This was a reaction we were supposed to write to four films we saw in our experimental film class we have on Fridays. She said to write how the film affected or didn't affect us. I just sent it to my facilitator.
I still don’t understand the allure film holds. I sat there in the first class slightly disoriented. I think part of the reason I wanted to do a class on film was to re-affirm my love for it. To take myself seriously and start piecing together the foundation of a hopefully slightly more enlightened film-viewer.
Fitzcarraldo was slightly bizarre. Knowing nothing about its background and very little of its context must’ve made us sound like quite the robotic duds I assume. I felt trapped and small when you got angry at our naïve reactions. The tension in the room was palpable as was your poker face and after that first class I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought of you or the film.
I think my initial reaction to the film was nothing much to speak about. After you telling us that Herzog actually had to drag a ship over the mountain did the enormity of what I had watched dawn on me. Watching Kinski’s face fill up that room, constantly exuding this conflict of emotions made me wonder if I had ever in my life been passionate enough to build an opera in the middle of the jungle or even possess the strength and will to drag a ship over a mountain. Fitzcarraldo made me realize that the uncertainty of the flow of the film was not just necessary but also added to it this stark,raw, untouchable beauty. I realized that the gaps in the flow of the film, its disquieting silence, had raised in me a lot more questions that the dialogues itself.
My Best Fiend on the other hand left me so overwhelmed I can’t even begin to explain it. I was bowled over and instantly in awe of Kinski and Herzog and my mind would wander back to the both of them at the most seemingly random times. I loved the film from start to finish. It was so intriguing to study a person like Kinski. What a beautiful mess of a man. I googled him quite a bit. Read an extensive interview his first daughter had done for a magazine. I tried to piece together the rest of his life. Putting this film down in words wouldn’t do it any justice. But my mind randomly wanders back to it. The film was like reading a really interesting novel with an abrupt end. Leaving you amazed at how less you know of the black, white and everything in between, a sense of loss and a yearning for more.
Throne of Blood was a film I couldn’t help but compare to Macbeth. Washizu’s wife was chilling and I liked how her role in the film was handled the most. Just when I thought I had fully grasped her character, she showed a humane side to her that was startling. What got me most about this film was that one frame where Washizu and Miki walk towards the King in this slow coordinated dance. With fires blazing behind them as they come forward to accept the King’s reward for their victory. Directors love to flirt with grand themes like greed and ambition and whilst it was interesting watching this film. I didn’t connect with it like I did with My Best Fiend. I watched Throne of Blood with interest and made all the right noises in the right places. But it was distant. It was something that might maybe come back to me later, when I encounter the aforementioned emotions with a similar kind of intensity and obsession, but as for my initial reaction to the film, I don’t have much to say.
The Seventh Seal again was a film I enjoyed thoroughly. I like how the main character voiced many doubts I have had myself. I thought the personification of Death was extremely interesting and I love when the director adds numerous layers to it in terms of the name of the film, interspersed with symbolism, unusual camera angles and a heavy plot. Some scenes from this film too will be etched in my memory for awhile. The most remarkable of them being the Dance of Death over that hill.
I have been ruminating all that you have said in class about keeping yourself open to experiences and it were your words in my head this one night when I trusted three different sets of strangers completely only to be horribly disappointed in each of them. While this experience has disheartened me considerably, I have realized that had it not been for you constantly goading us into keeping our windows slightly open, this strange experience with a couple of random people would’ve never happening. Unavoidable and distasteful as it was, I believe I learnt a very strong lesson that day.
Its not very often that I get to test out what I learnt in class out in the real world almost immedietly. Watching these movies made my real people, about real lives makes me feel like I am one step closer to achieving that somehow. Be it talking to someone I had never considered my type or re-evaluating someone I had previously written off. Also, I am also recently coming out of the need to constantly have a beautiful end product for a course. I realize how some courses, as this one, are meant for the awakening of a deeper more intelligent side of the human consciousness. The ‘other’ reality as you said in class. Other than the fact that I obsessively google all the movies you show us and unhealthily keep mulling them over in the back of my head, four movies down, I can’t really say I have transformed completely as a person or that I am suddenly going to produce reams of beautiful analysis or become a film-maker one day [actually, who is to say?], but it makes me rethink a lot of my values. Values that form the skeletal framework of my mind. It makes me revisit the understood and turn its basic foundation upside down. And what is more is that- this is just the beginning.
Sincerely,
Koyal Chengappa
