Dog Star Man (1964) - full transcript
An experimental film from Stan Brakhage in which a man and his dog ascend a wooded mountain.
Dog Star Man
(a dialogue)
by Jan-Pieter ‘t Hart
for Cosmos Carl
V: So what are we watching?
A: It’s this film that I once
watched on my laptop.
A: It’s called Dog Star Man.
A: I didn’t watch it here in my
living room, I was on the train.
I took a train ride on a late
night, the last one ...
of the night, actually. I
just got back from this ...
birthday party of a distant
friend of mine.
I was feeling kinda icky and out
of it the whole night,
I couldn’t really connect,
there were a lot of people ...
... there that I kind of knew
but not really,
and every conversation just
took so much energy.
Anyway, it doesn’t really
matter, what matters is I took a
train ride back home, I had
a laptop with me and decided ...
to watch something. To get
my head elsewhere.
So I opened my laptop, checked
my local files because the ...
WIFI on the train is shit.
I only had a few films
on there, one of them was ...
this one. I remembered a
good friend of mine ...
recommended it to me and
transferred it a few months ...
earlier. He told me how
amazing it is, how he ...
watched it once in a cinema,
in this small, run down ...
arthouse cinema in the east
side of town, you might ...
know it, I think we've been
there together once or twice.
And I remember him telling me
how much it impacted him...
So it's basically this
completely silent film,
as you can see.
It's more or less an abstract
experience but it has some ...
narrative to it, according
to the critics.
It runs for over an hour,
and it's quite a ...
challenging ride.
My friend told me how
extaordinary it was ...
seeing this on the big
screen, in this dark cinema, ...
with only the flickering
lights, and mostly,
how aware he was of the
people around him,
trapped in the same
experience.
How he heard all the
coughs, the whispers,
the gulps of beer, the
squeaking of the door ...
in the back, people going
to the toilet, or going to ...
get another beer, or giving
up on the film altogether.
But he also told me that,
at some point,
he wasn't really paying
attention to all of that ...
anymore, he was really there
with the images,
sucked into the flickering
light, into the abstraction.
He was describing it as
some kind of catharsis,
a transcendence of the
physical into the ...
extraterrestial, of simultaneous
unconsciousness ...
and hyperconsciousness.
Or something like that.
And I remember telling him how
jealous I was of him,
how I'm always hyper aware
of everything and everyone ...
around me, and how I can
never fully immerse ...
myself into a film when I'm
watching it in a cinema.
It's like the feeling when
you get the AUX cable ...
at a house party and
all of a sudden ...
you are listening to the
music you love so much ...
through the ears of everyone
in the room...
It's awful.
Anyway, sorry. Long story short:
I was watching this on the train
back home coming from this ...
birthday party and I had a
complete opposite experience ...
from my friend [laughs].
But in a good way, kind of.
I was sitting in a near empty
compartiment, in a two-seat ...
with my laptop in front
of me, ...
no headphones needed, and
I remember how much ...
I loved the images, and
how much I could imagine ...
my friend having this
cathartic experience ...
in the movie theater.
But for me, right there,
the images weren't ...
overwhelming at all.
They were like a companion,
for my thoughts,
and my physical presence.
Everything around me grew
so loud,
my mind and my
surroundings,
the flashing lights from the
train windows,
my recollections from the
party,
the attempted
conversations,
the beers I had a
few hours ago,
it was all so very
present.
And I never finished it.
I had like 15 minutes
left when it was my stop.
This is almost a year ago,
and I still haven't
finished it,
so when you proposed
to watch something together,
I thought of this.
V: So why now?
A: Mainly because I wanted
to rewatch it.
I don't revisit things
often enough.
I'm a sloppy consumer,
always in a rush.
I really hate this, because
hardly anything ever ...
really sticks, you know?
I have this internalized
neo-libral inside of me ...
that just wants to keep
adding things to the pile.
Growth and accumulation.
I think it's a weird
sort of... cannibalism,
being someone who makes
things as well.
V: Cannibalism? In what sense?
In the way Oswald de Andrade
uses the term?
A: Who's that?
V: Oh I don't know much
about him,
but he is this Brazilian
modernist,
a poet who wrote a minfesto
in the 1920s.
Translated to English it's
called the Cannibal Manifesto.
It's very referential,
and to be honest ...
I didn't get much out of it.
From what I know it's a
celebration of how Brazilian ...
culture cannibalizes on
other cultures and thrives ...
off of it.
In it there's this famous line:
"Tupi or not Tupi:
that is the question."
So it references the Tupi,
a tribe of indigenous ...
Brazilian peoples who,
in some shape or form,
practiced cannibalism.
And at the same time this
sentence cannibalizes itself:
it eats Shakespeare and
Shakespearian legacy..
A: That's cool... I guess
that's more or less what I mean.
My longing to consume as many
Beautiful things as possible ...
is sometimes so big that
it consumes itself.
These are the worst days,
when I'm oversatured,
and overstimulated,
scrolling through my ...
watchlist or my Spotify
library and not longing for ...
anything in particular.
It's depressing.
V: Why is that so depressing?
You can just accept that
you're fed, right?
That you are full, and
digesting.
A: Of course, that is exactly
what I should do more often.
That's why I wanted to
rewatch this,
to expand on one experience
instead of hurrying ...
to the next one.
But now all we do is
blabbing over it.
V: That's okay for me.
I don't mind that we talk ...
over it. We are just
soundtracking it [smiles].
[silence]
V: Oh shit, this was only
the prelude... okay.
A: Yes, it’s quite a watch.
But beautiful, right?
After this it's getting more...
lyrical, I believe.
[silence]
A: I forgot to mention,
but this film is a collection
of four or five shorts,
made over the course of
as many years.
I looked up a bit about the
process before,
and he intended this prelude
that we just watched to be...
Do you wanna hear this?
Or should I just let you
watch it?
V: No no, continue.
Cool.
He imagined the film
or at least the prologue ...
to be like a dream.
Not a depiction of a dream,
but the dream itself,
as experienced from the
embodiedness of the dreamer.
Watching it, I think it kinda
makes sense.
You feel lost but you're also
a part of this very specific ...
cosmos of color and flashes
and scratches and rhythm.
And then there are these
occasional sparks of life,
as a memory,
or a déjà vu.
[silence]
V: You know, I like how we are
watching this ...
and analysing it, wording
it, at the same time.
It's probably a bit barbaric,
but I like this as well.
It is a kind of guerilla viewing
I just imagined Stan...
what's his name,
... Stan Brackade? how he was
probably this pompous white man
with big ideas about
Cinema and Life, you know,
20th century stuff.
And here we are, when was this
made? 50 plus years later ...
on the fourth floor of a
studio building in Amsterdam,
overlooking a car wash
and a car rental ...
and some anonymously
grey warehouses.
Sitting at your desk,
watching his masterpiece,
his opus, every frame
crafted with care ...
and juxtaposed in this
painstaking montage,
and we watch it in this
bright lit room ...
on a 17" MacBook, and you
couldn't even be bothered ...
to move the cursor so the video
player hides the progress bar.
No 16mm projector, no cinema
room, no event, just us.
I'm not being ironic or mocking
the film or the filmmaker's ...
efforts when I say that I
really find this beautiful.
It's another way of relating
to something.
Stan probably didn't
anticipate home viewing,
at least not when he was
making this in the 60s.
But we are engaging with it,
and keeping it alive,
even though his work mutated
into pixels on a laptop screen.
[silence]
A: I think I agree.
I noticed in the comments
something you will like.
Here, I will scroll down a bit.
Here is this thread of comments
where people share which album .
they put on while watching
the film.
CAN, Stereolab, William Basinski
Coil, Earl Sweatshirt [laughs].
And I get it, I did the same
thing with another film ...
by Stan, it was called
Anticipation of the Night.
He made it a few years earlier .
and it has the same vibe,
more or less.
I paired it with a compilation
of ambient tracks ...
I'd been listening to a lot
back then.
Stan probably would've
hated this,
he wanted to strip cinema to
it's core and show film itself,
the materiality of
the surface.
But I'm not sure if I
agree with that.
I'm not sure I agree with
this purification,
it somehow makes me
suspicious.
V: I trust John Cage more,
I guess he was his contempory
by the way,
I trust him more
when he says that ...
he never shuts the
windows when he composes.
He welcomed the noise.
It kinda relates to some
texts I've been reading.
I think I have one in
my bag.
Want me to read a bit?
A: Sure.
V: It's by Bourriaud,
this French curator ...
who was involved in the
art scene of the 90s.
Douglas Gordon, Félix González-
Torres, you know the lot.
He coined the term
'relational art' ...
and he makes some pretty
great points, actually.
This is from his book
'Relational Aesthetics':
Hold on.
Here:
"Otherwise put, the role of
artworks is no longer to form ..
imaginary and utopian
realties, but to actually be ...
ways of living and models of
action within the existing real,
whatever the scale chosen by
the artist.
Althusser said that one
always catches ...
the world's train
on the move:
Deleuze, that "grass grows from
the middle" ...
and not from the bottom
or the top.
The artist dwells in the
circumstances ...
the present offers him,
so as to turn the setting ...
of his life (his links with
the physical and conceptual ...
world) into a lasting world.
He catches the world
on the move,
he is a tenant of culture,
to borrow Michel de Certeau's
expression."
And here he talks
about animism:
"If one of these atoms
swerves off course,
it "causes an encounter with
the next atom ...
and from encounter to encounter
a pile-up,
and the birth of the world."
... this is how forms come
into being,
from the "deviation" and random
encounter between ...
two hitherto parallel elements.
In order to create a world, this
encounter must be a lasting one:
the elements forming it must
be together in a form.
Form can be defined as a
lasting encounter."
A: So what he’s saying is
that we are completing ...
this film by relating to it?
That there’s no film
without viewers?
V: So the whole book is
one plea ...
for “formations rather than
forms”, as he calls it.
One last citation, I promise.
Maybe Stan would’ve liked
this passage as well:
“In a way, an object is every
bit as immaterial ...
as a phone call.
And a work that consists of a
dinner around a soup ...
is every bit as material
as a statue.”
[silence]
A: So what do you think of it?
We’ve been talking around it,
but not really about it.
V: [laughs] Yes, I guess that’s
the difference between us.
I spiral around things ...
and you want to get straight
to the point.
V: I don’t know what I think
about it…
But it makes me think,
it’s engaging.
It’s not something I would
decide to watch,
and that’s why I like that you
decided for me.
You know, sometimes I think I’m
too conditioned by academia,
I always think in terms
of... I don't know, value.
Which is important, of course,
but I get stuck I'm when trying
to value a work like this.
My cynical side wonders
why I should watch ...
this sisyphean character with a
dog climbing a snowy mountain,
what the point is of watching
this in 2021.
I mean 2022, shit...
It all seems a bit dated,
it’s not about living but about
Life, you know?
It’s so sacred and spiritual, in
a masculine kind of way.
Like a feature length black
metal video [laughs].
But I like how hopelessly
romantic it is,
it is kind of endearing.
A: Hmm...
[silence]
V: What are you doing there
on your phone?
A: [laughs] Sorry, it’s a
bad habit.
I’m reading Letterboxd reviews
of this film.
It’s pretty amusing, actually.
V: Wanna read me some?
A: The top one kind of echoes
what you were saying,
but this guy is head over
heels about it.
Listen to this:
“A tremendous juxtaposition of t
a man that has towards ...
superior forces, towards transce
dence and towards our ...
inherent piritual perpetuity,
contemplating the vastness ...
of existence and the beginning
of humankind ...
and its continuation through
procreation.”
V: Hmm. Too Christian for me.
A: You’ll like this one better,
its motto is a song by Miley:
“Ain't about how
fast I get there ...
Ain't about what's waiting
on the other side ...
It's the climb (yeah)”
V: What do they say?
A: This one is also
pretty lyrical.
But it’s more… relational.
This is the closing paragraph:
“I want to watch this many more
times in my life.
I want to watch it with all
different kinds of music.
I want to watch it with
my friends.
I want to watch it
with strangers.
I want to watch it on the
biggest and smallest screens.
I want to watch it outside.
I want to watch it high.
I want to watch it as a I drift
gently off to sleep.”
[laughs] Hear this one:
“Lost track of whatever was
happening 3-4 minutes in,
still managed to not die out
of boredom.”
[silence]
A: I’ve been thinking about
what you said,
about what the point is of
watching a film like this ...
in 2022.
And I get it… there is something
obsolete about it,
it is definitely out of touch
with this time,
with any time I would argue.
This was made in the 60s,
there was plenty of shit going
on back then ...
and it doesn’t deal with
that either.
But I think that is part of the
appeal too,
for my friend who recommended
it to me,
and for me, watching it on the
train back home ...
after a shitty night.
It is a kind of nostalgia.
Not a nostalgia for a tempo-
rality or a specific memory,
but for a kind of non-time.
A: I remember a review
of a triennial in the States,
it was in an art magazine,
and the writer was considering
why he could hardly find ...
any works in the exhibition that
looked new,
that looked like they were a
reflection of its time.
I’d like to read you a bit of
the closing paragraph.
I think I can make it just
before the film finishes.
Let me just look it up.
V: You wanna have the last
word, huh? [grins]
A: OK, reading back it is all
a bit of a truism,
but I will read it anyway:
"These have been five crazy
years, at times so intense,
so full of paranoia and mania,
it’s surprising that we’ve ...
ended up with an art that’s
so traditional and nostalgic.
During these years, people have
been afraid of so many things:
The Trump presidency.
Racism.
The rise of fascism.
That Facebook has been
manipulating our minds.
That the Russians are hacking
our consciousnesses.
That free will no longer exists.
North Korean nuclear tests.
Islamic terrorism.
Domestic terrorism.
Shaman-involved insurrection.
Pepe the sad cartoon frog.
Irony. Ambiguity.
EVIL artists and writers.
Greta sailed across the ocean to
Manhattan to warn us about ...
climate change.
We’ve been scared of the
global pandemic.
Of cities, of going outside.
Of spending time with one
another, of social proximity.
We’re frightened of each other.
And so much else besides.
What these surveys of the
present seem most afraid of ...
though, is the present,
and the future,
which is considered
completely doomed;
and that’s a shame."
(a dialogue)
by Jan-Pieter ‘t Hart
for Cosmos Carl
V: So what are we watching?
A: It’s this film that I once
watched on my laptop.
A: It’s called Dog Star Man.
A: I didn’t watch it here in my
living room, I was on the train.
I took a train ride on a late
night, the last one ...
of the night, actually. I
just got back from this ...
birthday party of a distant
friend of mine.
I was feeling kinda icky and out
of it the whole night,
I couldn’t really connect,
there were a lot of people ...
... there that I kind of knew
but not really,
and every conversation just
took so much energy.
Anyway, it doesn’t really
matter, what matters is I took a
train ride back home, I had
a laptop with me and decided ...
to watch something. To get
my head elsewhere.
So I opened my laptop, checked
my local files because the ...
WIFI on the train is shit.
I only had a few films
on there, one of them was ...
this one. I remembered a
good friend of mine ...
recommended it to me and
transferred it a few months ...
earlier. He told me how
amazing it is, how he ...
watched it once in a cinema,
in this small, run down ...
arthouse cinema in the east
side of town, you might ...
know it, I think we've been
there together once or twice.
And I remember him telling me
how much it impacted him...
So it's basically this
completely silent film,
as you can see.
It's more or less an abstract
experience but it has some ...
narrative to it, according
to the critics.
It runs for over an hour,
and it's quite a ...
challenging ride.
My friend told me how
extaordinary it was ...
seeing this on the big
screen, in this dark cinema, ...
with only the flickering
lights, and mostly,
how aware he was of the
people around him,
trapped in the same
experience.
How he heard all the
coughs, the whispers,
the gulps of beer, the
squeaking of the door ...
in the back, people going
to the toilet, or going to ...
get another beer, or giving
up on the film altogether.
But he also told me that,
at some point,
he wasn't really paying
attention to all of that ...
anymore, he was really there
with the images,
sucked into the flickering
light, into the abstraction.
He was describing it as
some kind of catharsis,
a transcendence of the
physical into the ...
extraterrestial, of simultaneous
unconsciousness ...
and hyperconsciousness.
Or something like that.
And I remember telling him how
jealous I was of him,
how I'm always hyper aware
of everything and everyone ...
around me, and how I can
never fully immerse ...
myself into a film when I'm
watching it in a cinema.
It's like the feeling when
you get the AUX cable ...
at a house party and
all of a sudden ...
you are listening to the
music you love so much ...
through the ears of everyone
in the room...
It's awful.
Anyway, sorry. Long story short:
I was watching this on the train
back home coming from this ...
birthday party and I had a
complete opposite experience ...
from my friend [laughs].
But in a good way, kind of.
I was sitting in a near empty
compartiment, in a two-seat ...
with my laptop in front
of me, ...
no headphones needed, and
I remember how much ...
I loved the images, and
how much I could imagine ...
my friend having this
cathartic experience ...
in the movie theater.
But for me, right there,
the images weren't ...
overwhelming at all.
They were like a companion,
for my thoughts,
and my physical presence.
Everything around me grew
so loud,
my mind and my
surroundings,
the flashing lights from the
train windows,
my recollections from the
party,
the attempted
conversations,
the beers I had a
few hours ago,
it was all so very
present.
And I never finished it.
I had like 15 minutes
left when it was my stop.
This is almost a year ago,
and I still haven't
finished it,
so when you proposed
to watch something together,
I thought of this.
V: So why now?
A: Mainly because I wanted
to rewatch it.
I don't revisit things
often enough.
I'm a sloppy consumer,
always in a rush.
I really hate this, because
hardly anything ever ...
really sticks, you know?
I have this internalized
neo-libral inside of me ...
that just wants to keep
adding things to the pile.
Growth and accumulation.
I think it's a weird
sort of... cannibalism,
being someone who makes
things as well.
V: Cannibalism? In what sense?
In the way Oswald de Andrade
uses the term?
A: Who's that?
V: Oh I don't know much
about him,
but he is this Brazilian
modernist,
a poet who wrote a minfesto
in the 1920s.
Translated to English it's
called the Cannibal Manifesto.
It's very referential,
and to be honest ...
I didn't get much out of it.
From what I know it's a
celebration of how Brazilian ...
culture cannibalizes on
other cultures and thrives ...
off of it.
In it there's this famous line:
"Tupi or not Tupi:
that is the question."
So it references the Tupi,
a tribe of indigenous ...
Brazilian peoples who,
in some shape or form,
practiced cannibalism.
And at the same time this
sentence cannibalizes itself:
it eats Shakespeare and
Shakespearian legacy..
A: That's cool... I guess
that's more or less what I mean.
My longing to consume as many
Beautiful things as possible ...
is sometimes so big that
it consumes itself.
These are the worst days,
when I'm oversatured,
and overstimulated,
scrolling through my ...
watchlist or my Spotify
library and not longing for ...
anything in particular.
It's depressing.
V: Why is that so depressing?
You can just accept that
you're fed, right?
That you are full, and
digesting.
A: Of course, that is exactly
what I should do more often.
That's why I wanted to
rewatch this,
to expand on one experience
instead of hurrying ...
to the next one.
But now all we do is
blabbing over it.
V: That's okay for me.
I don't mind that we talk ...
over it. We are just
soundtracking it [smiles].
[silence]
V: Oh shit, this was only
the prelude... okay.
A: Yes, it’s quite a watch.
But beautiful, right?
After this it's getting more...
lyrical, I believe.
[silence]
A: I forgot to mention,
but this film is a collection
of four or five shorts,
made over the course of
as many years.
I looked up a bit about the
process before,
and he intended this prelude
that we just watched to be...
Do you wanna hear this?
Or should I just let you
watch it?
V: No no, continue.
Cool.
He imagined the film
or at least the prologue ...
to be like a dream.
Not a depiction of a dream,
but the dream itself,
as experienced from the
embodiedness of the dreamer.
Watching it, I think it kinda
makes sense.
You feel lost but you're also
a part of this very specific ...
cosmos of color and flashes
and scratches and rhythm.
And then there are these
occasional sparks of life,
as a memory,
or a déjà vu.
[silence]
V: You know, I like how we are
watching this ...
and analysing it, wording
it, at the same time.
It's probably a bit barbaric,
but I like this as well.
It is a kind of guerilla viewing
I just imagined Stan...
what's his name,
... Stan Brackade? how he was
probably this pompous white man
with big ideas about
Cinema and Life, you know,
20th century stuff.
And here we are, when was this
made? 50 plus years later ...
on the fourth floor of a
studio building in Amsterdam,
overlooking a car wash
and a car rental ...
and some anonymously
grey warehouses.
Sitting at your desk,
watching his masterpiece,
his opus, every frame
crafted with care ...
and juxtaposed in this
painstaking montage,
and we watch it in this
bright lit room ...
on a 17" MacBook, and you
couldn't even be bothered ...
to move the cursor so the video
player hides the progress bar.
No 16mm projector, no cinema
room, no event, just us.
I'm not being ironic or mocking
the film or the filmmaker's ...
efforts when I say that I
really find this beautiful.
It's another way of relating
to something.
Stan probably didn't
anticipate home viewing,
at least not when he was
making this in the 60s.
But we are engaging with it,
and keeping it alive,
even though his work mutated
into pixels on a laptop screen.
[silence]
A: I think I agree.
I noticed in the comments
something you will like.
Here, I will scroll down a bit.
Here is this thread of comments
where people share which album .
they put on while watching
the film.
CAN, Stereolab, William Basinski
Coil, Earl Sweatshirt [laughs].
And I get it, I did the same
thing with another film ...
by Stan, it was called
Anticipation of the Night.
He made it a few years earlier .
and it has the same vibe,
more or less.
I paired it with a compilation
of ambient tracks ...
I'd been listening to a lot
back then.
Stan probably would've
hated this,
he wanted to strip cinema to
it's core and show film itself,
the materiality of
the surface.
But I'm not sure if I
agree with that.
I'm not sure I agree with
this purification,
it somehow makes me
suspicious.
V: I trust John Cage more,
I guess he was his contempory
by the way,
I trust him more
when he says that ...
he never shuts the
windows when he composes.
He welcomed the noise.
It kinda relates to some
texts I've been reading.
I think I have one in
my bag.
Want me to read a bit?
A: Sure.
V: It's by Bourriaud,
this French curator ...
who was involved in the
art scene of the 90s.
Douglas Gordon, Félix González-
Torres, you know the lot.
He coined the term
'relational art' ...
and he makes some pretty
great points, actually.
This is from his book
'Relational Aesthetics':
Hold on.
Here:
"Otherwise put, the role of
artworks is no longer to form ..
imaginary and utopian
realties, but to actually be ...
ways of living and models of
action within the existing real,
whatever the scale chosen by
the artist.
Althusser said that one
always catches ...
the world's train
on the move:
Deleuze, that "grass grows from
the middle" ...
and not from the bottom
or the top.
The artist dwells in the
circumstances ...
the present offers him,
so as to turn the setting ...
of his life (his links with
the physical and conceptual ...
world) into a lasting world.
He catches the world
on the move,
he is a tenant of culture,
to borrow Michel de Certeau's
expression."
And here he talks
about animism:
"If one of these atoms
swerves off course,
it "causes an encounter with
the next atom ...
and from encounter to encounter
a pile-up,
and the birth of the world."
... this is how forms come
into being,
from the "deviation" and random
encounter between ...
two hitherto parallel elements.
In order to create a world, this
encounter must be a lasting one:
the elements forming it must
be together in a form.
Form can be defined as a
lasting encounter."
A: So what he’s saying is
that we are completing ...
this film by relating to it?
That there’s no film
without viewers?
V: So the whole book is
one plea ...
for “formations rather than
forms”, as he calls it.
One last citation, I promise.
Maybe Stan would’ve liked
this passage as well:
“In a way, an object is every
bit as immaterial ...
as a phone call.
And a work that consists of a
dinner around a soup ...
is every bit as material
as a statue.”
[silence]
A: So what do you think of it?
We’ve been talking around it,
but not really about it.
V: [laughs] Yes, I guess that’s
the difference between us.
I spiral around things ...
and you want to get straight
to the point.
V: I don’t know what I think
about it…
But it makes me think,
it’s engaging.
It’s not something I would
decide to watch,
and that’s why I like that you
decided for me.
You know, sometimes I think I’m
too conditioned by academia,
I always think in terms
of... I don't know, value.
Which is important, of course,
but I get stuck I'm when trying
to value a work like this.
My cynical side wonders
why I should watch ...
this sisyphean character with a
dog climbing a snowy mountain,
what the point is of watching
this in 2021.
I mean 2022, shit...
It all seems a bit dated,
it’s not about living but about
Life, you know?
It’s so sacred and spiritual, in
a masculine kind of way.
Like a feature length black
metal video [laughs].
But I like how hopelessly
romantic it is,
it is kind of endearing.
A: Hmm...
[silence]
V: What are you doing there
on your phone?
A: [laughs] Sorry, it’s a
bad habit.
I’m reading Letterboxd reviews
of this film.
It’s pretty amusing, actually.
V: Wanna read me some?
A: The top one kind of echoes
what you were saying,
but this guy is head over
heels about it.
Listen to this:
“A tremendous juxtaposition of t
a man that has towards ...
superior forces, towards transce
dence and towards our ...
inherent piritual perpetuity,
contemplating the vastness ...
of existence and the beginning
of humankind ...
and its continuation through
procreation.”
V: Hmm. Too Christian for me.
A: You’ll like this one better,
its motto is a song by Miley:
“Ain't about how
fast I get there ...
Ain't about what's waiting
on the other side ...
It's the climb (yeah)”
V: What do they say?
A: This one is also
pretty lyrical.
But it’s more… relational.
This is the closing paragraph:
“I want to watch this many more
times in my life.
I want to watch it with all
different kinds of music.
I want to watch it with
my friends.
I want to watch it
with strangers.
I want to watch it on the
biggest and smallest screens.
I want to watch it outside.
I want to watch it high.
I want to watch it as a I drift
gently off to sleep.”
[laughs] Hear this one:
“Lost track of whatever was
happening 3-4 minutes in,
still managed to not die out
of boredom.”
[silence]
A: I’ve been thinking about
what you said,
about what the point is of
watching a film like this ...
in 2022.
And I get it… there is something
obsolete about it,
it is definitely out of touch
with this time,
with any time I would argue.
This was made in the 60s,
there was plenty of shit going
on back then ...
and it doesn’t deal with
that either.
But I think that is part of the
appeal too,
for my friend who recommended
it to me,
and for me, watching it on the
train back home ...
after a shitty night.
It is a kind of nostalgia.
Not a nostalgia for a tempo-
rality or a specific memory,
but for a kind of non-time.
A: I remember a review
of a triennial in the States,
it was in an art magazine,
and the writer was considering
why he could hardly find ...
any works in the exhibition that
looked new,
that looked like they were a
reflection of its time.
I’d like to read you a bit of
the closing paragraph.
I think I can make it just
before the film finishes.
Let me just look it up.
V: You wanna have the last
word, huh? [grins]
A: OK, reading back it is all
a bit of a truism,
but I will read it anyway:
"These have been five crazy
years, at times so intense,
so full of paranoia and mania,
it’s surprising that we’ve ...
ended up with an art that’s
so traditional and nostalgic.
During these years, people have
been afraid of so many things:
The Trump presidency.
Racism.
The rise of fascism.
That Facebook has been
manipulating our minds.
That the Russians are hacking
our consciousnesses.
That free will no longer exists.
North Korean nuclear tests.
Islamic terrorism.
Domestic terrorism.
Shaman-involved insurrection.
Pepe the sad cartoon frog.
Irony. Ambiguity.
EVIL artists and writers.
Greta sailed across the ocean to
Manhattan to warn us about ...
climate change.
We’ve been scared of the
global pandemic.
Of cities, of going outside.
Of spending time with one
another, of social proximity.
We’re frightened of each other.
And so much else besides.
What these surveys of the
present seem most afraid of ...
though, is the present,
and the future,
which is considered
completely doomed;
and that’s a shame."