Loose Ends

I still think about cinema everyday. Which is far too often. I still co-opt anything that moves me in to a potential screen story. I still think filmmaking is an essentially democratic art for obsessive mongrels. I still think the stupid mongrels are mostly in charge. But even that does not mean all their images will suffer the consequence. I still think silent films are more important than, and, in the ideal instances, superior to, most of sound cinema. I still feel that there is no real point in writing about movies. I still think it's worth trying to penetrate them anyway. I still think my mind is too cluttered for this. I still fear our culture might someday be too cluttered for movies. I still think that, while The Passion of Joan of Arc clearly is a finer film than The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum may be formal equals to The General. Stylistic cousins, maybe. I still think the only obligation films actually have is to move intriguingly and that is all. I still prefer movies that do more than move intriguingly. I am still uncertain of the practical value of most films, though I am very certain of their impractical values. I still prefer Paradjanov to Tarkovsky. Thinking about movies everyday is far too often, but making a film everyday might be noble, even spiritual. I still think most of what I've written here is probably shit. Some of it's okay. I don't regret it. There is no sense in regret in life.

Motion Studies: Relative Disappearance

(Home Alone/1990)

             

            Kevin (Macauley Caulkin) wanders through his deserted house after awaking on a snowy day shortly before Christmas. This scene in Home Alone starts off looking like a reference to classic cinematic suspense style, or a parody of said style. The way the shots play suggest both.

            Kevin’s brother’s tarantula scurries to the edge of his glass cage as Kevin hobbles through the bedroom, calling out his brother’s name. Kevin walks through the absurdly grandiose suburban parlor, calling the names of his mother, father and uncle. Kevin goes in to the basement, where his eyes scan the mannequins and dolls, and he stops cold at the sight of the menacing stove. His face, mouth open in a half-pose of his scream face (is there a childrens film that makes greater use of profiles?). The stove comes to life, its mouth opens, the coals flare up. Kevin gasps and races upstairs. He is outside, displayed in a tracking shot that follows him along the front of the house, through the snow. He sits at the dining room table and sighs; “I made my family disappear.” The taunting faces of his brother, his cousin, his uncle and his mother shimmer in to thought-bubbles above his head. 

          But suspense means nothing to nobody or no thing by now; not to the delicately creeping spider, the goofy stove, the mannequins. (In Kevin's world, it is vaguely suggested that things do have their own existence, in his head or outside of it). Based on what our eyes took from this space, who cares about suspense at this point? What of parody? The point of it all is that Kevin was told exactly what he (most kids) wanted to know from his roam around depopulated suburban glitz. Another profile: he smiles and looks directly at the camera and repeats what his surroundings told him; he made his family disappear.