Saturday, January 21, 2006
In-der-Blog-sein
Adam Ash on the world disclosing itself:
Adam Ash on the world disclosing itself:
Heidegger says that the world is disclosed in language itself, and isn't something which is first disclosed independently of language. To Dr. Grandin, the world is disclosed in pictures, and that seems to me a more primordial disclosure than language.I just got back from watching The New World. Which is about worlds disclosing and humans making their own worlds as they go along. Obviously a lot of world disclosing by cinema pictures, and then there's the interior monologues for the worlds humans create for themselves. ¶ 1:40 AM
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Very interesting reflections.
Of course (it could be argued), neither the imaginary (pictures) nor language (the symbolic) ever disclose, until real intervenes ... :-)
Of course (it could be argued), neither the imaginary (pictures) nor language (the symbolic) ever disclose, until real intervenes ... :-)
well Malick's work seems to be about self-reflexion through the eye of the camera. reality appears to be memories and the narration most likely reflections on past events. I believe Farrell even uses the past tense at some point "She threw herself at me...". The eye is disembodied (check out the way it swoops through the space) as though it were a floating conscience above the world (new world in this case) formulating its selective reality. everything happens to be poetic, specially the love rememberances, the swooping during the battle scenes. not a coincidence.
The film's sequence is definately not strictly linear, with remembered scenes libreally intercut with the film's "present" time. But I disagree that the eye is disembodied, compared to, say, your average movie. That's one of Malick's signatures, the embodied camera. Almost all the camera angles are from eye-level, next to the grass when a character is rolling about in it, branches brushing against camera when exploring, pointed at the ceiling when Farell is knocked down in the chief's hut. I think the poetic, dreamier, shots represent the character's mood. The battle scenes are one of the few times when the camera is jerked about and spins quickly, following the motion to the combatant. The same was the case in Thin Red Line, with the camera galloping above the grass when a GI was running, and pushing through the grass when crawling, with hot lead coming from the enemy and narrowly passing by.
Also repeated from the earlier flick, are the allusion to classical poetry. In her monologues Pocahontas invokes her mother or the spirit, like Achilles calling to Thetis or Homer his muse.
There were also modern, existential, moments in ther movie. It's not a historical yarn, for all its efforts to authentically recreate the native villages and Jamestown. I've forgotten one that struck me quite forcefully while I was watching--I'll take notes next time--but another was at the end when Pocahontas dies and tells Christian Bale (who I'd just watched the night before playing James Ballard in Empire of the Sun, Spielberg's best movie) not too mourn her, because we all die anyway.
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Also repeated from the earlier flick, are the allusion to classical poetry. In her monologues Pocahontas invokes her mother or the spirit, like Achilles calling to Thetis or Homer his muse.
There were also modern, existential, moments in ther movie. It's not a historical yarn, for all its efforts to authentically recreate the native villages and Jamestown. I've forgotten one that struck me quite forcefully while I was watching--I'll take notes next time--but another was at the end when Pocahontas dies and tells Christian Bale (who I'd just watched the night before playing James Ballard in Empire of the Sun, Spielberg's best movie) not too mourn her, because we all die anyway.
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