Abstract themes in avant-garde film

 

Comprehending Abstract themes in avant-garde film

In this paper I will analyse two films, Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren (1943) and Lost Highway by David Lynch (1996); both depict Hollywood, Los Angeles through elliptical editing and surreal imagery.  I will endeavour to highlight similarities between the texts and use structural theories, expounded by David Bordwell and Edward Branigan, to suggest a way of comprehending their narratives. 

I will identify and apply other academic / philosophers’ theories which I feel help to understand the abstract imagery / themes in the cinema; these works include: Gilles Deleuze and his expansion of Henri Bergman’s ideas on time, Baudrillard’s position on post-modernism, Kant and Burke’s philosophies on the sublime through aesthetics.   

It is my aim with this essay to look at the medium of cinema as a tool to reflect the fragmented, cognitive processors of the human mind as well as a reflection of the post-modern western world.  I hope to expound why these filmmakers have created their own personal visions and the relevance of their work in the contemporary landscape.  

Before I can identify the themes, use of time, style within my chosen texts, I will demonstrate, through analysing methodologies / systems devised and expounded by Edward Branigan / David Bordwell, ways of perceiving a narrative in film.  Due to the confines of this paper I will only identify areas which I feel are relevant for my readings of these texts.

The ways you perceive something and comprehend something are the ways we understand the world around us.  It is a process of construction on the part of the individual, which represents and explains experience.  Branigan describes, in Narrative comprehension and film (1992), perception as ‘a precept devised from reality, a pre-conscious assumption being made about reality or acknowledged fact of physical reality.’  All our knowledge about the world around us is informed from prior knowledge, experienced, assumed or taught (1992).

‘The acknowledged fact of physical reality’ is a cultural, scientific, time-bound factor which can lead to disparities when interpreting a text from a foreign culture or time. 

Bordwell (1985) writes in Narration in the fiction film of ‘a perceptual judgement on the basis of non-conscious inferences’ I assume that ‘non-conscious inference’ is the same as pre-conscious as mentioned earlier by Branigan.  Using the signifiers around you to identify reality, you piece together these individual modes into an order. These inferences of the world, grouped together, make up your reality.  One aspect of style in narrative film is the ordering of the time-sequences.  These are the modes, which supply the data, which you order in your pre-conscious mind to comprehend the narrative.  This is identified in cognitive psychology as schemata.

Certain information in a narrative is elaborately processed and assigned to a hierarchy in working memory according to relative importance, while much else is discarded.  The value of information increases accordingly to its improbability, so accordingly typical and probable elements carry the least amount of information.  The more typical the information is for the perceiver, the less well it is recalled; for it is already implicit in a guiding schema.

You can conceive that the mind will re-arrange the order of a sequence of events to create a working schema. The mind continuously defines an ongoing definition of an ever-complex diegesis,  creating a continuous generation of better-specified and more complicated expectations about what might be coming next and its place in the pattern.  These new ‘macro-propositions’, concerning global relationships among data stored in memory, represent the gist of the narrative (Branigan, 1992).  This is the manner, you as a perceiver, may use a schema to automatically fill in any data that is deemed missing, the off screen diegesis.

Reid Hastie (Narration in the fiction film, 1985) has distinguished the various types of schemata as the prototype / or central tendency and the template:

Central tendency / prototype – identifying individual agents, actions, goals, locales etc…  In Lost Highway (1996) you are introduced at the beginning to Fred, Renee, their house and the action, bizarre videos of them left on their front entrance.

Template: to pre suppose a master schema, the perceiver expects each event to be discriminate.  The string of events should reveal chronological order and linear causality.  Which adds information when absent and tests for proper classification of data.  Causal connections.  

The template in Lost Highway (1996), once identified, in the opening of the film is obliterated when all the prototype information is subverted, when Fred becomes Pete and Renee becomes Alice.  The confusion found by many critics / audiences could be asserted to this alteration, unheard of in mainstream Hollywood cinema, ‘the string of events should reveal chronological order and linear causality’, this does not happen in this film.

The perceiver, whilst watching the film, will incorporate ongoing pertinent cues that draw on prototype schemata and template schemata.  These are specific to the narrative structure, rather than isolating each piece of datum and slowly assembling a narrative event.  This linear cause and effect ‘chunks’ the film into more or less structurally significant episodes in the perceiver’s mind.  Procedural schemata, as identified by Hastie (1985), employs prototype schemata and template schemata, ‘operational protocols’ that dynamically acquire and organise information.  The spectator may justify material in terms of its relevance to story necessity.  From the above statements you can see an ongoing organisation / re-organisation of the flow of data, used by the perceiver to identify narrative.  This process is a continual effort, after identifying and comprehending the prototype i.e. the characters, locations, goals etc.

The task of ordering this information becomes, on the perceiver’s part, a series of identifying relevant information which can be used to infer a plot / a story-line and rejecting other information which is identified as not relevant.  Bordwell (1985) identifies this as ‘compositional motivation’.  But using Lost Highway (1996) as an example the viewer soon learns not to expect the usual outcomes from information given, so they must be aware of all signs available in case it is useful for future reference.  In Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) the audience, already given the pre-requiste that they are ‘seeing’ through the dreamer’s eyes, may already have concurred that any thing may happen utilising the unlimited scope of the subconscious imagination. 

The perceiver also brings with them their own non-diegetic references, which can be applied.   These inferences / references may be personal to the reader or a cultural norm which is part of their social reality.  You can determine that events can be informed by everyday life.  These must be your first points of reference when interpreting a film.  Bordwell (1985) identifies this as ‘realistic motivation’ e.g. in these circumstances this type of person will take this action.

Bordwell (1985) also suggests that certain artistic devices be seen to be included which have no narrative purpose at all.  They are present simply for their own sake.  These devices which cannot be structured into meaningful order, they simply exist, were thought of by the Formalists very highly.  As it directed focussed attention on the forms and materials of the artwork.   The mind cannot place these devices into a meaningful order, they are easily forgotten, and are only brought to the fore when all other methods have reached nought e.g. when the unfolding action cannot be explained through transtexual, realistic, compositional motivation.   As a last resort the perceiver may consciously employ artistic motivation.  This would imply that there is a certain degree of procedural schemata or a hierarchy, in the perceiver’s mind of methods used.  This method encourages the spectator to be aware of the style in their comprehension of the narrative.

The arrangement of the display of this information, retards hypothesis and suggests / confirms new schemas.  These in turn create the diegesis.  This is a constructivist theory and has been the dominant view in the area of psychological effect, activity of perception since the Nineteen Sixties.  It is the organisation and understanding of sensory data which I earlier described as modes.

One aspect of using an extreme contrast ratio i.e. Lost Highway (1996), enhanced by using a large amount of shades and black in the mise-en-scene e.g. clothes, night time, etc, and a limited pallet, albeit saturated colours, is that you are conspicuously aware of the on screen symbols.  The lack of clutter and other social trinkets also enhances the isolation and focus of the eye.  This deviance from a recognisable depiction of reality can enhance the meanings of the on screen imagery for the viewer.

Your attention is drawn to certain particular motifs due to the scarcity of cultural signs.  This becomes a parallel to a dream state, with the importance of objects as symbols alluding to non-material states in the realm of the mind, represented in Meshes of the afternoon (1944).

The protagonist, played by Maya Deren, repeats a cycle of events, an action of picking up a flower and repeatedly chasing after a hooded character. She observes herself, following the same path, each time with different obstacles and entering the same house.  Maya regurgitates a key and the repetition of action continues; she would appear to gather more knowledge every cycle.  This continues until all duplications of herself stop the scenario and take in turn  the key, the one with the shadow’s hand (representing the enigmatic, hooded figure within her) is despatched to kill her sleeping self.  The knife, she carries, turns into a kiss from her husband (played by her partner at the time and fellow filmmaker Alexander Hammid).  They go to the bedroom where she uses a knife against her husband who becomes a broken mirror. 

Viewing the path, again, you can see Alexander picking up the same flower.  On entering the house he discovers Maya dead surrounded by broken mirror pieces.

Similarly in Lost Highway (1996) Fred discovers, through an amnesiac haze, Renée dead with no prior recollection. A series of transformations, cyclically, also happen to him.  Both films depict the characters starting the cycle as naive pawns that gain knowledge through this process.  

Both films have a ‘mystery’ character who initiates these scenarios. Initially through something found outside their homes, Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), a flower and Lost Highway (1996), videos. In Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) the hooded, cloaked character leads Maya into a cycle of repeated events, through repetition and observation she would appear to gain an understanding of her position.  The character, whilst appearing sinister reveals information for the benefit of Maya, this could be said for a similar character in Lost Highway (1996);  Reni Celeste (cineaction,1997) described him as the ‘enigma’ man:

That excess which undoes and exceeds any system of signification… as that excess which is revealed through heterogeneous matter, excess, obscenity, sacrifice and eroticism… close to Derrida’s concept of otherness, which he insists is not a lack or void but a ‘negativity without negativity.’  This is not the reverse side of positivity, but rather something that transgresses signification.  He is the downfall of Aristotelian logic and Hegelian dialectics.  He is what breaks apart all construction and yet serves as its groundless ground.

The enigma character, in Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), has a mirror for a face; I would like to suggest that this reflection is symbolic and represents, through the revelations, a truth from within her about herself.  The seemingly sinister character invokes an intuitive revelation, revealed through these cycles and reflection. 

In both instances the enigmatic figure appears sinister and starts a cycle of events, which changes the protagonist’s life.  In Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) the cloaked character has a mirror for a face, which I conceive as representing a surface illusion and reflection of Maya.  In Lost Highway (1996) the mystery man uses a video camera to reflect an aspect of Fred, which unknown to him is his killing of his wife Renee.  This is similar to Alexander finding Maya dead surrounded by broken mirror pieces.

In Lost Highway (1996) the mirror has been replaced by a modern interface, a video camera, which reveals / reflects revelations to the protagonist (Fred is in the video initially sleeping and then killing his wife, his unfulfilled desires or reality?).  The mirror in Lost Highway (1996) is the video camera, a contemporary revision.

‘While these critiques mirror the larger critique of meta physics in their emphasis on disrupting a movement towards stability and wholeness’ - Reni Celeste (1997).

In Lost Highway (1996) the film ends and starts with the character Fred announcing ‘Dick Laurant is Dead’, however Fred is not aware of his previous / future actions, physically or mentally and has no foundation for the fragmented knowledge he possesses.  Lynch has stated that the film is based on a ‘mobius’ strip, a strip twisted

180 degrees and then looped by connecting the opposing end.

The protagonist, through his experiences, which include a change in identity (this also happens in Meshes, Maya becomes replaced by her partner Alexander in the cycle), gains knowledge through repeated experiences to overcome his previous lack of understanding.

The conclusion of Lost Highway, when Fred returns to his home to deliver the message that will set the whole narrative in motion again, a new element has entered the script that was not there the first time around in the form of the cop cars waiting outside the home.  This illustrates well that repetition is never identical, and that at the core of sameness is difference. -  Reni Celeste (1997)

As Fred becomes Pete in Lost Highway (1996), Maya in Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), after symbolically fragmenting in the broken mirror, becomes Alexander in the infinite cycle.  Fred gradually deteriates mentally and becomes fragmented through his suspicions, paranoia, impotence and memories without context.  The videos, left on the steps, from an ambiguous sender, eventually depict him killing her.  In Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) it appears that Alexander, through his amnesia, has killed Maya and replaced her in the cycle of events.  Again an ambiguous figure has left a gift outside the house, like Lost Highway (1996), which is brought into the home.  It is revealed that the enigma man has been leaving these just as the cloaked man is associated with the hand that leaves the flower in Meshes of the Afternoon (1944).

In both instances, the ambiguous character reveals aspects, unknown to the protagonists about themselves, which they are not conscious of.  The broken mirror could symbolise the shattering of illusion and the videos turn into television static; revealing and re-enforcing the superficial illusion of the reflective medium. 

 It could be conceived that both films bring to the attention of the spectator the illusion of realism in the cinematic medium.  Both utilise fragmented time sequences and imagery, i.e. broken mirror, to symbolise the break down of reality.  This could lead the viewer to perceive the themes outside of their conception of consciousness, which is associated with reality.  To expand their analytical use of creating a narrative to include ambiguous signs alluding to the unconscious.  This could enable the spectator to use a personal / subjective approach to understanding the text rather than following pre-conceived expectations, devised in the pre-conscious mind’s creation of schemata.  The texts are open to interpretation, by the viewer, with greater attention paid to the stylistic elements available. 

The symbols of reality can represent other things, it is left to the perceiver to interpret them and find their own meaning, which they can use to determine the narrative.  The ambiguous nature of these films, can lead the spectator to be consciously aware of their own participation in the texts' creation.  As previously mentioned this process, which the audience can apply pre-consciously, determines the construction of the narrative.

The question arises, why do these filmmakers want the audience to be active participants, bringing these themes to the fore?  I would like to suggest that they are deliberately trying to invoke in the viewer a broader palette of analysis to explore un-representable themes.  These themes, with mysterious signs / characteristics, allude to non-materialistic experiences. The cinema medium is used to reflect aspects of reality, which are not visible and cannot be represented through logical semiotics.

 

Paul Shrader in 'Transcendental style in Film' (1972), acknowledges this mirror of representation in transcendental art: ‘art that expresses the human mirror’; this reaction is similar to Norman.K. Denzin's in 'Images of Post-Modern Society' (1991) he states that the 'cinematic age sees itself through the reflections of the cameras eye'.

The above mentioned films depict a reflection of reality which is fragmented and open to interpretation.  This deviance of formal linear narrative, with ambiguous signs, could be seen as a depiction of a fragmented reality and a loosening of the dominant position of cultural signs.

Ian Jarvie claims in Philosophy of the Film (1987) that Traditional Hollywood offers a controlled order in its depiction of reality in the guise of realism:

It is only the implicit contrast however submerged the recognition of it, between the real world we inhabit and the film world, so enthralling and satisfying.  Things work out so interestingly there, there is so much order and coherence, in contrast to the world as it actually is. 

He continues with his problematic ideas on the film world vs. reality (and deception) citing the disturbance of the spectators' sense of reality, their knowledge and the difference between the real and the unreal.  

It could be conceived that everything that the brain experiences are perceived as real, from dreams to altered states. It is through established culture and its signs that inform the individual which to decide as real, creating a hierarchy of meanings within the perceiver; which the traditional film narrative represents and emphasises. 

Ian Jarvie (1987) suggests that film will usually reflect order, unlike reality; it is up to the spectator to determine, subjectively, if they are actively involved in the texts’ creation.  This would suggest that cinema’s version of reality, known as ‘Realism’, is not a very accurate description, but a false and limited palette of representation. 

But the screen is not a mirror, and, while there was some magic in passing beyond the mirror there is no magic at all in passing beyond the screen.  Its impossible anyway - there is no other side of the screen.  No depth - just surface.  No hidden face - just an interface – Baudrillard (Art and Artefact, 1997)

Bordwell (1985) identifies these representations as similar to objects / actions in the perceiver’s reality as ‘mimetic’.  Although the screen is merely two-dimensional and an illusion, the perceiver can relate situations, objects, actions as displayed as similar to their physical world, a reflection.  Mimetic theories take as their model the act of vision; ‘an object of perception is presented to the eye of the beholder’(1985).

It is this very identification with the mimetic on screen, which the perceiver uses to create the diegesis.

It can be conceived that no two events are ever the same in reality and that your subjective memories can change over time.  This is represented in Lost Highway (1996) when two parallel lives, which mirror each other in speech, characters, lives, start out at two different points and eventually merge together to become one.  A question is raised to the spectator, are they the same circumstances perceived differently or separately?  

The character Dick Laurant is known to Pete as Mr Eddie but exists simultaneously in the same time /space as his other persona.  Near the end of the film, Fred is told that Alice never existed, by the mystery man: ‘If she told you her name was Alice she was lying’.  It could be conceived that the director is highlighting the form of his materials and inherent falsity of representing reality, using fabrications e.g. a script, actors, sets.

The image of Alice also disappears from a photograph of her standing next to Renee, found at the crime scene of Andy’s house.  Just as we may anticipate and expect change in a film, you may expect the opposite in a photograph.  The unchanging, static photograph is not perceived to alter on its own, without manipulation, and can be seen as a preserver of an instant of time.  The photograph which is encountered at Andy’s house featuring Alice, Renee, both played by the actress Patricia Arquette, with Dick Laurant (Mr. Eddie) and Andy, changes when seen by the investigating officers.  It only features Renee in it, the photo, apart from this is identical in setting, postures ect.  When Pete earlier asks Alice which one she is, Alice is blonde and Renee a brunette, she points to the blonde and states ‘this is me’.

You can comprehend a variety of outcomes by using prior knowledge of similar circumstances or in this case films.  You could create a hierarchy of propositions, starting with the most likely and thus create a narrative, a pattern that explains the experience.  These changing sets of relationships, which are always different, create causal transformations, a cause and likely effect; utilising your mind maps of reality you may think of all the possible outcomes relating to the circumstances.  Starting with the most probable leading to the least probable.  Using this model to explain experience Branigan (1992) suggests that the mind will organise this spatial / temporal data, chain of events, into a beginning, a middle and end.  Hence the mind makes a judgement about the events witnessed and predicts, through this process outlined, an outcome; a global interpretation of changing data measured through a set of relationships.

As I originally stated your perception of reality is based on the world around you, where you devise assumptions and intuition about events from prior knowledge.  If you conceive of Lost Highway (1996) as a dream, like the majority of Meshes of the afternoon (1944), then the illogic of the sub-conscious mind must be incorporated into this perception as well.  Selectively we use, through these different models, different ways of analysing new data.  When a series of signifiers do not necessarily follow the syntagmatic model, Rick Altman (Narrative comprehension in the fiction film, 1992) suggests that the mind may use a pragmatics of comprehension.  This methodology works outside the time of causal progression and isolates a multiple of static binary opposition’s e.g. the textual elements, which suggest parallels with something else.

Bordwell (1985) states that research studies have proven that the more advanced, sophisticated reader can interpret events displayed in non-linear terms.  As people mature they develop different ways of perceiving, this may be used through the use of a paradigmatic model of narration.

It is impossible not to talk of associate relationships between shots, and yet the cutting has the effort of isolating each shot, giving its own weight and unity, and not restricting the associate process to the relationships between immediately neighbouring shots.  Because each shot sinks into the memory, the possibility for association, for waiting, for letting things happen, via an extended, unproscribed one (Deveraux, field of dreams, 1995)

The process of creating a narration is the same, with the reader interpreting the signs and applying their own hypothesis testing.

Deren’s Meshes of the afternoon (1944) uses unconscious symbolism, e.g. keys, doorways, a knife. as recognised by Freud (her father was a Russian psychiatrist) and developed by the surrealists as a split in the sign 

This western approach, subjectivity through culture, by naming an object / image could be conceived of taking away (reduction) the 'true nature' of the object through categorising it, reducing it to a surface meaning (a split, what it is and a surface value), the name / meaning equals its functionality.  This is a particular trait of western philosophy identifying objects as external and internal, the external identified as ‘real’ whilst the internal, the subjective (feelings) singular mind as unreal.

‘Our representation of things as they are given, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but (that) these objects as appearances conform to our mode or representation.  Immanuel Kant (Critique of pure reason, trans. Smith, 1965)

Whereas an eastern cultural reading may identify that every object is associated with a spirit (pantheism).  

The Japanese feel a divinity in every industrial object.  For us this transcendental feeling is reduced to a little ironic glimmer, but even so it is still a spiritual form.  For we pagans and agnostics, irony is all that is left of the sacred – Buadrillard (1997)

It is impossible to identify which elements in an individual culture can connect the individual to a spiritual state of mind.  Whereas Baudrillard suggests that the Japanese will automatically feel a spiritual presence within objects and a western approach would only find irony; he does not suggest how this state arises.  Richard Allen (1995) suggests that:

‘In order to be present to transcendental consciousness, the object of sense must be unmediated; the linguistic sign must somehow be purified and stripped of its sensuous aspect’ 

The reader of the text is called to be involved in the invocation of the idea / spirit, which ultimately holds the prize of intuitive understanding, a truth which is untaught.  This can only be experienced on an individual basis as consciousness is not plural. 

Consciousness is ‘never experienced in plural, only in the singular… meaning to understand a symbol you are understanding your own psyche from the point of view of consciousness. Erwin Shrodinger, Creator magazine, 1995

To understand without being taught how to perceive something is transcendental and not of the materialistic / physical plane. 

‘Semiotics is not so much concerned with the exploration of reality as with a conditioned reality, or a conforming, consensus culture.’ Eugone Gorny (1995)

Semiotics are signs, assigned to reality, semioticians attribute signs as always being something.  Eugone Gorny (1995) discusses the difference between signs and symbols as:

Signs are a means of acquiring knowledge, unlike signs however, symbols are connected not to knowledge but understanding. (Creator,1995) 

He regards reality as built by culture, a conditional reality, and a way of seeing reality but not as it really is. Similar to the depiction of realism in Mainstream Hollywood films with its order and coherence (Jarvie,1987). These signs he believes are a way of holding society together and making the individual act automatically in social situations (shared conventions) without really understanding.  Similar to Branigan describing actions that are probable carrying the least information as they conform to preconscious cognition.  Symbols on the other hand are a means to requiring understanding.  

Illusion has no history. Aesthetic has one.  But because it has a history it has an end, and it may be now that we can see the fall, the failure, the fading of this conditional form, of the aesthetic form of the simulacrum – in the favour of the unconditional simulacrum, that is, of the primitive scene of illusion, where we may join again with the rituals and phantasmagorias of symbolic cultures, and the fatality of the object. Buadrillard (1997)

  This split in the sign I would like to develop through the Lacanioan analogy / notion of the representational mirror stage.

Identification in the cinema (lacan) – disavowal as mis recognition / mirror-stage: A child’s sense of self-identity emerges in his early life and through his representation in a mirror and, less metaphorically, through the gaze of the mother.  Initially the subject is fragmented.  Upon perceiving himself through his representation in the mirror or in the gaze of the mother, the subject is constituted as a coherent entity.  However, since the subject really is a fragmentary and undifferentiated libidinal puddle and not the unified body image he appears to be in true nature, self – knowledge is founded upon a radical self-alienation of which the ego quo ego is necessarily unaware.   Liz Rhodes (Avant-garde film, 1996).

The child sees it self in the mirror and sees itself as a whole, interestingly the mirror is framed, at this point he is split between this single whole appearance of himself and the fragmented libidinal pool which is his body.

I would like to use this as an analogy for the represented, whole body of reflection for established culture and the fragmented libidinal pool as the unconscious or symbolic.  In the tradition of linear narrative story telling there is a progression, a start, middle and end.  A conflict (causal), a binary opposition and triumph by the protagonist.  The body, reflected as a whole, defeats the weak, symbolised as a lack.  This can be recognised blatantly in the traditional horror film e.g. Frankenstein.  This ideology could be said to be the re-assertion of the sign over ambiguous symbolism (the beast) and thus the cultural ideology over the individuals subjectivity.  It, the symbol or unconscious, works on a subjective level beyond the cultures all-encompassing control.

Stan Brakhage (Film at Wit’s end, 1989) defends Maya’s symbolism which he described as very accessible: 

‘Maya had the capacity to speak more directly about what everyone else was being very pompous about – that is symbolism, particularly psychological symbolism.’

Just as Deren offers the viewer easily accessible symbols which represent doorways.  So Lynch who has publicly expressed his dislike of analysis, stating ‘95% of the audience just go with it, the 5% need relaxation therapy’, offers his own canon of symbolism.  Whilst Pete in Lost Highway (1996) waits in his bedroom for Alice to call, he starts to show signs of mental disturbance similar to Fred’s whilst in Prison.  This is manifested visually by macro close ups of detail which suggest claustrophobia, with quick, erratic pulling of focus which have an unbalancing effect as if the eye cannot focus voluntarily.  The sounds are amplified to, so that the buzz of electricity from the lights is audible; even the sound of a spider’s footsteps on the wall are brought out.  This spider, which is a female black widow, can be interpreted as a strong indication of the position which Pete is in.  The spider is notorious for its habit of eating the male after intercourse, to re-enforce this suggestion moths, in close up, are shown flying around the light bulbs and eventually burning their wings and dying.  Again showing their desire killing them, as is the case with Pete who is drawn into a world of murder and porn through his desire for Alice.  Porn could be seen as the representation of unreal desires, the simulation of sex.

Fred, a tenor Saxophone player, plays screeching jazz in a club, the sound is strained and he plays with a desperate, red face.  This can be interpreted as Fred’s impotence brought about through his suspicions whilst playing, he sees Alice disappear with Andy through the exit even though she stated she was staying home to read.  This statement arouses his suspicion asking ‘read what?’ which she just laughs at.  The director highlights the apparent illegibility of his own narrative and the process of its creation with laughter; this is continued when Fred meets the mystery man and asks who he is.  The enigma just laughs at him, confronting his narrow view of needing labels / signs to understand.  Lynch in an early short film – ‘the Alphabet’ also explored this theme, which he described as the pain of being taught as a child, thus destroying intuition and making a human construction of the world, not as it actually is.  In the third act of the film Fred encounters the mystery man in a desert hut, whilst looking for Alice / Renee, he asks him ‘what’s your name?’ angered he continues his probe stating ‘what the fuck is your name?’ Fred does not answer; the man is angered as he pursues him.  This would imply that the reductionism of naming people / objects angers him, Fred does not reply, having just transformed from Pete.

Fred describes a dream earlier, whilst in bed with Renee, which you discover later on is the beginning of the video sequences, ‘You were in the house calling my name... I couldn’t find you…  Looked like you, but it wasn’t you’, the image not reflecting the true self. Turning around he finds the reflective face of the enigma man where Renee lies. It could be conceived that Fred sees a mirror image of himself in the image of the enigma man in Renee.  As in Meshes of the afternoon (1944) when one of the reflective versions of Maya has a dark, shaded hand, a possible symbol for the cloaked figure within her, drives her to kill her sleeping self?  She turns into Alexander her lover; similarly in Lost Highway (1996) it is an unconscious version of Fred who kills the female protagonist.   The image of Maya, with reflective, cataract bauble glasses (representing second sight, with different perception) looks like Maya but it is not her, i.e. the image of something does not necessarily convey who / what they are.  Like the simulation / superficiality of an actor playing a part.

You could compare the use of time in Lost Highway to the Philosophies of Gilles Deleuze (Cinema 2 -Time / Image, 1985).  Who developed his own, rather than following conventional film theories, vocabulary and ideas about the representation of time in film from the philosopher Henri Bergson.

‘Our actual existence whilst it is unrolled in time, duplicates itself along with

a virtual existence, a mirror image.   Every moment of our life presents the two aspects; it is actual and virtual perception on the one side and recollection on the other.  Whoever becomes conscious of the continual duplicating of his present into perception and recollection…  will compare himself to an actor playing his part automatically, listening to himself and beholding himself playing’

It could be conceived that both filmmakers have appropriated this philosophy for the context / theme of these films.  The continual duplicating of his present into perception and recollection could be seen to address the audience in their creation of the narrative and Fred’s / Maya’s subjectivity when recalling events, future / present / past.  Early on in the film Fred informs the police officers about his dislike of video cameras, ‘I like to remember things my own way not necessarily how they happened’, this gives you an impression of Fred’s subjective perception of events and reminds the spectators of their own.

The unease that Fred expresses (because of his environment and recollection of events which happen out of order) through his speech / expressions are mirrored in his meta-morphasised alter ego Pete.  You could compare these parallels, but Pete / Fred cannot as they do not exist in the same time / dimension and as such cannot be objective about them.  When Fred returns near the end of the film he appears more knowledgeable about the events unfolding, with guidance from the mystery man.  This is as if he has been observing Petes’ mirroring actions and comparing them to his own: ‘compare himself to an actor playing his part automatically, listening to himself and beholding himself playing’(Deleuze, 1985).  From this point on Fred begins to take control of his destiny.  It is as if he has come to terms with the ambiguous flash forwards / backs which he encountered at the beginning of the film which originally created paranoia and confusion.  Now he returns, after seeing things objectively, through another’s eyes and connects the fragments i.e. re-orders the schemata of signifiers into a coherent structure and now he can work out what to do.  In Meshes of the afternoon (1944) this cycle of learning through repetitive actions and transfiguring is a major theme, resulting in Maya taking action into her own hands.

Deleuze (Time / image, 1985) referred to the audiences’ reaction to film time as the ‘duree’:

‘As delineating memory as the virtual co-existence of the past in the present and the duration as the contemporary of the present and the past.’

You could see a connection with both films use of time, happening achronologically / simultaneously as similar to Frederick Jameson’s theories on Post-modernism (1983):

‘The disappearance of history (virtual co-existence), the way in which our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions’

This is not a new theme for Lynch who has often used imagery from different periods simultaneously, in his films, to present a perpetual present.  In Blue Velvet (1986) he mixed iconic imagery from the fifties / sixties with the eighties, i.e. cars / diners combined with the characters dress, Jeffrey sports a gold ear stud.  A similar mixture is found in Lost Highway, with Petes’ parents looking like rockers from the fifties; with their rock and roll clothes, leather jackets, blue jeans, hair and attitudes. 

 The television programmes they watch are in black and white from this period, this is contrasted with the contemporary themes of the film including modern music by Marilyn Manson and Rammstein. Lynch has, by changing the context of these signs, changed the meanings they can represent, thus highlighting their isolation and shifting meanings.  This isolates the objects and makes its original meanings subverted and open to a broader, ambiguous reading, left for the audience to devise.

The amount of time an image / signifier is presented, film-time, on screen also can affect how the viewer perceives it. Bordwell (1985) explains that: 

 Our comprehension of cinematic space depends upon the cinemas ability to govern the rate at which we propose, test hypotheses… The minds induction operations can be limited by the speed at which the environment demands decisions.’

Lost Highway (1996) begins with long, drawn out sequences with little dialogue / action, this could be to induce the audience to acknowledge the feel / mood / textures of the mise-en-scene and consciously incorporate these into their subjective diegesis.   Similar to his earlier works: Eraserhead and The Grandmother. 

 Bordwell (1985) suggests that a slow paced film may not confirm schemata rapidly enough and the viewer may make a reassessment of the appropriateness of their initial expectation.

As the film progresses and more information is displayed the pace of Lost Highway (1996) quickens; this could be because the director has asserted that the viewer is now incorporating the style into the creation of the narrative, after previously displaying very self-conscious, slowly presented images.  New data can now be processed quicker in this manner.  You could regard this as a conscious attempt to tune the viewer into the symbols used in the films’ style, which can be used to interpret the rest of the film.  As it progresses more and more non-materialistic themes start to be addressed as you the perceiver, plunge from a representational reality into non-reality.  The spectator becomes like the protagonist Fred.  Eric B. Rhodes writes in Film Quarterly (spring, 1998)  

‘Although Lost Highway starts out looking like the ‘real’ world, it quickly becomes a ‘constructed’ world: an extravagant phantasmagoria with twilight zone meta-physics.  The structure, form, and visuals all conspire to construct a self-contained allegorical nightmare where the sense of time is eviscerated’ 

As mentioned above the order and structure as purveyed in the dominant form of mainstream western cinema and its depiction of ‘realism’ does not really reflect the ambiguous nature of reality, feelings, emotions (on a personal level certain objects hold different ideas in peoples minds. Which go beyond their surface value) and subjective time (the duree).  All the above are aspects which can be applied to reality which cannot be conveyed literally, they can only be alluded to.  To depict a ‘true’ reflection of reality these directors have felt it necessary to incorporate unconscious, abstract themes for the spectator to determine their meanings as they might in everyday life.

Lynch has expressed his interest in mysterious themes describing the beauty of mystery as ‘like a body without a head.’  Alluding to his interest in subverting the expectations of the image.  His uses of elliptical editing, like Deren's, retards pre-conceived notions the viewer may bring with them from watching other films.  But also changes the context of the situations / objects. 

 To return to the cognitive process of deducing a narrative, it is common to associate objects within the context of their surroundings, i.e. a chair standing on the floor in a room, taking away the context changes the object.  i.e. if the chair was hanging in space your expectations of it would alter dramatically.  The same is true when time-sequences are presented in a non-linear order, a straightforward narrative suddenly becomes more difficult to hypothesise the outcome when the events (a+b=c) are jumbled up. Suddenly, when the viewer acknowledges that things are not happening in a linear order, you must make a judgement on how to understand this new ambiguous information.  Normal situations are suddenly thrown into a mysterious world without easy answers.

In Lost Highway (1996) the enigma man exists outside linear confines of time e.g. he reveals to Fred that he is inside his house, whilst at a party with him there.  Upon meeting one another all the sounds of the party stop, as if their reality suddenly exists outside of the place they are in, and then returns once the conversation ends.

As a medium film can offer a realistic element similar in depiction to reality, which no other art form can mimic.  This is its very relation to time, which constitutes its formal properties, as a record of a time sequence and representation of it.  

Haig Khatchadourian (British Journal of Aesthetics, no27, 1987) writes of this relation stating:

Space and time are primary organising or structuring principles of a film; indeed, in different ways space and / or time are organising principles of all art, just as they provide the basic framework of the world and of subjective reality.  One of the most important ways in which they function in that way in a film is by their making motion possible’

By its very nature of a form it is bound to its causal effect.  Similar to Kant describing the human condition bound by causal–linear effect. He believed that there was an innate law in man’s consciousness which was separate from the material world, this, when applied, would form the basis of our morals (conscience) and was the distinction between man and animals.  This, for him, was reason to believe as a practical notion the existence of god (which he describes as - practicle postulate); beyond our sensory perceptions, which are bound by causality.  Kant believed we have no freedom if we only live as creatures of the senses.  He found: 

The moment of transcendence can be successfully read as a breakdown of language and meaning, the limit of the minds ability to regard itself  (Sandner, The fantastic Sublime,1986)

Burke: found this transcendence through material signs, sign-posting him to a similar state, and in his subjective feelings through poetry 

Language is better able to create or reflect sublime experiences than any other representational form (The sublime, 1986)

Ashfield and de Bolla (1986) state that-. Burke's point is that Words can convey things we can only 'see' in the imaginative orbit of linguistic representation. 

Burkes’ play of language and his own imagination / intuitive beliefs were for him opened by the sublime effect, using the key of linguistics.  It was not the actual words but his transcendence through them and their material meaning. Which I think Lynch and Deren were trying to achieve in these texts.  Deren stated during her film lectures that in film you can bypass language and go straight to the idea (channel 4,1986), similar to Lynch stating the audience just goes with it.

Since the fantastic sublime cannot, of course, prove the existence of anything beyond itself - looked for, the world of the spirit cannot be found in the texts themselves - and guaranties transcendence only through the participation of the imagination, of the reader as well as the author, even works of the sublime can be read as purely rhetorical...- David Sandner  (1986)

Kant describes human consciousness as having an intuitive understanding of morality and appreciation of beauty, devised from outside of man’s spatio-time bound reality.  As a Christian he applied this ‘sublime’ effect to God, and proof of his existence.  For this discussion I will apply these intuitive feelings to the decoding of my chosen texts.  This spiritual effect alluded to by Kant and Burke in the eighteenth century, describes a feeling beyond aesthetic and linguistic forms.  Nature, poetry and art were the mediums used to express these ideas but were not the cause of the effect, merely described as keys or doorways for the perceiver of the text, who would if sufficiently motivated discover within themselves the intuitive truth, a transcendental feeling beyond the material plane.

In Meshes of the Afternoon (1944) and Lost Highway (1996) reality is subverted into ‘worlds’ beyond the limits of the material plane.  Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), uses the unconscious mind to display a repetitive cycle of events, which eventually cross over into the material plane to kill or transfigure the protagonist.  Lost Highway (1996) similarly depicts the impossible metamorphosis of one man into another, transported through time / space by an element beyond conventional physical laws. In Lost Highway (1996) the enigma man exists outside linear confines of time e.g. he reveals to Fred that he is inside his house, whilst at a party with him there.  Both of these accounts could be described as analogies of the film viewing experience.   The effect of experiencing shifts in time and space whilst not physically moving, the subjective effect on the perceivers account of time (the duree) and the mirror effect of transferring ideas from one person to another through a reflective medium.  Ideas can change your perception of the world, and in effect kill or transfigure certain beliefs.  Both texts are open to interpretation, as they suggest and depict mysterious landscapes, which look similar to reality and offer a fragmented, abstract view of it.  I would suggest that all narrative-cinema takes the same position but hides these differences through techniques designed to mask its form i.e. linear-narrative, creating suggestions and fulfilling expectations, invisible editing and symbolism which confirm pre-conceived ideas, leading the viewer to leave unconscious feelings / desires in the unconscious.

Conclusion 

Dream, idea, phatasy - must be taken seriously only if it unites with the proper creative means to form a work of art. Then those curiosities become realities - realities of art which help to lift life out of mediocrity.  For not only do they, to some extent, add more spirit to the seen, but they also make secret visions visible - Paul Klee (lecture 1924) manifesto for the art of the inner eye.

Maya continued film making and lecturing for the rest of her life, but never regained the same, initial success she had with Meshes of the Afternoon (1944).  She continued exploring themes of transfigured time, sub-conscious feelings, representing the unseen and with her passion for dance travelled to Haiti to explore ritualistic dance and its similarity with western children games; which she described as ‘form not represented in the purpose’ (Channel 4).  However the spiritual side of this ritualistic culture, ‘voudoun’, overtook her initial interests and she became the first white woman to become a ‘voudoun’ priestess; and found it impossible to edit the footage she had shot. She found in her new religion aspects, which she had dealt with as a filmmaker, of living spirits inside of her.  She wrote a successful book on her subject called ‘Divine Horsemen’; which her editor, Joseph Campbell descibes as a premonition of the changing attitudes in America. 

‘In the sixties when people started taking LSD they understood these gods are within you.’ (channel 4, 1986)

Whilst many avant-garde film makers and artists have used the medium to explore these themes through abstract imagery.  E.g. Jordon Belson, James whitney, Stan Brakhage and experiments in trance films, they do not depict a recognisable / mimetic version of cultural reality.  Their respective experiments have dealt with purely abstract imagery, which alludes to the sub conscious and other mental states, but forego any reference to material reality.  Lynch has continued to explore his interests in these themes, even though he was universally panned for Lost Highway (1996), and has recently received success with the film ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001), winning the Palme D’or at the Cannes film festival and universal critical praise. In this film he returns to his interests in elliptical editing / blurring of time and again transforms his protagonist into another persona.  The film has no resolution and the narrative doubles back on itself starting the scenario again, with a change; Kim Newman writing in Sight and Sound (January, 2002) describes the subjective experience and pointlessness of trying to articulate these themes.

‘A film that shifts and changes along with the viewer, upon which all commentary is necessarily provisional.’

His points reflect my own position that to appreciate the themes involved you have to incorporate your own personal feelings into the film viewing and that to try to articulate the themes would be provisional.  This would also validate Lynchs’ own comments that the ‘audience just go with it’.  It will be interesting to observe in the future if other major film makers start to explore the possibilities of these themes.

If ... what is felt intuitively can be articulated on an adequate theoretical basis (i.e. become an object of knowledge as well as feeling) our hold on the world is strengthened accordingly. Paul Crowther (1993)

Anton Artaud (prophetically) writes in his essay 'witchcraft and the cinema' (1930): 

The mind moves beyond the power of representation.  This sort of virtual power of the images probes for hitherto unused possibilities in the depths of the mind.  Essentially the cinema reveals a whole occult life with which it puts us directly in contact...Raw cinema, taken as it is in the abstract exudes a little of this trance-like atmosphere, eminently favourable for certain revelations.  To use it to tell a story is to neglect one of its best resources to fail to fulfil its most profound purpose...The cinema has arrived at a turning point in human thought, when language loses its symbolic power and the mind tires of a succession of representations.

  If the cinema / moving image experience is moving towards a closer representation (or simulation) of the human experience, then as a part of this experience a re-negotiation of this viewing might need to be addressed.   As the (trans) aesthetic becomes a parallel for the inner mind's complexities as well as the external world we live in.

Word count: 8415

Bibliography

Ashfield and de Bolla, (1996), The sublime, Cambridge

Allen, R. (1995), Projecting illusion, Cambridge University press

Baudrillard, j (1997) Art and Artefact, Sage Publications, London 

Bordwell, D, Narration in the fiction film, London, Methuen, 1985

Bordwell, D, On the History of film style, London, Harvard University press, 1997

Brakhage, S. (1989), Film at wits end, Polygon press, Edinburgh,

Branigan, E, Narrative comprehension and Film, London, Routledge, 1992

Crowther, P., (1993) Critical aesthetics and post-modernism, Clarendon press, oxford, 

Chion, M, David Lynch, London, BFI, 1995

Deleuze, G, Cinema 2 – time/ image, London, Sage, 1995

Denzin, N, Images of Post-Modern soceity, London, Sage, 1991

Denzin, N, The Cinematic soceity, London, Sage, 1995

Devereaux / Hillman, Fields of Vision, University of California Press, 1995

Ferguson (1992), Solitude and the sublime, Routledge, London,

Gaarder, J (trans. Paulette Moller)(1994), Sophie’s world, phoenix, London,

Artaud, A(1930), witchcraft and the cinema’, In: Hammond, P. (editor), (1978), The Shadow and its shadow, BFI publishing, London, p 63

Jarvie, I, (1987) Philosophy of the film, Routledge, New York and London

Kant, I (trans Norman Kemp Smith)(1965), Critique of pure reason, New York

Kant, I. (1981) (trans.Goldthwaite), Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime, California Press, California

Kant, I (1991), The Critique of Judgement, Clarendon Press, Oxford

Kandinsky, W, (trans. Sadler, M.T.H) (1977), concerning the spiritual in art, Dover publications. New York

Kotarba and Fontana, (1984), The existential self in society, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Lyotard, J.F, (1984), the Post-Modern condition: Manchester University Press

McLuhan, M (with Quintin Fiore), (1967), the medium is the message, New York, Random house

 

O’Pray (editor), (1996), Avant-garde film, University of Luton Press

Rodowick, D. N., Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine, London, Duke University Press, 1997

Sandner, D, The Fantastic Sublime  

Shrader, P, (1972), Transcendental Style In Film, Da Capo, New York

Warner, M. (1996), The inner eye, Beacon Press, UK

Articles: 

Buadrillard, J, (1998) (trans Francois Debrix, Miami September 1998)

 A l’Ombre du millenaire ou le Suspens de l’an 2000, Paris, Sens and Tonka

Celeste, R, Lost Highway: Unveiling Cinema’s Yellow Brick Road, Cineaction, Num. 43, Summer 1997 

Gorny, E, between knowledge and understanding, Creator, issue 3, winter 1995

Graham, G, Art as a vehicle of religious truth, British Journal of aesthetics, Oxford University Press, vol23, num 2, 1983, 

Khatchadourian, H, Space and Time in Film,British Journal of aesthetics, Oxford University, Press, No. 27, Spring 1987

Jameson, F, (1983), anti-aesthetic, no125

Howitz, D, screening the I of the camera, Film and Philosophy vol.2,  www.hanover.edu/philos/film/vol_02/herwitz.htm

Newman, K, Anyone got the right time, The Guardian (G2), 13 December, 1994

Newman, K, Mulholland Drive, Sight and Sound, January 2002.

Rhodes, E. B., Lost Highway, Film Quarterly, Vol 51, num 3, Spring 1998

Warner, M., Voodoo Road, Sight and Sound, August, 1997

Film / Television:

 Off-air recording, Testing God, channel 4, Sep 15 2001

Off-air recording, eleventh Hour Documentary, Maya Deren, Channel 4, 1986

Lost Highway (1996), Lynch, 

Mulholland Drive (2001), Lynch

Meshes of the Afternoon (1944), Deren M.

PAGE  1

PAGE  31