Maxwell Menzies – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 28 Sep 2018 02:34:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Maxwell Menzies – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 [final cf] Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter creates engaging, experimental documentaries https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/29/austrian-filmmaker-nikolaus-geyrhalter-creates-engaging-experimental-documentaries/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/29/austrian-filmmaker-nikolaus-geyrhalter-creates-engaging-experimental-documentaries/#respond Fri, 29 Jun 2018 17:12:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142561 Icarus Films recently released a box set of six films by Austrian documentary filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. Geyrhalter focuses his camera on meaningful “human” moments and spaces; he fixates on the beautiful and conflicted states in which we live. His shots linger ambiguously on every image, person and place he chooses to show. As a result, […]

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Icarus Films recently released a box set of six films by Austrian documentary filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. Geyrhalter focuses his camera on meaningful “human” moments and spaces; he fixates on the beautiful and conflicted states in which we live. His shots linger ambiguously on every image, person and place he chooses to show. As a result, his films have a deliberate and slow pacing that can, at points, be taxing. Yet this pace provides ample time for the viewer to digest the content visually and thematically. He can also distance himself from a single cinematic viewpoint or a particular set of politics.

Overall, the films featured in the box set capture stories that are often overlooked. Movies often show the events of destruction or catastrophe, but Geyrhalter’s works focus on the destroyed, the remains, the wasted – oftentimes not in a literal or dramatic sense. These are stories of the periphery of the human experience. I’ll elaborate – unfortunately briefly – in the ways Geyrhalter achieves this in two of his most memorable films.

 

“Homo Sapiens”

This film exclusively consists of images of spaces and forgotten structures. It does not, however, feature “homo sapiens.” Instead, it concentrates on the places they – or we – have left behind. It shows destroyed malls, McDonald’s restaurants and suburban homes being consumed by overgrowth, rain and trash. In showing these places, there is a sense of sadness, knowing that humans have destroyed part of the natural earth and left these things here to rot. Along with remorse, these images raise many questions. Temples are shown, as are great monuments to leaders. There are destroyed theaters. “Places as holy and ancient as these left human-less?” I thought. “What do we do? Fix it?”

Yet something tells me Geyrhalter wouldn’t accept a renovation of these forgotten spots. Despite the apparent degradation, there is an inherent beauty in these locations. The images shown become less about the abject state of these former bowling alleys and plazas, but on their new status as a synthesis of man and nature. He communicates this through the camera’s awareness of space. We are shown a space – for example, a mall with toppled indoor trees. Then, after meditative moments, we cut to yet another view of that same mall with those same trees, and we see the point where the camera was moments ago. The keen awareness of space lends the film perspective. We are the objective camera, exploring a new wilderness of concrete, vines, glass, trees, birds, flies. The film is not presented as a feature length PSA – we are not told that these places are bad, nor are we told how to fix it. Instead, Geyrhalter asserts that since this spot is no longer inhabited by humans, it cannot be regarded as a human space.  

 

“Over the Years”

This film is about the lives of employees at a textile factory and takes place, as the title suggests, over the years. The film is three hours long, and it feels three hours long. Geyrhalter’s unobtrusive style becomes slightly exhausting, as we watch hour on hour of seemingly unedited footage of the lives of these workers. At the same time, it does something I’ve yearned to see in movies for a while: It literally gives us lots of time with the on-screen subjects.

The subtle changes, or lack of change, in their lives becomes perceptible the more you watch these characters. At the beginning of the film, 14 minutes in, a man being interviewed begins to talk unprompted about how he doesn’t talk much, how he likes to be alone and how he has made few enemies. It felt like a moment that a typical documentary would reserve for later in the film, when we have gotten to know this character. This is Geyrhalter’s style, to trade insight for impact. The “confession” in the interview contextualized each of the smaller moments in the man’s life; two hours and presumably years after the first interview, he pulls out a book of his poetry. He helps his senile mother with her dishes, and her napkin falls on the floor behind him. He cares for his garden. This is the same for many of the subjects, for whom the interviews become a monumental plant-and-payoff over hours of viewing.

 

Geyrhalter’s films

Ultimately, Geyrhalter’s movies benefit from the length and exposure, unfortunate though it may be for the casual viewer looking for an easy, tight-knit story. That being said, these films do not lack story. It may be that the stories Geyrhalter tells – stories of people and places on the edge of the cosmopolitan, globalized, (European) experience – just don’t lend themselves to a traditional documentary rendition.

 

Contact Maxwell Menzies at bugzone ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Throwback Thursday: Sergei Parajanov’s ‘The Color of Pomegranates’ is a mystifying masterpiece https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/throwback-thursday-sergei-parajanovs-the-color-of-pomegranates-is-a-mystifying-masterpiece/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/throwback-thursday-sergei-parajanovs-the-color-of-pomegranates-is-a-mystifying-masterpiece/#respond Thu, 31 May 2018 10:25:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141787 Sergei Parajanov’s newly restored “The Color of Pomegranates” is a film about the life and poetry of Armenian poet and musician Sayat Nova.

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Sergei Parajanov’s newly restored “The Color of Pomegranates” is a film about the life and poetry of Armenian poet and musician Sayat Nova. I would be lying if I said I know of the poet, know anything about poetry or know what is happening in the film. Despite my confusion while watching the movie, I was under the impression that I was in the presence of something magnificent. The film delights in unspoken meaning and invites close analysis of its frames, costumes, movement and imagery.

The film begins with shots of Nova’s texts. (Nova’s poetry plays a vital role in the film — it divides the film into “chapters” — ironic since neither films nor poetry have chapters and yet …) These frames, which show the poems written on pages, are very flat. In other shots, Parajanov layers people and objects, spreading them throughout the space of the frame in deep focus. He usually employs wide shots, rarely going close except to examine a religious object or blanched face. He allows the viewer to soak in all of the imagery and begin to dissect what is being said with his arrangement of people in space, their objects and the clothes they wear.

Wardrobe plays a larger role in this film than it does in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — actors are constantly changing costume, disrobing, veiling themselves with clothes or … veils and metamorphosing in-and-out of clothes. Clothes cover the dead, surround the living and conduct color. The second shot shows pomegranates seated on a cloth; their red dye seeps throughout the fabric like sharpie on a piece of paper. Costumes also function to establish character, allowing viewers the opportunity to recognize distinct personages in densely packed shots.

Alongside wardrobe, movement is another item that Parajanov utilizes to differentiate individuals and generate meaning. By movement, I do not refer to camera movement, since the camera remains static for the majority of the film, save for a few pans. Throughout the film, characters perform ritualistic and trancelike processions, swaying their bodies this way and that, moving an object in relation with another. In watching this film, I found myself reading these motions as much as I did reading the pieces in the frame. A man will rotate a human skull toward the camera while he lifts his hands above his eyes. Is this a motion indicative of the poet’s reflections on death? A woman raises a gun to the air and fires, somewhere on the screen someone is hit, though she did not aim at them. This I still cannot decipher, yet its recurrence throughout the film and the consistency with which the moment is captured in each instance seems to suggest a larger theme is at play. This image and ones like it invite a rereading of the film, just as one might reread the poem. Throughout, these movements coincide with equally esoteric tableaus of rotating idols, lambs filling a church, instruments and frames within frames.

Parajanov’s film is comprised of myriad images and symbols, one of them being pomegranates and their color — red. Yet, Parajanov is particularly preoccupied with religious imagery, spaces and thematic content. Many of the poems that start each chapter directly address God — perhaps a Christian god. In addition, the movie takes place in churches and in monasteries. The monastic setting adds more layers of depth to each scene — layers that involve the poet’s life, lifestyle and persecution, and layers that intensify the sense of suffering.

Before I depart, I’d like to reaffirm that I really can’t even begin to digest this film. It is a work of poetry, of film, of sculpture and of ethnography, and to begin to attack it from one angle then uproots aspects of the other, resulting in something fruitless and incomplete, at least as far as I am concerned. This movie is that good. For those with an inclination toward this poetic filmmaking style, Parajanov’s film is a masterpiece. Alas, I lack the proper facilities and ethos to write about this film in more detail than description. In Nova’s own words: “… grief, grief, grief …”

Contact Maxwell Menzies at bugzone ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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