Post date: 20-Nov-2017 10:16:44
Elephant by Gus Van Sant (2003)
The American cinema industry paradox is its capacity to provide the most formatted/commercial productions as well as the most radical indie movies. Elephant belongs to this second category. Palme d'Or winner of 2003, this movie constitutes the peak of Gus Van Sant's cinema, most specifically the type of cinema he developed in the early 2000's. Indeed, after the making of rather consensual and popular Hollywood movies, he suddenly adopted a radical approach of cinema-making during four movies (Gerry, Last Days, Paranoid Park and this one), before forgetting his short-lived genius. This cinema praised the use of plan-séquence (long take, or sequence shot) to an experimental level. All these movies are quite short, but they extend the time of the takes to an incredible level, developing a strange hypnotic rhythm that became GVS's signature. The story-line of these movies is very tight, the dialogues are rare, and the events filmed are scarce. So what GVS is trying to tell us? To me, these movies are all experiments about Time. The editing of a movie kills the consciousness of time: the time dimension experienced by the movie characters and the one of the viewer are different. During a sequence shot, the character and the viewer experience things in the same time. This experience of consciousness may allow a director to represent some events more accurately, more intensely. It also gives a sense of space: editing also kills the perception of distances, while sequence shot locates everything. Ultimately, editing is a way to not choose of point of view, and to adopt a sort of ominous perception of the events, whereas a sequence shot adopts the partial perception of one character, one situation at a time. GVS used these concepts to their extreme, and these concepts became particularly meaningful in Elephant, because they were applied to the Columbine shootings. Because Time is linked to another concept: Death. This is where the genius of this movie and its director relies: the use of sequence shots transformed this movie into a vertiginous experience about death. The film-making alone just makes us give a specific value to every single gesture of the characters, being aware that in the meanwhile, some teenagers are preparing a slaughter. The peregrinations of these teenagers becomes a slow march towards their death, and the audience is then moved by their suddenly meaningful routine. Ultimately, sequence shots also vehicles the idea that every character has a single partial perception of reality, and this is maybe why no one expected these two kids to become mad and dangerous: trapped in their sequence shot, people don't pay attention to other views. This is the message GVS was brilliantly sending to the USA in 2003, and still in 2017, nobody seemed to have listened to him.
UK by UK (1978)
One amazing thing about jazz and progressive musicians is their capacity to jam all together, and get out of their original band. It is a kind of music that is particularly rich of various collaborations and combinations of extremely gifted musicians. It allow musicians to blend in a different way their musical signatures, revealing their talent in another context. UK is an album I particularly fancy because it gathers the core of the late King Crimson, bassist John Wetton and drummer Bill Bruford, and one of my favorite jazz fusion guitarist, Allan Holdsworth. Together with keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson, they produced this unique album of fierce progressive rock. The syncopated drumming of Bruford is incredible as usual, the heavy bass lines of John Wetton are overwhelming, and the virtuoso Allan Holdsworth pleases us with his incredible scales exploration. All these talents blends incredibly well with the musical atmosphere created by Jobson. Odd time signatures, mystic lyrics, sounds exploration, everything is there! We are left in a strange universe in between King Crimson, Yes, and Soft Machine. Short-lived formation, it will release just another album without Holdsworth and replacing Bruford by Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa's drummer) for a less successful result. This is why I consider this album as a jam, that just increased that affection for these musicians!