Indie Dance Party Redux, or Oslo is the new Stockholm
Mr. Darcy: So what do you recommend to encourage affection?
Elizabeth Bennet: Dancing. Even if one’s partner is barely tolerable.
- Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Right before the second half of a morose film about two young aspiring writers, a dance breaks out. So far, the film unfolds like a book either one of them could have written (since we never actually see their creative process or actual contents). Better yet, it develops like an cinematic adaptation of their novels, complete with flashbacks, flashforwards, what-ifs, and a dry weary narrator. Best buds since grade school, Erik and Phillip, who are the literary equivalents to real life Swedish musical duo, Tough Alliance, struggle to keep their existential careers intact. Philip is depicted as an inherently gifted wordsmith who undergoes a nervous breakdown because he “loves” his girlfriend, Kari, too much. Again props to the casting director for finding a prettier Bjork. Erik’s relationship to writing is bound to his idolizing friendship with Philip; their desires are aligned as if they’re one person. Thankfully, no bizarre love triangle is formed between the three main characters, or at least, by any heterosexual dictum.
Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006) exchanges scenes and dialogs typical of my generation, a swarm of twenty-somethings with a full-time job and a part-time dream to realize whatever shred of creative potential that might grow into an insular enterprise…this blog for instance.
One of the many elements that have been obligatory in films dealing with dime-store alienation and aimless directionality afflicting young folks is the momentary dance that only exacerbates those symptoms of modernity for the viewer–a confirmation of shit hitting the fan but in slow motion. In Reprise, Le Tigre’s Deceptacon only comes on through the speakers because one of the guys decided to amp up the party scene and overthrow the tranquilizing muzak. It works on both fronts, the participants there, and for me here! Like the bumper car sequence in Bresson’s Mouchette, the dance suspends the pervasive mood enveloping the rest of the film, it gives both the character and the viewer breathing space before we take the plunge back into the film as a whole. Unlike the musical genre which includes its now trendy white girl-can-do-hip-hop-too inspirational manifestos, the best dance sequences are those extractable from the larger body of work. You expect them, not anticipate them. They stick out like sore thumbs and propels our bodies to mingle with those onscreen rather than enjoying it voyeuristically. Reprise with all its crazy pillow fights and heads and toes going up and down, delivers a kinetic analogy to the film’s central metaphor, a dark undeveloped photograph Erik took of him and Philip meeting their great hero, a reclusive author. Only one minor forgotten detail: he left his lens cap on. Yet, like the transitory dance, the blackened photo signifies the very tools of how we visualize—with our memories and imagination—than anything emulsified on film or in cinema. A writer’s block, a reader’s reign.
P.S. Hands down, better than the official video! Jem fans, be proud:
He[ART]@SF: Reverse Graffiti
The HeART@SF series is dedicated to the hardworking men and women who dare to change a foggy city into a cozy home without sacrificing you + me in the process.
Englishman and American met up and had a Green-conscious plan.
Their mission was simple: remove dirt using intricate stencil patterns and high-pressure pumps.
Overlooked con: Much like the rampant gentrification spreading like wildfire through the city’s districts, the art of making reverse graffiti follows the same guidelines: it requires the dirty grime as the base in order to exaggerate the beauty of whatever is affixed/removed from it afterwards. It must have the final look of possessing a wealth of unkempt history, of justified violence, of tension between the Sharks and the Jets, only succumbing to the discipline of immaculate hygiene because of increased urbanization and pollution. Just one marker of authenticity is all one needs. “I don’t want to live in these new high-rises, but they’re better than living in old snobby Richmond,” I would repeat over and over at yesterday and tomorrow’s boho dinner parties. Hold the Whole Foods brie, we only have Trader Joe’s gouda!
The Broadway Tunnel best viewed on foot, not bikes/skateboards.
I’ve been watching you like a hawk
Attention LeRepertoire customers: On October 2008, for just $44.99, you can own your own Tippi Hendren doll. Celebrating the Hitchcock classic, Melanie Daniels includes, as the description writes, “real fake birds!” and “high-quality head looks scared and has awesome hair!”
To commemorate this momentous occasion in doll production history, enjoy the invisible terror of Martjin Hendrik’s reworking of the birthday scene as well as the original second half of the diner scene, or what I like to call “Tippi does Eisenstein.”
Martjin Hendrik
Alfred Hitchcock
Dancin’ in Tongues
Johan Söderberg’s award-winning (and Pitchfork-approved) video for Swedish techno act, Familjen, turns avant-garde appropriation on its ass, or more appropriately, saves it from pretentious flights of fancy by allowing the old footage to speak for itself within a completely profane context (Evangelist revival as Friday-nite rave) and transplanting the emotional intensity of the religious to the secular. What’s better than Daft Punk as some sort of deity controlling our convulsive bodies? Through the conventions of step-repeat-step-repeat-etc, Söderberg cuts across the divide between seemingly archaic rituals and hedonistic forms of release, the latter being a chore urbanites practice more often than their God-fearing forefathers. Whatever the reason may be, emotion and motion are mixed so precisely (meticulous editing!) and organically, that the existence of the video is essential to us seeing the music and hearing the images when the song is played alone on iTunes. Director Werner Herzog has always been a proponent of ecstatic truth over factual claim, preferring the wisdom gained from the experience of the sublime through tactility. It never lasts long enough, but once there, on the beer-stained concert floor, on the rotting wooden planks of a blazing white cathedral, or on the creaky metal foundation of the Metro bus, the ecstasy will seem to last forever. Shuffle to the next song, please.
*Söderberg has an impressive CV including the likes of Beyonce, Madonna, and Robyn.
Peter Adair’s Holy Ghost People (1967) captures the day-to-day movements of a Pentecostal Church in what has been circulating as a verite document of folk Americana. A frustrating short film placing the viewer in the middle of action, the clip below with all the snake handling and mumblecore babble absolutely enraptured me the first time, but placed side by side with the Soderberg’s music video, it makes me uncomfortable, those flaying arms and jittery knees bring FAITH to a freeze frame, once a product of unfathomable belief, now laughing stock for those skeptics too cool for Sunday mass.
Look again at the new church! Put your hands up high!
