioned earlier, the protagonist severs the head of a wounded bird in front of a child. The limping Hero, already in the village, will often encounter local children, observing them for a long time, as if trying to dissolve himself in them, to see in them not the contemporaries but the child he once was, to see that «unbridgeable light» that divides life into parts. In these shots, Reygadas seems to reveal himself, as it is he, the director, who curiously observes children in life. If we add that in his feature debut, Japón, the director appears in a simple cameo at the beginning of the film, the identification becomes complete. Behind this identification, in my view, lies the ancient patriarchal mythology (myth) of a complete past that is beheaded by modernity, the ongoing present, the aggressive modern
37
civilization. In this myth, dream, and creative expressions, humans constantly strive to return to the pre-beginning of time or times. In the film Our Time, the scene with children of different ages is the first scene in the film, where they run along the beach, swim in muddy water, drink beer, and share their first kisses. It is interspersed with scenes of adults having their heavy conversations. This scene represents the «beginning of time», an era when nothing has happened yet, but everything is possible, absolutely everything. It is the meeting of the past (adults) and the future (children) in the space of the present. It is a time and place of the presence of the Absolute spirit of life and time. Zara Abdullaeva, in her text, refers to this as life caught off guard. 41 Children are contemporaries of the on going present, and while adults require an effort to «return to the present in which we have never been»42, children naturally abide by the inexplicable laws of harmony and grace. Even in a complex film like Silent Light, where time weighs heavily on childhood, children still bear the imprint of «being in the present.» In the scene of the family bathing, the breakfast scene, and even in the final burial scene, children, dressed in their necessary black attire, inevitably and necessarily feel bored (i. e., they do not share the same experience as adults, and the younger the child, the more evident it becomes) during these adult rituals.
Thus, the presence of children in the films serves two main purposes. Firstly, it represents the alter ego of the author and the main protagonist. Secondly, it is an attempt to return to a mythical state, to a state of pre-history, to the ongoing present, to the beginning of time, where time is subordinate to myth and vital growth, rather than the other way around, where everything is subordinated to time. The child in Reygadas` frames is the state of
38
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 1.
DIEGETIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF REALITY OR AUTHENTICITY AND ARTIFICIALITY
the hero by the riverbanks, at the boundary of reality, it is immanence transcending into transcendence. The child is the time before history or its complete absence, it is the «presence in the present.»
DIEGETIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF REALITY OR AUTHENTICITY AND ARTIFICIALITY
Unlike Bresson, Carlos Reygadas is not afraid to explore reality. Hiding behind the mask of impartiality, Reygadas intervenes in reality, or rather, allows reality to intervene in the lives of his characters, bringing with it not just triviality, but something hidden, possibly transcendental.*
In her essentially encyclopedic article about Paul Schrader, E. Kartsyeva complains that «It turned out to be much more difficult to reproduce transcendence on the screen than to talk about it on printed pages.»43 In fact, it is as difficult as writing about a person in a few hundred words using words as mere words. Practically, it means writing nothing but words. Kartsyeva complains that Schrader absent a «visual vision of material», although, as I believe, it is precisely the hidden visual vision that distinguishes the transcendental style from other film styles in contemporary world cinema. Slow cinema and visual extravagance are different banks of the Acheron that separate the Space of Limbo from life. The style of Reygadas, like that of Schrader, is a unfolding of the real world before the viewer, resulting in the viewer seeing one thing: form and content, but understanding another: beyond the boundaries of form and content, while still maintaining form and content as a unified language (without the use of estrangement techniques). «This is
* Perhaps it depends on the extent to which reality and the hidden can be not only a suggestive synonym, but also transcendental itself.
39
a difficult aspect of cinema that is not possible to separate into individual elements. Everything is interconnected, everything is intertwined. When people say that a film is bad but the cinematography is excellent, those words have no meaning. It's like saying, after a performance of Beethoven, „The symphony is good, but the violin part is not great“. Or saying that you don't like Van Gogh's paintings, but his use of color is beautiful. Therefore, the poet is right: form and content are essentially the same.»44 As American researcher Samantha Ordусez writes: «Other elements of Reygadas’s cinema contributing to his centring of material and corporeal reality include extreme closeups, direct sound, nonprofessional actors and on-location shooting»45, «additionally, there is a clear emphasis on silence and everyday life,» adds Matthew Flanagan.46 These aspects of his work have allowed for different interpretive approaches based on new discussions of visual and cinematic realism and sensory perception, for example, the approach proposed by Tiago De Luca in his recent book «Realism of the Senses in World Cinema». De Luca's research is connected to foundational concepts of realism, including the existential understanding of André Bazin, which views film as the ability to convey sensory perception of objects as they emerge in the world.47 Sabino Luévano echoes this sentiment in his dissertation «Políticas de la desposesión: masculinidad y neoliberalismo. En el cine mexicano contemporáneo», and as critic Troy Bordun states, «both directors (Stan Brakhage and Carlos Reygadas Y.A.) share the idea that the specific quality of cinema is primarily a means of perception, rather than knowledge».48
The visuality of the transcendental style is not dependent on editing and the emergence of new meanings at the intersection
40
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 1.
DIEGETIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF REALITY OR AUTHENTICITY AND ARTIFICIALITY
of shots, as Eisenstein and Kuleshov favored. It is not dependent on what the viewer sees within the frame, as the eyes remain passive. It is unrelated to the plot, climax, turning point, or narrative sequence (plotline). It is independent of the actor's performance, sound as a technical component, and the method and depth of cognitive processes. Instead, it directly relates to duration and sensory perception, not of the frame itself, but of the images. Their immanence, duration, and sensory perception by the viewer in time are not determined by technical means but on the balance of forces on the set between the actors, between the director and cinematographer. It is akin to a «trustful contact between cinema and life,» as Evgeny Gusyatinsky wrote about Bresson.49 There is no involvement of fantasy, transrealism, and the like. What is diegesis? It is the construction of the reality within the frame, where everything is shown directly and openly, but it is left to the perception of the individual viewer, their sensory-perceptive apparatus, capable of sensing the duration of their own time, their present. Just as Bresson «perceives reality and, accordingly, cinema as intermediate or mediating spaces. He himself becomes a conduit between the transcendental and the everyday, the external and the internal, the visible and the invisible».50 «In this sense, Reygadas» cinema is not a cinema that can be understood solely through rational means, as it addresses deep layers of the unconscious, desires, fantasies, and dreams that create a perception of reality as moments that seem mystical», defines the style of the Mexican director Sabino Luévano.51 It should be emphasized that Reygadas employs realistic methods without any «trickery» in the frame; it arises within the mind of the viewer. Categories such as reality and illusion, physics and metaphysics, authenticity and artificiality
41
* A different view of this scene is given by De Luca, who views Assen death as "the founding myth of Christianity: like Jesus, she dies to save the soul of man.". Citation by: De Luca, T. Realism of the Senses in World Cinema, New York: I. B Tauris & Co. – 2014. - P. 42.
CHAPTER 1.
THE MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
lose their oppositional properties, their dichotomous nature. Here, one can speak of a rejection of psychological and narrative approaches. At the Istanbul Film Festival, Reygadas even radically stated that reality encompasses dreams, memories, knowledge, all under its canopy.52
Thus, all three categories discussed above Children, Nature, and Aboriginal non-actors, in their essence do not have their antipodes or opposing qualities in Reygadas» works. This is because, just as Nature possesses simultaneously immanent and transcendent properties, humans, too, are capable of discovering and encountering the past and the future in their present moment. However, according to Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: «People are obsessed with the idea of dividing things into real, authentic, and genuine versus unreal, fake, and artificial. The reason for this dichotomy lies in doubts regarding the status of nature not only nature as the surrounding environment but also nature as a norm within different models of human life».53 The fixed of human beings from nature is recognized. «Both Authenticity and Artificiality bear distinct, often repetitive signs of time and place. Choosing Authenticity means choosing traditions and the past (often with nostalgic enthusiasm); choosing Artificiality means choosing the future (often with a hint of submission to an inevitable fate)».54 The transcendental style dissolves these oppositions, allowing us to perceive the world in a unified, continuous duration.
If I recall Humboldt, then one can compare the Hero from Reygadas» Japón with Orpheus descending into the underworld in search of Eurydice. The Hero deceives Death by tricking her into taking someone else, and in a way, Death stops its choice on itself, taking the old woman Assen, as depicted in the film Japón *
42
DIEGETIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF REALITY OR AUTHENTICITY AND ARTIFICIALITY
However, Eurydice does not return to Orpheus, only appearing in dreams and during masturbation. Thus, we can say that the hell of «modernity» Reygadas placed not in the bowels of the earth, but on a mountain closer to heaven. It is on the mountain that the boundary between the space of limbo and profane time is located, between immanence and transcendence, albeit with a hybrid status but still bearing nostalgic functions of direct transcendence. Only by crossing this threshold does Reygadas» Hero fail to attain anything transcendent, remaining in the realm of ordinary immanence. The Hero returns home without Eurydice and without the experience of transcendence.55 It is precisely the transcendental style of cinema that allows for the existence of dichotomies such as Nature and Mechanism, Authenticity and Artificiality, City and Province, Future and Past (Present), Child and Adult, Immanence and Transcendence.
«Actually, I believe that my films should be regarded like a forest or, let's say, like the Volga River we are currently sailing on. However, the truth is that neither the forest nor the river contains any ideas. A film should be watched as if it were a forest. Eventually, it starts communicating with you, and it turns out that it does convey certain ideas to you. Personally, for me, the main idea that I want to convey to people is that we are free and that we should always seek our path to freedom the freedom to be together, the freedom in knowledge, in love. That's the main thing».56
43
