(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The films of famous director Stanley Kubrick have often been characterized as "cold". There may be something in that description, even if it encounters problems in meeting movies like Paths of Glory og Barry Lyndon. But in that case, the film's "cold" is not the temperature of an emotionless person. If anything, it is the temperature of a disinterested universe. Kubrick didn't have time for sentimentality (except in the Fear and Desire), because he cared so much about man that he was busy analyzing something about the fact of existence – and our feelings in it.
Wednesday 26. August I sat in a square in the Danish city of Odense and saw Kubricks 2001: En romodyssé (1968). It was a relief after watching a couple of Danish short films characterized by directionless emotion porn. Kubrick's extensive portrait of evolution bears the mark of what Susan Sontag, via Ortega y Gasset, called the art of dehumanization. The work of art draws us from a familiar, human perspective, and asks us to reflect and experience new premises – beyond our comfortable sentimentality.
The work of art does not take a step back to remove itself or us from the world, says Sontag, but for us to see and approach it in a new way. Its distant perspective is not a goal in itself, but a means of a new experience. Unlike direct emotion-appealing art, which often plays on our personal identification with fictional characters, a distant, reflective art is about gaining an empathy that "goes the way of intelligence"; it allows us to encounter a strangeness and an incompetence in how we are, so that we can come to a new understanding, or struggle with something we do not understand, but which we experience in meeting it. 2001: A romodysseé is one such film ultimate.
At most film festivals you will find films of both types, and many that are in the middle of these extremes (emotion porn and dehumanized art). Some of the quaint wood cardfilm festivals are that you can end up in shows where the entire span is lived on for an hour and a half.
"Please take the pill voluntarily," the staff commands, in what appears to be a senseless attempt to give the woman a sense of self-determination.
The international short film festival in Odense (Odense International Film Festival) is no exception – although it was far between the very highlights of this year's shows. The festival goes on to be Denmark's oldest film festival, and celebrated this year's 40th anniversary. It has been held 30 times over these 40 years, and initially had the memorable name "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairytale Film Festival".
The festival presents Danish and international short films of various kinds (fiction, documentary, animation), and offers many different events – panel debates, workshops, focus programs and seminars. All the halls were close to each other and the atmosphere very relaxed. Besides, almost all views were free for everyone! The appearance of 2001: En romodyssé was a collaboration with the Cinemateket in Copenhagen, and was one of several feature films that were shown during the festival – including Dr. Strangelove (1964), another masterpiece from Kubrick.
In the dark. Of the films in the Danish competition program (a total of 25 pieces), one in particular stood out: In the dark (2015) by Gustav Möller. It also marked itself as a more distanced, disciplined and stylized treatment of emotions than many of the other films in the program. The result was something more vibrant, powerful and powerful. And perhaps it is because an empathy "that goes through the intelligence" is easier to include in one's own experience; the emotions are not glued to the film, but extracted in the encounter with it.
In the dark provides a concentrated portrait of a woman who is forcibly admitted to a closed psychiatric ward. The film has a "clinical" character that imitates the systematic compulsion the protagonist is subjected to – what one describes in the catalog as "a force majeure as anonymous as nothingness". At this point, it may be reminiscent of John Carpenter's latest film, The Ward (2010), in a more naturalistic, gloomy and less genre-specific stylized form.
They know, rectangular scopethe images highlight the sharp, straight, locked lines in the walls that hold the woman captive. An unbearable silence, the sound of impenetrable glass, uncontrolled screams, impersonal keys, voices like mighty shadows and heavy breath that do not recognize themselves; it is as if there is some madness in and between these walls, which really should tame madness. The architecture is intrusively inhuman, it is difficult to breathe and think and act freely in it. The thoughts cling to the wall, which captures the woman inside her expressionless darkness.
The film's form at all conveys a sense of coercion – of being coerced, and of existential freedom. When the woman screams and desperately opposes taking pills, it is the compulsion she opposes, and not the employees as such, not the pills themselves. "Please take the pill voluntarily," the staff commands, in what appears to be a senseless attempt to give the woman a sense of self-determination. The film makes one sense this experience of a situation where there is no negotiation and choice; "Free will" is reduced to forced or "voluntary" coercion.
In the dark does not feel like an assault on forced entry. It is not at all a didactic or moral film; It is not initially about what is right or wrong, but about creating a sense of the harsh, unfree reality that may be necessary for some people, perhaps not. The film portrays an existential situation with a disciplined artistic form, which claims to be one of the strongest Danish such of the year.
Self-pity. There were also other (but less interesting) films during the festival that dealt with forms of freedom in our safe welfare state, such as Katusha (alcoholism), Teen World (Patriarkat) Lists (family violence and communication difficulties), Fallen Angels (Christian morality condemns lesbian sexuality), The Owl (Handicap), Heaven (psychological barriers) and Luke & The Aspies (lack of room for a boy with Asperger's). Along with the latter two were Ulaa Salims The Sons of Our Fathers among the most interesting of these – a poem attack on immigration prejudice.
But many of these films remained powerless, and I think that is because they are too eager to squeeze out emotion from the audience. That's what I used to say about "emotion porn" – one eager to trigger viewers' emotions in a way that makes them persuaded them these feelings. This is especially true for movies like Fallen Angels og Katusha (but also Allan 3000, The Owl and not least the lousy one spendthrift): the former with its uncritical and incessant soap opera-like close-ups of crying sexuality, which participates in the pain of the characters without putting the participation in perspective; Katusha with its compassionate sadness, which asks us to buy its sentimentality without understanding anything – without having managed to feel anything. These are films where the emotions and thoughts one sits with do not grow out of the film's expression and organization, but are pushed to us by a self-pitying camera who thinks it is enough to record fictional suffering.
Distance. Stories are not important in themselves, and fictional human beings are not moving in themselves. It is when it is all put in a certain perspective that it becomes interesting. Perhaps more sensitive filmmakers should take a closer look at Kubrick's "cold," which in its aesthetic distance to the represented world evokes previously untold feelings; new felt perspectives. After the film festival in Odense, I am left with the impression that many of the Danish filmmakers could afford a more "dehumanized" treatment of their material. It is precisely in its formal distance In the dark finds its emotional power. It draws me out of the usual compassion – not for me to coolly analyze, but for me to discover a new empathy.
Eidsaa Larsen is a regular film critic in Ny Tid.
endreeid@gmail.com
