| GOOD HEAVENS : James Benning's 'Ten Skies' [8?/10] |
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| Sunday, 25 June 2006 | |
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"Charlie Brackett summed it up beautifully, I think, when he said that in Europe you could open a picture with clouds, dissolve slowly to clouds, and dissolve again to more clouds. In America, though, he said, you open with clouds, you then dissolve to an airplane, and in the next shot the airplane's gotta explode." John Sturges (quoted in Peter Bodanovich's Picture Shows, pp30-31) Severe projection problems* mean that this can only be a partial assessment of Ten Skies: Benning's work is structural and relies heavily on composition and sequencing, both of which were adversely affected by the technical issues which marred the screening I attended. On the (limited) evidence of what I saw (and heard), however, I can state with some confidence that the film represents Benning operating close to, if not quite at, the level of his finest recent achievements (13 Lakes; Los; El Valley Centro). The film is very much a demanding/rewarding companion-piece to 13 Lakes**: this time Benning trains his (16mm Bolex) camera and (Nagra) sound-recording equipment on the sky. There are ten shots of identical length - the picture runs 99 1/2 minutes, including some short opening and closing 'titles' (the latter providing what's an unlikely but effective 'twist ending') and several seconds' black screen in between each shot, which means each shot is somewhere between nine and ten minutes. The shots are clearly taken at various different times of the day (not, it would seem, at night) and during different weather conditions. The sounds accompanying each image are also very different from shot to shot: distant gunfire can be heard during one sequence; we can make out what sound like a helicopter, human voices (talking and singing, though no words can be discerned). By making and editing his film in such a way, Benning is clearly inviting us to contemplate our natural surroundings - which of us hasn't spent time staring at the sky for minutes at a time? Clouds can be breathtakingly beautiful things, all the more so because they are so often in flux - either changing rapidly before our eyes or developing at a pace so slow that we can't quite discern it until it's happened. All of this is contained within Benning's film, and he affords us plenty of opportunities to play the child's game of making out shapes and faces in the clouds: a winking pirate here, a leaping dog there, Scandinavia transforming into Ireland. And we may even recall Antony's speech from Antony & Cleopatra: Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs; They are black vesper's pageants. But there's rather more going on here than may initially meet the eye - as so often in his work, at first glance there seems to be very little "happening", but once we adapt to the film's form and structure we become remarkably attuned to the various "events" which do occur. A black dot zips across the frame : is it a bird? Is it a plane? In one sequence the sun (or is it possibly the moon) is visible, a tiny disk among a shimmering network of cloud-fragments. And of course the sun 'moves,' ever so slowly, across our field of vision - its progress seemingly 'accelerated' by the fact that the clouds are moving, slightly more quickly, in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, by the end of the sequence it's clear that the celestial body is now slightly to the right of the frame, whereas before it was slightly to the left. If it is the sun, then what we're seeing is the rotation of the earth as it supports Benning and his camera; if it's the moon (less likely), we're seeing the earth's rotation and the progress of the satellite. There's plenty of time to ponder such issues (in both practical and philosophical terms) before the screen goes black and we wait in wonder and fascination for the next quotidian wonder Benning has captured for our benefit, edification and education. There are longueurs here and there, and Ten Skies perhaps isn't the best starting-point for a Benning newcomer. But you don't have to be an aficionado of avant-garde cinema to appreciate the merit of what is the liveliest and perhaps most thought-provoking sequence, in which the 'natural' clouds are obscured by the violently up-billowing smoke from an unseen chimney. These almost fill the screen at the start of the shot, but have subsided towards the end, allowing the 'real' sky behind to dominate the shot: it doesn't seem too fanciful to discern an oblique comment on (or rather a visual metaphor depicting) man's transient, explosive tenure on earth. Such an interpretation could also be supported by the 'gunshots' sequence (a self-referential nod to an aurally-similar segment from 13 Lakes) in which the vast stormy (but sadly lightning-free) cloud-systems of the heavens make the accompanying, repeated firearm reports seem quite laughably puny - the ridiculous juxtaposed with the sublime, if you like. Neil Young 25th June, 2006 TEN SKIES : [8?/10] : USA 2004 : James BENNING : 99.5 mins (timed) seen at Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds (UK), 25th June 2006 - public show (paid £5.50) - Leeds Film Quarter * reproduction of e-mail sent to a friend (name deleted) who co-runs Leeds Film Quarter, 25th June 2006 Dear XXXX ... Unfortunately major projection problems severely marred - in fact, ruined - today's screening of Ten Skies. The projectionist didn't seem to have much of a clue what he was going to be showing: the opening title and the entirety of the first "sky" were miles out of focus (and fluctuated wildly for a minute or so as the projectionist panicked and tried to get the image in focus) so that almost nothing of the (crucial) first shot should could be made out. In addition, the screen wasn't set wide enough for the first three skies: they only rectified it after half an hour when I pointed out that 1/4 of the image was being projected onto the black part at the right-hand side of the screen and thus rendered almost entirely invisible (wrecking the careful composition of the shots). The remainder of the film was at least in focus (pretty much) and occupied the whole screen (pretty much) but there was a significant long black blur at the bottom and a slightly less noticeable long black blur at the top (both I presume parts of the "gate") which remained conspicuously in place throughout and, again, threw the compositions badly out of whack. All in all, I got the gist of the picture but the experience was, to say the least, most disappointing: if Benning had been there in person he would (justifiably) have blown a major gasket. A friend I brought down from Sunderland, who has little experience of avant-garde cinema, was left entirely nonplussed and unimpressed and will not be risking another encounter with the maestro's works. Sorry to have to report this but thought you ought to know first hand what transpired. ... Neil ** NB : despite their titles, unfortunately neither Richard Donner's 16 Blocks nor Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes are connected to Benning's duo. |
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