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| (9 Songs/2004) |
Michael Winterbottom is a director who gives one the sense that he likes the feeling of operating a camera or making an edit more than images and stories. So it is that in 9 Songs (2004), the images shut off almost as soon as they start; a boy and girl frolic naked on a bed in a hotel, cut; they begin making love, cut; the girl lies face down and reads descriptions from a book on Antarctica to the man—cut. But this could describe a great number of scenes in the film. These images are willfully indistinct. They are images of sex, beds, shot on grainy digital video, made jagged by cuts. But there is one difference. As the girl reads, shots of Antarctica—such a pivotal metaphor!—flash on to the screen. These are far prettier than anything else that’s happening. That may be because the space within the frame is vast and clear, the sun is setting on perfect chunks of ice and snow—but it is also due to a shot of a distant iceberg breaking off from a larger glacier and gliding through the sea as the horizon turns orange. This is one bit of motion Winterbottom pulled off. Not just because it’s one of the few surprising bits of motion in the scene, period. Also because its one shot Winterbottom didn’t have any fun with; he didn’t cut the iceberg up. The iceberg looks like it is breaking away of its own volition. It is an image that approaches serenity, and it gets us to believe in the film’s corny metaphor, finally. Then back to mere screwing, etc. Cut.
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| (9 Songs/2004) |
