| RR (2007) : J.Benning : 7+/10 |
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| Friday, 21 March 2008 | |
 The Texan asked me why I was on the train. I looked into the camera and said because my girlfriend and I had split up about a month ago and I couldn't stand being at home. Everything reminded me of her. I said I decided to go on a train ride and try to forget her. I said I thought I'd drink beer and look out the window at the passing landscapes. And I did do that all the way to Seattle. James Benning, Train Notes from 1987 Cinema and locomotives have always run on intersecting tracks: the Lumiere brothers' riot-inducing footage of a train arriving at La Ciotat station in 1895; Edwin S Porter'sThe Great Train Robbery - the first narrative film - in 1903; Orson Welles proclaiming a Hollywood studio "the biggest train set a boy ever had." Not to mention Jiri Menzel's Closely Observed Trains, Buster Keaton's The General, and Alfred Hitchcock's love-affair with the permanent way (North by Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Strangers On a Train, etc). In recent years, however, the train has gradually lost its pre-eminent place on the movie screen (as touched upon in Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself), supplanted by "sexier" modes of transport - mirroring and emphasising the way right-wing governments in the USA and elsewhere have deliberately underfunded, privatised and "sidelined" what admirers believe to be the noblest and cleanest form of mechanised transport. James Benning now tries to single-handedly rectify this cinematic neglect with RR, comprising nearly two hours of trains passing through our field of vision - i.e., that of his tripod-mounted, never-moving camera. An ideal triple-bill companion to Jean-Pierre Gorin's Routine Pleasures (1986) and Bill Daniel's Who Is Bozo Texino? (2005), it's a defiant, unapologetic, implicitly political celebration of the railroad - but also an excuse to visit some fascinating, hidden, underpopulated corners of the continental United States: mysterious, strangely alluring backwaters which, as we see, remain utterly unchanged by the trains' deafeningly noisy transit (even if they themselves have been formed or crucially altered by the railroad's proximity.) And they are invariably (and repetitively) rural or semi-industrial: oddly, Benning never shows trains in or near major cities; and he never films at night (a shame - we therefore miss the spectacle of the great "one-eyed monster" blasting its way through the darkness.) Shots may be very brief (passenger trains? they're never identified as such) or punishingly long - indeed, the film itself is all about duration, an irresistibly big, blunt, unadorned, uncompromising monolith of an artwork which unfolds majestically, relentlessly, indifferently, elusively as we watch. It's a tightly-constructed exploration of space, time, colour and movement: the mechanisms of cinema reduced to their barest essentials. A journey into linearity and direction, set to the soothing, soporific rumble of wagon wheels on metal tracks. Benning apparently sets some basic rules - the shots begin when the train enters the shot, end after the last carriage has passed by - and then proceeds to bend, break or ignore them as it suits the rhythms of his construction. Odd to describe such a behemoth of a film as "playful", then, but the label seems accurate. Look out for a cameo by some of Benning's beloved Hanjin container units; listen out for a sequence featuring his trademark "distant rifle shots" effect. And there's even room for a touch of gentle, lyrical/romantic magic: two white butterflies dipping above a meadow as Woody Guthrie sings "this land is made for you and me." NY 21.Mar.08 ------------------------------------------------------ theoretical alternative title Rail Road * USA 112m (approx) director/editor : James Benning (casting a glance, Ten Skies, 13 Lakes, etc) - billed here as 'JB' seen 14.Mar.08 Bradford (Cubby Broccoli cinema, National Media Museum : complimentary ticket : Bradford International Film Festival) location list - by James Benning RR ......... zweiter Meinung - by Sheila Seacroft MORE BRADFORD '08 REVIEWS....  * "The film is called RR, but I like to call it "Railroad," because RR sounds like a pirate movie."—James Benning
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