Человек с киноаппаратом

Если есть в мире фильм, который я готов смотреть бесконечное число раз, то это Человек с киноаппаратом.

Кто-то остался пить кофе в баре на первом этаже, а кого-то я все же уговорил подняться в музыкальный магазин наверху. Мы договорились встретиться через час на мосту через реку Клайд. На том самом мосту, где The Pastels снимали видео на "Crawl Babies". Кажется, я купил Carrington Street. Один из лучших альбомов года стоил ровно два фунта. Но дело в другом. Проходя мимо стенда с фильмами (причем их было так мало, и их названия настолько ни о чем мне не говорили, что каждый их них должен был быть шедевром), я обратил внимание на советский футуризм 20-х. Обложка так отдавала Маяковским и так явно выпирала буквами и цветами, что я почти отдал последние деньги. 

А через час, на мосту, кто-то открыл сумку и достал тот самый фильм. И восторженно рассказал мне про Человека с киноаппаратом Дзиги Вертова, советский немой фильм 1929 года.

Самое надежное оправдание старому, которое я слышал, дал один американский критик: некоторые вещи нужно воспринимать как часть истории. Не пытаться вписать их в современный контекст, но оставить в прошлом и просто попытаться воспринять как то, что произошло тогда. В 1966 году. Или даже в 17 веке. Это врезалось в память, и когда я наконец собрался смотреть Человека с киноаппаратом, через несколько лет после того дня на реке Клайд, я купил бутылку вина и в тысячный раз проговорил про себя слова американского критика.

Как оказалось, зря.

Ни вина, ни слов не понадобилось. И было наплевать на рейтинг Sight & Sound. Это кадры, от которых совершенно невозможно оторваться. В каждой сцене, которая пропадает тут же, за секунду, есть фраза Эйзенштейна о том, что настоящее искусство основано на противоречии. И музыка, наверное, самое яркое из них. По крайней мере, самое очевидное. Есть огромное количество саундтреков к этому фильму, но мой любимый - The Cinematic Orchestra. Контраст современного оркестра и бесконечных черно-белых трамваев постепенно сводит с ума. 

Хотя все это, конечно, напрашивается на эксперимент. В последний раз я включил The Gamble (Nonkeen) 2016 года, и кадры произвели совершенно другое впечатление.

Плакаты, карточки, счеты… Баскетбольные кольца с рыболовной сетью. Бахметьевский автобусный парк. Люди, спящие на городских скамейках. Странным образом, по-детски непосредственным, все это выходит за революционные рамки техник, на которые способна камера первой половины прошлого века. Монтаж, ускоренные и замедленные съемки. Это вряд ли может свести с ума. Но вид советских трамваев сводит. Прыжки с шестом сводят. Стрижка волос, которая гипнотизирует. 

Сегодня я писал про Комнату, в которой восхищает в первую очередь свет. Здесь поражает абсолютная внутренняя свобода. Отсутствие внутренних барьеров, которое, в сочетании с безупречным вкусом Вертова, создает шедевр. Секундный кадр рождения ребенка - это вольность. Это немыслимая свобода. Это опередило время, которое еще даже не началось. Но в этом нет ни капли напускного. 

Ну и мысль о том, что это 1929 год. И что, черт возьми, могло бы быть, если бы девочка с ружьем попала не в Гитлера, а в кого-то другого. И человек с киноаппаратом продолжил снимать. Вот так свободно. Появляясь то здесь, то там. То пропадая в пивном баре, то возвышаясь над городом.     

Room

Emotionally, nothing even comes close. Once the impossible happens and Room wins it tonight, my faith in humanity will be fully restored. I promise. 

Perhaps the best thing about Room is the light. The white light that worms its way into your heart despite the fact that the first half is pure claustrophobic horror. One of those harrowing maniac stories you see on the news and fail to translate into real life.

The light comes through the roof window, and through the eyes of a child hiding in the wardrobe while the room is shaking for reasons he cannot yet comprehend. 

This should be unbearable. And it is. I know a grown man who cried three times watching it. I'd say you have to be a monster not to. It's not mawkish. It's life-affirming. The tears are tough.

And of course you hate child actors. Why wouldn't you. Those little bastards spoiling every scene each time they are supposed to do something meaningful. Room has changed it for me. This is not Jodie Foster playing a young prostitute, this is a boy of five not once faking it for two hours. 

I had no idea it would come to this back when I first saw a Lee Abrahamson film. What Richard Did was good but depressing. Frank was quirky in the best way. But Room... Bloody hell.

Naked Lunch

It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.

Naked Lunch is the greatest film about writing. Not The Shining. Not Barton Fink. Not Adaptation. For all their inspired insanity, those films treat writing like a rational process. It isn't. As William Lee says in one of the opening scenes of Naked Lunch, you first have to ‘exterminate all rational thought’. You need Burroughs. You need Cronenberg. And you need a major juxtaposition in the form of a poker-faced Peter Weller and the repulsive images of crushed bugs. Then you can get close to it.

I first watched Naked Lunch when I was 19. An old woman, a great art lover who died as quietly as she lived, brought it to me on a scratchy DVD (no cheap Internet downloads in those days) that also contained The Night Porter. As it turned out, I hated The Night Porter and loved Naked Lunch. I fell in love with the very first shot.

New York City, 1953. The red door.

The sound of free jazz, a smart looking man in a suit exterminating bugs. People saying stuff like 'I gave up writing when I was 10. It's dangerous'. Judy Davis getting high on bug powder. Typewriters transforming into genitalia. Centipedes crawling in your bathroom. Talking insects. Naked Lunch is a film you watch with your senses, not with your intellect. Your intellect explodes the moment you enter Interzone.

Interzone is, of course, a perfect metaphor. A place of queers, black meat and strange typewritten reports. I still believe the Davis-Weller scene in the Frosts' apartment is one of the most unforgettable and disturbing scenes in world cinema. It got me more than anything in Videodrome, which should say a lot. And it's always wonderful to see Judy Davis do her mannerisms. This is the muse of Barton Fink taken to extremes. 

Existentialism was about absurdity. The Theatre of the Absurd was absurdity itself. Likewise, Naked Lunch is not just about writing. It is writing. It's Franz Kafka on very heavy drugs.

Evening Gown

There's absolutely no reason why anyone should be saying what I'm about to say, but let's spare a thought for a Mick Jagger ballad. I'm not even talking about "Angie" (God help us all, but I won't hear anyone knocking that tune), I'm talking about a Mick Jagger ballad in the 90s.

Cheesy overproduced heartfelt romantic balladry. May well have been suited for MTV for all I care. Things like the bloody "Angel In My Heart" which I first heard on some dodgy and downbeat Stones/Jagger  compilation a thousand years ago. Sitting side by side with Richards's "Slipping Away" and Jagger's equally fantastic "Evening Gown". Those fucking tunes.

I could listen to "New Faces" for days on end. Nobody can resist a harpsichord, and the middle eight tugs at my heartstrings like they cannot snap. That opening piano of "Out Of Tears" that sounds like you've lost the last shred of taste and where the hell is your Sticky Fingers? The power chorus of "Blinded By Rainbows" that erupts in the sort of poetry that make you think of every reason why you are supposed to hate Aerosmith?

There's no question that he went too far on "Always Suffering" which is a bit too fucking much even for a drunken night in, but the falsetto of "Already Over Me" is a thing of beauty that you fail to copy (embarrassingly) when singing along. 

Mick Jagger's ballads in the 90s had zero regard for your taste, which is something you should quietly admire. Love the moon, love the goddamn eclipse.

The Look Of Silence

The horror is not visual but it is relentless, and you watch this till your eyeballs start to bleed. The horror, it feels, is a matter of fact. Or, one can argue (an Indonesian mass murderer certainly would), a matter of history.

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act Of Killing was pure brutal fascination. It was irresistible because it was grotesque. You had a million people who died during the genocide in Indonesia in 1965-1966, and here you saw those decrepit sons of bitches smiling smugly to the camera and gushing over the details of how they tortured and murdered their victims. A little less farcical, and you could throw up. As it was, you held on squeamishly and tried to make some sense of a completely different civilization.

The Look Of Silence is an afterthought. Oppenheimer's attempt to go a little further and try to make sense of what actually happened in Indonesia in mid-60s. At some point you feel he almost gets there, to some horrible revelation, but deep down you know he doesn't stand a chance. And nor does the quiet little Indonesian man facing the killers of his elder brother. Getting close would burn you down. Getting close would require you drinking the blood of those murderers.

Which is what those murderers apparently did: they drank the blood of the people they killed. The rational justification is grotesque, but you get to hear it again and again. They did it not to go insane. Decades later, there's no remorse and hardly a breath of apology. Decades later, they were obedient soldiers doing their job. Decades later, it was all bloody politics.

Another fruitless encounter, and you know the whole premise is an illusion. You can't get through. Sometimes there's no truth beneath human nature, and you are only left with a few horrific images that will stay with you for a very long time. Like the restless jowls, swirling insanely, of another sorry bastard who used to drink blood and cut off human genitalia. The past, someone like him says, should never be stirred up. Or else it will happen again. 

If there’s one thing that Joshua Oppenheimer gets out of this, it’s that history doesn't equal fact. History is emotional. It's the sweat and the tears. And the blood, too.

January: 5 Albums

DAVID BOWIE – Blackstar

Only Bowie could make complexity this accessible. You can have your Bish Bosch, I’ll have Blackstar. It’s a scary record, jazzy and unsettling, and while nothing comes close to the first three songs (note that I still prefer the album version of “Sue”), it will all get imprinted on your psyche for a very long while. Bowie could always put things into context, whatever that context was. 8/10  

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER – New View

I have no idea what her brother is up to these days (or her ex-boyfriends, for that matter), but Eleanor’s third album is just as good as the previous two. Sweet and charismatic, or how else do you explain the effortless way in which she pulls off “Because I Asked You”?.. Just great songwriting. 8/10

MASSIVE ATTACK – Ritual Spirit EP

I’ve always preferred Portishead, but that’s marginal. Ritual Spirit is one hell of an EP, and I do mean hell. Each of these four songs is creepy and intense in its own particular way, but –unsurprisingly – the collaboration with Tricky works best. “Take It There” is easily the best thing I’ve heard all year. Like “A Wolf At The Door” on painkillers, only better. Better than anything Tricky has done in a decade.  7/10

JESU / SUN KIL MOON – S/T

Each time I listen to a new Mark Kozelek album, I feel like I’m being fucked over. Is he trying? Is this taking self-indulgence to a whole new level? And – this time – what’s with the gushing fan letters? But I just like the style. I realise this is close to cheating (“Exodus” is him talking about the tragic death of Nick Cave’s son) and the shortest song here is six fucking minutes, but as long as you are not a hipster who got into him through Benji (a line from a fan letter)… Jesu add some heaviness, but this is all about Kozelek’s ghosts. 7/10

TINDERSTICKS – The Waiting Room

Tindersticks doing their thing. Intricate, atmospheric music for night people who prefer to stay at home. Lots of pleasant subtleties underneath, and I appreciate that they are trying new things (again, this is all very subtle and only a seasoned fan would notice – or care). “How He Entered” is one of those spoken-word beauties nobody can do as well as them. There’s always a sense that they are teasing you, Tindersticks, never giving you the whole thing. And The Waiting Room is indeed a very intriguing album.  7/10

P.S. Oh, and Ty Segall is boring, Suede’s new album is badly humourless (“Tightrope” is excellent though), and John Cale totally butchered one of his best albums.