I am not a film scholar. However I follow discussions here where they are
informative or interesting. My inquiry is about two films which I watched
recently one after the other in the following order: Silent Light and
Fugitive Pieces.
I found the first film very compelling not because of the narrative in
particular but because I could not stop looking at the film, at the actors
and the settings whether landscape, which was very prominent in the film, or
domestic interiors. Continually there were small gestures on the part of the
characters or technical aspects of the film (the breakfast scene at the
beginning of the film was overlit given the lack of deigetic light) that
kept attention on the act of filming going on. The pacing and strange,
stilted dialogue and the unconventional depiction of sexuality and of
childhood in particular, which might have been alienating, were extremely
insistent. Perhaps this was simply a matter of my own aesthetic sympathy
with Reygadas' style and intention. So what.
It was what happened while watching Fugitive Pieces immediately after Silent
Light - I had an intense experience of the second film as a simulation, a
fabricated cultural artefact. It was as if during the viewing I could not
stop looking at the screen and the blocking and camera movement (not
presence, as in Silent Light), even the actors' repertoires were there to
see. This was a very interesting way to view Fugitive Pieces. I would not
otherwise have been very interested in that film but enjoyed watching the
way it was made.
I am interested in other films that, like Silent Light, are instructive
about how to watch film. Are there some? Or was this experience completely
idiosyncratic and serendipitous. I particularly want to learn to see how
film cuts work.
Joan Guenther
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