Leos Carax in his own film, Holy Motors (2012)
An intuition I (too) briefly explored in May 2011 though an article entitled The Paradigm of Modern Cinema: The Cinematographic Introspection (Godard, Fellini, Truffaut, Assayas & Hansen-Love) was attributing (again this is just an intuition) the key element of modernity in art to the ability it had to introspect itself thought its very existence. The examples I then gave were quite literal as they were films that were dramatizing the very act of film making. A more recent movie motivates me to attempt to explore this topic a bit more: Holy Motors by Leos Carax (2012). Because this film approaches the introspection in a more indirect way than the previously quoted others, it might give us a clue about what makes this modern method interesting and expressive.
In Holy Motors, the main character embodied by Denis Lavant is followed during one (evidently typical) day of his life in which he goes from “appointment” to “appointment”. The latter constitutes as many roles he incarnates like an actor would in front of the camera. However, there is no other camera here than the one that we find in each film, invisible, and which allow us, the spectator to watch the movie. That is how L.Carax progressively blurs the limits between reality (in the film) and fiction (again, in the film) in a clear manifesto for this ambiguity. In doing so, we are not only wandering/wondering in the realms of representation but, more importantly, we are being questioned about our very human condition. This is not to say, of course, that we all play a role thus perpetually hiding of our “true self”. Rather, it questions the fact that what we really are might be the sum of the point of views that the otherness develops on us.
This is obvious in the cinematographic construction which necessities a camera to give existence to what the latter frames and sees; however this film proposes the hypothesis according to which it may just as much be true in our lives. As said in the movie, the “beauty of the act” only exists if there is “a beholder”, even if the beholder is the actor him(her)self. This hypothesis is certainly a phenomenological one (a rare thing on this blog!). Nevertheless, isn’t cinema (along with photography) the art that belongs the most to phenomenology in its very essence i.e. the capture of light in order to encode a recognizable mode of representation?
//
All following images excerpt from Holy Motors (2012)
I love your phenomenology of “cinematographic construction”, a butiffal description of what Deleuze calls, ahh!, Cin-sain, I think that’s what he called it, in cinama 1:?…Anyway.
I want to say and I hope you don’t mind that, In a way what you do here at The Funambulist is in fact phenomenology: just not the kind that deals with perception, a’ la Maurice Merleau-Ponty (the phenomenology of perception), but a kind of phenomenology none the less.
Consider Heidegger’s phenomenology, not really a report of direct sensation, not really a description of the integration of the senses, the way Merleau-Ponty is.
I think phenomenology of perception kind of dominates the field at this point, and there’s probably a good reason for that, but it wasn’t always that way. Edmund Husserl like Descartes before him thought we should start with consciousness, “consciousness is always consciousness about something,” he said, but Heidegger was like what about all the things we’re not conscious of, these things shape our lives too.
For Heidegger we are task oriented, and in order to perform the task we need ‘the things’ that make up that task, this is true, but we don’t necessary notice ‘the things’ unless something goes wrong. When something goes wrong then we notice that the task is made up of all those ‘things’, that’s when our perception turns on, or we become conscious of the ‘things’.
I think what you do here at The Funambulist isn’t really describing the way our perceptions coagulate with the world the way Merleau-Ponty does, but you are describing, in a very profound way, how the objects in our world; bridges, buildings, dwelling, maps, ect. Shape our being, often without us noticing, and this, I think, is very much part of the Phenomenological tradition. (‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ is an excellent essay by Heidegger, have you read it? I think you would love it.)
I think of what you do as a political phenomenology because; you deal mostly with human subjects, you don’t often appeal to analytical devices, you don’t really deal with linguistics or etymology (although when you refer to coding and decoding I think that’s semiotics), you don’t really make applies to scientific law (Unless it reveals an aspect of political existents as such), mostly you uncover the hidden relationships that make up our human existents, yep! You’re a phenomenologist. Which in my book is a high complement, and if you don’t believe me, consider how surprised people get when you bring up buildings, bridges, dwellings, and maps when in a political discussion, it’s still a novel position to hold among the milieu of of language games and speculation.
(Not that any of the things I’ve contrasted to heideggerian phenomenology are bad.)
Hello Mick
Thank you very much for your nice message.
I am shameful to say so but I am not very familiar with Husserl and Heidegger so it would be difficult for me to response properly but I suppose that it is not up to me to call me “names” anyway !
It is true that the little I know of phenomenology is certainly a perceptive one.
In any case, thank you for reading my daily stuttering!
Leopold