Haneke and Reader Response Theory

Code inconnu, from opening shot. 

Watching the Haneke, I was struck by the way, in all his films, it almost seems like the effect he is trying to achieve is a constant modification, sometimes overturning, of the assumptions that we make to fill in the inevitable holes that are left by any work of narration. For instance, there is the journalist in Code Unknown. We begin by imputing to him a certain ethical integrity and courage for traveling to a war torn country to spread the news about the war. Later, when we see his refusal to get involved with the fact that his neighbors are severely abusing their young daughter, we are forced to reconsider his integrity and motivation for doing something so personally dangerous. Finally, near the end of the film he is shown stopping into a beauty salon to buy some kind of hair product - the camera remains outside but we are allowed to watch the brief, seemingly trivial interaction. Why are we being shown this? We have to admit, at this point, though of course we believe that this man, like any other, has to buy hair products; but there is a sense in which we hadn't made this assumption - we simply hadn't thought of him in that light. Haneke's realism - keeping the camera rolling during such an errand - is at odds with our need to interpret everything as a symbol, to 'decode' it accordingly: there is a temptation to allow this episode to indicate some kind of vanity, and as such to allow it to be part of an on-going characterization scheme, here building off of his self-interested refusal to get involved with the abusive parents next door. Then again, he's just buying shampoo, something everyone does; why does it have to accuse his character? But then again, this entire scene happens after a seemingly unpleasant encounter for the immigrant beggar woman character, though we too are left in the dark about what happened. Certainly his preoccupations are less dire than hers. But still, these characters have no real relation to each other - are our - i mean mine and your - characters impugned because there are unknown people out there suffering worse than us? Or does the accusation only take place in art - ie., when the director chooses to juxtapose the two - journalist and beggar - in a way to bring the gap out explicitly? But if we go this way, aren't our characters too, as viewers,  impugned by being brought into juxtaposition with the directors juxtaposition? After all, we enter intimately into their collusion by viewing the whole thing! These questions are raised over and over again in his films because Haneke's camera seems to intrude and cut out of his characters lives without regard to what's necessarily 'important' or 'indicative of character'; for another example, think of the laughing fit that Binoche's character has at the post-production session for the film she is making. Why is it important? Should we interpret it indicating some kind of lack of sincerity in the more gravely serious scenes that occur just minutes apart from the laughing fit? Or is it just a moment in her day, she's overworked and she's a bit giddy? Suffice it to say, we cannot fill in the gaps or decode the symbolism because the code is unknown. What's most remarkable is not that Haneke's works refuse to provide us with the usual code to decipher characters, but rather that Haneke's work actively refutes our long-ingrained attempts to decode what we're seeing according to our wonted modes: he slowly reopens all the gaps that we unreflectively fill in from the get go. Think again, of the troubling opening sequence - the little girl backing towards the wall, frightened, watching someone beyond the camera; this is overturned when the shot reverses and we see she is in some kind of class, playing some kind of game where the other deaf children try to guess what she's trying to say; we are allowed to forget about her for a long time - perhaps altogether - if not for the return of a deaf boy playing the same game near the end. Now we have to make sense of this: why are these characters included? Does it just bear a metaphorical relation to the story - that they're both these games of guess the meaning? Or are we supposed to conclude that this little girl is the abused girl? If so, then clearly the meaning of this game, and the frightened look in her eyes, takes on a more sinister significance.

Once you see that this is what he's doing, you can't stop seeing it, ie., this tension of ambiguity, between our attempts to decode everything as a symbol, with it's attendant assumption that somehow the camera 'knows' what to capture in order to reveal the significance in a character or event, on the one hand, and the "realism" that the photographic medium is supposed to be so apt to achieve: we're seeing what happened then and there, and what ever meaning we find is imposed by us, the viewer, in our attempt to tidy everything up into some perhaps slightly more complex or sophisticated or qualified version of the hero/villain dichotomy. At this point, the doubt raises itself - not that the code is 'unknown' (which is a mere, though potentially unsolvable, epistemological problem) but that there is no code (which is an ontological problem); why is there no code? Because there is no entrance. And there is no entrance because the transpiring of the world is shut up tight in a chaos that defies our meager attempts at narrative sense-making. Or maybe the journalist is just an asshole. 

As I watched this film, and recognized the ever-shifting layers and boundaries of sense that infringed on each other and indeed on my attempts to understand, I couldn't help but think that Haneke's films are the perfect subject for a reader-response critical approach. It is as though he writes so as to flout the reader's natural responses, and to leave him in a place where he cannot constitute a unified aesthetic object. This passage was too fitting not to quote at length:

"Communication in literature, then, is a process set in motion and regulated, not by a given code, but by a mutually restrictive and magnifying interaction between the explicit and the implicit, between revelation and concealment. What is concealed spurs the reader into action, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the explicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been brought to light. Whenever the reader bridges the gaps, communication begins" - Wolfgang Iser

Antonioni: Remarks on Technique

I wanted to write about some remarkable similarities between certain recurring techniques that I've noticed in my still rather limited viewing of Antonioni. 

First is a shot of two principle characters, facing away, showing only their backs. 

The Passenger (left), L'Avventura (right)

Both of these shots occur prior to the characters featured within undergo some kind of identity switch; in fact, that identity switch (whether it is the literal attempted identity theft of The Passenger, or the switch constructed relationally by a common lover in L'Avventura) comes to be the dialectical driving force of both films. Here, the physical similarity that is made possible by viewing the person only from behind - with none of the individuating power of the face - foreshadows the interchangeability that will soon become the central theme. Even more remarkably similar is the way that up until these scenes, both films take us on something of a false trajectory - The Passenger with it's journalistic forays into the desert to locate a guerrilla faction, L'Avventura with it's visually stunning pleasure cruise - from which we find ourselves stripped away to chase something else altogether: these scenes introduce a new, unforeseen turn in the events within which we're just beginning to feel at home. There's probably a lot more to say about interchangeability and authenticity and identity etc., but my purpose with these posts is to provide small jumping off points, especially ones that begin with distinctive cinematic choreography. The rest will be up to you, or us if we ever get to talking about these films over the phone (or in person!).

Second, briefly, I wanted to point out the method of the camera being 'left outside':

The Passenger (left), La Notte (right)

In both of these shots, the principle characters have a moment of privacy with a minor character who is in some sense abetting their flight (but from what?). The effect is simple enough (especially felt in La Notte): we immediately feel excluded. It is, if you consider it, a rare occurrence for the viewer to be less informed than the characters. Typically, the camera restricts itself to what is significant with in the awareness of the characters, or it draws away to let the viewer in on larger perspective than the characters possess (in The Passenger, the first time the perspective and epistemic situation of the main character is left behind is a good quarter of the way into the film - and as such it immediately stands out - as the camera breaks away to show that he is unknowingly being followed/observed). So it is all the more remarkable when the opposite effect is encountered - the viewer is excluded - or, more precisely, he is included enough to know that he is being excluded. In both cases, this exclusion reflects, and intensifies, the impenetrable interiority of the characters, who, in both cases, are running from something - and that something more than what they themselves profess. Both scenes also show the characters experiencing a rare ease, as though they are not only momentarily escaping their pursuant, but also escaping the gaze of the viewer and his prying need to understand. Indeed, what remains for the viewer is to watch and speculate, and listen, on the one hand, to the sound of the gondola machinery, and, the pouring rain, on the other. As such, the viewer too gets to escape, momentarily, from the logocentric tendencies of the main narrative, and enjoy a sonic ambiance that is in stark contrast to the broad swaths of silence so often employed by Antonioni. 

Finally, I decided to insert what I took to be the most visually striking sequence from The Passenger (except, of course, for the ending sequence!). 

One thing that is unfortunate about color film is that it loses so much of the beauty of contrast found in black and white. This sequence plays with lighting contrast by capturing a drive with a line of trees between the car and the sun - an dizzying aesthetic effect that I believe has been underutilized in movies (I can only remember seeing it in Conspiracy Theory, which, I suppose, has a couple of interesting points of contact with this movie). Either way, this scene stands out in contrast not only to the bleaker landscapes that bookend this story, but it also stands out in my experience of Antonioni, who is known for static, architectural cinematography - characters stepping out of the walls like so many bas-relief. Yet here in the middle of this flight is this most visually striking, dynamic scene; here, like the characters, the eye can lose itself, we can forget what's gone before and what is surely to come, and we feel the only freedom attainable in this freedom seeking journey, namely, the freedom of an overpowering aesthetic experience.  And after all, if you've seen enough movies centered around an ill-fated chase (whether we find ourselves with the chasers or the chased), it is only these moments of momentary and fleeting freedom that can redeem the undertaking - something may, after all, come to its fulfillment, its ripeness, before it reaches its actual end. And it may reach that fulfillment without itself knowing that this is it. It reminds us, we too always chasing, thinking the journey will go on forever, that our beauty days, our freedom days, our redemptive days, may be a thing of the past. Perhaps it would have been good of Jack to ask, on this cruise, whether this is as good as it gets. 

The Spirit of the Spirit of the Beehive

It's Tremendous! The best I've ever shown in this town!

The Spirit of the Beehive is in many ways a film about the experience of watching film. The entire opening sequence - from the approach of the truck that carries Frankenstein into town, through the excited questions of the children, the quaintly humorous announcement of the films showing by the town (movie) crier, the gradual filling up of the theater, and finally to the introduction and disclaimer that begins Frankenstein itself - builds anticipation about the very act of watching a movie - and in a way, this anticipation is self-referential, since the 'real' film, The Spirit, in a sense, doesn't begin until after this buildup. It is not until we find the father alone at his bees that the movie begins to give us the normal cues that it is moving forward: it now begins framing solitary shots of characters we assume will henceforth be the focus of the story; narration overlays these images, and we take these not only to be the voices of the characters visually introduced, but we take this privileged access to their thoughts as instant signs of these characters centrality. What is slightly ironic is that the true central characters have already been surreptitiously introduced in the opening sequence at the theater, but then with none of the cinematographic cues of their importance. The divide between the 'false start' and the 'real story' is further marked, more obviously, by the introduction/disclaimer that precedes Frankenstein, which warns us that we may be shocked by what follows, while admonishing us from taking the film too seriously - and then instead of seeing Frankenstein or perhaps his monster, we see the somewhat strange image of the father at work in his bee keeper suit (it is notable that Isabel will later put this suit to dress up as a monster to scare Ana). This divide - between the announcement and the film proper, is further marked by the return of the (haunting?) opening credit music, the presence of the soundtrack being an easy to spot reassertion of the filmic nature of what we are experiencing. I do not wish to go further into the introduction of Frankenstein being used, in a way, to introduce The Spirit itself (for instance, it would be too easy as well as objectionable to claim that the Father is a monster, or that he has committed a similarly against-god act); I only wish to point it out. But I will also point out that it is at around 30:00 into the film that we see any of the family members (other than the inseparable two sisters) in the same frame. And tellingly enough, it is the scene where the husband is coming to bed after having spent the night in his study, while his wife pretends to sleep.

Watching the Watchers:

The Spirit of the Beehive

The 400 Blows, Truffaut

Trains and cinema have a long history - both symbols of modernity, both rolling along a track, both a spectacle, almost a miracle, of sound and vision. The scene of Isabel and Ana playing at the train tracks develops the girls individual attitudes toward that moving spectacle of sound and vision, the film: So while Isabel faces the direction from which the train is coming, Ana faces Isabel - she is still dependent on her sister for certain cues ("why did he kill the girl?" "Why did they kill him?"); likewise, at the approach of the train, Isabel runs to safety first, while Ana does so only after being prompted; this shows the crucial difference between the girls stages in development: throughout the movie, Ana does not quite grasp the boundaries between safety and danger (the train; the deserter), between good and bad (the mushrooms), between life and death (Frankenstein; her sister's playing dead), while there are all exhibited as things that her sister understands. This difference in understanding, however is what makes Ana an innocent, and Isabel a moral agent - compare the scene in which Ana 'tests' the bees, blowing on them, with the following scene of Isabel quite self-consciously trying to strangle the cat.  This difference in their understanding is perhaps most importantly exposed when Isabel answers Ana's questions about Frankenstein (I.e., Why did the girl and the monster die?) with something like, they didn't die - movies are fake. The point is not necessarily that Ana believes Frankenstein is a true story, but that she doesn't really wield the distinction between fiction and non-fiction; she is moved by the movie without worrying about it's historical reality, and the director makes us too challenge this distinction when Frankenstein crosses the boundary of the silver screen and appears before Ana in an ambiguous encounter. 

The Spirit of the Beehive

L'Arrivee D'un train de gare de la Ciotat, Les Freres Lumiere

The movie is, after all, in many ways in the tradition of realism; still, it has many moments when it's filmic nature is brought to the viewer's attention, and these moments are among the most beautiful and memorable of the film - in particular his use of dissolves to mark the passage of time. Each dissolve (the schoolhouse in the morning, the girls crossing the field) does not seamlessly match up with the preceding image, giving the transitions a rough-edged, hand-crafted quality, not only speaking of the rustic ways of the village, but also reminding us that what we are seeing, too, was stitched together. 

The Spirit of the Beehive, dissolve technique

 

And while there is much more to this movie than this self-reference, it does have its way of reminded us that it's all a trick of light and shadows. 

Francesca's List

Seen Selection

The Magnificent Ambersons (3 stars, 90 minutes is not enough time to flesh out characterization of the Ambersons or those who surround them, however, the cinematography and direction was  unique, though a bit over dramatic. His use of shadows felt like a perfect introduction to the age of Hitchcock while his narration reminded me that he still belonged to an age where radio ruled and voice was everything -- great film!)
Vanya on 42nd St, Malle (2 stars, I thought the roles were poorly cast)
8 1/2, Fellini (4 stars, I think I should post something about this one)
Revolutionary Road, Mendes (2 stars, no better than last time I saw it, too sterile!)
The Spirit of the Beehive, Erice (3 stars, refer to comment on your post)
Weekend, Godard (1 star, far too avant garde for my taste)


Coming Attractions

Code Unknown, Haneke
Qatsi Trilogy, Reggio
Three Colors Trilogy, Kieslowski
Autumn Sonata, Bergman
Bicycle Thieves, De Sico
The earrings of Madame de --, Ophuls

Justin's Lists

Tokyo Story, Ozu

Summer Interlude, Bergman
Fanny and Alexander, Bergman

Three colors Trilogy, Kieslowski
The Seventh Seal, Audio Commentary
Nebraska, Alexandra Payne

My Seenlist:

Revanche, Spielmann (3 stars.)
Code Unknown, Haneke (4 stars. Probably my favorite Haneke. I think he struck a perfect balance here with what came before and what followed.)

The Passenger, Antonioni, Jack Nicholson (3 stars.)
8 1/2 (4 stars!)

The Spirit of the Beehive, Erice (4 stars!)
Frances Ha, Baumbach (3 stars!)
The 400 Blows, Audio Commentary
Dallas Buyers' Club, Jean-Marc Vallee (hmm, 2 stars at best?)
The 400 Blows, Truffaut (4 stars!)
The Royal Tennenbaum's, Audio Commentary

One day (maybe):

Our Children, Lafosse