Film Review

This is a list of how we operate. Its useful reading for all volunteers.Operating Schedule for The Star and Shadow Cinema

1. Nature of venue:

1.1 The Star and Shadow Cinema (hereafter referred to as “The Premises”) is an 80-seat cinema with a café/bar social space, offices and vestibule.

1.2 The Premises is planned to run as a membership venue. This membership is not part of the license but is instigated in a social capacity. It is also as a way to raise revenue and will help as a security measure as numbers on Premises can be regulated. Unless we change our plans, membership will be compulsory for all patrons. We will not change these plans without consultation with the Licensing Authority. Membership will be available at a minimal cost and our policy is not to turn away visitors for lack of funds. In such cases membership fees may be waived although membership rules will still hold. The membership rules explain the nature of the Premises and ask members to respect and support these. The Premises is a small venture run as a benefit to a broad community and to promote cultural activities beyond the mainstream. As such, our membership is open to all and will only be restricted if allowing membership would constitute a breach of the licensing objectives and general safety.

1.3 The Premises is run as a Community Interest Company and staffed entirely by volunteers. This allows for as little hierarchy in our structure as possible and to be open to new volunteers at any point. It also allows our costs to be much less in running the venue. All volunteers are members of the company and can be part of decision making on issues at meetings. All volunteers working in a public capacity will be trained to the standards laid out in the Operating Schedule and any risk assessment or other health and safety documents.

1.4 Our clientele will vary depending on our programme, but the majority will be sympathetic to our position as a socially conscious, volunteer-run space promoting local, ethical and fair trading policies as far as possible and an open policy with our programming.

2. Opening Hours

2.1 Standard public opening hours during which film screenings or other licensable entertainment may be take place:
10am-12am Sun-Thurs
10am-1am Fri- Sat

2.2 Hours during which alcohol may be sold:
3pm-11pm Mon-Thurs
3pm-12am Fri
12pm-12am Sat
12pm-11pm Sun

2.3 Our closing times are in line with The Tanners public house opposite.

2.4 Last entry will be at the end of serving time.

2.5 The hour after last orders allows for winding down the evening slowly and for staggered leaving.

2.6 Special hours:
We will make ACPO applications for special hours opening to the police 14 days in advance of any such events, up to 12 times per year as agreed by the Licensing Authority.

2.7 Due to the nature of the Premises its is possible that the Premises will not be open all the times stated as opening depends on programmed events, staff availability and audience interest.

2.8 Staff have 24-hour access to the building

2.9 A conspicuous notice will be displayed on or immediately outside the Premises adjacent to the entrance to the Premises that gives details of the times when the Premises are permitted to be open for any licensable activity.

3 Smoking

3.1 Smoking will be allowed in all areas of the building aside from the auditorium until such time as the law changes on smoking in public venues. We may choose to restrict smoking in certain areas.

3.2 When children under 16 are present we will make every effort to ensure they are not affected by smoking. 

4 Screenings of films

4.1 There is one fixed screen at the cinema in the auditorium. From time to time we will screen films more informally in the café.

4.2 Most screenings will be in the evenings though we may also show films during the day within our opening hours and occasional ‘midnight movies’ when we have late openings.

4.3 The nature of the films shown at the Premises means that not all of them are certificated. (see 26)

5 Music and dancing

5.1 The Social area will have background music during opening hours. A license for playing copyrighted material will also be in place if such music is played.

5.2 On evenings where there are no films and after films we may employ a DJ to play music.

5.3 There is a provision for dancing in the social space and in the auditorium.

5.4 Live music events will take place in the auditorium or in the social space. Both spaces are soundproofed.

6. Sale of Alcohol

6.1 We will use ‘meter measuring equipment’ for the sale of spirits.

6.2 No patrons shall be allowed to leave the Premises whilst in the possession of any drinking vessel or open glass bottle, whether empty or containing beverage. (This condition shall not apply to patrons who have purchased beverages for consumption off the Premises (within the curtilage of the Premises licensed area) with the express consent of the Licensee, DPS or responsible person).

6.3 Alcoholic drinks shall only be sold for consumption off the Premises as closed bottles.

6.4 All members of staff at the Premises shall seek credible photographic proof of age evidence from any person who appears to be under the age of 18 years and who is seeking to purchase or consume alcohol on the Premises. Such credible evidence, which shall include a photograph of the customer, will either be a passport, photographic driving license or proof of age card carrying the PASS logo.

6.5 A suitably worded sign of sufficient size and clarity will be displayed at the point of entry to the Premises and in a suitable location at any points of sale, advising customers that they may be asked to produce evidence of their age.

6.6 The licensee shall not advertise, promote, sell or supply alcoholic drinks in such a way that is intended of likely to encourage persons to consume alcohol to an excessive extent.

6.7 Any reduced price offers will be in conjunction with other activities, such as a ‘Friends’ membership scheme entitling patrons to a complimentary drink at the bar; special events may include a complimentary drink with the price of entrance. Short dated drinks may be sold at a slightly reduced price in order to prevent waste. Any special offers will be in place for whole days.

6.8 The licensee shall not sell or supply alcoholic drinks in such a way which will enable, or which is intended to enable, persons to consume unlimited quantities of alcoholic drinks on payment of a single payment or a payment arrangement which is not related to the quantity or volume of alcoholic drinks supplied.

7. Late Night Refreshment

7.1 Within our opening hours we will make available for sale hot drinks.

7.2 If plans are introduced to serve hot food, we may make this available within our opening hours.

8.Capacity:

8.1 The maximum number of persons permitted on the Premises at any one time shall not exceed that recommended by the relevant authority

8.2 As all patrons will be members, entrance will include becoming a member or showing a membership card to a trained staff member. Numbers of patrons will therefore be counted in and out of the Premises. This will allow the license holder, Designated Premises Supervisor (DPS) or manager for that day to be aware of the number of people on the Premises at any time, and to provide this information to any authorised person on request.

8.3 Membership and ticketing ensures the auditorium will not go beyond capacity. The social space will also be maintained through membership entrance. On occasions where we may reach capacity the DPS or manager for the evening will support the member of staff on the door to ensure capacity is not breached.

8.4 The maximum number of persons permitted on the licensed Premises, or relevant parts of the Premises, shall be indicated by a fixed notice bearing the words “Maximum Occupancy” with letters and numbers not less than 20mm high conspicuously sited (at each relevant part of the Premises and) at the reception point to the Premises.

9. Private hire

9.1 We will make the Premises available for private hire.

9.2 Private hire will not entail the visitors becoming members

9.3 In all other respects, private hire events will be staffed and run in accordance with the Operating Schedule.

9.4 In the case of a private hire, capacity will be a part of the hire agreement. Staff will be instructed to ensure capacity is not breached.

10. Seating

10.1 Seating shall be provided for all cinema patrons in the cinema. Seating will usually be available in the café as standard but will be available on request at all times the Premises are open for licensable activity.

10.2 A copy of the seating plan will be available at the Premises to be shown to any authorised person on request.
 
10.3 All staff will be trained in the safe use of the auditorium which includes the following rules:
(i)No article must be attached to the back of any seat which would reduce the clear width of seatways or cause a tripping hazard or obstruction.
(ii) Sitting on floors is not permitted except in front of the first row of seats and by the attendants when a chair would obstruct a fire exit.
(iii) In no circumstances will anyone (except for a single attendant as above) be permitted to –
(a) sit in any gangway;
(b) stand or sit in front of any exit; or
(c) stand or sit on any staircase including any landings.
(iv) Any drinks sold to be consumed in the auditorium will not be supplied in glass containers.

10.4 A copy of any certificate relating to the design, construction and loading of any temporary seating will be kept available at the Premises and shown to any authorised person on request.

11 Toilet facilities

11.1 The provision for toilets in the Premises is beyond the minimum recommendation of the licensing policy. There are 5 WCs and 2 washbasins for females; 3 WCs, 2 urinals and 2 washbasins for males; 1 disabled access WC with 1 washbasin (unisex); 1 WC and 1 washbasin for staff.

12 Disability access

12.1 The Premises has been designed to ensure access is not restricted due to disability. This includes the auditorium, entrance and exits to the Premises, the fire plan and the toilet facilities. We will always support the broadest range of audience accessing our activities.

13 Staffing:

13.1 The Licensee shall ensure that at all times when the Premises is open for any licensable activity there are sufficient competent staff on duty at the Premises for the purpose of fulfilling the terms and conditions of the License for promoting the Licensing Objectives.

13.2 Minimum staff requirements are:

Film screening or other event in cinema:
3 (1 door/membership, 1 usher/bar, 1 projectionist/bar).

This is in line with the Licensing Statement. As such, the usher will not be engaged in any other duties that would hinder the prompt discharge of their duties in the event of an emergency or entail their absence from the auditorium when on duty for the duration of the screening and until all patrons have left the auditorium. Attendants will be readily identifiable to the audience although they may not be wearing a uniform.

Evening Café/bar event only:
2 members of staff (door/membership, bar)

Day café only
1 member of staff to cover membership and bar

13.3 Each of the above cases represents the minimum number of staff. Many screenings and events will attract very small audiences and this number of staff would be sufficient. In the case of events which are expected to be busy or reach capacity we will aim to have more staff available.

13.3 There shall be phone points available in the café and the projection booth for emergency purposes.

13.4 Staffing will be managed by the DPS along with other volunteers that run the Operations team, ensuring that there are enough staff available for each event. The Operations team is a group of volunteers that meet regularly to plan the staffing of the cinema and training of staff.

13.5 The DPS is Ilana Mitchell, who has good management and bar skills.

13.6 Due to the nature of the Premises as a volunteer project we are likely to have a reasonably large pool of staff, some of whom will not work very often. All volunteers will be trained either by the DPS or by Jo Burke (volunteer and personal license holder) or by a regular volunteer who has been trained by one of the personal license holders or any other volunteers that become personal license holders. The training will include the rules set out in this operating schedule. All volunteers will sign a form to say they have been trained. A separate training for volunteer projectionists will also be in operation.

14 Public Safety

14.1 All staff will be trained in security and public safety. Routine safety checks will be carried out before the admission of the public, details of which will be kept in a logbook. The safety checks and training will correspond with the risk assessment and the conditions of the license.

14.2 When disabled people are present, adequate arrangements will be in place to enable their safe evacuation in the event of an emergency. All staff will be trained to be aware of disabilities and react according to a pre-determined plan. This will include making disabled people on the Premises aware of the arrangements in place to enable their safe evacuation in the event of an emergency.

14.3 All escape routes and exists will be kept unobstructed in good order with nonslippery and even surfaces free of trip hazards and clearly identified.

14.4 All exit doors, whenever the premise are occupied, will be easily openable in the case of an emergency without the use of a key card, code or similar means.

14.5 All exit doors will be regularly checked to ensure that they function satisfactorily and a record of the check kept.

14.6 Any removable security fastenings will be removed whenever the Premises are open to the public or occupied by staff.

14.7 All fire doors will be maintained effectively self-closing and will not be held open other than by the approved devices.

14.8 Fire resisting doors to ducts, service shafts, and cupboards will be kept locked shut to prevent unauthorised access and preserve integrity.

14.9 The edge of the treads of steps or stairways will be maintained and conspicuous.

14.10 Drinking water (e.g. tap water) shall be available or served to patrons in sufficient quantities at all times when patrons are present on the Premises.

15 Fire Alarm and evacuation

15.1 The fire alarm on the Premises has been designed to and installed in accordance with British Standard 5838 current edition by ADT and will be maintained by them regularly as required.

15.2 Fire fighting equipment: the premise holds fire extinguishers and other fire fighting equipment in line with recommendations from the relevant authority. All staff will be trained in their use and in the evacuation procedure in the event of a fire alarm.

15.3 Notices detailing the actions to be taken in the event of fire or other emergency, including how to summon the fire brigade, will be prominently displayed and protected from damage and deterioration.

15.4 The responsible person where there is an outbreak of fire, however slight, will raise the alarm, evacuate the building, and call the fire brigade. Following the incident, the responsible person will ensure that the details are recorded in a Fire Log Book. Any remedial work necessary to restore fire precautions to their original standard will be completed with systems fully functional prior to re-admittance of the public.

15.5 The responsible person will notify the Licensing Authority as soon as possible if the water supply to any hydrant, hose-reel, sprinkler, drencher or other fire extinguishing installation is cut off or restricted.

15.6 Access to the Premises for emergency vehicles will be kept clear and free from obstruction.

16 Fire Prevention

16.1 Upholstered seating will meet, on a continual basis, the pass criteria for smoldering ignition source 0, flaming ignition source 1 and crib ignition source 5 when tested in accordance with section 5 of BS 5852:1990 or equivalent standard.

16.2 All hangings, curtains and temporary decorations will be maintained in a flame retardant condition.

16.3 All hangings, curtains and temporary decorations will be arranged so as not to obstruct exits, fire safety signs or fire fighting equipment

16.4 Prior advice will be sought from the Licensing Authority before temporary decorations are used, and the risk assessment amended accordingly.

16.5 As the Premises is a cinema and film production resource, flammable film will be kept on the Premises. All film will be kept within the designated areas for film storage when not in use. No other flammable films will be allowed on the Premises without the prior notification of the licensing authority/fire authority.

17 First Aid

17.1 Adequate and appropriate equipment and materials will be provided for enabling first aid to be rendered to members of the public if they are injured or become ill whilst at the licensed Premises.

17.2 As the premise is run by volunteers, and has a small capacity, training will include the necessity to appoint a member of staff to take charge in any situation relating to an injured or ill member of the public every time the Premises are open. Steps will be taken to ensure that as many volunteers as possible are trained as first aiders but due to the nature of the Premises, it may not always be possibly to have a first aider on site.

18 Lighting and emergency lighting

18.1 As the building does not get much daylight, it is fitted with lighting in all areas accessible to the public, members or guests.

18.2 The cinema lighting has been designed to meet the purpose of the cinema and be as great as possible consistent with the effective presentation of the film, complying with the standards specified in BS CP 1007 (Maintained Lighting for Cinemas).

18.3 Fire safety signs will be adequately illuminated.

18.4 Emergency lighting has been designed in accordance with BS5266 (current edition) or an equivalent standard approved by the Licensing Authority and will not be altered without prior consent of the Licensing Authority.

18.5 The emergency lighting system will be checked to ensure it is operating correctly before the admission of the public, members or guests.

18.6 In the event of the failure of normal lighting, where the emergency lighting battery has a capacity of one hour, arrangements will be in place to ensure that the public, members or guests leave the Premises immediately. Where the emergency lighting battery has a capacity greater than one hour the public, members or guests may remain in the Premises for the duration of the system less one hour. Note: In addition an investigation into any failure of the system must be carried out to ascertain whether it is safe for persons to remain in the Premises when only the emergency lighting is operating.

18.7 The entrance to the Premises faces away from the residential areas in the vicinity and as such lighting should not cause a nuisance. Any signage or security lighting will be designed so as not to cause nuisance to neighbouring or adjoining properties.

19 Sport

19.1 No sport will take place on the Premises in a licensensable capacity.

20 Alterations

20.1 No alterations will be made to the Premises which make it impossible to comply with an existing license condition without first seeking a variation of the Premises license proposing the deletion of the condition in question. In such cases the licensee will propose a new operating schedule reflecting the proposed alteration to the Premises and will outline intended alternative steps to promote the public safety objective and amend the risk assessment accordingly.

20.2 Temporary electrical wiring and distribution systems must not be provided without notification to the licensing authority at least ten days before commencement of the work and prior inspection by a suitable qualified electrician. Premises must not be opened to the public until the work is deemed satisfactory by the above parties.

20.3 Where it is not possible to give ten days notification to the licensing authority of provision of temporary electrical wiring and distribution systems, the work must be undertaken by competent, qualified persons.

20.4 Temporary electrical wiring and distribution systems will comply with the recommendations of BS7671 or where applicable BS7909.

20.5 All temporary electrical wiring and distribution systems will be inspected and certified by a competent person before they are put to use.

21 Special effects:
21.1 Where special effects are intended for use, including:
– dry ice machines and cryogenic fog
– smoke machines and fog generators
– pyrotechnics, including fireworks
– real flame
– firearms
– motor vehicles
– strobe lighting
– lasers
– explosives and highly flammable substances
the responsible person will notify the Licensing Authority and submit a relevant risk assessment at least ten days prior to the event. In the case of any other special effects with safety implications prior notification will be given in writing to the responsible licensing authority at least 10 days before the event with details as to their use to enable the Authority to consider if further inspection by the Fire Authority is necessary. It may be required that staff trained in fire prevention and extinction be present during any such performance

21.2 Any special effects or mechanical installation will be arranged and stored to minimise any risk to the safety of the audience, the performers and staff.

21.3 All special effects will be tested before public performance in respect of audience safety and to ensure that there is sufficient ventilation and extraction to avoid activation of fire protection equipment.

PUBLIC NUISANCE

22 Sound levels

22.1 The café and the cinema auditorium are two sections of an existing brick built building inside the brick built exterior of the Premises. (see plans). The auditorium is the middle section and is soundproofed on all four walls and ceiling. The café area is the section closest to Stepney Bank, furthest from the residential areas in the vicinity. The café has been soundproofed on the ceiling and is sound insulated by its position and design. Noise and vibration will not be audible outside the Premises.

22.2 External doors will be kept closed except for access and egress. This will be maintained by a self-closing mechanism and staff checks.

22.3. Noise generated by amplified music will be controlled and kept at or below the level determined by the Local Authority Environmental Health Officer, such level being confirmed in writing to the Licensee.

22.4 Loading in and loading out: the nature of the Premises allows access to vehicles inside the building and therefore noise will be significantly reduced. Where possible this will take place before 11pm.

22.5 Clear and legible notices will be displayed at exits and other circulatory areas requesting patrons to leave the Premises having regard to the needs of local residents.

22.6 The DPS and staff will ensure members of staff monitor the activity of persons leaving the Premises and remind them of their public responsibilities where necessary.  A bus timetable will be available and a relationship will be established with the local taxi company so the bar can organize taxis for patrons. Directions to the nearest car park will be available although driving will be discouraged as far as possible to avoid parking problems and drink driving. From experience of programming films at Side cinema, we expect many of our clientele to travel by public transport, foot or bicycle rather than by car and we will aim to encourage this in our publicity.

23 Ventilation

23.1 Suitable ventilation and extraction systems are planned to be installed to eliminate noxious odours. Once installed, such systems will be maintained on a regular basis.

24 Refuse

24.1 As outlined by the Licensing Policy, the Licensee will ensure that waste and refuse are removed in a timely manner to a licensed waste disposal facility and will establish a waste removal agreement with a licensed waste disposal contractor and keep documented evidence of the agreement.

24.2 Empty bottles will be recycled. They will be stored in a lidded skip or a bin within the curtilage of the Premises prior to collection. Operationally, bottles will be removed from the public area on a frequent basis and transferred to the skip. It is recommended that transfer to an external skip will not be undertaken after 10.00 p.m. to minimise noise disturbance to adjoining properties.

25 Deliveries

25.1 As far as is reasonably possible, all deliveries of stock for the bar or equipment will be kept to normal working hours (8am-6pm).

26 Protection of Children from Harm

26.1 As a cinema open to all and catering to as broad and audience as possible, we will not restrict children form coming into the building. In particular we hope that there will be specific times when films suitable for children or family will be shown. We may also run workshops suitable for children.

26.2 The bar will not serve alcohol before 3pm on weekdays. Alcohol sales during the daytime on weekends will be regulated depending on the nature of the activity.

26.3 No children under 12 will be admitted unaccompanied by an adult over 18 after 11 p.m.

26.4 A list of all films to be screened will be submitted to the council before the start of each season with their classification or an example of previous screening situations. The Licensee will adhere to any British Board of Film Classification classifications or age restrictions imposed by the Licensing Authority.

26.5 In the case of open submission screenings, all filmmakers will be asked to inform of any material that would be unsuitable for screenings for children under 18 and signage and admissions made to correspond accordingly.

26.6 Immediately before the exhibition of a film there will be exhibited on screen for at least 5 seconds a representation or written statement of the film’s classification in such a manner as can be easily read by all persons attending the entertainment and also in the case of trailer advertising any film.

26.7 Where a film is to be shown that has been classified as 12A, 15 or 18 the licensee will cause a notice to be displayed, in a conspicuous position, at the entrance to the Premises or room in which the film is to be shown reading:

PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF [insert as appropriate] CANNOT BE ADMITTED TO ANY PART OF THE PROGRAMME.

This notice must refer to the oldest age restriction where films of different categories are included in one programme.

26.8 In the rare case of entertainment wholly or mainly for unaccompanied children the licensee will comply with the rules of the Licensing Authority:
• There must be at least one attendant per 50 children or part thereof who must be on duty in the area(s) occupied by the children and stationed in the vicinity of each exit and at the head of each stairway
• attendants must wear distinctive clothing or suitable armbands
• attendants must be present throughout the entertainment and while the audience is entering and leaving the building

26.9 It is unlikely that we will show performances involving children. In the event, we will comply with the regulations in the Children (Performances) Regulations 1968.:
•    The show venue must be large enough to safely accommodate the children backstage.
•    All chaperones and production crew must receive the fire instruction procedures applicable to the venue prior to the arrival of the children.
•    You must consider the adverse effects of special effects upon the health and safety of children.
•    Children must be supervised by an adult at all times.

26.10 The Licensee will comply with the Portman Group’s Retailer Alert Bulletins.

The Qeros, directed John Cohen Doc 50 minutes. 1977Shown at Side Cinema Sunday 6th November 2003.
A floating film about a floating world high up in the Peruvian Andies. A political film about gravity and what happens when you come down. Simply shot powerfully voiced record of a way of life that seems doomed to extinction as ruthless market forces gather in, like sheep, the last of the stray ecomonically free tribal groups.
The film is a journey that starts high in the mountains, miles up above man and ends down in the town with man. The opening shots look down on the clouds like the old gods and then reveal a stone landscape where the people and their animals float across the screen. Like the stone everything is hard, like the stone there is little artifice. Cohen does not make a faked sentimental picture of these people. They are as other people: some are arseholes, some fucked up. Death hunger and illness are tightly woven into life but the people endure though their culture which gives resiliance and resolve. The physical and the mental. Then gravity the elementary force exerts its pressure as the film moves forward and leaves the floating plain falling down the side of the mountain – first into the jungle.
The rain forest is vital to the indians as a source of seed for their maize crop. But they don’t like the rain forest because it stifles them entraps them chokes them pinions them, with its folliage liens and tubers. The film’s descent stops at the town of Cuzco. Cuzco is the fall. Outside the gates of Eden. The future. It is what lies in store for the Runi. In Cuzco we see the actualisation of the political and social process that reduces the Indian to the level of beasts of burdon, lumpen proletariat carrying huge loads for remote economic forces. Where once the Indian used the llama to as a pack animal, now they themselves take on this role. The loads are of extrardinary dimensions: huge unwieldy shapes strapped to their backs so that they look like exotic insects, beetles with huge carapaces. And these loads, pinion them and press them down.
The indians of Cuzco are not of the air. They do not float; they stagger through the streets heads bent and bodies doubled over. The Runi of Qeros walk lightly, heads upright parading wonderful colourful hats . In Qeros the Indians carry their own loads. They do not carry other peoples cargo. Their llamas carry the loads of corn up the mountains, but not more than 50 pounds. Neatly stashed and trim, the llamas carry easy; it looks a reasonable load, more reasonable than the the burdons that the Indians have to carry in Cuzco. The film floats because the Runi Indians are at the moment free of burdons; they do not have to lump cargo that belong to other people’s econonmic interests. They survive where they are and on what they have, with tradition and ingenuity and their piercing flutes. Flutes that play notes that are light and etherial and which bear no relation to the heavy melodic despotism of the commercialised Spanish music. This is music as energy and being. The sounds owe nothing to world of products or any rules governing artistic form or content. The sounds the Runi make are of the air and travel though the thin atmosphere going where they please.
Despite the hardship of life the Runi have a freedom which also lets their spirit soar and a freedom to move without burdons. And this lightness is something you carry away when the film is over: perhaps you are glad that you don’t have carry the huge loads of the enslaved Indians; and you yearn to experience life above the clouds. I can still here the flutes, breathy atonal piping.
Adrin Neantrour 2003
more about John Cohen can be found at www.johncohenworks.com

Extracting The Michael and Slurs & Stereotypes by Tom Jennings

2 reviews of Fahrenheit 911: essay published in Variant, No. 21, Autumn 2004, pp.7-9; review published in Freedom, Vol. 65, No. 15, August 2004]EXTRACTING THE MICHAEL(Variant 21, 2004)

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 has attracted frenzied debate among right-wing, ‘quality’ liberal and radical and alternative media and critics alike – all trying to enlist the meanings mobilised by the film into their own discourses of politics, journalism, and the ‘reality’ of the world. Fair enough, as far as it goes. Somewhat surprisingly, given its enormous commercial success and an audience already many millions strong, its significance as a film has received much less attention – as a commodity circulating in a popular cultural environment which articulates with, but cannot be reduced to, current affairs and documentary genres. So, though it may be necessary to carefully scrutinise the levels of accuracy and logic and to judge the status of the information and arguments presented, analysis of F911 so far has been reluctant to imagine what its impact might be on the attitudes of cinemagoers seeking spectacular entertainment, and what relevance this might have to its potential political resonance. From this angle, it may be impossible to disentangle the complicated presence of the director as author and film star, and his taking the piss out of power, from other substantive effects of the film. Nevertheless, what follows attempts to sketch out what would be needed to begin that task.
Reference to the song lyrics ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ ends the film, with George W. Bush attempting a quotation and, as per, getting his lines wrong. Counterposed to a line from Orwell (1984) – “the war is meant to be continuous … a war of the ruling group against its own subjects” – Moore aligns himself simultaneously with the US ruling elites and with the general populace (‘us’). Both are  counterposed to ordinary lower class Americans (‘them’) who, he asserts, join the armed forces to preserve freedom because ‘we’ ask them to. “Will they ever trust us again?” (my emphasis) is Moore’s rhetorical question. The slippage of agency is curious given F911’s demonstration of all the different ways the Iraq war and its policy corollaries have damaged nearly everyone involved both at its sharp end and in the distant ‘heartlands’. Meanwhile, as comprehensively and convincingly documented in the film (including with their royal Saudi and Bin Laden family business associates), the war’s biggest beneficiaries have been the same US corporate profiteers who bankrolled the 2000 presidential election campaign.1
This rather different kind of scandal is the film’s starting point. Even here, it wasn’t enough for the rabid neoconservative clique who engineered the Bush/Cheney victory to mobilise the usual panoply of seedy Republicans, fundamentalist Christians and other moral fascists against such an obviously pathetic yuppie pillock (Al Gore). To get their latest moronic puppet into the White House, they still needed media manipulation courtesy of Dubya’s cousin at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, blatant vote rigging in Florida presided over by his brother Governor Jeb Bush, and the final (and most revealing) farce of the Supreme Court and Senate lining up to slavishly protect ‘the institutions of State’ from any serious investigation. According to Moore’s hype machine, Fahrenheit 9/11 was intended to cut Bush’s cowboy gang off at the pass in the next presidential elections in November. If successful, this will allow upper class Democrat John Kerry to pander to corporate interests instead, just like Clinton did, but presumably without being quite so brazen about it.2
Star Strangled BannersUnfortunately, the fascination with figureheads and personalities is no aberration. Moore’s efforts in this direction in the past included the mantra of ‘Tweedlebush or Tweedlegore’ in his active support for Ralph Nader (who seriously eroded the Democrat vote last time) and, apparently in all seriousness, trying to kickstart a campaign to persuade talk-show host Oprah Winfrey to run for president. On the other hand, this track record does indicate that F911’s patronising conclusion about lower class kids and their parents duped into enlisting then being betrayed by their leaders, is no accident. Presenting himself as so right(eous), in opposition to those who are both wrong and evil, leaves him no real alternative but to portray his audience as hapless marks at the mercy of power and needing enlightenment from his bluff and bluster. Through what is, in effect, his (unconscious) identification with the powerful, Moore blends strategies drawn from homegrown populist political traditions with the emotionally resonant narrative and structural devices of popular culture genres. As a music-hall master of ceremonies, carnival huckster or rabble-rousing demagogue, his underlying motivational pattern is to inflate and project his own ego through his work, resulting in a concealment of intellectual deficiency under a blanket of narcissism and paranoia, energised with appeals to sentiment focused on his self-deprecating ‘ordinary guy’ charisma.
It certainly works as entertainment, as testified by the record-breaking box office of F911 particularly among working class audiences and in conservative mid-West and armed forces towns, who normally turn out for melodrama served up in standardised Hollywood dressings and who may shun worthy documentaries. Moore thus raises his stock in the media markets and boosts his personal star profile and mythology as a ‘working class rebel’. From this angle, inspired parallels are drawn between the economic destruction of Western urban/industrial wastelands and the military havoc wreaked in Iraq, along with the depression, desperation and grief suffered by both sets of inhabitants. This is set against the sinister prowling of armed forces recruiters and the cynical dishonesty of their patter; reproduced and attenuated later in the abuse of Iraqi citizens by those recruited. On their return home in both physical and psychic torment, Iraq veterans then learn that their government is enthusiastically cutting back the already pitiful levels of medical and welfare aid due to them. It’s not even deemed necessary to remind us of Vietnam.
Rarely are arguments like this put together so effectively on screen in front of such huge audiences. Better still, they are interspersed and augmented with a wide range of highly salient and suggestive information which, although already in the public realm and theoretically available to anyone with the resources required to collect it, is scrupulously suppressed, skated over, or (at best) detached from all context in mainstream current affairs reportage. So the press managed to spin into a semblance of coherence the thoroughly spurious and contradictory explanations and justifications over Iraq offered so hamfistedly by the government.3 If part of the project is to propel into a widespread consciousness elements of the kind of critique normally associated with meticulous scholars such as Noam Chomsky (whose readership is relatively tiny in comparison), then F911 has to be judged a triumph.
Likewise, plenty of footage is uncovered demonstrating the utter irrelevance of political processes purporting to protect against executive excess. First the top judges and senators (Democrat and Republican alike) refused to invalidate Bush’s election in the first place – better to disenfranchise a few thousand mainly poor Black Florida voters (and that’s just the ones known about) than question the integrity of the electoral system. Then the 2002/3 Patriot Acts legislated unheard-of degrees of surveillance and interference with ‘civil rights’, supposedly to facilitate anti-terrorist policing. Congress voted these bills through without anyone even reading them, but this was no regrettable oversight in a moment of panic. Instead we are assured by one put-upon Congressman that he and his colleagues never have time to examine what they vote on. The film’s failure to consolidate and interpret these demonstrations of the meaninglessness of liberal democracy’s institutions has to be its greatest missed opportunity. It mirrors the  comparably craven disregard for all those routinely excluded from the flag-waving decency of white Middle America, as various non-white and muslim people suffer heightened harassment – unofficially from neighbourhood racism and as terrorist suspects for the official kind. Moore looks the other way because he daren’t ask his main target audience any of these really searching questions.4
Less, Moore, Too MuchNote, though, that while characters, variables and phenomena in the political realm are the explicit nuts and bolts of the text, F911 doesn’t work as political analysis. Moore makes no pretence of providing any conclusions regarding the history and nature of the US state and the pivotal contemporary role of the media in its reproduction. Worse, those of a forensic disposition will be able to find many inconsistencies and dubious assertions in his innuendos. In those rational terms, what he often does is to collage verifiable information with found footage, in order to highlight correlations which are very pertinent to questions of various vested interests. Going over the top to insinuate direct causal relationships is mischievous, but doesn’t necessarily intend to be taken so seriously.5 As part of the narrative, this kind of trick milks humour from our intuitive awareness of the decadence of power, which can then be mobilised as grist to the mill of outrage. As such, his material is well worth projecting into the public realm – whatever the framing –  because there is just too much to be papered over. It defies easy answers; refuses pat cliches; shatters conformist homilies; and overflows any neat, naff attempts at conventional containment. The result is therefore intensely ambiguous, as with much of the director’s previous work.6
Moore’s tactic is to take an issue of contemporary concern and uncover 57 varieties of cans of worms in true muckraking gonzo journalism style and fashion. The material is then woven together with crescendos of hilarity, rage and horror, orchestrated by Moore the Magician into revelations of innocent individuals (and families) beset by the disgusting twin towers of organised money and power. The viciousness of the satire in the first half of F911 is undoubtedly effective in reinforcing the class hatred necessary to anchor any clear-sighted rational response in passionate engagement. Here the film is content to allow this tide to flow and ebb around the only piece of restraint on show – the blank screen of September 11th signalled only by sound effects from Ground Zero. Once the focus shifts to the diverse personal tragedies of communities and lives shattered by the war on terror, however, satire turns to sanctimony. The energising momentum of laughter is lost, as is the increasingly threadbare plot. Overkill centres on the choice of a single family from Moore’s home town as the prism through which to understand the effects of war. Lila Lipscomb from Flint, Michigan, whose son died in Iraq after she urged him to enlist, has to stand in for the global degradation of humanity that this chapter of US imperialism represents.7
Perhaps to many ordinary Americans this clinches his argument that Bush is a traitor, if feeling for the bereaved parent captures those who previously voted for him.8 But when it comes to the complexities of history and politics, and the collective reflection needed to work out what to do next, Moore always fails to deliver. Structural change never makes it onto his agenda, despite being clearly implied by the sorry mess of corrupt incompetence throughout the ruling elites, state institutions and tame media in the past four years. Here, the Bush administration’s foreign (and domestic) policy has amounted to war (full stop) – not on terrorism but employing it in Afghanistan, Iraq and the more or less low-intensity propaganda and repression aimed at opponents at home (also painted as un-American and thus, in effect, as ‘foreigners’) Furthermore this was always the neoconservatives’ explicit agenda, starting from outright opposition to any kind of peace process in Palestine. But without historical context in F911, this pattern is presented as somehow exceptional, rather than a particularly virulent example of business as usual.
The closing admonition to not be fooled again now sounds like a vain hope – simply the latest in a long line of failures of the popular will – which Moore can’t acknowledge without threatening the putative efficacy of the decency of ordinary folk in a narrative trajectory which depends on its appeal to an acceptance of the nobility of the ideals and traditions of the American political system supposedly disrupted by the Bush clique. F911’s downhome moralising, cheap jibes, exploitation of sentiment, and even its casual xenophobia, can then be understood as symptomatic of Moore’s failure of nerve. He cannot attack the myths of American ‘freedom’ and the history of this discourse in stitching together America’s diverse constituencies into a patriotic unity – which is not only every bit as fraudulent as Bush et al’s conduct but which has always underpinned the ‘manufacture of consent’. It’s a major part of the problem, rather than the reassuringly familiar wellspring of resistance that the film invokes.
The director imagines that, through its sheer rhetorical power, his cinematic rollercoaster can help transform the reactionary defensiveness of middle America into a movement for change. But on the face of it, and according to his PR, his desired outcome of voting out Bush would merely recuperate all of the energy generated back into the miserable electoral game, thereby re-legitimising what the film has already shown to be irredeemable. This does no justice to the visceral euphoria occasioned by the expert editing and structuring of images, sound (bites) and story arc in F911 create the expectation of a satisfying climax – according to Hollywood conventions, for instance. Whereas the film ends with (in no particular rank order): an appeal to human decency; an assertion of that decency’s gullibility; the stupidity and duplicity of leaders; and a faith in future, better leaders. Is Moore taking the piss, pissing in the wind, or just full of piss and wind?
The Power and the VaingloryMany have concluded that F911’s inadequate ending therefore confirms the judgement that it is a bad film, despite their acknowledgement of its power. But although it’s not difficult to show that the political analysis is unconvincing and the quality of the journalism questionable, these are hardly criteria of cinematic excellence. The reasons for its power thus seem more difficult to pin down. Even cinema critics – who might be expected to appreciate the blockbuster provenance and deal with the effectivity of its fictional universe accordingly – found themselves suspending their professional judgement and watching instead an unusually long party political broadcast.9 There appears to have been a widespread cognitive dissonance arising from the mismatch between the denouement and what has gone before. Many viewers (present author included) reported reactions of raw but conflictual emotion on emerging from the cinema – simultaneous distress and exhilaration, for example – along with a thoroughgoing confusion as to what the film has done to us, and what it might mean.
In contemporary cinema, though, singular linear narratives have for some time been out of fashion. Since the 1970s the formal structures of postmodern art films have seeped into the mainstream, with alternative endings, unresolvable red herrings, and playing with time, memory and perspective virtually the norm.10 F911 stirs up a whole mess of dormant and suppressed emotion, and rhetorically nails it onto the specific reality of this chapter of the New World Order via the cathartic power of cinematic audiovisual montage. No simple readings or conclusions are provided, actually, and the director as trickster almost delights in preventing these from arising. In responding to such experiences, the conflictual and contradictory elements of the audience’s psychology and everyday understanding interact to some extent with those of the image stream. We tolerate, and even seek this out, at the multiplex. In other situations which seem to require it, we gear ourselves up to be serious, rational beings. Here, strenuous effort may be made to resolve such chaotic fracturing – whenever awareness of it can’t be avoided – because it is so uncomfortable. Masquerading as documentary, F911 simultaneously prompts both these orientations.
If such a juxtaposition of fantasy and current affairs seems outlandish,11 it can be thought of in the context of the rise of many new visions of documentary in independent and alternative media. A growing awareness of the inadequacy of liberal notions of journalistic ‘balance’ has fostered dissatisfaction with the limited understanding possible of current affairs within this paradigm – given the stranglehold of commercial integration and monopolies of media programming.12 Similarly, in the recent renaissance of cinema documentary, other filmmakers concentrate on a more careful balance of information and narrative, inviting viewers to contemplation rather than reaction.13 Those of the newer UK ‘faux naif’ school place their subjective involvement in the discovery process and their personal social responses to their subjects more at centre stage. Nick Broomfield14 embarks on quests to understand controversial celebrities and events, encouraging interviewees to open up in response to his persona of a bumbling amateur investigator with an amiably naive liberal worldview.
Other such documentarists on television exercise their fashionable cynicism more openly in exoticising ‘minority’, ‘weird’ or ‘subcultural’ scenes, either from perspectives of superior knowledge and taste, or a more well-meaning secure upper class nerdy fascination.15 All the above maintain liberal detachment, so that the results amount to  tourism through worlds which – however threatening – remain forever bracketed off; never really meaning much to them, let alone fundamentally affecting or changing anything. The gathering of information, and any consequent enlightenment, therefore merge in the amusement of the protagonist and the entertainment of the viewing audience – neither of whom are ultimately touched by the experience. Their fundamentally complacent premise and conclusion is that, in practice, alienation and dissociation in cynical stasis are the only achievable values.
Shock, Horror – News as FarceBut Moore, though he may be smug, is neither liberal nor detached, and his expertise lies in provocation rather than scrupulous exposition or the search for an all-embracing ‘truth’. His method, using comedy conventions as a starting point, is to directly implicate the anguish and pain that is a fundamental ingredient of his audience’s own lives in illuminating and enlarging upon ‘objective’ situations about which we are usually only ‘informed’ by the cool authority of the news. Most of the debate about the value of F911, like views on the dwindling trust in mainstream current affairs on the part of the general public, or of tabloid power, assume that engaging the emotional response of the audience must be suspect, if not wholly negative – thus failing to appreciate our increasing orientation to the world through the lenses of our cultural literacy.
Before the last few decades of media diversification, remember, News was monolithic and monovocal – and generally understood as the singular voice of power. It could therefore be ‘trusted’ in that very specific and limited sense. Now the news anchor and star reporter stand in, but with the proliferation of images and gazes and postmodern splintering of our selves and societies we hear many versions and nuances of what used to be distilled into the one absolute word. The nature and modus operandi of propaganda have moved on, and the petty squabbling, internecine manoeuvering and decadent baseness of the ruling strata and those scrambling up the ladders of status are now visible for all to see. Overloads of trivia multiply the complexity of explanation – but then the world is complicated. The opportunities for satire are also vastly improved – through means which are always also inevitably partial, whether face to face, in local public fora and stagings, grass-roots publishing, or in making inroads into mainstream media in comics, animation, TV and film.
Comedy is potentially an extremely effective tool in savaging pretension and false authority.16 True, Moore flirts with the other end of the comic spectrum, displacing his audience’s unacknowledged self-disgust onto shared objects of prejudice – where the balm of laughter converts sorrow into hatred. Neurotic pride and vanity prevent such performers from extracting the michael from themselves – a far more effective ploy. The honest pathos of one’s own abjection generates genuine and conscious empathy – which, when handled with the requisite skill, facilitates analogy with the wider tragedies of the world. These too render us abject, but collectively so, and the puncturing by the satirist of the bad faith of the powerful takes the hilarity beyond catharsis. In the route from tame court jesters to carnivalesque subversives, and to the French revolutionary pamphleteers, for example, this becomes overtly political with an increased readiness to take action in the world – when it chimes with pre-existing tendencies for a wider clamour for change. But the comedy itself can’t create or lead anything, so our only option is to laugh uneasily at (not with) Moore for his delusional grandeur.17
One example which transcends most of the aforementioned problems with Michel Moore’s approach and that of the newer documentarists is Channel 4’s Mark Thomas Comedy Product – whose title immediately signals a self-conscious acknowledgement of the limitations of cultural commodities. Nevertheless the structure of the programme takes us back to the intimacy of club stand-up routines, and the studio and television punters are always invited to laugh at as well as with the comedian. The quest for answers to admitted naivete and ignorance means that methods are developed in practice, and a range of pragmatic forms of action advised. The emphasis throughout is on collective work and discussion, with the front man a delegate rather than leader. Overall, a dynamic sense of change implicates the audience too, rather than retreating to the complacency of existing beliefs. No perfect solutions are ever offered as a sop to satisfy the passive recipients of uplifting performance.18
Beyond a JokeTo sum up, regarding F911 as primarily a popular cultural product enables us to reverse the terms of debate about its qualities. The political intervention it proclaims is, in fact, part of its commercial promotion – not the other way round – and Michael Moore’s primary motivation, in practice, is to enhance his position (in terms of both economic and cultural capital, because these have become so closely entwined nowadays in the realms of public media). F911’s success has been engineered by a commercial strategy (or simulation) of ‘guerilla’ marketing using the convenient excuse of the political career of a more obviously tainted than usual US president.  It is an example of the persuasive potential of media and popular culture genres having entered the body politic through their saturation of our daily lives, from infancy, in the discourses embodied in cultural commodities – just as in the past it made sense to analyse folklore, mythology and religion in terms of the limiting and limited narrative possibilities offered there.
At home in his high-profile environment, Michael Moore can neither be extracted from his unconscious alignment with (other) celebrities in the star system, nor from other planets in the political universe – any more than current affairs are usefully considered to be analogous to hard-nosed theoretical physics (chaos, charm and entropy and all). As an individual Moore is far from an intellect of genius, has any number of prominent and visible ideological and personal warts, and wouldn’t pass muster in the real world as any kind of salesman let alone a politico (you’d be too busy laughing). But the egomania and drive needed to bring together large volumes of human and financial collateral in translating his vision onto celluloid probably also provide the entrepreneurial savvy to persuade investors to cough up. To them he’s doubtless considered a safe bet, in the established cinema tradition of paranoid mavericks prone to hysterical posturing. Some of these, such as Oliver Stone, also consider their work as ‘subversive’ – and it may be so, though rarely in the ways they imagine.
On balance, despite its many shortcomings and even its frankly reactionary overtones, I, for one, am happy that F911 is out there in the world and that so many millions of us are seeing it. Of course it’s important to be clear about the film and its director – the cowardice as well as the bravery, clangers and bullseyes, clarity and befuddlement. Further, it’s no bad thing to acknowledge that this is also a fair description of the human condition in general. In universalising the moral decency of common folk (Moore) and natural human common sense (Chomsky),19 we will always be found wanting.There’s little point bemoaning the fact that we are human animals with hearts, guts and minds; or that it’s a dirty world and we are in a mess. The mobilisation of emotion fosters an appreciation of the world and its people that both punctures the purity of power and avoids paralysis from imperfect knowledge.
The hints are also all there in F911that the imagined community of nation is the most profound con of the present era, with its mouldy cement of voting for leaders as liberal democracy’s feet of clay. A less opaque perception is possible of the close-knit globalising networks of domination and suffering disappearing over the on-screen horizon – from the complementary regimentation and abuse of underclass enlisters and Baghdad residents to the harassment of white US respectables and invisible internal ‘others’. Few show signs of fighting back in the film, but the implication is that any or all might. So might the audience; and more belligerently than by meekly lining up to vote or paying to be thrilled. Out of pain can come laughter, and there are many kinds of both. One laughter, one pain; one love, one blood – these are unlikely slogans at hustings for the lesser corporate-military evil. But they might begin to make sense to those viewers of F911 not prepared to sweep their gut reactions back under the carpet-bombing of presidential election news. Therefore our conclusions and interpretations can usefully converge around what active political use to make of all this – not trying to enforce as authoritative any of the many possible readings of what is, in the end, only a film.
Notes1. And although Moore himself might get even richer, thanks to the film, he is at least urging its internet pirating and distribution.
2. Cue a video outtake showing Bush addressing a fund-raiser gathering as “the haves and have-mores; I don’t call you the elite, I call you my base”.
3. Cue Secretary of State Colin Powell emphatically denying two months before September 11th that Saddam Hussein had any capacity for WMDs.
4. In his book What Next: A Memoir Towards World Peace, Serpent’s Tail, 2003, Walter Mosley stresses that, from their centuries of hard experience of noble US humanism in action, many Black Americans weren’t at all surprised that the country could be hated so much. Thus F911 could easily have found resources for such discussion very close at hand.
5. Interesting critiques which accept the f ilm in those terms can be found in: Todd Gitlin ‘Michael Moore Alas’, www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-3-1988.jsp; and Robert Jensen ‘Beyond F911′, www.counterpunch.org/jensen07052004.html.
6. in television series such as TV Nation and The Awful Truth, bestselling books like Downsize This!,  Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country? and the films Roger And Me, 1989, and Bowling For Columbine, 1992.
7. She works as a employment counsellor to the jobless, so Moore’s rare appearance on camera hounding national politicians – only one of whom has offspring on Iraq active service – ironises as it humanises.
8. The matching shots of a grieving Iraqi mother impotently railing at American barbarism, however, are just as likely to reinforce depressive apathy.
9. So, for example, Mark Kermode (‘All Blunderbuss and Bile’, The Observer, 11 July) mistakes his lack of engagement with Moore’s vulgar exploitation of real grief and horror as based on Britishness; whereas B. Ruby Rich (‘Mission Improbable’, Sight & Sound, July, pp.14-16) is seduced by the Cannes Festival PR into discussing F911’s emotive power only in terms of swingometers.
10. see my ‘Class-ifying Contemporary Cinema’, Variant 10, 2000, pp.14-16, for further discussion.
11. despite the title being borrowed from a Ray Bradbury science fiction novel.
12. Two forthcoming documentaries tackle the significance of these developments in the present context: the independently distributed critique of Fox News, OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, dir. Robert Greenwald (see article by Don Hazen, www.alternet.org/story/19199/); and The Control Room about Arabic cable channel Al Jazeera, to be broadcast on BBC2.
13. For example Errol Morris reveals the inevitable partiality of perspective of his subjects in their particular fields, using expressionistic visuals, filming styles and editing to emphasise gaps and uncertainties in the stories told – in , for example, Gates of Heaven, 1979, The Thin Blue Line, 1988 and The Fog Of War, 2003 – the latter revealing the pomposity and shallow self-delusions of Vietnam war architect Robert McNamara.
14. e.g. in documentaries about Thatcher and South African fascist Eugene Terreblanche, two about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and Biggie & Tupac, 2001.
15. e.g. Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux respectively.
16. despite most ‘alternative’ comedians preferring to assert cool distinction by sneering at the cretinism of ordinary people.
17. and at others who reveal their (stars and) stripes in thrall to leadership cults – such as the Socialist Worker review calling on Moore to stand for office. For a corrective, see the No Sweat campaign’s more prosaic take on F911 (www.nosweat.org.uk).
18. Clearly inspired by Michael Moore’s TV work, disappointing tendencies sometimes cross over too, such as occasional hints of  little Englandism – but not too often. Respectability is decisively rejected in Mark Thomas’ insistence on retaining his own effing and blinding vernacular – which works for me, even if ensuring the show’s relegation to a minority schedule slot.
19. attributions which also seem to be transhistorical in their mythical persistence.

Slurs & Stereotypes by Tom Jennings (Freedom 65 (15), Aug 2004)
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 has catapulted into the mainstream US media an overwhelming shitheap of crucial and revealing information about contemporary American politics which has otherwise been largely falsified, trivialised, buried in ‘quality’ programming, or ignored altogether. The film is also exemplary in the energy and passion with which the contrasting effects of the Bush government’s foreign and domestic policies on their corporate US and Saudi friends, and on ordinary US and Iraqi people, are catalogued and decried. Best of all, several pivotal examples are given of the way political institutions (Supreme Court , Senate and Congress – both Democrats and Republicans) instinctively protect themselves rather than admit failure – however tragic or (literally) earth-shattering the outcome. These are no negligible achievements given that, for example, millions of us watching the film possibly had not found the time to read Chomsky, may not previously have contemplated taking any radical or alternative propaganda seriously, nor even got round to questioning the precepts of patriotism, democracy and ‘freedom’. We may now.
F9/11 covers the period from the Florida vote rigging which allowed Dubya into office through the administration’s dodgy business practices and political slackness up to September 11th, and then into Afghanistan, the Orwellian domestic fear tactics, and the latter-day Vietnam of Iraq. Via a jumble of meticulously stitched together found footage, outtakes, soundbites and mischievous associations, the film mercilessly lampoons the lies, evasions, contradictions, vested interests and all-round general farce of government conduct. Around the fulcrum of the fall of the twin towers (signalled by an audio-recording from Ground Zero and a blank screen), the focus inexorably shifts from the complacency and duplicity of the victimisers to the grief and desperation of the victimised – in a brilliant paralleling of the wastelands and wasted souls left in urban America and Iraq by the corporate-military onslaughts.
Breaking cinema box office records even in traditional mid-West and armed forces towns, F9/11 succeeds partly because it mobilises so effectively a range of popular cultural traditions – from music hall comedy to Hollywood melodrama, for example – to engage and involve its audiences. Over here, too, many multiplexes have shown it in several packed auditoria at once to those who often turn out for action thrillers and other blockbusters, and whose emotional responses have been similarly intense. The key device used by Moore in all his work in television, books and films has been to solicit identification with his persona of the little man up against big finance and corrupt government. A staple of populist political traditions, this strategy has similar drawbacks and dangers – such as facilitating the careers of charismatic charlatans. Indeed, now a multimillionaire with formidable PR backup, Moore could be said to fit that profile. But then he’s only an entertainer, right? …
However, poking fun at incompetent, greedy and self-serving leaders as a prelude to outrage at the liberties they take is only a first step. Unfortunately, the force of polemic is not matched by rational analysis – either of the history and nature of the US political system or of the iniquitous role of the media and intellectuals in legitimising it. So, having dredged up the reserves of depression, apathy and reactionary defensiveness of middle America, and fashioned them into anguished hilarity and furious indignation aimed squarely at the status quo, F9/11 squanders its rhetorical power on a feeble reiteration of the inherent decency of the people, who are urged to choose better leaders next time. Such a false and miserable climax left many viewers stumbling out of the cinema in confusion.
In a sense this dissonance of thought and sentiment may mirror Moore’s own. After all, our gut-level understanding of the significance of the rich and powerful in the world and in our lives often is impeccable – even if it receives very little confirmation from official discourse. But it doesn’t translate directly into intellectual understanding, especially when it comes to working out what to do next. Being humble, we don’t expect it to – that takes collective work and struggle. Whereas Moore inflates his narcissistic ego in order to play the carnival huckster delighting us in his performance – where admitting ignorance and error would ruin the illusion. But political activism is rather more permanent than the temporary subversions of carnival, in which case a puffed-up ego easily succumbs to the hubris and paranoia of demagoguery. Come to think of it, film directors have been known to be megalomaniacs too.
And F9/11 is only a film. On one level an effort of memory and suggestive interpretation, the scope is  too short term to convince. In the end it retreats to a recuperation – complete with commercial pitch as controversial electoral revelation – into the same old political game that it has already mortally undermined. The really useful insight it offers is in presenting so much compelling material in a way that resonates emotionally with so many of us and our desired audiences at once – predisposing them to engage with the ideas. This is a method we would do well to study.
www.variant.org.uk
www.freedompress.org.uk
www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Blissfully Yours – Apichatpong Weersethakul – Thailand 2002

Viewed ICA cinema 2; 20 – 03 – 05; ticket £6-50Blissfully Yours – Apichatpong Weersethakul – Thailand 2002
Viewed ICA cinema 2;    20 – 03 – 05; ticket £6-50
 
natural arousals
Apichatpong’s film  is an inflowing from another world.  A world where there exists a vision of an opening up of bodies to nature in a way that almost inexpressible in the West.  Perhaps because ‘nature’ ‘the natural world’ has become for Westerners, if not merely a cartoon backdrop to be exploited,  then a metaphore or allegory relating to our own condition rather than place in itself. 
 
In Western cinema/literature, nature is often caste in the role of an allegorical hand maiden, with appropriate signification as hand baggage.  Woods, forests, rivers sea shore often enjoy a cameo role – a moment of idyll in a film – a break out from the motivational lines of force driving the characters to the appointed and scripted ends.  Sometimes in films like Elvira Madagan nature is used to poignantly offset the machinations of the social machine, or in survivalist Hollywood scripts nature ends up caste in an adversorial role.
 
Blissfully Yours starts in the town.  A quest to solve the problems of the town, trying to sort out the papers of an illegal immigrant.  All the usual hassles you get in static unyielding environments governed by beaurocracy.  Then suddenly the film takes off.  Apichatpong takes to the wing with his camera and  flies away from the square static ungiving urban environment.  In a series of sensuous languorous tracking shots filmed  from the rear window of the car we watch  as if on the magic carpet of some magician.  the road behind us uncoil like a snake or a tongue or a stiffening penis.   In the view from the rear window we leave behind not just the concerns and fixations of the town but move into a new time dimension governed by a different set of beats rhythms and fluxes. 
 
The natural environment of Apichatpong is neither an idyllic nor allegorical place. It is a place where a different governmental order is at work, and in Blissfully Yours the woods and streams and vallies of Western Thailand are place where three characters Min, Rooug and Orn give themselves to this order.  They don’t cease to have problems or identities, the subjective world doesn’t change.  Simply these things now have different expressive context in which they have another dimension of  value.  Nor is the forest a place where story has any part to play – this is not a Western style film where the woods are a certain kind of narrative setting for ‘things to happen’.  Narrative doesn’t develop in this natural domain.  Experience does.    
 
The forest is a place of flow: flow of images and sounds – sometime working together sometimes independently.  Water wind the sounds of birds and other animals the flow of life – the ants.  In the presence of this fluidity –  raked with turbulance, for there is no flow without random occassional congestion and spasm – the three characters Min, Rooug and Orn (I think that two of them were played by non actors) adjust to the flows joining their own fluxes, tears body fluids semen skin urine thoughts so that the roar that is happening about them is happening in them.  Nothing essential changes – there are not any answers either to Rooug’s or Min’s problems(some answers to the slight narrative questions[with a political resonance] posed by the characters are given as text during the end titles which is a warm and humane  touch;  not essential in the context of what we have seen) – the scenario becomes one flow with  a multitude of tracks and notes. 
 
In the last sequence of the film Rooug lying at Min’s side by the forest stream her fingers drift to the fly of his shorts open the buttons to reveal his cock.  Her delicate lazy movement at last arouses him.  The lightness of her finger touch uncoils him as he slowly swells up, flows through multiple forms,  a snake transforming to a flower becoming an exotic snail a rich fruit and finally a cock.  In its own time another final flowing before we go and know that we can take nothing with us.  The forest is one of those machines – you leave everything behind.
adrin neatrour  25 03 05
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk

Natural Born Cultures by Tom Jennings

[essay review of Natural Born Killers, dir. Oliver Stone (1994), published in Here & Now, No. 16/17, pp.48-51, 1995]Natural Born Cultures by Tom Jennings
 
 
[essay review of Natural Born Killers, dir. Oliver Stone (1994), published in Here & Now, No. 16/17, pp.48-51, 1995]
 
 
 
The notion of culture has been a problem for radical politics. Socialists and Stalinists, the PC, ultra-lefts and liberals all tend to narrow the concept to elite producers, whose quality validates a status quo possessing the standards of taste to appreciate it. Anything else may be scorned as imperfect, less than fully human, to be ignored, transcended, or educated away. Radicals stand outside received culture, presenting alternatives of rationalist criticism, avant garde art, lifestyle posing, or simply a cynical distaste for popular pleasures. Such self-marginalisation coincides with the Left’s disarray, the right’s appropriation of public agendas, the resurgence of a purportedly mute, rebellious underclass, and rampant consumerism.
 
Marxist critics tend to discuss these phenomena in terms of their interests as leaders and theorists. Communist Party intellectuals affiliating to Media Studies and identity politics gave us the hilarious spectacle of filofax Lefties dissecting the corpse of authoritarian communism on behalf of a whole catalogues of oppressed groups. Careers were built in a democratic pluralism that finally, if surreptitiously, could admit its class-specific position. Blairism is the political consequence – tight-lipped censorious Christian snobs allied with respectable folk wishing to ‘better’ themselves and partake of expanded cultural markets. Liberals are outflanked on the right on social and moral issues, exposing fear and hatred for the vulgar, informal, spontaneous, dangerous, ambivalent passions of the masses.
More generally unable to come to terms with their absorption into elite hierarchies since the 1950s, and with interests opposed to substantial social change, ‘political practice’ has become political ‘good taste’ (how to be right-on) for bureaucrats, teachers, cultural ‘workers’ and scholars. The hidden agenda of leaving their privileged positions intact permeates the new cultural theory. Criticism of the functions of leaders, intellectuals and theorists may risk leaving the new middle classes bereft of progressive roles – so it is avoided.1
 
 
Common Creations 
Conversely, oppositional politics can be grounded in the experiences of ordinary people – the cultures that surround and suffuse our everyday lives and what we make of them. As practices producing meanings with emotional resonance in groups of people, culture expresses how we make sense of life, identify and position ourselves with respect to internal and external forces and to our material and social surroundings. Seen from below, the focus of culture shifts to hopes, fears, fantasies and expectations as much as beliefs and feelings about the past and present. Our inherently social nature is evident, from community and collectivity, language and discourse. The material basis of culture is clear from the sites of its operation – ‘oral’ cultures rooted in the structures of schools, workplaces, streets or communities, the elite institutions of the arts and academies, and the products of the mass culture entertainment industries.
 
The culture sold by capitalism may seem impoverished and imperialistic when compared to the diversity of human life and its persistent impulses for self-determination. Worse, the trajectory of media market development relies on military and security-led technological determinism, bringing corporate and state control and class-based hierarchies of choice.2 But global marketing is leading to such a saturation of mediated images, stories and symbols, that officially sanctioned public forums and channels of communication cannot connect with the masses’ expressions of feeling. This distrust of the forms of knowing, being or aspiration that experts and politicians trade in doesn’t inevitably lead us to cynicism, apathy, quietism or a celebration of consumerism.3
 
The importance of culture lies in its open-endedness, its continual re-creation and reproduction within lived experience, where cultural materials are present at every level.4 Efforts to contain it within restricted discourses – to imprison culture in the imperialism of theory – mirror existing systems of control and oppression. These justify themselves in explaining the world via regimes of knowledge which themselves developed in support of coercive and exploitative structures and processes.
 
Irrespective of the intrinsic value of the cultural commodities we are immersed in, their use entails creating meanings and feelings that resound and echo in social networks, and that don’t map directly onto the supposed intentions of the producers or financiers. Not only may meanings produced oppose those intentions, but the very success of cultural products as commodities may depend on consumers creating excess meanings tailored to their desires. Possibilities for radical propaganda may open for those who accept their part in the culture and its aftermath,5 but not for those posing as distanced observers bemoaning the alien horrors of the cultures of others.
 
 
Big Screen Distraction 
Cinema films are the most expensive, elaborate and spectacular cultural commodities, and are the organising centre for much of our relationship with the mass media. Going to the cinema is a public, social act where we physically separate ourselves from the everyday world in dream-like or festive states, attracted by overwhelming sounds and images. At home special efforts are made to view films and videos on television, compared to the visual wallpaper of most TV output. Films live on thanks to the commodification of stars, symbols and spin-offs. But characters, elements of narratives or film styles may become markers of experience and identity, incorporated into everyday life like, say, soap operas, but with a special quality due to the strength of their impact. Film cults and fan hobbyism are extreme examples of this. But for millions of others not investing such immense personal significance, films are as prominent as sport or music, and are as thoroughly woven into social and cultural life.
 
Contemporary cinema is dominated by outrageously expensive Hollywood blockbusters which profit from merchandising and globalising hype. Smaller studios, independent producers and (usually government sponsored) non-US film industries break even on a combination of cinema attendance, video and television rights. Increasingly, as viewers become used to differentiated media, film producers minimise risk by combining styles and genres, appealing to multiple groups of viewers at once and playing havoc with established critical categories.6 So Natural Born Killers mixes conventions from action and crime thrillers, romances, road movies, documentary, melodrama and social satire; plus exploiting assorted avant garde film devices and state of the art computer graphic, video and television techniques.
 
 
Realism In Fantasy 
Engagement with films furnishes fantasy experiences for viewers that may enhance their own potential competence in understanding and embracing their own agency. Only to the extent, crucially, that they read into (and explode out of) the narratives salient elements of their own lives – and such processes, of course, the producers of cultural commodities have relatively little power over. The capacity of cultural products to inspire their audiences may have unequivocally negative effects, which conventional wisdom exaggerates and agonises over if it works contrary to or exposes accepted dominations (such as children assaulting each other as opposed to adults doing it). Ironically, the resulting censorship neutralises the power of cultural products to be used for those resistive strategies which would render policing and interpretation by experts as well as moral guardians redundant.7
 
Cinema’s attraction to new middle classes seeking cultural distinction has developed in tension with the vulgarities of Hollywood, especially in dealing with social conflict. Not so much the lifestyle dilemmas that a tradition of safe bourgeois film and television dramas has milked; but in the collective untidiness and mass tragedies of the lives of the oppressed. Social realism appeals to those insulated from it, but it’s difficult to sell the masses films about our suffering because it implies some kind of exotic uniqueness of the problem treated – as opposed to the everyday connotations, for us, of crime, exploitation, misery and drudgery.
 
Popular cinema narratives portraying the unpredictability of large scale social discord have to appeal to powerful groups in order to be financed and produced, but also need to convince a popular audience that the cards are not all stacked in advance, and that whatever levels of realism are employed have any integrity. In navigating this uneasy path, pleasure must still be afforded to viewers with agendas of hope, fear and expectation, and patterns of desires, likely to diverge wildly from the educated taste of the film makers.
 
The static cinematic viewpoint leaves watchers distanced from the seething film spectacles of diffuse and sublime social or community processes. Passively connected to events on-screen, one person’s voyeur can be someone else’s carer, and another’s gaoler. Treating one extreme of suffering as the be-all and end-all of a story is the classic strategy of ‘social realism’ genres of cultural production, with the intimate lives of a few standing as exemplars of the many. This resolution of systemic social and political conflict into a multitude of individual problems reproduces the discursive intersection of the middle class charitable gaze with the ministrations of a benevolent liberal State. Thus the film maker’s task, rendering onto the screen the chaos of the social world, helplessly follows a similar logic.
 
 
Crime and Punishment 
The enduring archetypal social issue is crime, where the cumulative weight of cultural material produced to try and explain what is wrong with society is conveniently funnelled into separate working class bodies. This fragmentation of collective reality – a narrowing of focus onto the ‘problem’ of the lone working class object – forces the development and resolution of processes into a rut of heroic voluntarism. Implacably opposing moral forces are divided arbitrarily and simplistically so that no-one can doubt where guilt lies – inside the bad individuals (as opposed to the more general intuition that institutions are far less trustworthy).
 
Given global, divisive and corporate barbarisms, it is ironic that the banality of a diametrically opposed evil is celebrated instead: that of the serial killer.8 Popular novel and film treatments have experimented with every conceivable fiction and media convention, even interrogating the cultural significance of the serial killer genre’s popularity itself. The disasters of capitalism have very definite purposes – in consolidating the power to profit – whereas the actions of serial killers seem utterly pointless in any social sense. Thus the nihilism of the political world is displaced into the moral vacuum of the ultimate criminals. Now, when Hollywood gloss meets TV soap, tabloid news sensationalism, social issue movie, MTV editing and video diary ‘realism’, the scoop has to be serial killers. And if we’re really supposed to think that Natural Born Killers is serious, then the director must be Oliver Stone.
 
 
Tablets of Stone 
Stone has consistently tried to achieve popular Hollywood expressions of contemporary history, abusing in cavalier fashion the conventions of social issue and social realism genres in his ‘state of the nation’ stories.9 But despite his avowed intention to radically criticise existing institutions, viewers are usually left mystified about the social and political scenario portrayed. Crippling liberties are also taken with the historical record, so precipitating fatalism about the prospects for effective political agency.
 
This is compounded by gross narrative oversimplification, supposedly in the interests of populism, but in practice going so far as to evacuate the complexity of situations down to a comic book shorthand. Viewers have to do their own work in transcending the indiscriminately childish patterns of motivation Stone’s characters have to operate with. But by that stage, such a large proportion of any recognisably social context has been eviscerated that few strategies remain for imagining how the fictional problematic might relate to our real lives.
 
 
Noddy and Big Ears Go Psycho 
Renewed child violence and copycat scares gave Natural Born Killers free hype – the calibre of ‘evidence’ being more laughable than usual (e.g. Panorama, BBC1, 27/2/95). Sure enough its characters seem indiscriminately deranged grown-up babies, even if their personalities and development are hidden from us. Backgrounds of horrific abuse and random misfortune would be convincing precursors of this killing spree only if the action took place inside the psychopaths’ vengeful unconscious fantasy-lives. In that case the moral – it was the telly wot did it – would be a provocative comment on media zombification. We could speculate on how destroying the tissues of community enhances, as it cuts adrift, violent infantile impulses which otherwise get woven back into intersubjective creative experience. But we learn nothing about how any real world phenomena are generated, overdetermined, conditioned, articulated and driven.
 
If the media bewitch us exactly so that we do remain ignorant, that can’t account for the desperation of liberals like Stone trying to recuperate disenchantment with the information age and its media, while striving to maintain coherent positions for themselves (where all those 60s gurus failed?). Worse, such familiar leftist elitism would concur with Natural Born Killers’ implicit argument that specifics don’t matter: of cultural connection, social context, or how viewers’ experiences are woven into our lives. Since the media turn it into a glossy celebrity distraction; it is, in effect, distracting us in precisely that way; and that’s all it does. Or has someone read too much Baudrillard?
 
The film’s main innovation is its constant background visual noise of distorted, agitated fragments of film, hand-held, home video, black and white TV, animation, pop video, computer simulation and other visual styles infesting walls, skies or any surface that holds still long enough. Now and again one of these techniques infiltrates the main action for sustained moments, profoundly enthralling and unsettling the viewer, forcing even closer attention. This breathtaking strategy of montage serves as multiple analogy: TV segmentation and random juxtaposition (channel-hopping, succession of images etc); the jumbled chaos of symbolic, social, and urban environments; and the crazy work of the id, here magically materialised. A mythical media junkie’s unconscious is filtered through the director’s ego and projected (cinematically and psychologically) within a cinema screen. Despite these layers of processing, artifice and distanciation, it is a marvellous metaphor for media saturated culture.
 
Action films are utterly (unwittingly) spoofed. The irony and subtlety of a Tarantino script is sacrificed for pompous seriousness, so the actors have no choice but to caricature infantility. Formal pyrotechnics replace pulp devices of affectionate banter and wry humour amidst humdrum horror. Clumsy, staged references to other films are paradoxically more comical amid the ad hoc existentialism and romantic fatalism which show no sign of the reflexiveness that might give them integrity. And in the prison riot, the police, media and governor’s decadence, the execution of the media pundit, and the outlaw woman’s bodily refusal of victimhood, middle class America’s nightmare of underclasses out of control comes into sharp focus.
 
As usual Stone can’t handle the complexities of politics plus media in the face of social forces beyond a superficial individual level. Like its woeful TV predecessor, Wild Palms, this film poses as a serious cultural object by neurotically hamming up the technological wizardry. It falsifies and trivialises the way the media deal with crime and violence, and is irrelevant to their real contemporary expressions. It is transparently parasitic on its cultural context – usually commercial products parade social conscience as niche marketing, not hiding behind it as a crusading principle.
 
Stone will convince those whose grasp of structures of power and capacity for agency in the world are as shallow, cynical and narcissistic as he is. Natural Born Killers and its ilk only have corrosive effects on those whose smugness and jaded tastes are relatively untouched by the material immediacy of 1990s impoverishment and brutalism. We can interpret it (and the panic-hype reception) as a display of intense hysterical anxiety by the elite middle classes at the predicament their ethics, technology and aesthetics are bringing their children to; and at the same time abject fear as they see their brave old world beginning to slip away, threatened with ease by the demons of their own creation. That they hate themselves so much, and know us so little ……
 
 
Blood From A Stone 
Stone’s films unwittingly reproduce the alienating social effects of the media and government operations he claims to want to change. This banal grandiosity contributes to their success as films – but in the ambivalent pleasures they evoke, we glimpse the tragically robust persistence of government-by-capitalism. More optimistically, his films demonstrate that conventional wisdom about possible paths to personal, social or political change (as expressed by the film maker or his leading characters) are definitely not going to be useful as such in our lives. They are the social and political opiates of the enemy – their weakness, not ours, and crying out to be travestied as such.
 
The cinema audience may use the power of film images to resonate with our fantasy lives – which is another way of saying, the exploration of possibilities, catalysts and raw materials for thought and intention, dream and action. And if we fantasise about what we don’t have, those in control fear what they may lose. Given their contemporary cinematic visions of the world and its people, their confidence seems to be at a surprisingly low ebb, balancing subversion and containment more hysterically than ever. Even if we can’t take that much heart from their discomfiture, surely we can at least take every opportunity to expose it publicly.
 

Notes
 
1. Main sources for the left on culture: Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction; Callinicos, A. (1989) Against Postmodernism; Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture & Postmodernism; Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism; McGuigan, J. (1992) Cultural Populism; Ross, A. (1989) No Respect; Szczelkun, S. (1993) Conspiracy of Good Taste. My contributions to Here & Now 11, 14 & 15 also cover some of this ground.
2. see Ian Tillium, ‘Technological Despotism’, Here & Now 15; and Bonnano, A. (1988) From Riot to Insurrection.
3. Some examples of pessimism, cynicism, quietism etc: Lash, S. & J. Urry (1994) Economies of Signs and Space; Poster, M. (Ed) (1988) Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings; Fiske, J. (1989) Understanding the Popular and Reading the Popular.
4. For culture and the grass-roots, I used: Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power; de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life; McGuigan (1992); Willis, P. (1990) Common Culture; and E.P. Thompson’s studies.
5. Sadly this seems to exclude most of the libertarian left.
6. Books on cinema I found useful are: Collins, J. et al (1993) Film Theory Goes to the Movies; Corrigan, T. (1991) A Cinema Without Walls; Kuhn, A. (1990) Alien Zone, Tasker, Y. (1993) Spectacular Bodies; Turner, G. (1993) Film as Social Practice.
7. Seen most clearly in exploitation genres like horror and porn. See for example Clover, C.J. (1992) Men, Women and Chainsaws; Newman, K. (1988) Nightmare Movies; Segal, L. & M. McIntosh (Eds) (1992) Sex Exposed; Williams, L.R. (1993) ‘Erotic Thrillers & Rude Women’, Sight & Sound, July, pp.l2-14.
8. see F. Dexter, Seriality Kills, Here & Now, Issue 12, and the ensuing debate in Here & Now, Issue 13.
9. including a Vietnam War trilogy – Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth; the parapolitics of JFK; a biopic of The Doors; gangster stories in Wall Street and the script for Scarface; and accounts of the media and US politics, from Salvador and Talk Radio to Wild Palms (TV series) and Natural Born Killers.
 
 
www.variant.org.uk
 
www.freedompress.org.uk
 
www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Last Days – Gus Van Sant – USA 2004: Michael Pitt

Viewed Tyneside Film Theatre 20 Sept 05; Ticket – £6-00Last Days – Gus Van Sant – USA 2004:  Michael Pitt
Viewed Tyneside Film Theatre 20 Sept 05; Ticket – £6-00
 
Do what thou wilt
 
In his last two films GVS has turned to myth as structural device.  In  both Elephant and Last Days there is no doubt as to what will happen.  It is mythically certain.  The point is our relation to and understanding of what we have experienced.
 
In these two films GVS is not only employing a mythic structure but also taking up the central mythic theme of death and reworking it in the context of America as a necropolis, the  new world of the dead.  In GVS’ vision of America it is not only people who die whether they be superstar deities or ordinary folk.   Something essential is dying:  the idea of America.  The America whose people are free to pursue happiness through the satiation of desire.   America the last Titan, as an autophage, consuming her own constitution in  which happiness is an object rather than a state of being.
 
Elephant and Last Days, are both observational in form.  GVS’ camera takes a definitive role in relation to the action on screen, present yet detached, playing the part of quasi historical observer like a Pliny the Younger witnessing the eruption of Mt Versuvius.  What we see is not explosion but implosion of a culture that has become a death centred.   Both films are characterised by camera tracks that have the stylised movement of an Egyptian funerary procession.  GVS uses these long tracks to follow the paths of the doomed young Americans.  In their pacing and deliberation the camera movement is like a remodeling of the tomb paintings and friezes in the Valley of the Kings, where the Egyptian golden ones, bearing their treasure, process towards their deaths.  Last Days  and Elephant are ‘descending’ films in style and intent.  They are constructed as long going downs into the earth.  Going downs that are orderly and controlled without melodrama or fake emotion,  going downs as a cultural observation.
 
GVS has centred his last two films around specific structures located in specific milieu.  We know ancient Egypt though its surviving monumental structures.  America too is observed through the portals of its architecture.  In as much as the structures of ancient Egypt, the Pyramids,  Karnak, the tombs of the Pharaohs directly communicate their obsession with the dead so GVS mediates the idea of the death of America through its contemporary vernacular architecture.
 
In ‘Elephant’ the victims have a sacrificial quality as if they were sleep walkers in some Nietschean parable where a mad man crashes into the school and cries out: “America is dead! America is dead!”  No one hears.  They are all walking towards oblivion.   The students don’t understand that the society whose culture they are assimilating died years ago. No one notices.  No questions are asked.  They continue as if nothing has happened.  Nothing can save them from being claimed by the forces unleashed.  In some respects they are like the faithful trusting slaves and retainers whose throats were slit before being entombed with their ancient kings and queens.  
 
GVS’ setting for ‘Elephant’ is the school, a building that has a sepulchral quality.  Set in a vast headstone suburb the school is white and bony, a structure that encloses its inhabitants and sends them on long mazy journeys.   Like  a catacomb it is a sealed enclosed world, a perfect medium for the unremarked entry of avenging angels.   The house in Last Days where the singer songwriter Blake(a character dedicated by GVS to the memory of Kurt Cobain) resides, is in itself a sepulchral peeling decaying edifice, harbouring an outhouse in the familiar shape of a Victorian mausoleum. 
 
Last Days is centred on this big house in the woods. As the desert is the setting for the Pyramids so the woods are the setting for the big house.  The natural world and the man made world exist as counter attractions for the human soul which becomes a virtual extension of the meaning embedded in these outer forms.  The woods are part of the natural world and in entering them personal history becomes insignificant, only the body is important.  In the woods there is the abrogation of individual destiny.  To go into the house is to accept individual destiny, a destiny that is bound to culture and history. 
 
The house in up state New York, which is the setting for Last Days, resembles one of those stone piles that are found everywhere in Scotland.  Comprising many rooms the houses are labyrinthine, riddled with stairwells and passages. Mostly they were built by wealthy industrial magnates to serve a lifestyle and culture now gone.  As with the monuments of Egypt, you can feel in these houses a permanently frozen way of life: the presence of the dead. Appropriately these buildings are usually very cold a phenomenon often mentioned by contemporary visitors to these houses in their hay day.  In Last Days although the house is cold there are no fires in any of the grates.  The only fire in Last Days is the bonfire Blake lights in the woods when it gets dark.
 
During the film I kept getting images of Alistair Crowley who owned one these Scottish piles called Baleskine situated by the edge of Loch Ness.  Crowley is part of the drifting subterranean current of American / Californian thought forms.  Crowley bought Baleskine in order to exploit its remote situation to further his ‘magik’,  magik that revolved about the idea of the Great Invocations and calling up of the spirit world in particular the Egyptian spirit of Horus.  His house like those Egyptian tombs with their multiple chambers became part of the world of the dead.
 
Crowley an interesting but bloated egotist was consumed by desires above all to be the greatest ‘ master mage’ of his generation.  But Crowley by his own account nearly had his brains and sanity blasted away as a result of an invocation ritual that went out of his control.  He was totally overwhelmed by what he had summoned and his inability to halt the process.  He wandered about for days in shock at what he had called up into his presence. 
 
There is something similar in the dazed existence of Blake.  Blake has called up something which overwhelms him:  the terrible forces latent in the idea of America.  Its as if GVS is suggesting that the desires that fed Blake’s ego and  drove him to his destiny as a rock stargod once satiated, assumed form of a terrifying  and manifest presence that tore his mind apart.  Unlike Crowley, Blake does not have the strength to take on these forces and physically survive.  Most people don’t  resist these types of demonic forces.   They permit the dark powers possession of their souls whilst indulging the delusion born of their pride that there will be no price to pay.   But the price to be paid for desire fulfilled is the human soul. And, ‘Do what thou wilt’,  was the motto of Crowley.
 
Last Days is an examination of the flip side of Faustian myth. What happens to the soul  unable to make the pact which is the everyday business of successful Americans?  Its premise is that a society dedicated to the pursuit of individual desire at any cost creates a culture of death and destruction to protect itself.  The obverse is that those who refuse or are unable to make this pact with the forces of success are either declared insane or driven to self annihilation.  This is the state of affairs in America.
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
28 Sept 2005

Going Through the Motions by Tom Jennings

[published in Freedom, Vol. 66, No. 8, April 2005]

9 Songs is the ‘dirtiest film ever shown in Britain’.1 If so thought must be dirty, as that’s all it aroused in Tom Jennings.Going Through the Motions by Tom Jennings
[published in Freedom, Vol. 66, No. 8, April 2005]
9 Songs is the ‘dirtiest film ever shown in Britain’.1 If so thought must be dirty, as that’s all it aroused in Tom Jennings.
Maverick director Michael Winterbottom’s demystifying of genre has yielded an unparalleled range of highly distinctive films.2 His latest innovation is that 9 Songs’ sex scenes are not simulated, featuring the full hetero hardcore checklist in fly-on-the-wall anatomical close-up – given an ‘18′ certificate uncut by the BBFC and striking a blow for what art can dare to project into the pub(l)ic realm. Through impeccable handheld digital video photography, appropriately dingy lighting and muted colour, effectively brisk editing and valiant acting, the waxing and waning of a love affair is depicted in flashbacks of sexual activity interspersed with concert footage, in an attempt to capture the way memory prioritises iconic moments and intensities.
So, following a one-night stand after a Brixton Academy gig, fun-loving American student Lisa (Margot Stilley) regularly fucks with academic Matt (Kieran O’Brien), but becomes increasingly frustrated by his hidebound cultural, social and erotic routines. She tries to awaken sensuality and enchantment in him (musically via salsa moves and sexually in sado-masochism-lite), but his tender trump cards (earnest cookery, icy seaside skinny-dipping, Christmas tree decoration) barely touch her. Lacking all conviction as a meditation on love, and laughably pretentious as existential philosophy, 9 Songs somehow does convince despite also falling so far short of entertainment or engagement.
Thanks to straightforward realism, the film implies that sex itself is actually no big deal, either as misguided aspiration for personal fulfilment or grounds for complaint. The mechanics of bodily connection fascinate us because physical pleasure can point beyond present disappointment towards meaningful possibilities of intimacy and exploration. However, as Michel Foucault observed in The History of Sexuality, the contemporary injunction to obsess about sex as the centre of identity displaces attention from both personal ethics and the overarching social and political disciplining of bodies. Base sexual urges scarcely represent the ultimate horizon of human yearnings for growth, even if twentieth century capitalism’s masturbatory individualism and narcissistic culture is exemplified by the pornography industry dressing them up for instant gratification. The tragedies of misogyny, homophobia and paedophilia testify to the damage done in falling for that illusion; and 9 Songs gestures at what consumerism promises but is constitutionally unable to deliver.
Going Through the MotionsThe film overturns this overvaluation of sexual behaviour – whose mediated forms embellish fantasy in a hysterical ‘frenzy of the visible’, ignoring anything heartfelt in the most fleeting throwaway consumption. Their seductiveness obliterates the less-thrilling reciprocal altruisms of shared solace and affectionate companionship which enrich mature sexual love and non-erogenous sensuous engagement with the world. Conversely, childish playfulness and polymorphous perversity are justifiably cherished in sexual or any other creative activity. Rather than any ideal integration of these unlikely bedfellows, perpetual reworkings of the dialectics of desire seem inevitable when danger, tragedy and farce circumscribe the human condition.
Absolute safety, security and purity are guaranteed only in death, where moral judgmentalism also leads. Healthy relations in any social sphere require continual pragmatic renegotiation of intention and consequence – but not, as here, among those sleepwalking their way through someone else’s script. The excerpt from Michael Nyman’s sixtieth birthday concert as one of the nine songs now seems less incongruous among the drearily derivative indie dirges. Along with the choice of profession for the male lead as glaciologist, Nyman’s stylistic variations on death-knell orchestral minimalism echo the film’s sterility, the pathos of the protracted decay of rock and roll, and the ironic desperation of postmodern culture.
More specifically, Winterbottom accidentally deconstructs humdrum mainstream masculinity as tediously adolescent and soul-destroying, and the smug flush of young middle class ‘enlightened’ courtship as so much shallow self-delusion. The hardcore conventions aren’t tarted up with titillation, the unexplained complicity of women and other trappings of the self-important patriarchal male gaze which work to conceal porn’s fundamental lack of respect. But images can’t convey fleshly force, heat, textures,  pheromones or feelings, and with no psychological complexity rendering the characters real to each other or prompting identification among viewers, their sex acts seem irrelevant.
The director’s negativity governs this show, and, hey presto, it’s cold out there in the unknown/unknowable continent of Antarctica/feminine desire – even if (as we’re told in the voiceover) the history of life on earth is tantalisingly fossilised therein, and which furthermore retains the capacity to thaw out and flood us all. But not in this scenario.
And if all this feels far-fetched – well, it’s pretty chilly in the bedroom, too, when the rich traces of bodily biography are reduced to hapless couplings by people displaying only the merest hints of awareness of self or other. So Matt resignedly (and fancifully) ascribes selfishness, wildness and impetuosity to Lisa in a denial and projection of his own imaginative failure to rise to the occasion and offer her anything she wants. Distracted ennui sees her turn from provocation to bitching about how boring he is, preferring a lapdancer or vibrator to his sexual presence, and eventually abandoning him altogether to stew in his own juices. It remains unclear why it was supposed that real sex between partners who don’t care for each other might be better than, for example, simulated sex between those who do.
9 Songs goes through the necessary motions of its supercool exercise in calculated miserablism – quietly rubbishing the preposterous  Four Weddings, Bridget Jones and all those other sorry antiseptic upperclass excuses for passion, but with absolutely nothing fabulous or of significance to offer in their place. Generically an (anti-)romance, it is undoubtedly an interesting experiment in critiquing both the fairy-tale complacency of love stories and the ridiculous pneumatics of porno. Unfortunately it fails to grab you by the attention (or any other parts, despite the shock-horror headlines) – and will really only exercise those who prefer to not be moved.
Notes1. according to the tabloids, anyway.
2. including Wonderland’s meditative ensemble tapestry of the intersecting lives of various Londoners, In This World’s quasi-documentary journey with a young Afghan refugee, Code 46’s speculative fiction, and 24 Hour Party People’s docufictional honouring of Madchester as well as more downbeat period dramas (Jude and the forthcoming version of Tristram Shandy).
www.variant.org.uk
www.freedompress.org.uk
www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Palindromes – Todd Solondz – USA – 2004

Viewed 3rd June 2004 – Tyneside Cinema Ticket price £6-00

No message from dead woman walkingPalindromes – Todd Solondz – USA – 2004
Viewed 3rd June 2004 – Tyneside Cinema Ticket price £6-00
 
No message from dead woman walking
 
Palindromes like Todd Solondz’ earlier Happiness, has the feel of a cartoon: a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs goes through one of those sequences in which he adopts multiple forms of identity in order to escape the hunter or …..whatever.  It’s not only that the Palindrome characters transpose their identities into different bodies into different forms in the same roles.   Palindrome also shares some stylistic traits with Toon town in that as a visual experience its characterising feature is density.  Where it differs from the Toon town key note is that its emotional and psychic tone is deadness.  It is a message from the dead zone opening with death and closing with death with a bias towards the female.
 
It’s a film that has almost no luminous quality.  Except for tracking shots from vehicles most of film is the framed in cordoned off spaces such as bedrooms, motels and wooded locations.   There are few window shots and no spaces where light streams, of light sparkling, of light illuminating or light movement.  As in cartoons light in Palindrones has the quality of being something immobile, a function of colour and pattern contrasting the hyper-realness of the sets.  In the space created in Palindrone – with one exception –  there is no issuance of luminance as an intensity. 
 
The exception is one short sequence where the light suggests another world rather than a strip of framed space.  Henrietta(Aviva) is taken to Ma Sunshine’s where she is greeted by the Blind Girl in the White dress who is hanging washing on the line.  Solondz shoots the sequence against the light and the film shimmers – an affective illusion he is quick to dampen.  Henrietta has not chanced into an enchanted world, rather another controlled  zone.   Palindromes is about spaces not worlds: and as film it is locked into corners and holes.  And as if to balance this density of compositional structure Todd Solondz mixes to white as a device for sectioning and marking off discrete sequences of the film, at which point the screen reflects an image of pure light back to the audience, a motif giving temporary relief from the absorbion of light that characterises the dramatic strips of the action.
 
Solondz understands that for the West World 21st century there are no stories left to tell.  We do not have cultural resources that include ‘stories’ on the inventory list of expressive modes.  What we have instead are strips of action that show the movement of individuals through frames.  Stories are based on structural tensions: strips of action are grounded in character and situational tensions – the personal.  Palindromes is a series of strips modeled on familiar thematic material – Dorothy – Red Riding Hood – Snow White – but transformed through the distorting mirror of American society.  In a manner that is characteristic of strip style fomulations Palindromes is moved along by utterances:  statements of personal perspective and value, rather than questions.  The scripted utterances in Palindromes drawn from a collusion of therapy speak and Walt Disney,  are the critical components defining what is going on here.  So what’s happening?  
 
 Central to structural matrix of Palindromes is the inverse relationship of adult and child and the idea of female troubles. Firstly as adult American society is progressively infantalised,  children, as a kind of autonomic compensation, become distorted adults trapped by the stimuli and expectations of the adult world – deterritorialised children. There is one area of prevarication: the reproductive reality of the body.   This area of evasion creates a situation where deterritorialised children may seek to reclaim their world, even though it no longer exists.   Although there is a sub-plot that is built around the botched murder of the doctor who performed the botched abortion on Aviva, the plot status in the film is fantastical rather than real.
 
 At the core of the film is the idea that US (Western) society exposes everyone, and specifically children, to an intense sexual grooming( the anticipation of sexuality). This grooming denies reproduction as a real biological consequence, setting up primary tensions between body and life style that threaten immanent fracture of both psyches and social releationships.  Palindromes measures this idea in a female psyche with a subsumed multiple personality called Aviva, as she checks out various responses: from somatic capitulation and suicide, to murder of the abortionist.  The growth of the fundamentalist Christianity to America now, is depicted as a consequence of infantile yearnings driven by the insecurities of living in a cultural disaster zone.
 
Palindrones starts with a prayer for the dead and ends with the dead.  From dead to dead.  The problem with the film, for all its intelligence and virtues is that it is soul- less.  Without soul or a humour(there’s some internally referenced black humour) that cuts through the crap it remains a stolid and rather heavy experience that is unable to rise above the obvious parameters which are set by American culture which actually imprisons the film.  Palindrome a film that is a prisoner of itself.  Like the idea itself: pointing at self referencing rather than meaning.
Adrin Neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk

Kill Bill 2 – directed by Quentin Tarantino – 2004 – USA

Uma Thurman – David Carradine
Kill Bill 2 – directed by Quentin Tarantino  – 2004 – USA
Uma Thurman – David Carradine
 
The cosmos is the source not only of all energy but also of course of the ultimate joke, if there’s anyone who can stick around long enough to laugh.
At the point where the world’s human society needs a certain relative sobriety as it knocks on the door of oblivion, the cosmos sends Dubya to jolly along the eschatological machinery.  On an average day, Dubya with his pinched face expressions depicting endless varieties of suburban bewilderment, hams through the force fed words cooked up by the back stage writing team.  As performance its par for the Pres part in an Austin Powers film romp about the White House, alternatively Bush would not have been out of place in Dr.Strangelove, in fact it sometimes looks like he studied the Peter Sellars performance in the Pres role and so perfected the craft of welding technology to stupidity.
And Tarantino? After watching KB 2, I see him as part of the same cosmic joke as George W.  It’s not really a question of whether it’s good or bad president or film (though I thought it was a boring ponderously scripted mono-paced film) but, of how comfortable you feel with sound of your own laughter.   In terms of plastic art KB 2 is true comic book homage to the culture that spawned the Dubya presidency. (Carradine towards the end of KB 2 gives one of his tedious talks, this one about Superman’s nature, to Beatrice which seems to almost send her asleep despite the fact she is being well paid to stay awake) Dubya culture has at its centre the core beliefs that: you kill people you don’t like or who don’t show respect and after you’ve killed them it’s like they never existed;  the sanctity of the family; the real belief that we don’t actually have bodies –  because the body is a source of limitation  embarrassment discomfort and dysfunction so it is better replaced by systems of circuitry, centrally programmed and held together by a tightly sutured integuments.
When the body is functioning correctly as a series of circuits it is as if it were without organs. The final element of the Dubya/ Tarantino  belief system is that: time is a sort of the black hole in the political subsystem without any real inconvenient reference flow like past present and future.  Time is something that is simply manipulated to foster credulity.  One outcome of this approach to time is that as a consequence consequentiality takes a particular direction like light in a dark star.  Other people’s actions against you will have consequences for them, but your actions against others have no consequences for you.
The Dubya and Tarentino belief system is as effective a shield as that possessed by any of the American super heroes in that it protects the user experiencing any effect whatsoever from the results of their own behaviour. At the more superficial level the belief system insulates the user from the anxiety of imagining that any enemy – to whom they are alerted – might be able to better them.  But the significance of the belief system is really at the psychic level so that the experiences such as of killing people, stomping on people’s eyeballs, being threatened with death, have absolutely no effect on one’s capacity to be a loving caring mommy, which is the most important thing you can be.  The reason for this is that body and brain are separate wiring systems, and within the brain the emotional and rational killing systems comprise different circuits and there is no interface or interfeed.
Occasionally there might be some bleed through as in KB 2 when Beatrice comes back home to Bill and BB.  However competently wired up individuals such as Beatrice can cope with this sort of minor stress by fixing gaze upon the darling faces of children.
Tarantino’s response to the current ideological need of the American political system is to deliver a mythological tale where the heroine is not a loner in the absolute sense of the term.  In the older myths the one (almost always a he) who was called upon to defend the homeland was an isolated psychic entity.
One who was apart from others and society through the experience of death and killing.  Even the good killer was something of a sociopath, made dirty by the experience of killing.  Killers were of few words.  The world of women and family, children was not the world of the hero who worked with death.
But this sort  mythic image seems increasingly out of kilter with the evolving needs of American imperium: an imperium in which both men and women are front line pawns.  A different sort of mythic wiring system needed to be designed so that the offered prospects of service to America, whatever its form, could offer the recruits a cognitive ideology that permitted them to enjoy both the killing and their families, without blinking.  Both worlds were OK, and in no wise essentially contradictory because it is a world without consequences for the right actors.  Also the children are in no wise effected as long as things look right.  So mummy can kill daddy, but as long as mommy’s well groomed and her hair’s nice the daughter doesn’t miss daddy.  General grooming, use of the right products and a finely tuned suburban fashion antennae are all part of the ideological kit, all part of the wiring.
That’s about it.  Tarentino is now busy constructing the myths required by the American empire to  bind the populace into the new wired up belief system that you can have everything at no real personal cost.  Tarentino might try to contend that KB 2 is simply a tongue in cheek strip of American Gothic, but the cosmic delivery system often works most effectively in joke mode, particularly when large numbers of people don’t get the joke: Bush for President!  Anyone?
I am sure that Tarantino et al had fun (another important ideological concept of the Empire) whilst making KB 2 but I think that as film maker he seems to have lost the flair  to do it.  The use of filmic patina  the black and white sequences only reinforces obvious function of these sequences to effect a retro ‘40s noir heroic reading.  His camera is also big into texture – skin plaster, wall, wood but my feeling is that this prominence of texture is no more than a device to give a real feel to the unreal.  The film plods through predictable locations stocked with predictable characters such as the psychopathic crazy loner, the old kung fu master with big stick to beat students. All the clichés are here – Bill himself as a latter day Charlie of angel fame -but both the shooting and the script are laborious overwrought and overdeliberate as they are in poorest examples of the Gothic revenge genre.
The lines handed out to Carradine in particular are the worst, mainly because he has a lot of them and his scripting reminded me of the loud mouthed self important flatulent producers that you meet at media parties: their only interest is themselves.  All the dialogue, Thurman’s VO included, had the same archeness of writing and delivery.  Somehow I imagined that at one time Tarentino was capable of deft use of words, but that was perhaps when he was telling stories, now he is peddling ideologies.
adrin neatrour 2nd May 2004

Themroc -Claude Faraldo – Michel Piccoli, Beatrice Romand – France 1972

Viewed: 16mm print; Side Cinema Newcastle, 14 November 2004

Ticket £3-00Themroc -Claude Faraldo – Michel Piccoli, Beatrice Romand – France 1972
Viewed: 16mm print; Side Cinema Newcastle, 14 November 2004
Ticket £3-00
 
Send on the Clowns
Its like Claude Faraldo has taken one horrified look at what’s going on in the world about him, and in time honoured tradition stuck two fingers in his mouth and sent out a shrill piercing sliding whistle summoning  Michel Piccoli wearing full clown costume into the arena to save the day for the audience.
 
When in the course of a show in the big top disaster strikes the sexy trapeze artist off her bar, if the lions maul their virile tamer, if the big top catches fire or the four horsemen deal out death across the skies, the circus tradition is to send on the clowns.  It’s an old ploy.  Not just a divertissement but the realisation that the clown has something to give to the audience – clown -ness – that might guide them through a dire state of affairs.  Clown-mode a state of mind where reality does not comprise of events to which you re-act.  Rather reality is perceived as a flow of events with which you interact for the purpose of play.  Clown-mode shows that with some situations playing with the energy is best means of the survival with awareness.  At Armageddon in clown mode you will stay alert: in clown mode there is no blame, no personal responsibility for what is, no imperative to understand only the recourse to play.  To play now.  To play with and by pointing up all the forces in play by giving total attention to being.  Play which involves the total exploration by all the senses of each passing moment attracted by clown consciousness.  There is no intentionality in clown mode only existing at and for the moment.        
 
From the opening sequence with its tacky title cards during which the only recognisable word in the whole film is pronounced – we hear the guttural emuncative enunciation “Themroc” (where does this word come from, does anyone know.  It feels like the name of some cartoon character) we are at the circus where Piccoli clown takes over the show indifferently hostile to the increasingly exasperated and frustrated machinations of the ringmaster, the force of order, to control his behaviour.  Picolli clown’s behavour can’t be controlled because this is the last show.  This is all that remains to do.   In the last act of the last house when everyone has turned into robots that pretend nothing is happening, who are unaware that we are sitting on the self destruct button,  Piccoli clown puts on his red nose paints his face white and gets on with the business of  clown.  The naughty id- child in the man’s body with instinctive responses to the stimuli of the dying world – in particular those responses that are erectile. 
 
Themroc is from camera to performance, becoming clown. In Themroc, Faraldo explores a line of retreat from the horror of the broken machine world and the self important gibberish of machine speak (Themroc should be required viewing for Radio 4 presenters).  It is an actual film of exploration in itself.  Everything in Themroc is on the screen: there is nothing hidden either content structure or form.
 
To see in Themroc anything other than what is on the screen is to miss the point.   What Themroc is not, is,  it is not a metaphor.  Not a metaphor for anarchy or any political system state or philosophy.  It is clown simple.  It has no metaphoric content or meaning whatsoever, noting symbolic nothing allegorical.   The becoming clown in Themroc is actual process of following a line of escape – visceral sensual indulging cruel and always extreme.  This is clown.  Putting on the red nose is real (try it) response to the world.  Being clown is creating a new world of immanent desires immediately gratified.  Piccoli clown is an escape but an escape that in itself leads nowhere.   All Piccoli clown can do is to indicate to other people that there is a way out of experiencing the world as an automaton.  It is a way out that doesn’t lead anywhere but is alert.  Sometimes that’s all there is.
 
The rule of the clown is that like the animal he does not speak.  Like the animal the clown points directly and acts immediately on (not reacts) stimulus.  Piccoli clown completes the implied logic of Harpo clown.  Where Harpo clown chases the sexy women Piccoli clown dives straight into their crotches and makes them laugh with  his tongue; where Harpo clown closes his jaw round someone’s limb to bite then, Piccoli clown goes the whole hog into cannibalism eating the pompous self conceited bullying representatives of authority the policeman.  Where Harpo reformulates and recastes the world by use of outrageous objects produced by delving into the voluminous wrap of his coat which envelopes him like a tent, Piccoli redefines the world according to clown rules by engaging in a primal act of architecture and remodeling his bolt hole.  In an infectious orgy of destruction he smashes out the exterior walls of the apartment,  rips out fittings and hurls away the furniture making a cave like platform from which Picolli clown can survey the world and wave to it. 
 
And the camera loves Piccoli clown. The camera is his friend.  It loves his face because the face of clown says everything there is to be said about clown.  Beautifully mute poison words don’t fall form the lips of the clown .  Clown doesn’t use his face to lie  to deceive or mislead like those cheap actors. Clown is impeccable. You love the face of the clown for exactly what it is: truth without dissemblance;  state of mind without ulterior motive.   The face of the clown moves with him and sees and hears the world as he does.  And the camera follows the face of the clown seeing and hearing the world as he does – experiencing world as clown consciousness. 
 
Piccoli’s face and Faraldo’s camera move together turning the world upside down, exhilarated by acts of petty destruction and  happy together in the rubble dust and smoke.  I don’t think you could make such a film today, with camera and actor so complicity at the edge of vertical surfaces.  Yet it is the complicit relationship of this bond that takes the film in clown mode experience, something rare in cinema.  
 
Themroc is the last movie made in clown- mode.  After 30 years it feels time for another film to put on the red nose and white make and explore the line of escape of the clown.
Adrin Neatrour 15 11 04
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk