LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Monday, December 17, 2012

'Philip Glass at 75: Koyaanisqatsi' at the Barbican, 14th December 2012

Monday, December 17, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Taken during the show, Philip Glass is seated on keyboard near the bottom right.

I've been looking forward to this concert/screening for what seems like forever.  'Koyaanisqatsi' is my favourite film of all time, and ever since I first watched it in 2006 I've been desperate to see one of the rare orchestral performances of the score performed in sync with the film.  So when I found out last February that Philip Glass himself would be performing it 5 minutes from my front door I snapped up a ticket right away.  Since then the ticket has been gently yellowing from age, tucked safely up on a high shelf for 10 months, the concert always too far off in the future to let myself get truly excited for it.  But on Friday the day finally arrived.

I hate the idea of having a singular 'favourite' film that sits above all others, but if I did have to pick one 'Koyaanisqatsi' would probably be it.  It's a piece of 'pure cinema', minimalist in construction, composed entirely of beautiful images and music.  There is no plot, no characters and no dialogue.  The only problem with it is that the general response when you say it's your favourite film is for people to go "Koyana-what?" It's almost impossible to describe the film without coming across as a pretentious arsehole, especially if you begin using (perfectly accurate) phrases like 'visual tone poem' or, for that matter, 'pure cinema'.  

Ironically, even though a description can make the film sound utterly inaccessible, 'Koyaanisqatsi' is a film that any human being can appreciate on some level.  By eliminating language the director, Godfrey Reggio, created something that can be appreciated anywhere in the world.  Similarly, culturally specific elements like plot and characters can be enormous barriers, invisible to audiences accustomed to Western story-telling, but potentially alienating to anyone outside of that sphere.  I genuinely believe that every single human being on the planet, can get at least something out of this film.  Sure, they might be bored or confused by it, but 'Koyaanisqatsi' is constructed in a way that highlights certain universal human experiences and emotions.

So, if the film is pared down so much, how does it communicate?  The division is split 50/50, between the beautiful cinematography of Ron Fricke and the score composed by Philip Glass.  The score is famous in its own right, being appropriated for video game trailers or superhero films but for my money it's so intrinsically connected with the images in this film that it doesn't properly work anywhere else. 

Walking into the Barbican auditorium to a stage full of empty seats immediately impresses upon me how many people it takes to bring this music to life.  We have the Britten Sinfonia, the Philip Glass Ensemble and the Trinity Laban Chamber Choir, all in all meaning there's about 60 or so people on stage at any one time.  We also have Philip Glass in attendance on keyboards, although as far as I can see he doesn't do a huge amount himself, leaving the complex arpeggios to Mick Ross.  Still, I think he's earned the right to sit back a bit and take the co-pilot's seat tonight.  

I've seen this film many times, and I know pretty much every shot in it by heart, but I was anticipating what the live musical accompaniment would add to the experience.  From the moment Jeremy Birchall stepped up and began singing the word 'Koyaanisqatsi' in an impossibly deep bass tone I knew we were in safe hands.  Throughout this performance, the sheer abundance of incredibly talented musicians on stage breathed new life into the film. 

'Koyaanisqatsi' begins very slowly, with majestic shots of deserts, lakes and mountains.  The pacing here is deliberate and stately, underlining the permanence of this geography.  Some of the shots of the desert seem deliberately framed to be reminiscent of shots of Mars; alien landscapes utterly indifferent to human life.  This tactic of transforming the familiar into something abstract runs throughout the film.  As we progress through the film we see the first signs of human life, miners carving their way through this pristine landscape.  The final progression is an extended examination of a city, the processes that support it and the lives of the people living within it.  

There are a number of clever and subtle contrasts in this film, and the impressing upon us of the timelessness of the natural world is inversely mirrored in the impermanence of our man-made world.  The human equivalent of these majestic landscapes are our skyscrapers and urban environments.  'Koyaanisqatsi' shows up these as something transitory.  We're shown the Pruitt Igoe housing project being demolished, row after row of huge blocks collapsing into dust.  Skyscrapes bloom grey clouds from their bases as the TNT explodes, and then seem to be sucked into the earth.  Again and again the film urges us to consider our environments and behaviour from different perspectives.

The film uses various artistic tools to shift our viewpoint, forcing us to view a familiar world with an outsider's eyes.  Probably the most famous is the time shifted photography.  In the most intense sequence,  'The Grid', we see the processes of a city hugely sped up.  Traffic becomes abstract red lines, electronic dots chasing each other around a maze.  People become frantic blurs, jittering their way through mechanised turnstiles and office doors.  Here, the crowd becomes dehumanised, notions of individuality are squashed.  There is a an inescapable futility here, thousands of people rushing around madly to no apparent end, running as fast as they can to stay in the same place.

During 'The Grid' we examine the life support systems that keep this crazy system running smoothly.  We see food mass production, conveyor belts teeming with food sorted by robotic, emotionless workers, television after television being bolted together or computers being assembled.  These shots echo the machines we've seen people travelling through.  One shot of sausage production directly quotes footage of commuters pouring off escalators.  You inescapably begin to feel like a piece of meat yourself, a tiny pointless cog in a bigger machine.

You're somewhere in that crowd!

As this sequence ends the music drops away and we cut to high above the city.  The camera floats serenely, reminiscent of an out-of-body experience.  This is a transition from the small-scale to the large and the silence allows us a moment of contemplation and decompression after all the thundering noise and energy.  After maybe 40 seconds of this, there's a series of spectacular match cuts which show us the city from above as circuit board, manufactured and logical, humans mere electrons blustering around components.

Throughout 'The Grid' the music builds and builds to a frantic pace.  The rhythmic chanting of the choir seems to match the arpeggios of the keyboards.  As it gets faster and more frantic so do the visuals, as if they're racing each other and matching speeds.  This onslaught of imagery and sound had a profound physical effect on me.  I found myself pressed back into my seat, my muscles tense, my jaw locked in a grimace.  I felt a bit like David Bowman in 2001 being passed through the star gate.  Seeing the film projected large, with an orchestra thundering beneath it elicits an actual physical response, suddenly 'Koyaanisqatsi' is not a nearly 30 year old film, it is something happening here and now.

Though this is a film that gets a clearer view than most of the bigger picture, there are repeated smaller and personal moments that always affect me.  One shot shows an faintly simian looking man sitting, smoking in the bowels of a power station.  He looks competent and in control, emanating some kind of confidence in his role, as if he's shouldering the responsibility of keeping the city running.  Another is an old homeless man who, as the choir starts singing, turns his head to look directly at the camera, staring dully and faintly accusingly at us, his sunken eyelids seamy and red.  

By far the most affecting, for me is simply a shot of an elderly withered hand weakly searching for human contact in a hospital.  Film is ultimately a manipulative medium, exploiting a basic human love of melodrama to make us feel emotions.  But when a nurse walks over out of shot and takes that person's hand and comforts them, it feels genuine; a true glimpse of kindness.  The contrast between seeing tightly regimented humanity moving marching robotically through the city, and dazed, wandering, injured people of this sequence couldn't be greater.  We're seeing the people who've been spat out of the machine, broken gears that society has no further need for.  

Watching this woman trying to light her cigarette showcases the misery of the mundane.

'Koyaanisqati' is a wonderful film, something that achieves what few films ever can: a positive change in the viewer.  Rather than preach a message it trusts us to reach our own conclusions and to actually think about the images and sound before us.  The film allows us to explore the perspective of the outsider, to see the world with new eyes.  It's the kind of film that stays with you for the rest of your life.  Heading onto the tube in London in rush hour you inescapably begin to consider yourself as a mere electron, just another insignificant face in the crowd.  It's not a pleasant feeling, but it is, perhaps, the truth.

It was an absolutely wonderful concert, and I think maybe the best single screening of a film I've ever attended.  'Koyaanisqatsi' is an outstanding piece of cinema, and is only uplifted by hearing its score live and loud.  An experience to treasure forever.  If you ever get the chance to see this film with an orchestra behind it - jump at the chance!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Samsara (2012) directed by Ron Fricke, 18th September 2012

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

‘Samsara’ is pure cinema.  It achieves transcendence in a way that can only be achieved by film.  It’s an answer to the query as to what cinema can do that literature and theatre can’t.  The vast majority of all films released could be adapted into books, or cut down in some form on stage and remain recognisable.  These adaptations would be different experiences to the film, but the conceptual thrust would remain the same.  ‘Samsara’ can only ever exist as a film; a procession of moving images and sound that gets neurons sparking off each other like nothing else I’ve seen lately.

Ron Fricke has been carving out this niche in cinema for thirty years now.  After working as director of photography on Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (1982), he directed ‘Baraka’ (1992) and ‘Samsara’ is a direct continuation of this filmic tradition.  All of these films share common cinematic DNA; long shots of landscapes, contrasts between ‘natural’ and ‘urban’, closeups of individuals, time lapse photography and a lack of narrative.

‘Samsara’ takes in some jaw-dropping scenery, highlights being temples dotting a green and pastoral landscape at sunset, waterfalls cascading through rainforests, flights over neon cities at night and an amazing view of the Kaaba at Mecca during the Hajj.  These landscapes are contrasted with portraits of people from a huge variety of cultures.  We see young Hindu dancers, Buddhist monks, gun-toting Americans, nomadic African tribes and Thai ladyboys.  Conceptually the film is divided into chapters, sex, guns, poverty, the natural world and so on, although they’re never delineated and the sections flow into one another organically.

Films like this are perhaps unique in cinema in that they allow the viewer almost complete autonomy to decide what the film's about.  Rather than being presented with a clear message or symbolic intent, we’re just invited to think about what we’re seeing.  This sounds deceptively simple. The only thing the film asks of us is that we analyse the visuals, and how these sequences might interrelate.  The film is overtly meditative, and the images it presents are shot coolly and dispassionately.  

This openness seems to confuse and bewilder some people.  A number of negative reviews of the film criticise it on the basis that the film doesn’t explain where and what you’re looking at.  I don’t think it matters whether or not you know you’re looking at, say, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or a Ghanian funeral.  What’s important in the film is the image that’s on screen at that moment, not any outside context you wish to apply to it.  In trying to decipher a coherent meaning, I think it’s interesting to consider whose viewpoint we are seeing these images from.  We experience this film unbounded by time and space, ethereally moving around the landscape, observing and never interacting.  Time and motion become malleable and fluid, we observe the stars and sun spinning dizzily over the desert as days and nights fly past us.  The film places the audience in the role of an omniscient god-figure, able to travel anywhere and see anything.  One aspect of these films that I appreciate is that we never feel like what we are seeing is being done for our benefit.  The impression given of these images and events is that they not only would have happened anyway with or without our observation, but that they are ongoing processes – something happening in the here and now.

I see this ‘god’s eye view’ as a tool that’s being used to expand our consciousness, to force us to re-examine our perceptions.  One theme I identified running through the film is the illusion of the self.  There are many huge crowds moving as one in this film, as well as people moving in a highly regimented fashion, be it for military, fitness or religious purposes (among others).  It is hard not to be awed by the sheer amount of humanity on display, particularly in the Hajj sequence at Mecca where millions swirl around the Kaaba like a human whirlpool.  When confronted with a depersonalised crowd this large, the film asks us to consider our own place in humanity.  From our god’s eye viewpoint the individuals in the crowd melt into one another; the notion of the individual seems ridiculous.  When the film does focus on individuals, it shows us a vast spectrum of human life and behaviour.  Can we discern anything of ourselves in the eyes of a nomadic tribal leader?  Is it possible for us to empathise with a Japanese Geisha, or a cellful of Filipino prisoners?

The answer is always yes.  ‘Samsara’ demonstrates that there are myriad ways to be ‘human’.  From the conventionally beautiful to the horrifically scarred to the heavily self modified we are asked to consider them as individual facets of a shared humanity.   The way Fricke shoots these portraits of people recalls similar shots in his previous films – the subjects stare, emotionless into the camera lens.  Rarely are we shown somebody whose thought processes we can immediately comprehend.  These blank expressions have the effect of gently nudging us towards wondering what they are thinking.  If we’re doing this, then we’re being empathetic, and this empathy goes a long way towards involving us in the images we’re being shown. The upshot of this is a blurring of the line between self and not-self.  The word ‘samsara’ is a Sanskrit word defined as the neverending flow of births, lives, deaths and rebirths that constitute humanity.  This is a cycle without end, and ‘Samsara’ allows us to consider our place in it in relation to the rest of humanity.  

Another line that the film blurs is between what is considered ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’.  We see shots of beautiful landscapes untouched by human hands contrasted with vast, shining cityscapes.  Fricke makes no judgments as to which is the more worthy and both are equally stunning in their own ways.  Coupled with this are shots of environments where the line between civilisation and nature isn't so clear.  We see houses filled with sand, doors pushed open by an intruding earth, cracked and dried mud covering every surface of a school.  This boundary is further eroded by a view of a prehistoric looking town built into a cliff face.  Moonlight shines through slits in one of the rooftops, creating a pattern of vertical silver that passes eerily over the interior.  All of this instils not only an empathy for our fellow human beings, but  a profound connection to the entirety of nature.

Just sensing this connection isn’t enough, and ‘Samsara’ shows us why a state of equilibrium and balance with the world around you is important.  There are a series of what I’d classify as ‘perversions’ of the cycle.  Some of these are more symbolic than literal.  The obvious example of the symbolic are the closeups of humanoid robots.  They click, buzz and whirr in an uncomfortable simulation of a person.  We’re deep in the uncanny valley here, and it’s disconcerting to look into the eyes of something that appears vaguely human and see nothing looking back at you.  A continuation of this theme is a later sequence showing the assembly of realistic sex dolls.  In a disturbingly hospital-like room we see headless bodies, female dolls with their legs spread open, everything made of the same unpainted sterile flesh coloured plastic.  We later see the heads, which with their wide staring eyes and rosebud lips seem unpleasantly childlike.  I don’t think Fricke is explicitly condemning these false bodies, rather, he’s showing us an example of humans without humanity.  It’s a warning, an observation of the endpoint of human solipsism; pure plastic image devoid of emotion or feeling.

A more obvious and disturbing perversion of the samsaric cycle are the slaughterhouse sequences.  We see chickens, pigs and cows just prior to slaughter, being manipulated like objects on a production line.  The contrast here is between the frantic and confused flapping of the chickens, and the implacable, cold machines that usher them towards the killing device.  For me the most affecting shot in this sequence was that of piglets suckling on their mother.  The mother was lying down in a stainless steel box, unable to get up or do anything other than lie there.  Watching these piglets fight for milk struck me as depressingly pointless.  Why should they expend so much energy trying to survive?  They're soon going to be gristle for the machine whatever they do.  It's interesting how sterile these sequences are, everything is clean metal and plastic, everything is steam-washed to remove any trace of contamination.  There's a slow sense of horror in watching the wheels of mechanised death inexorably turning, the industrialised slaughter making a mockery of the balance we see elsewhere in the film.  

Of course, this is just my personal, humanist interpretation of the film.  The beauty of 'Samsara' is that it'll mean something different to everyone that watches it.  A film without language, without narrative or characters is truly universal.  Stripped of cultural conventions, Fricke makes films not for a Western audience but for humanity as a whole.  

I'd highly recommend seeing this in cinemas if at all possible.  It's amazing even on a purely technical level, with one of the best digital transfers I've ever seen.  It benefits hugely from watching the whole thing in one go too.  This film casts a spell, and if you were able to pause and rewind at will I fear that spell would be broken. 

'Samsara' is on limited release now.