Embedded Files
Pi - Aronofsky
Darren Aronosfky's Pi... After watching this film, not only did the message resonate with me but its look. It touched on and therefore inspired me to make use of
a brilliant mix of incredibly insightful spiritual themes, commentary on the nature of man's greed and one man's paranoia and anxiety in his search for a myth, a pattern within pi.
a beautiful looking high contrast film, it is important that everything is black and white with fewer mid-tones. It is represented at its fullest on the go board, which mirrors the outer story of man/material/money with the inner of god/sun/enlightenment.
highly composed shots (see to your right)
This cross cutting between the digits of pi, and the character Max's growing madness over his situation, this cross cutting is extremely effective at showing us what is going on is the characters head.
I chose to emulate this in my film, see short 20 second excerpt below.
pi comparison with slay.mov
Max going mad in trying to understand the nature of the numbers, the patterns behind them.
Max's madness grows from trying to understand the divine, something Sol, Max's tutor (which interestingly means sun), warns him about such with parallels like retelling the story of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. Thematically representing coming too close to the divine. A motif that is repeated throughout the film. This draws on a similar parallel of the City of Babel, in man's quest to join with the divine, to seek to understand it...
It only ends in ruins.
La Jetee
Themes
It focuses on a short-lived doomed relationship between two people within a city. The impact of this relationship resonates not just in the specific time it took place but also potentially far into the future in the life and memories of the person who survived.
It deals with memory not just as a recollection of experience but as markers of what are most fundamental to those who do the remembering. Memory as meaning. Memory as an anchor to a time and place when things happened with people who matter so much to us that they live and grow and interact with us again and again in our minds even if those physical people are dead and the places we interacted with them might (or might not) have been destroyed.
La Jetée deals with time. The inevitability of what is now present always becoming past and gradually becoming a more and more buried past. But through the vividness and importance of a single face in our memory we can transcend time. We can relive and go back, though we may alter what actually happened without fully realising that our memories alter subtly too. Emotion can shape our memories.
It is to do with theme of loneliness within a city.
It is to do with the problems of communicating vital deeper truths. The idea that an individual can know about a deeper truth which no one else in a city does, but even though he’s articulate, he's unable to communicate fully what he knows because the city and its inhabitants don’t want to listen or can’t hear or couldn’t comprehend the scale of what is being told to them.
Style
I was drawn so deeply into La Jetée because of its use of still photography overlaid with voice, dialogue, music and sound design. I always love the moment when the woman wakes up and for just a few frames Marker uses moving cinematography. The change in form produces magic and emotion and wonder.
I love the fact it is in black and white. I was drawn to the depth of the blackness behind the people in the future. The nothingness they inhabit contrasting with the details of the city that the Man returns to in the past.
I love the editing style of La Jetée. The rhythm for each cut of the stills. The sense of movement within the frames and between consecutive frames. I love the sense of meaning embedded within frames that then is unleashed as the frames are joined by the edit. The sense of menace in the Jinn or fragile tragedy//feminine delicatessé in the Young Woman.
I love the costuming style. The sunglasses. I wanted my character for the Jinn to wear dark glasses so we never see the eyes. It is unsettling and dangerous. If eyes are the windows to the soul then someone without eyes might not have a soul. How dangerous they would be.
Key Shots
I pay subtle homage to
a few specific frames in La Jetée.
The still of an airplane near the opening.
The two people sitting together in a personal and close moment of trust and the fragility this suggests when viewed through passing time and passed time.
I wanted the tunnel section to visually reference the Future in La Jetée where populations live underground after nuclear war even though my tunnel underground shots represent something more mythic and labyrinthine in nature rather than prophetic of a disaster.
I drew inspiration of the sunglasses shot of the Scientist in the Future when thinking about my character who plays the Jinn.
La Jetée
Slay The Beast
Koyaanisqatsi - A City Symphony Film
Koyaanisqatsi - meaning life out of balance in the ancient Hopi language, has an interesting structure. It begins in nature, shows the old city then holds a beautiful shot of the new city from far; before delving into what makes it really tick. The rivers of light painted by cars, time-lapses of people walking. Yet it appears all that matters is the money makers who are the last we see in the movie. It shows this life is so out of ‘balance’; the natural order of existence subverted by man's materialistic nature and his edifices to his own glory.
What is so alluring about Koyaanisqatsi is how it takes the genre of a city symphony and builds on it. It shows the gross enormity to which we have built our cities. The below gif sees cars flow like rivers of light surrounded by millions of dots, each one a home. These shots are unbelievably beautiful.
Interviews with Tarkovksy
In Irena Breznas 1984 interview with Andrei Tarkovsky
He makes some fascinating points that greatly inspired my writing. I will quote them here. I will highlight in bold areas of particular interest/ personal illumination.
T: “Two notions are in disharmony - that of material development and that of spiritual development.
Q: “This began already with Plato”
T: “No, much earlier. It began when man decided to defend himself against nature and other men… In any case, Man should realise that he was born into this world with the purpose of spiritually rising above himself, to overcome what we call evil, the evil which has its source in egotism… everything else, as right as you may be, is secondary”
T: “Unfortunately, society today is a at a dead-end street. We need time to spiritually reconstruct our society. But we don’t have the time anymore. The processes have been started, the buttons have been pushed and thus function independently now. The people, the politicians have become slaves of the systems they have erected themselves. The computer has already taken the lead over Man. In order for the computer to cease functioning, it would take spiritual work for which we don’t have the time anymore. The only hope is that, in the last moment when there is still time to turn off the computer, Man will be enlightened from above. Only that could save us.
Above Tarkovsky's Interviews, Below, Irena Brezna,
In an Interview with Herve Guilbert he said this:
Q: Every man is aware of his suffering: with you, where does it originate?
T: In the fact that man is consumed by material things. Throughout the course of history, progress has advanced by gigantic strides in comparison to spiritual development. Man hasn’t taken into account that this growth is out of harmony with his spirit.
Tarkovskys way of speaking about spirituality amazes me, He seems fluent, to truly understand the real wealth of this world and to create films that can touch on mans purpose in this world.
I hope my film can evoke an nth degree of the provocative, beautiful images of Tarkovsky
Man and his Symbols - edited by CG Jung
Pg 227:
The relation to the self
"Nowadays more and more people, especially those who live in large cities, suffer from a terrible emptiness and boredom, as if they are waiting for something that never arrives. Movies and television, spectator sports, and political excitements may divert them for a while, but again and again, exhausted and disenchanted, they have to return to the wasteland of their own lives.
The only adventure that is still worthwhile for modern man lies in the inner realms of the unconscious psyche." I briefly read a few pages of this book, this section being the first thing I laid my eyes on "by chance" I like working in such a way because I don't believe in coincidence, this passage has relevancy for my project.
Lines in my script that touch on this are:
"Production of Mass Media leads to the people getting feebler"
"Are we still listening to that same TV Screen, a gospel of truths camouflaged and concealed"
The Philosophies of Ghost in the Shell
A Philosophical Analysis of Ghost in the Shell (1995) – The Vault Publication
“In this film, a soul is referred to as a “ghost” and the plot is propelled forward by a myth concerning an entirely robotic being containing its own “ghost”. This ultimately brings forth questions as to what a “ghost” is and whether artificial lifeforms can possess these “ghosts”. Similarly, it also pushes forward the question of what is inherently unique to humans if robotic beings can mimic something such as a “ghost”. It is immediately apparent that this film presents the idea of dualism; the mind and body are presented as different entities.”
Philosophy | Ghost in the Shell Wiki | Fandom
“In Ghost in the Shell, the word ghost is colloquial slang for an individual's consciousness or soul. In the manga's futuristic society, science has redefined the ghost as the thing that differentiates a human being from a biological robot. Regardless of how much biological material is replaced with electronic or mechanical substitutes, as long as individuals retain their ghost, they retain their humanity and individuality.
The concept of the ghost was borrowed by Masamune Shirow from an essay on structuralism, "The Ghost in the Machine" by Arthur Koestler. The title The Ghost in the Machine itself was originally used by an English philosopher, Gilbert Ryle to mock the paradox of conventional Cartesian dualism and Dualism in general.”
Side note: The basic assumption of structuralism is that its particular object of cognition can be viewed as a structure - a whole, the parts of which are significantly interrelated and which, as a whole, has a significant function in the larger social setting.
Ghost In The Shell: 10 Philosophies That Influenced The Cyberpunk Franchise The Most
TRANSHUMANISM
It will soon become imperative that humans and machines learn how to merge into one another. To be honest, the fact we are unable to separate ourselves from our phones proves that we're halfway there, already.
Use of a human to represent the corporation. Surveillance. Using the costume prop of sports shades due to the fact they cover more of the human face. Shades are also headwear that prevents others from looking at the wearer's eyes. I like this sense of disconnect. People say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I want to play off this and seed the idea that the suited man has no soul as you cannot see his eye. Don’t know where he is looking → robotic CCTV camera - esque
Taoistic Non-Dualism
“However futuristic, the narrative is rooted in the core philosophy of Taoism (or Daoism.) The magnificent teachings of Lao Tzu describe the nature of reality as variegated, in that everything and everyone are part of, and compose, "ten-thousand things" — there is no difference between you and me, trees and animals, life and the world.
This is part of the Puppet Master's final argument to Motoko when it says that the universality of the net is far more preferable to the prison of the body.
Why be one when one can be all?”
p.s. literally the coolest gif
Summary
This page is mainly following up on my contextual research and ideas generation, Looking at what I mentioned in my visual treatment with films such as Pi, La Jetée and Ghost in the Shell. Looking at what I mentioned in ideas generation with Tarkovsky. Expanding and researching deeper into these ideas helped me to get insights into how I would write my film and shoot my film. Tarkovsky especially helped with the underlying themes of my film.
After shooting I expanded my section on La Jetée to show how it inspired me indirectly with some shots that I ended up having. A lot of parallels can be drawn.
Bibliography
Koyaanisqatsi. 1999. [film] Directed by G. Reggio.
The Vault Publication. 2015. A Philosophical Analysis of Ghost in the Shell (1995). [online] Available at: <https://thevaultpublication.com/2015/01/20/a-philosophical-analysis-of-ghost-in-the-shell-1995/>.
Aravind, A., 2020. Ghost In The Shell: 10 Philosophies That Influenced The Cyberpunk Franchise The Most. [online] CBR. Available at: <https://www.cbr.com/ghost-shell-philosophies-cyberpunk-influences/>.
MUBI. 2010. city symphonies - Movie list. [online] Available at: <https://mubi.com/lists/city-symphonies>.
Ghost in the Shell Wiki. 2022. Philosophical Elements. [online] Available at: <https://ghostintheshell.fandom.com/wiki/Philosophy#Philosophical_elements>.
Pi. 1998. [Film] Directed by D. Aronofksy.
2015. Pi: Using the Medium of Film to Externalize a Concept. [online] Available at: <http://jbuchbinder.com/2015/07/28/pi-using-the-medium-of-film-to-externalize-a-concept/> [Accessed 26 March 2022].
Gianvito, J., 2006. Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews. 1st ed. University Press of Mississippi, p.118.
Jung, C., Henderson, J., Franz, M., Jaffé, A. and Jacobi, J., n.d. Man and his symbols. 1st ed. Turtleback Books, p.228.
Torato, D., 2022. Nature as “Comfort Zone” in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. [online] Offscreen.com. Available at: <https://offscreen.com/view/nature_as_comfort_zone>.
Mogsam (2015). A Philosophical Analysis of Ghost in the Shell (1995). [online] The Vault. Available at: https://thevaultpublication.com/2015/01/20/a-philosophical-analysis-of-ghost-in-the-shell-1995/.
Siorafasnacillini (2021). Philosophy. Ghost in the Shell Wiki. Available at: https://ghostintheshell.fandom.com/wiki/Philosophy#Philosophical_elements.
Aravind, A. (2020). Ghost In The Shell: 10 Philosophies That Influenced The Cyberpunk Franchise The Most. [online] CBR. Available at: https://www.cbr.com/ghost-shell-philosophies-cyberpunk-influences/.
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