last words
last words
CONSIDERING CONTEMPORARY CINEMA
JASON WOOD
A Wallflower Press Book
Published by
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright Jason Wood 2014
All rights reserved.
E-ISBN 978-0-231-85069-8
Wallflower Press is a registered trademark of Columbia University Press
A complete CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-231-17196-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-17197-7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-85069-8 (e-book)
A Columbia University Press E-book.
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Contents
My sincere gratitude to Yoram Allon at Wallflower Press, Curzon Cinemas, Jake Garriock, Andrew Ktting, Chris Petit, Ana Santos, Ian Haydn Smith and all of the filmmakers included in this book.
Dedicated to the memory of Artificial Eye co-founder Andi Engel who understood that film is an industry, but also an art. And vice versa.
This book is also dedicated to the memory of Walter Wood.
The more injured you are by time the more you seek to escape it to write a faultless page or only a sentence it raises you above becoming and its corruptions and you transcend death by the pursuit of the indestructible in speech in the very symbol of nullity.
E.M. CIORAN THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN
In This World
The Old Kent Road had a hold of me motorbike on top of me someone had driven into me the blood spilled out from the femoral artery I felt a warm oilglow piss all over me I hadnt long in this world me and my biography Lookatme and Woeisme I was awash and still it came gushing out then a policewoman tiptoed through the mire to help me she pushed hard into me a gore-soaked poultice 63 stitches picture that picture this picture the puss pictures the story begins thus
My grandfather Albert (Gladyss husband) took me to the pictures Enter the Dragon Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia He told me that pictures could be dangerous (hed once found a photograph of somebody with their legs blown off up a tree) but he didnt frighten me Hold the whole world up in front of a mirror for us all to see this was my philosophy but real life had fallen into the cracks between myself and my work and caused much misery deliriously The trouble with being born
So
Ever onwards forewards an introduction as opposed to an outroduction a reflection and pontification upon the main stream (of consciousness) and all this from the moon that dreamed like an elephants piss (post-accident morphine haze) and into the unchartered pondwater of befuddled misremembrances McQueen with his falling house and epic eye for detail McQueen and the sexy train scene now followed by TS Eliots agonies:
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube
Stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades to silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about.
The shoutingout and melancholy of the nothing-but-the-body Carol Ann Duffy with her mirror in I Remember MeIt must be dreams that make us different must be the private cells inside a common skull The same but different The shoutingout and melancholy of the nothingbuthebody the same but different Main Stream as the common current through which thoughts of the masses might easily flow clones and echo chambers pale imitations of themselves and real life compromised committees bandwagoneering not pioneering universal not personal the production of film not the medium of film long-in-the-tooth and eversotired straight from the boards mouth devolved to the lowest common denominator vanilla not rum and raisin
Sad
One can be sad anywhere but sadness grows in intensity within the confines of closed spaces within the confines of a cinema that keeps showing the same faces again and again and again melancholy flourishes in open spaces melancholy is fire-in-the-belly is Nick Cave and Ned Kelly Get out there and look for it Not as business interest or capital venture but more an attempt at punctum more an attempt at trying to make meaningful that which is meaningless Gideon Koppel and his sheep Clio Barnard and her ability to make you weep the world closing in as real outburst and controlled angst it can get lonely Not Octavio Paz Labyrinth of Solitude lonely more a really out there lonely wind in the face tears in the eyes lonely isolation and outsiderdom fuels and inspires allows for a reflection distance causes desire
The Industry
Of Film filling the horizon fetid stream of settledown gulag and fish farm the major studios drying their nets in the Nissan huts of comic-book ambition (another issue being the risk of algal blooms from overcrowding) Big Fish in One-Big-Pond oxygen depletion and idea starvation blocking out the sun and polluting the head Who would ever want to penetrate the perimeter fence in order to swim in such fishy waters? Why dine at the table of plentitude when there are plenty of berries in the forest? Genre is a minimum-security prison in which all the guards are reading Hello magazine contingent or specialised is elsewhere An Edgeland where it might be possible to dive headlong into the notknowing Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor have been there Harmony Korine lives there
Outside In
Really out there Not In and pretending to be Out Contingency Solidarity and Irony The struggle between pragmatism and poetry between philosophy and high energy This is what Richard Rorty and Tarkovsky have taught me Or De Montaigne (Prophet of the Enlightenment) A mind unable to sit still Explorer of the great themes of existence humanist skeptic and acute observer Georges Perec A Void and Life a Users Manual Lives seen through the prism of ones own self-consciousness intrigue me astound me do more than entertain me disrupt the very fabric of the life that surrounds me cut holes in it and let the light shine in
Maybe I should start again?
When people talk about Modern Art they usually think of a type of art which has completely broken with the traditions of the past and tries to do things no artist would have dreamed of before. Some like the idea of progress and believe that art too must keep in step with the times. Others prefer the slogan the-good-old-days and think that modern art is all wrong.
E.H. GOMBRICH THE HISTORY OF ART
Why do you have to be a non-conformist like everybody else?
Beyond the turmoil and effervescence of the busy life a quieter existence enjoys the surrounding splendor in all its exquisite detail Ben Rivers has supped from this forest floor and regurgitated atop the veneer banqueting table of superficial pop Calm through the absence of cacophony and CGI an essential antidote to the business of mediocrity and commerciality James Marsh and Anton Corbijn mirrors of the mainstream but with more spit and less furniture polish
And you are not paying for art. You are paying for assurance, for social confirmation of your investment, and the consequent mitigation of risk. You are paying to be sure, and your assurance is very expensive, because risk is everything, for everybody, in the domain of art
