What I watched at metrograph last month
& some healthy questioning of auteur theory
Auteur theory has been on my mind lately. I have been reflecting on why I have been so drawn to the concept, and also why I am outgrowing it. My love for movies comes from my love of books, and when I was in tenth grade I started to really love English class. I read every book and took thorough notes on each of them, because my teacher offered us with the necessary tools to analyze an author’s rhetoric, and I began to see the way books are constructed to reflect a certain vision. My teacher made us work diligently, and soon, close analysis (which rewired my brain) became more of a natural process. I learned about the world, the importance of diction, and the power of a creative voice. Years later, when I took my first film class in college, which was mostly analysis based, I learned the vocabulary to talk about film in a new way, and I realized that I could apply the same logic I learned to analyze a book to movies. This new way of thinking opened me up to film in its ability to portray something internal externally, and I loved watching movies to decode meaning and, above all, to learn about the world. Film in this way was uncharted territory to me, and I learned so much so quickly in that period.
Perhaps this is why auteur theory resonated so deeply with me, because I liked the idea that I could understand films as having an author or a single creative vision. I learned about auteur theory in this very formative time, so it became the framework with which I understand film. I like being able to pinpoint themes, styles, and patterns to certain directors, so I can categorize them and pocket them up in my little bank of film knowledge. However, in the last couple of years I have slowly started to come to terms with how limited of a viewpoint it is, especially within the boys’ club context in which it was created. It’s hard for me to let go of the auteur as my dominant understanding of film, and I don’t want to abandon it necessarily, but I am open to a lens far more expansive at this point. I learned about cinema through a particularly western lens, and while it represents the dominant narrative, it is just that: a framed story. On the other hand, other theories, like third cinema, reject an individualistic and institutionally mediated understanding of cinema and present a vision of cinema by and for the people. It’s not a movement necessarily, but a different framework of analysis. Gradually, my appreciation for small-scale art and the resourcefulness inherent in collaboration forms a deeper part of my vision.
Nonetheless, I keep going back to Metrograph, because I believe that the spectator is just as much a participant in the conversation around a film as the filmmakers. Seeing films from across history and across the world in the company of people just as excited to be there as you are and to keep the dialogue ongoing is a very special experience. Movies are meant for people, collectively.
In the spirit of collective viewing,
Here is what I watched at Metrograph last month and Here are some of my (still auteur-oriented) thoughts:
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966) BY ROBERT BRESSON
1966 was a good year for cinema (PERSONA, THE FACE OF ANOTHER, DAISIES, BLACK GIRL, MASCULIN FEMININ, TOKYO DRIFTER, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS…)
Bresson sets this tragedy against the backdrop of a donkey being treated cruelly and passed along from owner to owner according to their own selfish whims. Bresson intentionally uses juxtaposition editing in order to highlight the casual cruelty of people in a microcosmic village in the French countryside. His cinematographic direction of Ghislain Cloquet is characteristically straightforward and the music is often diegetic. In other words, there are not many frills. Instead, Bresson relies on the steady, omniscient eye of Balthazar to frame a scene, and the film therefore begins to adopt his point of view. It is a subtle and brilliant trick, because Bresson limits our range of knowledge to the perspective of an animal. Balthazar is just a donkey whose unchanging reaction to the abuse he endures becomes a mirror of our own viewing experience.
The village is filled with archetypes, many of whom are corrupt and obsessed with possession and ownership. Contrastingly, Balthazar and Marie represent the innocence of Jesus and Mary as is suggested by their suffering and the way Bresson frames them seraphically as if they were figures in a classic renaissance painting. Eventually, Marie is corrupted by the townspeople and Balthazar dies after being abandoned by the greedy people who once took care of him. The story is tragic, but Bresson’s understanding of people is not purely nihilistic, as he treats his subjects with care and nuance. He is not so held to time, but the film is marked by the start of a life and a death, and in this sense, he uses innocence as a juxtaposition to corruption to portray human existence even at its darkest and most complex.
THE CASSANDRA CAT (1963) BY VOJTÊCH JASNY
THE CASSANDRA CAT is the most pleasant film I have seen in a long time. I haven’t seen a ton of Czech films, but something that I can say about Czech films from this New Wave era is that they are so literally out of this world. Jasny’s fantasy film is a narrative framed by the film’s somewhat omniscient narrator Oliva, who tells the time and shares the lives of the townspeople with the audience, emphasizing the individual and intersecting lives of people and actively engaging the viewer. This framing is both a meditation on storytelling and where that tradition fits into film. Jasny experiments with the medium while also demonstrating the infectiousness of creativity through sincerity with oneself, especially while the local school’s headmaster tries to control the children by stunting their creativity through his authoritarian rule. Similar to BALTHAZAR, a cat comes to town with a magician and his assistant, and its gaze exposes a corruption that has overrun the city and aims to fill it with color again.
THE CASSANDRA CAT is one of the most unique visual experiences I’ve had watching a film. At this point, as viewers, we are aware that almost anything can happen on screen through editing and that the rules of film do not always align with the rules of reality. Despite this, there is still something so magical in the spectacle of the film and the use of post-production color editing as something intertwined with the storytelling. The magician puts on a show for the townspeople (both diegetic and not), and as the audience we are equally implicated in that moment. Jasny prompts the viewers to think about the many layers of illusion that can be achieved with film that are on the one hand immersive and on the other contradictorily self-aware. Ultimately, a magical cat forces a town to reconcile with their corruption and turns kids into artist-anarchists, and through self-reflexive filmmaking we are involved as well. I had so much fun watching this, but there were moments that felt like a musical in a way that bordered a little too earnestly family friendly and didactically moralizing for me. However, it was the most unforgettable and magical film I have seen in a long time. I can’t wait to keep exploring Czech Cinema.
Also I noticed the name of this film changed to WHEN THE CAT COMES on Letterboxd, but The CASSANDRA CAT is the way I have always heard it.
