Spacecut
Werner Nekes' film ' SPACE CUT consists of two parts, Indians at Taos and 'Diggins Place' in the Sierra Nevada after the Goldrush 1871.
In the first, against the timeless background of adobe structures, the people move like the wind moves.
They walk thru the picture. 'They are picked up in midmotion, walk out of it. They are picked up & suddenly dropped again before they had the chance to reach the margin of the frame. You pick them up where you want step out of a door in the middle of the picture; suddenly they are dropped, have vanished because of a cut, a new event.
They move, yes. But their movement has no beginning or end, any beginning or end, is simply your decision to pick them up 'here' and drop them 'there'. "Now I say I begin. Now I say I end." (Anthony Moore). All the aims, the destinations are only provisional, declared, given, willed but not real beyond this. Look at wind.
Part 2 consists of quick single frame montage of landscapes bottom up and down and sideways all angles. The structure of the landscape changes, there are aspects of rock, of trees, of sky. The quick rhythm makes for abstractions or should I rather say, concretion? You see all that is relevant & seeable. But not at once, rather as cumulative effect, as summation of multiple impact. No aura can develop, as when you look, for a long time, at a tree, any landscape.
The horizontal bottom down view is not primary: we see that ALL the perspectives are equal.
Werner Nekes' film, Whatever Happened Between the Pictures?, seems to me to combine two elements of understanding acquired in previous films - the awareness of space that is so characteristic of Abbandono and the quick rhythm of single frame montage of the second part of SPACE CUT.
At the same time, it develops more fully something that had already, in embryonic form, been present in Abbandono by way of the relationship between that person which the camera is following in Abbandono and the space through which it is moving, in which it is alone.
The present film obviously has a plot. This is perhaps something that is new in the new cinema; somebody mentioned to me that it reminds of Gertrud Stein who despite all characteristics of avantgarde writing remained strangely faithful to plot, somebody else (Paul Sharits) mentioned how this (the plot) constitutes the difficulty in seeing the film and how at the same time this difficulty is overcome the actions in terms of musical themes, that are structurally related to each other. This, latter, statement end the hint of Gertrude for me elucidate each other. This, latter, statement and the hint of Gertrude for me elucidate each other; it is true, the film is patterned very clearly, in five great blocks of I) slow rythm; II) quick rythm; III slow rythm; IV) relatively quick rythm and V) slow rythm. Also, thematically and in terms of images, III) takes up I), and V) to some extent III). The story is that of two girls, also of love, or shall we say its impossibility? - its possibility again but not easily? The girl of Abbandono is there again. But in Abbandono she had been anyone, maybe it didn't even matter that she was a girl. Here it matters a great deal, to the extent that (except for one instant where a man appears, sitting or squatting at the coast between the two girls) men are excluded. Part I to me, I admit, somewhat disturbing, with its concentration of sexual symbols which are at once fetishized commodities, belonging to woman, and, clearly, marking their prize; clothing, mainly stockings, over their legs, shoes, high, black, polished heels motionless. But the concentration is effectful, calls to mind the disturbing qualities of reality, how the woman is turned, and is turning herself, into the prize, for men: unmoving, they are things, reified, waiting, prey as well as birds of pray. That they are two, lying there is as yet without meaning because their relationship is that of the things.
When it gives way to landscapes, their walking together, it is a light but quiet, as if they were suddenly saying NO to it all, as if at least, for a moment, sleeply, they had forgotten about it.
The next part, II, cuts in brutally with a rapid succession of single frames, shifting horizon moving through all possible positions around the clock, aggressive sound. Part III) returns to the girls, the ocean. Maybe the ocean becomes a metaphor loneliness. The aura which was absent in Part II (and even more so in the second part of Space Cut) is introduced together with human beings: a figure half visible in the sea, two persons on the beach vaguely, the walks space, a lonely house. As in I, a gateway in a city, the two girls standing at its left front corner, the long view through it, the passers-by in the front of it and the girls, appears in intervals. Then there are autumn landscapes, trees, lakes, the rising and falling skylines of a mountain superimposed against each other, the landscape lights up and fades, just as in a de - and increasing way, the music comes and fades; from such landscapes without persons in it, the film moves back to the girls, under trees, walking into some deep background, thru the tree-filtered light, into medows, their movements, their gestures minimal, those of sadness. Finally a street appears, blueish; thru superimposition water flows in it, the street is already moving, before we notice two figures, two girls in the foreground, slowly one separates herself from the other, walks down the road. That part ends with the gateway sequence, only now, the girls don't remain immobile, they suddenly move thru the gateway into the court.
The rythm of Part IV is quick, and immobility gives for a time, way to hasty "love" which is, what love, after all, is anyway when it occurs? Two female bodies, rash movements, the red-gold light corresponding to the predominant blue of Part II - but this gives way again, even to the quickness of rythm remains, mostly.
Then the movements occur as if in some Italian paintings Botticelli? - or are the impressionists closer? Anyway, the effect is painterly, and one is detached, seeing ‘cool grace'. In the end, there is the bed, the contrast of the light bodies on blue background has given way to a different atmosphere, two women half sitting in the bed, immobility and virtual movement come to a counterpointal unity as by way of superimposition, they both stay immobile and move, slowly, towards each other: a sign of the frosenness of our existence, the difficulty, the impossibility to act, to love, now eith these two women as with any man
and woman - which is the dialectical counterpart of that previous hectic attempt to make love?
The last part, V, is full of elegance embraces that have a ritual quality, that occur slowly, deliberately, with gestures of controlled rapture, while these women look at each other, while one is looked at, is possessed by way of that look and has to look back, in like manner, while again, by way of superimposition, she looks again and again, at the audience, differently, helpless, with big eyes, utterly sad, betraying her loneliness, the reconstruction of a relationship of lord and slave.
(Andreas Weiland)
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