On Cinema Or Why There Will Be No Write-Ups
Have the Write-Ups Already Started?
What a spoiler! Through 200 titles I stuck to the rule of 'show, don't tell', so now, when opening my mouth for the first time, I feel like The Jazz Singer saying 'you ain't heard nothin' yet'. But you have, although you heard a different song, played a different instrument, attended different concerts. That's why I fear that my words will have no meaning to you. I'm not a good writer. I'm not as distinguished a cinephile as some of you think. I don't know much about film. I just watch a lot of movies and try to find more and more films that will move me, that will become personal, that will be relatable, or quite contrary: films that won't be relatable, but films that will offer just a simple way out, escapism.
It's terrifying how I can't even utter a single word about some of my favorite movies, and how I could write a book about others. But then I try to write that book, and what I get is something too personal to publish. Something that I feel only I will understand. Something that perhaps should not be shared. There are some personal things you do not share with others. And I feel the same when asked to talk about some films, fearing I will be exposed. I want to keep some privacy and stay away from the gawkers, no matter how much I respect them.
When talking about our favorites, we don't just have to share the films, but also describe our relationship with them. But more often than not, asking why you love a particular film feels like asking why you love a particular person. The reasons, even if masterfully laid out by a skilled writer, are just a drop in the ocean of our subconsciousness. What moves us, what amazes us, what gives us joy is so deeply ingrained into our very selves, that one might think that a picture, even a single picture, might be a more adequate way of presenting a film than thousands of words. So will words always fail? Is our relationship with our favorite films simply indescribable? But film speaks directly to the heart, therefore the heart should be able to talk directly about film!
Film has always been a part of my life, even though it took me a long time to realize that. When I was a boy of five, I would watch a film, and then watch it again, and again. Flabbergasted at what I initially thought was a perfect recreation of the film every time it broadcast, I asked my mom how come they always manage to recreate it so perfectly. Cinema is not theatre, you see. When I was six I had that ridiculous theory that old films were black and white because the entire world used to be black and white and then somebody decided to color it to humor themselves. Werckmeister Harmonies is my favorite film of all-time and it's always been since August 2011 when I watched it for the first time. Werckmeister Harmonies is the film that made me a cinephile. If this is not good enough a reason to place it as number one, then nothing is. Cinema, very much like us, is an ever-evolving organism that used to be written in silver but now is reduced to a series of ones and zeros. Whatever was alive is dead now. But binary tableaux can be made vivant when a ray of light enters a pupil and goes to the heart. Werckmeister Harmonies has been a favorite for so long that it seems absurd to replace it with anything else, even though I could easily do that and not feel bad about it. I've discovered a few films worthy of number one spot ever since, and sometimes I feel like some other film is taking that number one spot. Hell, you can love many films and not be frowned upon. That's the difference between cinema and relationships.
I have no camera. I don't have work of my own. I only have the work of others. So to me watching is just like creating. Words are my only weapon but I'm a pacifist. I have a flower in my rifle and a flower in my hand. Yes, I just woke up from a dream of cinema. I crossed Paradise in a dream and I received a flower as proof of my passage. Then I woke up and found this flower in my hand. What more can I say?
Cinema is from another dimension, from another space. And in this spatial continuum sometimes you don't want to get back to reality, so you put on another movie, and then another and another, and before you know it, the day is gone. But you don't regret the way you spent it, because you know it was the best possible way of spending your free time. But film isn't just merely plain escapism. If it were, it would be puny, tiny, skippable. But it's anything but. It's powerful, it's all-encompassing, it's life-changing.
Cinema is truth, and the truth is beyond even the most edited and greatest writers. People are far too concerned with the coherence and fashion of writing, and it's amazing how poor of listeners they become to the voices of the beauty of the image. A film lies behind images, even if 24 FPS is supposed to be 24,000 words per second. I'm a troglodyte and troglodytes can't read. That must be why I like watching flickering images on the screen. Way too often when attempting to talk about an absolute favorite of mine, I realize that this film is so personal to me, that I don't even know how to talk around it, so that you are still given all the reasons why I love it and I keep my privacy. But maybe I'm exaggerating. After all, most of my reasons for loving films are perfectly non-personal.
I don't know what it means to be a cinephile, but I know that films can change a life, and that should be enough. A film can change both present and future, and sometimes even past. A film can suffocate you, overpower you. It can take away your breath, it can stir your emotions, and stay in both your mind and your heart, yes, above all in your heart, long after the ending credits roll. Sometimes it takes some faith, some other time it takes heaps of faith. And cinema is the art of believers, so every cinephile has to believe.
Faith is important. Even atheists believe in something, anything. So it can just as well be film. And then I ponder what makes a film better than another film, seemingly just as great. I'm thinking about The Passion of Joan of Arc. What can you learn from a film that's 92 years old? You can learn a lot. First of all, you can learn how a face, a grimace can change, expressing emotions just as much as the interior of one's body and soul. How a face can transmit sadness and move the hearts of men. Light changes not only the way this very face looks but also the way we look. Changes our perception of film, that is cinema as a whole, by extending our film dictionary with a plethora of new terms, two of them more important than the rest: Light (that of God, of human being, of camera lens penetrating a character, baring her body and soul) and Beauty (often found in tragedy, in pain, in suffering but also in hope and faith). A handful of silent masterpieces were made but none with such ascetic, penetrating insight into the soul of what it really means to be a saint, to be human, to suffer, to stay true to oneself, to live - if not on Earth and in Heaven then on Earth and in cinephiles' hearts.
But all this is just pretentious talk. Dreyer made Falconetti kneel on pea grains to get a believable performance out of her. How does this all make the film a masterpiece?
I'm thinking about August in the Water. 'Ultimate proto-vaporwave seapunk new age teen romance masterpiece' sounds trite. 'Sounds and textures oozing with orgone' doesn't mean anything. The film? Since her drop of blood can make tap water run again, it's essentially her death, or rather reconciliation with Mother Nature, that will make the stone disease go away, and will save the city from drought, people from dying. The idea of chips inside people's brains allowing them to communicate with each other might be just another name for the Internet or a scary mind-control story premise, but such freedom, such power should come from a higher being, and since the girl could talk to dolphins, she understood plants, and all Nature, she in a way became a sort of Messiah, and a connector between God and people. She also had to die, to save all Mankind from turning into stone. People are just travelers, just guests on Earth. Earth is much older than us, and it will be here long after we're gone. Our relation to Earth is just that. Earth is life. Water is life. People who don't need water to live are essentially people who don't need Nature to live, which subsequently means some sort of dystopian horror story. The little earthquakes that happen at least two times throughout the movie seem to be the Earth itself saying "I'm here". It's its message to people, its warning. "You're not my masters, you should serve me, not vice versa". The last couple of minutes fast-forward the boy's entire life after the girl's disappearance. The boy is now an old man with brain disease who starts questioning the entire thing, asking what is real, what is memories and what he made up. I think the ending is absolutely beautiful because to me the ending says: it was all true, and just as I said that I will always be with you any time you want me, here I am. I am a part of you, just like we're all a part of Earth, of nature, of the world that surrounds us, of beauty and love. Here I am - reaching my hands to you. Mother Earth. Your love. Your solace. Embrace me. It's been so many years. You sacrificed your life to study the phenomenon, the unknown, but I've been here all the time. I've been with you. Don't try to understand the mystery of life. Just live it.
But I don't really care that much about the environment. Why talk about it, then? Why do I really love August in the Water? Why? Well, don't try to understand the mystery of life. Just live it. Don't try to understand what others love. Find something you love, and love that dearly. And once you found it, stick to it and don't lose it. But I lost it. Does cinema reflect that loss? Do I find solace in film? Is this the great mystery? Am I just a ridiculous man who hopes cinema will heal me? I keep searching and in the meantime let cinema fuel my dreams. I'm not as big as I once thought. "To see is to be.", I thought, but then I met a blind girl and my world collapsed. There are 700 million women in China. 3.9 billion in the world.
But quite indeed As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. Retroactively. But indeed. Should I retreat into some silent place and work it all out by myself, I asked. No, the voice said. You should stay here and continue doing what you are doing and work it all out the difficult way. The easy way will save your soul only; the difficult way will save your soul and a few others. So this is your choice: Salvation by yourself, or salvation together with others. If I was a woodcutter, I'd cut. If I was a fire, I'd burn. But I'm a cinephile so I watch films. That's the only thing I can do. And following Godard's logic, even if I might have forgotten how to light the fire, I still know how to tell the story.
Cinema is my benefactor. It taught me to understand love toward other human beings. Take from this text what you will. I tried to condense my entire philosophy on life, love, cinema in this write-up, and to make up for the lack of write-ups next to individual films. This text makes up for them a thousandfold, but I think that only I can fully understand why and how. And only you could understand such a text if you wrote one. Life is a difficult art. Try to live beautifully.