Annabelle Series

Raw - Lessons From The Stand-Up Feature

Eddie Murphy's second stand-up comedy feature film.

This is a weirdly significant film to me. Being way too young to have been watching this, Murphy's Raw was my first exposure to stand-up comedy. I can't even remember how old I was when pushing in the old video tape, but what I will never forget is the full-body reaction, the utter captivation, the drug-like sensation, of watching and listening to the most hilarious shit for an hour and a half straight. I can't stress, nor explain, how mind-blowing the experience of watching and re-watching this film was to me as a kid. It was basically a kind of magic to me, how someone could stand on stage and ignite a fiery, burning uproar in my gut. And it's that feeling of pain, of delirious joy as I laughed and laughed and laughed until I was blue in the face, that makes this film significant to me. Never have I howled as much, so wholeheartedly, so purely and thoroughly as I did when watching this film for the first few times.

Raw has then always stuck with me as it's one of those films that I watch at least a few times every year. And watching the film a few times a year means in totality. I'm constantly watching clips from both Delirious and Raw, showing them to friends and family - even if I've shown them a billion times already. What's more, I'll often wake up and watch Murphy talking about Michael Jackson, Um-Fufu, girlfriends going on holiday and taking half or Italian guys watching Rocky just to start the day off on some kind of high. So, as should be clear, Eddie Murphy has been a huge influence on me. And I suppose this manifests itself primarily in my sense of humour, but also desire to tell stories. Because Raw was such a revelatory experience to me I obviously had to find more - which meant other comedians. And that yearning or fascination with stand-up has lasted to this day. It was after Eddie Murphy that I went on to find Tim Minchin, Richard Pryor, Aries Spears, Sam Kinison, Chris Rock, Louis CK, Robbin Williams, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, Chris D'Elia, Joe Rogan, Mitch Hedberg, Kevin Hart, Jim Jefferies, Joey Diaz, Patrice O'Neal, Bill Burr and so much more. Each and every one of these comics hit that special note and ignited that familiar feeling I first felt when watching Eddie Murphy scream, shout and swear in Raw. And with this came this strange philosophy, sensibility or way of thinking.

My favourite comics seem to have two key characteristics. The first is a harsh, unapologetic truth. From Pryor to Kinison to Diaz to Jefferies, I see 'dirty comics' that find funny in very human truths that we often don't like to talk about. The other attribute I'm drawn to is an intellectual commentary. You get this from CK, Carlin, Rogan and Burr. These comics not only tell stories that make you laugh, but expose and talk about thought provoking ideas. But, what I often find is that these two types, the intellectual commentator and un-PC genuine storyteller, are often one and the same. So, whilst Carlin was more of a ranter, he was also focused on a kind of shock, hard-truth kind of commentary. Simultaneously, whilst Joey Diaz has endless stories about his balls, coke, prostitutes and guns, you get to hear the lessons of his life in his comedy. So, what I love in comedy is the visceral storytelling and the personalities that can say shit no other entertainer can. But, plain shock comedy, just like alternative pseudo-intellectual comedy, grows bland real quick. That's why I like an element of truth or thought in comedy. When that thought meets visceral exposition, you find the purest form of truth in my opinion. This is because, with a non-PC approach, you can say the things we all (many of us) personally think about all the time. You may talk about sexual things, racial topics, subjects of gender, poverty, evil, corruption and selfishness. And by not just bringing up these hidden and pushed aside topics of truth, but having something to add to them with some kind of original thought, the truth and expression demonstrated becomes something so much more precious.

I think the "it's just comedy" side of comedy off-sets this idea of visceral, probing truth incredibly well as it gives a comic free-range to create stories with hyperboles, which leaves their ideas with an ambiguous cushion around them - one that engages the audience, entertains them and doesn't assume they're an utter nit-wit that has to be fed easy to swallow, plain and simple ideas. Louis CK is probably one of the best comedians when it comes to implying a subtle truth within a hyperbolic comedic premise. Whilst CK may talk about "If Murder Was Legal" and suggest that everyone would kill someone if they were allowed as a way of creating something funny, he also implies something about a side of human nature that isn't so loving, that does get annoyed, fed up and frustrated. Whilst I could go on to talk about this for thousands of words more, this is essentially why I'm so swept away by certain kinds of comedy. Not only is there a pure, unflinching truth, but its delivered and packaged in an intellectual way that engages as well as respects an audience in a manner that no other art form, or form of entertainment, can manage.

Having said this, I bring up Eddie Murphy's Raw to ask two questions. The first question is, is Raw a film and does it count as cinema? This is a subtly tricky question. The answer seems to simply be, no, not really. This answer would suggest that, whilst this is a 90 minute recording, one that was given a theatrical release, put on tape, DVD and Blu-ray, we go to see this film for an art form that is not cinematic. We watch this 'film' for stand-up comedy. And stand-up certainly doesn't need a camera to function - it just needs a crowd. What this certainly says is that stand-up features, or specials, fit into a weird realm of cinema. However, despite this, in my opinion, I certainly think that they count as films - just not in a strict way. They are loosely cinematic. After all, A Streetcar Named Desire and Dogville are films. These are basically stage plays. We don't need cinema to experience these stories, however, they are stories expressed on film and so they are movies. This is why I say that Raw counts as a movie, as cinema. Not only is this a 'story' captured by a camera. but it is one dictated, facilitated and contorted by cinematography, direction and editing - a uniquely cinematic combination.

Having asserted that Raw is a film - though a strange one - we can move onto the next, and more pressing, question: so what? What can we learn from Raw as a movie?

With the introduction, I've tried to convey what the stand-up comedy and comedians I like have taught me. Primarily, the likes of Pryor, Diaz, CK, Burr and O'Neal have taught me a key idea of truth. What the mentioned comics do like no other artist can is, within the comedic realm, expose hidden truths and provide commentary on them. They are allowed to do this as their form of storytelling is entirely focused on making a succinct point. I repeat, entirely focused. A joke will only work if the audience gets it. And to get a joke you must understand how it tries to manipulate and misguide you. A pretty flat example would be as follows:

What do you call a boy about to stand up to his bullies?
An ambulance.

What this very simple joke does is set up a narrative of a boy about to rise up against his conflicts - be a hero of his story. However, the laugh lies in a sharp turn. Reality barges its way in with the implimence that the boy is about to be beaten to a pulp as he tries to pull on the tights and spandex of a hero. We then laugh because we understand that bullied kids are bullied for a reason - they're usually weak. Our recognition of this is the laugh. It's kind of fucked up when you think of comedy in these terms, but that's simply how it is. And it's not a form of sadism or hatred to laugh at these kind of jokes as, as previously said, "it's just comedy". What this much repeated phrase suggests is the obvious: the boy, his bullies and the ambulance don't exist. This means that a joke is, to push towards slightly pretension depths, a form of philosophical questioning.

As a philosopher, you may, without flinching, ask: why don't we just rape the women we're attracted to? The reason why a philosopher asks this question has nothing to do with actual rape. The question means to expose a hidden truth. After all, if you were to ask an average passing person why we don't just rape women, you'd likely get a very unsatisfactory answer: it's not right. With "it's not right" being the only answer one could provide to this question, you can see a tremendous problem. To explain, imagine you stand with your best friend before a red button. You are in an empty room without windows, without a door, just the button. You have the urge to push the button. Your friend says not to. You ask why. They said "it's not right". Where do you go from here? You'll eventually push the button, right? However, you wouldn't if your friend explained that the button has a wire that's connected to him and that if you push that button, a bomb strapped to his chest would go off.

Now, I don't mean to compare rape with pushing a button out of curiosity - not so plainly anyhow. What I mean to suggest is that asking questions and providing answers provides clarity and so reason to a rhyme. So, whilst no one (blindly holding onto optimism) raised in modern society really needs to be told not to rape someone, we can imagine an alien civilisation landing on Earth who have no mating rituals, instead, just inseminate anyone who catches their eye. Assuming these aliens are intelligent and empathetic, we'd have to explain what rape is, why it's bad, such and so on. You couldn't do this by simply saying "it's not right". You're going to need the philosopher.

Comedy works in a similar way to philosophy in this respect. A great example would be found in the works of Bill Burr. A great bit of his is him confronting the assertion that "there is no reason to hit a woman". Burr accepts, as we all do (again, blindly holding onto optimism) that you just shouldn't hit women. However, we are all told this in a "it's not right" manner. Burr questions this, exposing the truth, that is so easily glossed over, that women are humans, that they can be infuriating, that they can certainly be deserving of a punch. He repeats that you shouldn't hit a woman, but, asserts that there is reason to nonetheless. This is funny in the same manner that explaining why rape is wrong to aliens is helpful. Just as explaining rape to the aliens would ignite a reaction of understanding in them, Burr exposing a caveat in a subject of domestic abuse is funny. There is thus, in both cases, a reflex response to validate these intellectual assertions, which demonstrates how there is both a philosophical questioning going on in comedy, but also the need for the joke/questioning.

Taking this concept of jokes as philsophy, we can extrapolate our first lesson from the stand-up feature film. A great way to approach a story is with this focus on making a point that all comedians have. What makes a joke great is the profundity of its point. What often makes films great is also their profundity, however, there is a reliance on image and action in film that allows weak points to be made. For example, just look to Michael Bay. His films have no profound point to them - not in my view. However, millions have seen and paid for them. Ask yourself this though: if Transformers had to be performed as a stand-up routine, would it get any laughs? I say no - not a chance. Look to a film like Dogtooth, however. There is a succinct and powerful point made in this film about the control parents have over their children...

Could this movie be adapted into a stand-up comedian's set and be funny? I certainly think so. This is not just because Dogtooth is a slight dark comedy, however, but because there is a conflicting and probing truth exposed by this story that a comedian could capitalise on. What this says about Dogtooth and the approach to cinema that Lanthimos takes is that poignant stories have a point, one that exposes a visceral, easily looked over truth. If you appreciate this kind of filmmaking, I think stand-up comedy is a great source of inspiration and lessons. It's watching Burr, Diaz, Rogan, Hedberg and Pryor that you'll then learn the importance of a premise, its twist and its resolution. If you can put this into a script, I believe you'll have the tools and means to create something special. And you don't have to be inspired to write a comedy. In simply recognising how comedians expose truth, you can construct powerful dramas, fantasies, crime-mysteries - anything. What comedy will teach you is how to make those stories profound and how to get a reaction out of an audience.

The next lesson that a film like Raw may teach you, which is connected to the previous, is the importance of words or dialogue. Whilst you could learn this from a play, say for instance the 2001 version of Waiting For Godot, stand-up is a much more expressive example of the power of dialogue. When we watch Raw, it is so easy to forget that all we're doing is watching Murphy talk....

... that's it. If a stand-up comedian can entertain people for up to 2 hours on stage and this may translate to film, does this not suggest a much greater scope of story that may work in a script? What Raw suggests is that not all films need to be Die Hard, instead, that they can be much more subdued and simple. By watching comedy, you come to understand just how to achieve this, how to fill up a large space of time with minimalist resources. The answer is an unsatisfying one - it's all about a great performance and some great writing. This is why stand-up comedy is so hard and a film that mimics its form would be so difficult to produce. But, as Murphy demonstrates, this is more than possible.

A lesson within this subject of dialogue that you may learn from stand-up is how people performing talk or sound. As any screenwriter could tell you, when you write a film, you are not trying to write real conversations. If you were to turn a transcript of a real conversation into a film, it'd likely be boring. As a result, when you write dialogue, you don't want to transcribe real speech. Instead, you want to write movie dialogue. You can learn to do this many ways, and I believe watching stand-up comedians perform is one of the best due to the pure focus on their words and voice. One of the best sources actually begins to move further away from cinema. Joe Rogan's 2016 special, Triggered...

... is shot almost entirely in a mid-shot or close-up with a few wides. There are no inserts of the crowd, we just see him talk. This emphasises the power of his voice and performance. And what makes this entirely minimalist approach almost a no-brainer when it comes to Rogan is, of course, his podcast...

These are 2, sometimes 3 or 4 hour long conversation-performances (I say conversation-performances as they are for a camera and mic to pick up). All you see is captured by the above shot; just a cut between Joe and his guest. Is this cinema? There is cinematography, a camera, editing and so it has to be in some way, right? Whilst you may call it just a podcast, I believe that the YouTube videos of The Joe Rogan Experience are tantamount to movies - movies I happily sit through dozens and dozens of times.

What this should further emphasis to any film lover or filmmaker is that minimalism and bare-bones storytelling is a viable option. Whilst it may seem commercially daunting to try this, what Joe Rogan and many other podcasters who stream on sites like YouTube show is that, with a good character, this is very possible and endlessly entertaining. And this is arguably what we see in a film like Locke...

However, coming back to the idea of learning how to make characters talk, look no further than podcasts and stand-up specials to learn what goes into performances as well as how conversations flow and structure themselves. Recognising that podcasts and comedy specials aren't just conversations or talks will then open up the world of cinema to explore and experiment with minimalist, character-driven forms we rarely come across.

These are three great lessons that take a lot of time to absorb. I won't lie and suggest that I have the universal answers on learning how to make a great movie from watching Raw or any other stand-up feature. What I think makes a lot of sense, however, is that looking at the stand-up feature as cinema is incredibly powerful. And so learning from Raw, Delirious, Triggered, Live At The Beacon Theatre or Bring The Pain in the same way you may a Bergman, Spielberg or Scorsese film is pivotal. If you like comedy, if you are interested in comedic storytelling or even verbal storytelling, I cannot recommend stand-up more.

A Bug's Life - The Collective Individual: How Family Movies Work

Flik, an eccentric and inventive ant, attempts to save the colony he belongs to by finding warrior bugs to fend of the oppressive grasshoppers that threaten them.

A Bug's Life is not only one of Pixar's most underrated films, but also one of their most impressive. I've never understood why it fell so low on many peoples' lists, averaging just above the likes of Cars and Monsters University. Some of this may stem from the fact that it followed the astounding Toy Story, and some of this may come from the release of Antz a few months beforehand (a good video on this topic can be found here). However, judged holistically, A Bug's Life has a subtle, not entirely unique, yet undeniably strong narrative, compelling characters and some beautiful aesthetics that are, in my opinion, only out-done by the likes of Finding Nemo whilst rivalling those captured in WALL-E. And the aesthetics are what make this film primarily so impressive. Looking back at this almost 20-year-old film, you will find a mesmerising miniature perspective captured by Lasseter and his team, one that was, in its time, pretty revolutionary. If you only look at the technological jump between Toy Story and A Bug's Life, this is strikingly obvious...

In fact, A Bug's Life is a huge jump ahead, both in terms of scope and technological details of lighting and textures, on Pixar's behalf. What they do fail to capture, however, is the emotional poignancy of the Toy Story premise. But, there are incredibly few narratives out there that you, just by reading their synopsis, can get a sense of how emotionally impactful they'll be. This is true of all three Toy Story films; tell kids and adults alike about childhoods and lost toys and you're likely to get a few of them blubbering. Nonetheless, A Bug's Life takes the themes of community and friendship that were featured in Toy Story and really blows them up into something more intelligent, rather than emotionally impactful. And this is a hugely redeeming factor of the story. However, before getting into this, it has to quickly be said that the score for this movie is tremendous, as are the voice performances - especially that of Kevin Spacey as Hopper. Both of these produce a joyous, sometimes menacing, atmosphere that locks you into the narrative entirely.

But, let us now take a closer look at the story of A Bug's Life. As mentioned, this narrative is centred on themes of friendship and community - as in Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Inside Out, WALL-E - in short, basically all of Pixar's feature length films. The reason why this is the paradigm of Pixar's films is simply because it is the way that almost all family films are constructed. As the title, 'family film', suggests, movies that fit into this genre or class must appeal to a wide audience made up of many different individuals. Whilst the best way you may talk to teens is to depict rebellion, fun, adventure and discovery, this isn't really the best way to talk to adults as they often seek out more mature, niche themes. However, all of these themes - rebellion, fun, adventure and discovery - can appeal to anyone if angled right. With a teen movie, you'd often set up the conflict to be in spite of the protagonist with them having to actively seek out fun and adventure as an act of rebellion, haphazardly discovering new things along the way. A more family orientated film, however, would include more perspectives and differing shades of conflict. In such, the film would not just be about a teen rebelling, instead a whole group somehow coming together and persevering. And it's through this that there can be a debate of conflicts had. For example, in A Bug's Life, Flik wants to escape and prove himself in the bigger world - just as many protagonists in innumerable family films do. However, he has to bring this experience back with him to the ant colony and continue to learn. And such allows the debate between individual rebellion and a collective perseverance to be engaged.

The fact that this is so starkly explored in A Bug's Life is what makes the narrative somewhat remarkable in comparison to the many other Pixar films that feature this paradigm. In such, a film like Finding Nemo, Brave or Toy Story is about a protagonist going out into the wider world - often with a person at their side - before returning to their smaller world in the end with lessons learned. This focuses the narrative of these films on the growth of individuals as they are separated from their core group, instead of inducing a debate across a whole group of people in the initial smaller world of the narrative. But, whilst this isn't an inherently bad thing, the theme of family and collectiveness isn't so much explored in these films, rather, themes of friendship and individuality are. Again, this isn't a bad thing. But, the fact that A Bug's Life takes these themes and explores them in a different light makes it quite an interesting study into a wider paradigm of Pixar and family films. In such, A Bug's Life ultimately explores the relationship between the collective and the individual.

As said, this subject is one that has been widely explored in many stories and in many different forms. And the climax of many of these films often sees a large group rise up against their oppressors - as the ants do against the grasshoppers in this narrative. This is paradigm particularly prevalent in any movie featuring some kind of battle, revolution or war. However, the film that comes to mind as the most blatant expression of this trope has to be A Bug's Life. In such, this narrative utilises such a trope to point out the absurdity of a ruling minority that exists in the real world. However, despite the absurdity of such an idea, this is a state of normalcy throughout the world; despite notions of democracy, socialism and communism, we all exist somewhere in a triangular hierarchy with very few at the top of things. The reason why this is the case must come down to the fact that there is an inner conflict in all people between surviving as a group and surviving as an individual. In such, almost all people want to life/don't want to die. This is a self-centric urge within us all, but it extends to others; we do not want to see those close to us die and we do not want to see all of humanity blip out of existence around us. This is all because we need others so that we may live our lives. After all, how could I have typed this essay without a huge company manufacturing my computer for me? How could I have eaten this morning without hundreds, if not thousands, of people working to produce the milk and cereal that went into my bowl? What this says is that there is an incredibly strong bond between motivations for all people to live collectively and individually. However, these things are not one and the same.

A film I saw recently was A Bride For Rip Van Winkle - which also explores the themes we are discussing now. And, to delve into minor spoilers, one of the revelations a character reveals in this narrative is that she likes to buy things and spend extraordinary amounts of money because she can't bear to live in a world were she has to accept how kind people are around her. This is a pretty profound notion and a complex commentary on an idea of money, exchange and, in a certain sense, capitalism. We like to isolate ourselves within a crowd, to a certain degree, so that we don't disappear into, or become entirely reliant, on it. And this is the illusion we conjure with money. The metal, paper and digital figures that we all exchange daily mean, in a certain sense, nothing. And if you choose to see them as such, if you choose to take money out of the equation of me eating cereal this morning, things become overwhelmingly utopian. Out of some unneeded kindness, hundreds or thousands of people worked to provide me with a meal that I didn't even savour or enjoy that much as I ate it - which is pretty unnerving. But, because I claim ownership over that bowl of cereal, because everyone exchanges money, there is no weight of the collective on my back; because I paid for that bowl of cereal, suddenly I am somehow providing for myself.

This is the tension that is poignantly explored in A Bride For Rip Van Winkle, but also in A Bug's Life - just from a different angle. Because the Grasshoppers intimidate the ants into giving them food, they in turn think that they are the top of the food chain. The reality is, they can not only be eaten by birds, but that they wouldn't be alive without the ants providing their food. The commentary made by the ants rising up against the Grasshoppers is then that there is an overriding idea of a collective that can easily quash a tyrannical individual; money and hierarchy is just an illusion we construct and hold on to. However, is this really the case?

The fact is: no, not really. Flik essentially destroys Hopper. And I don't mean this in that he lured him toward the bird (who you could then say actually killed Hopper). Flik destroys Hopper by uniting the colony against him. This says that the collective doesn't really destroy the individual, instead, one individual destroys another with the collective at their back. As a result, the means that we represent this power in society (through hierarchy and money) are seemingly valid. And you can see that this paradigm of individual leaders exists both the real world and across many family films; it only takes one. In the real world, this one leading figure may be a Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Muhammad, Gandhi, Hitler or a Lincoln. All of these figures united whole nations and radically changed the world, and their names ring through the annals of history all because of this tension between the collective and the individual; they stood up and individually represented the collective. This says that collectives need some kind of triangular hierarchy because deadly risk is always an element changing the world. But, if there is one courageous person willing to die for a cause, others will often follow. This is the Spartacus effect. However, it mustn't be forgotten that, without the real Spartacus standing up first, this phenomena doesn't exist.

This is what we see in A Bug's Life, and the reason why I chose this film to discuss such a paradigm is that it says a lot about ourselves through the guise of the family film. As mentioned, almost all family movies have this conflict between collective and individual motivations, and so often resolve themselves with individuals bringing a collective together. We then seem to be so drawn to these movies as they discuss and emotionally appeal to our own existential conflicts between living as an individual person, but also as a cog in a wider system. These movies that we then watch with our parents, children, brothers, sisters and other loved ones become a currency much like money. Just as money smooths out and simplifies the exchange of goods and favours, family movies act as some kind of dampener of collective living. In such, instead of having to stand before your entire family and entertain them with stories and your intellect, you can all sit back and let the hundreds of employees at Pixar do it for you.

A question this leaves us all is, is this right? Should money be done away with? Should Pixar movies? Instead of throwing money at our 'problems' like Jordan Belfort in Wolf Of Wall Street (however minute), should we learn to say thank you and be more appreciative? Instead of shutting the kids up for 80 minutes with a Pixar movie, should we sit them down and talk to them ourselves? My position falls somewhere between the two extremes. Money introduces a lot of order into the world that I wouldn't want to see gone, but maybe we are a little too obsessed with ideas of individuality and making it on our own in life (when such a thing is basically impossible). And Pixar movies aren't something we need to deprive children of, but a little more care and attention wouldn't go amiss.

Before we end, it then has to be said that A Bug's Life is a hugely remarkable archetype of the family film that directly speaks to its thematic paradigms - which maybe suggest that this movie needs a bit more recognition. However, I'll now turn things over to you. What are your thoughts on all we've covered today? Is there more to be said about the topics we've picked up on?

No Country For Old Men - Disavowal

A relentless cat-and-mouse chase ensues after a Texan war vet steals drug money.

No Country For Old Men is a quintessential Coen Bros movie and is one of their best for the way in which it captures the subtle absurdity embedded into many of their narratives whilst creating an abstract sense of meaning. However, asking what No Country For Old Men is about isn't an easy question.

In a sense, this is about a conflict between nihilism, morality and structure. There are no easy lines to draw in this film, however; there could not have been an opening title sequence in which the 'good', the 'bad' and the 'ugly' are introduced. Each major character in this film bares within them ideas of structure and nihilism - and, from structure, there sometimes comes morality. The three major players of this narrative are Sheriff Bell, Llewellyn and Anton: the law, the cowboy and the outlaw.

The Sheriff, if he is a good sheriff, is an archetypal manifestation of the general the structure of society; he is the voice of the law. However, and this is putting to the side the bad cop concept, sheriffs can often run into a confrontation between the moral right, the structure of law and their own personal structure. This is expressed minimalistically in No Country For Old Men with Bell refusing certain mundane duties and eventually opting to quit the force, and is important because this is where a key theme of disavowal enters this picture. Bell is tested, both in terms of his patience and courage, throughout this narrative, which has him drift further from his role as the voice of the law. His failure to bring law-decided justice and order to his town is the ultimate expression of this drifting. And the 'drifting' itself is disavowal; it is the rejection of structure.

Before going any further with that idea, let us look at the cowboy archetype. Traditionally, there is the black hat cowboy and the white hat cowboy; the good individual and the bad individual - they are individuals because they are not necessarily tied to society in the same way, for instance, a sheriff is (though, he, too, is an individual - he just doesn't express this so much through his relationship with 'structure' as this, law, belongs to a society bigger than himself). However, because of the long cinematic history of the cowboy, this archetype has shifted in its representational capacities. As Eastwood's Unforgiven best defines, there is usually a more rounded and complex conception of the cowboy following the descent of the old John Wayne western and the rise of the New Hollywood one à la The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is expressed by the Coens through Llewellyn. He, as a cowboy, lives outside of the structure of society and by his own rules (and such is the cowboy archetype in many respects), but, whilst he isn't a true outlaw, he does not hold the moral status of a white hat cowboy. In such, Llewellyn, arguably, never makes a courageous and controversial decision to help a group of people. You may suggests that the money he steals is for his wife, but there is no stress on this concept; Llewellyn takes the money without much moral reason or foresight.

With Llewellyn's decision to steal the money, he chooses to step into the realm of a new, dark order - one that in fact suppresses all of his positive acts of morality such as bringing the Mexican gang member water. Stepping into a new, dark domain of order is actually a deeply archetypal decision that can be thought to draw parallels between No Country For Old Men and the "rescue the princess" narrative.

The "rescue the princess" story could be thought of in two respects: the Rama, Sita and Ravana myth or the Saint George and the Dragon myth. The Rama, Sita and Ravana story - which we referenced in the previous post - is a variation of the "rescue the princess" narrative that sees the equilibrium of romance disrupted by the princess being stolen by a king of demons. This, to reference Todorov's narrative theory, 'disruption of equilibrium' catalyses an adventure in which the princess must be rescued so that romance could be restored anew. Somewhat different to this, the Saint George and the Dragon myth sees an equilibrium of individuality disrupted by evil, which spurs an adventure to, as you could guess, rescue a princess and establish a new equilibrium that, in certain incarnations of the Saint George myth, does not end in romance. These two version of the "rescue the princess" narrative suggests that all heroic stories are about romance and/or adventure. In such, personal structure, which is defined by a romantic, familial or communal relationship, is abandoned when a hero is forced to step into the realm of a new structure or order. This adventure into the unknown is often catalysed by higher ideals tantamount to chivalry and the moral right, and it allows a new, improved and stronger equilibrium to be re-established.

This story has been told ceaselessly for centuries, and to a degree which suggests that it is maybe harder to break this paradigm than it is to adhere to it. With No Country For Old Men, this structure is abandoned as this is a tragedy of sorts, but it is still high visible. As mentioned, there are strong ideas of structure alongside romantic and adventurous themes in this film, and this leaves this narrative a failed "rescue the princess" narrative that is more a reflection of the Rama, Sita and Ravana romantic-adventure than the Saint George adventure (though, there are elements of both within). This is because Llewellyn attempts to essentially steal gold, but only manages to awaken an evil king, or dragon, that he must save himself and his wife from.

Both the Saint George and the Rama, Sita and Ravana "rescue the princess" narrative have been mentioned as they comment on the kind of cowboy (and cowboys can be thought of as Americanised knights or samurai) that Llewellyn is. Saint George follows this narrative to 'save' a city (convert them to good Christians). Rama and his brother pursue Sita and her captor, Ravana, to save her alone. As mentioned, Llewellyn doesn't attempt to save a greater group of people and gain a romance like, for instance, John Wayne's character does in Stagecoach. Neither does he just try to save his princess. Llewellyn awakens a dragon and endangers his princess, then spends much of his time trying to sort this mess out. This is the key way in which a tragedy is constructed out of this narrative and it is separated from the classical "rescue the princess" myth; the princess is thrust into the grips of the beast by the 'knight's' hubris. So, the kind of cowboy that Llewellyn reveals himself to be is an ageing, grey hat one. He then falls in some place between The Wild Bunch's Pike and Unforgiven's William, which is to say that he is not making a final stand (as we can assume he has already established a settled life), but is also not being called out of retirement. Llewellyn has escaped the old rat race of life, but is teased away all too easily. As this foolish grey hat cowboy-turned-outlaw who cannot establish a solid adventure or romance, Llewellyn demonstrates no higher morality or sense of structure, and so we could suggest that he is fated to fail.

Llewellyn has no strong structure about his personality, apart from the structure that is implied by him serving his wife. But, he does know how to recognise structure; both the dark and the light. And this is where we come to Anton. It would be all too tempting to say that, whilst Llewellyn is grey and Sheriff Bell is good, Anton is plain evil. The fact is: he's more than that. The most formidable bad guys are those that see themselves as a hero. I'm sure we've all heard this before, but, what on earth does it mean?

The best bad guys seeing themselves as the heroes gives their darkness a kind of structure. Structure is, existentially speaking, everything. The world, stared at through objective eyes, means nothing, has no substance, worth, rhyme or reason. This idea is key for scientists as from objectivity flourishes truth. However, as the most insidious projections of scientific concepts - such as the Social Darwinism of the Nazi regime - make clear, if objectivity precurses or overwhelms shades of humanity that we may define to encompass 'higher, positive morality', darker structures will prevail. With positive morality (which is hard to articulate, but can be conceptualised through fundamental, abstract ideas of good as opposed to bad), a structure that preserves and betters humanity comes to exist. Remembering that the universe does not necessarily give reason for this positive morality, when its (speaking human-centrically) chaotic being is overindulged, any structure - good or bad - can come into being. We can think of structures that do not fit the fundamental human concept of good as opposed evil as 'dark structures'. These dark structures manifest themselves through figures such as Stalin and Hitler, and they are alluded to, through archetype, by bad guys who see themselves as heroes.

Bad guys are those that the average human agrees come from evil--from darkness. By extension of this, the reflection of heroism that the bad guy sees when he looks into a mirror is the structure that emerges from his darkness. The reason why bad guys who think they are heroes are then so formidable comes down to the fact that Hitler, an archetype of evil, cannot really be understood. This is a somewhat misleading idea, but it has a certain sense. Hitler can be understood to a significant degree - and because his being had structure. Hitler was highly disgust sensitive and so wanted to wipe out the parasites, rats and plagues that infected his to-be-utopia. Understanding that Hitler essentially saw his structure of being as separate from, for instance, the Jews' just as we see our structure of being as separate from that of rats, it becomes very clear why he would exterminate them. Understanding this and the important, though sometimes problematic, role of disgust in human civilisation allows us to structure society around preventing the rise of another Nazi regime, maybe another to-be Hitler. Nonetheless, Hitler represents an archetypal symbol of chaos that, by definition, cannot be understood. We can understand this by asking the question: why did Hitler have to come into being? Why does Hitler have to express the deep-seated faults of humanity? We have no answer for this because chaos, when we don't blind ourselves to it, is overwhelming. As we discussed, the disorder of the universe is a much more powerful force than the order that humanity creates. We cannot understand the universe, thus we cannot fully understand its structure and order (which is why we say it is dark, chaotic and disorderly; we personify it without access to a possible 'greater purpose'). When people, such as Hitler, begin to embody our paradox of 'meaningful living' through their evil, there is no other reaction but fear, disgust, denial, negative reaction and disavowal.

To deny Hitler was 'right', that he made any sense, is to deny what could reveal itself to be a newly realise truth. After all, if there was a perfect fascist world-wide state that was entirely under Hitler's control - an (impossible) Nazi utopia - then the rules of humanity would be re-structured to suggest that he was the greatest hero of all human history. With this as a conceptual truth (though, this hypothetical concept could be argued endlessly), it becomes clear that our moral positive structure of being is somewhat precarious. And what this ultimately suggests is that the bad guy with structure, he who sees himself as a hero, is so scary because he is an expression of our precarious rules that, though they are probably the best way to navigate into the future as a species, can easily be overwhelmed by the chaotic nature of the universe. Just like Hitler is an expression of this, so is Anton.

Anton Chigurh is one of the best definitions of 'nihilism' that I have ever come into contact with. Nihilism is defined as an absence of theological meaning. Nihilism is the recognition and embrace of the universe's disorder and chaos (much like, more actively, anarchism is). However, nihilism does mean complete disorder. As has been implied, whilst we say the universe is chaos, this is merely an expression of our incomprehension. Figures such as Anton can draw structure from the meaninglessness universe (which is possible evidence that there must be some structure to it that we can only perceive and access in part). This is why Anton acts without any care for a life other than his own and by the rules of his own selfishness; when he makes a promise, or envisions a goal, he cannot let this be challenged by anything other than the universe itself. The universe is represented by fate and probability: Anton's coin. And such defines the nihilist structure that Anton represents as a bad guy who thinks he's a hero.

Understanding Sheriff Bell as structure, he becomes a voice of what we have been referring to as 'positive morality'. Positive morality is the structure that humanity has collectively drawn from nature and the state of being human so that we can live the best possible lives in the present that enable equally good or better futures (and much of this is predicated on sacrifice). Llewellyn is a wrench in this system. He is not truly good, he is not truly bad and he does not conform to the structures of human expectation (these expectations have been explored through his relation to the "rescue the princess" myth). When the lost cowboy ventures into the realm of the nihilist outlaw and the moral sheriff follows him, we get an old story of goodness and naivety confronting evil. What the title of this narrative, No Country For Old Men, suggests, however, is that this old tale is doomed to fail. The question that this title then asks is: what happens, against all expectation, when human structures of good defeating evil and naivety being converted into wisdom fail?

With naivety, the lost cowboy, Llewellyn, being killed by the nihilist hero, Anton, and our moral Sheriff losing his faith and reasoning, this is the question we are left with as this narrative comes to a close. But, in recognising this, it should also be said that this film has three conjoined endings: Bell speaking to his uncle about quitting, Anton confronting Carla, Llewellyn's wife, and the retired Bell talking to his wife.

With Sheriff Bell wanting to leave the police force, we see this narrative defined largely by the idea of disavowal. As touched on, disavowal is the rejection of an idea. This implies that disavowal is something to be avoided. However, as we could make a case for with a reference to Newton's 3rd law of motion, disavowal is in fact inescapable and even essential. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction", defines the known physical world (stress on known; we have to excuse the origins of the universe amongst other things as, for now, science needs a few miracles). Newton's 3rd law, beyond physics, also suggests much about the idea of meaning itself. Humans derive meaning from 'nowhere', 'nowhere' being the unknown; we do not understand ourselves and the universe, therefore, they are unknowns and relative nowheres to our self-evident somewhere. Ultimately, meaning is then not the nothing of the chaotic, meaningless universe; to oppose meaning there will always be nihilism of equal (maybe greater) magnitude. We bring this up to recognise that meaning itself is a form of disavowal; we have to deny disorder and faulted structures to construct and maintain our own precarious structures (positive morality). To map this onto No Country For Old Men, Sheriff Bell only is because his antithesis, the nihilistic Anton, is, too. However, he gives up his position of representational structure because he feels "out-matched". This means that Sheriff Bell has to disavow the structure that he represents because it has been overshadowed by meaningless; he becomes a nihilist because he cannot see any other option.

Moving on to the second of the three end scenes, we come to the most ambiguous and challenging element of this film: Anton's confrontation of Carla and the car crash. To skip the confrontation with Carla for a moment, we have to first ask: what is the meaning of the car crash. The fact is: there is no meaning, only commentary. This has been inserted into the script to characterise Anton's world by his structure of being; he is an anarchistic nihilist who embraces chaos, and the world the world has an abundance of chaos to throw his way. Thus, through his rejection of society and its structure, Anton has to crusade, or accept this, alone - and this is why he pays the boy for his shirt and is left to hobble off to, in all probability, find himself fighting chaos until he is consumed by it.

The meaningless of this all suggests that Anton is ultimately wrong. His sense of 'dark structure' is not as strong as the positive, 'good structure' of the average, moral human. This is revealed to be undeniably true as his way of life is not at all desirable; he may live with a sense of honour and power, but his life will not be a pleasant one. Consider the alternative ending: an average man gets into a car accident, he is subjected to the chaos of the world, but someone calls an ambulance, his life is saved and, after a period of suffering, he has the chance for a better life. Because of the structure of a good society, the average person has the opportunity to live a far better life than most alternatives could provide - especially that of a nihilist who chooses to confront the anarchy day by day, hour by hour. This isn't to say that current societies are perfect, just that, with meaning, they are far superior to a nihilist or anarchist state (which would, hypothetically, revert to a state with meaning or exist in perpetual chaos). The fact that societies are imperfect is actually where the whole conflict of this film comes from: structures can be rattled, and this is a scary, potentially catastrophic, event, but, it can be endured.

We now come to the final scene in which the retired Bell talks to his wife about his dreams; his father helping him with money in one, a less important dream, and his father providing light and warmth in darkness in the second, more important dream. The first dream is a reflection of the end of the previous scene in which the boys are paid to help Anton. This is an allusion to a faux kind of structure that he is embedded in. After all, you could retort to the idea that Anton is doomed by suggesting he can always pay or bully his way towards comfort - and he does in a certain respect. But, as we all know, crime doesn't pay. Anton's 'structure' is a faulted one as it does not confront chaos, instead embraces it. Whilst this sounds positive, you cannot live alongside chaos without a genuine shield; money and violence may get him somewhere, but they are destined to fail (at least, this is what we can believe after centuries upon centuries of learning as a species). Bell dreaming a reflection to this concept suggests that there is some shade of nihilism within himself. However, this strain of his being and this story is overshadowed by a second dream.

Whilst Bell becomes a nihilist, to a degree, when he quits his job, he is told that what he's going through is not new. The story his uncle tells him also suggests that Anton is nothing new; he is the archetype of structured evil threatening structured good that has always existed in human society, and so has only manifested itself in a new skin. The second dream reflects upon this notion and the title of this movie by exploring the concept of "old men". Whilst times change, old good guys and bad guys don't. They evolve and intensify, but how much of a difference is there between ancient gods and warriors and modern superheroes and cowboys? Bell's father establishing a camp in the darkness of the world embodies this implied concept of inherited archetypal traits; Bell can learn (has learnt) to be a hero from his father; whilst it is easy to accept material help, money, it's in an ancestral guiding light that true wisdom is found. Bell is then not a true nihilist as this signifies that he realises that his land is, and isn't, a country for old men. By seeing that the country hasn't change much, only that it needs a new sheriff, Bell should realise that he has the capacity to be the light in darkness for the deputies to follow him. In other words, Bell can pass on the essential positive structure of society down to the generations to come.

We cannot end here, however. Does Anton kill Carla? This is a tricky question to answer as Carla essentially asks Anton to judge her himself and to rely on his own structure, not plain nihilism and fate: his coin. However, we could also ask: Does Bell become the light in darkness for upcoming deputies to follow? Has he lead an inspiring life that re-affirms the purpose of law and the police? This is a far more important question as, though it is a tragedy that Carla may have been killed, this is the consequence of a naive man being overwhelmed by darkness; and that is the commentary of Llewellyn's pointless death. If Bell does manage to keep the fire of moral goodness burning even though he has, to a degree, disavowed it, then there will always be someone to fight Anton. So, ultimately, Carla's death is a tragedy to be learned from, but irrelevant to this narrative. The answer to the ultimate question of this narrative - what happens, against all expectation, when human structures of good defeating evil and naivety being converted into wisdom fail? - is then: find old lights in the darkness and spark new ones; have faith that the better structures will prevail.

If we bring things towards conclusion, we should recognise that, though this is a tragedy and a film about failure, it is a realist tale that hope can be derived from given that certain structures are disavowed, and in the correct capacity. In such, if we do not believe in Anton's nihilism and if we have faith in Bell's legacy, despite the somewhat irrelevant failures and successes of these characters, then we, the naive individual, the lost cowboys, can find our place within the positive superstructure of a successful society. So, not only is this a commentary on the war on drugs and the chaotic mess that emerged from it in America that people still live in wake of, but this is a story about confronting the disavowal of the good, the bad and the ugly in the dark country of old men.

Before you go, I think there's a lot more to be said about this narrative, for instance, much could be further discussed about themes concerning fate and the individual. So, what are your thoughts on this film and all we've covered today?

Henry Rollins: Talking From The Box - Spoken Word & Cinema: Subjective Impressionism

Henry Rollins recounts a selection of stories from his life on stage.

I have almost no knowledge of, and have had almost no contact with, spoken word performances. Beyond one or two live shows, Henry Rollins' performances are the only ones I've seen. And whilst I don't have too much of an interest in this storytelling form, having spent quite a bit of time consuming Rollins' content, a relationship between spoken word and film seems to have opened up an avenue or two concerning the way we may think about cinema. Before jumping into this, however, let's take a brief look at this show itself.

By 1992  and Talking From The Box, Rollins (most famous as the lead singer of Black Flag and Rollins Band) had made more than 5 spoken word albums. However, this would be the first 'album' that he would have recorded video for. The performances themselves lie in some strange space between poetry ("poet" being a title which he refuses and despises) and stand-up comedy. It is best to let the idea of 'spoken word' define Talking From The Box, however, as Rollins is, in essence, just expressing--a mere euphemism for 'talking shit' as he says--himself through verbal storytelling. Understanding this performance as such turns this into a very stark amalgamation of biography and constructed art or entertainment; Rollins is telling us, in part at least, who he is, what he thinks, what he's been through and where he is now in a way that has clearly been constructed for an audience's consumption and reflection.

To take a step back, the concept of this show being an amalgam of biography and art is a pithy one that could be applied to anything within, or approaching, the realms of 'art'. After all, if it is best to think of art as a term to define modes of communication that require some kind of router (router in the sense of a WiFi router) that facilitates a flow of thought and emotion between the 'artist' and their audience, then it becomes inevitable that what the artist projects will have significant - or just notable - touches of their personality, life and general biographical information on it. In regards to the art of cinema, we conceptualise this with the auteur theory, or, more commonly and less precisely, with a tendency to attribute a collectively manifested piece of work to one person; usually the director.

There is rhyme, reason, yet also discordance, surrounding this thought process. To take a slight tangent, to a thinker such as Marx, history may be comprised of collective ventures and events. Conversely, to someone such as Hegel, there are individual historic figures that lead masses. So, to Marx, there would be a French Revolution lead by the people, not necessarily just Napoleon. To Hegel, Napoleon is the historic leader to which we attribute many of the events of the French Revolution to. Without going into too much depth on these thinkers and such an idea, what we see emerge here is a problem of how to look at historic events and artefacts. Is there one individual force that leads something? Or, is there one abstract collective force?

Coming back to film, the rational summation would be that, this depends, and so the answer will vary between film productions. However, with an idea of the director being a significant one (added to this, the idea of a writer being a significant, though overlooked, one), there is a strong implication in traditional filmmaking that someone leads a creative force in an individually ordained direction. In such, the work itself is collectively sourced, but, without the individual, without a Napoleon, the work couldn't be; it wouldn't have direction and a voice. With such an idea making most sense to me, I am sympathetic towards the auteur theory and so embrace the attribution of a piece of work to one person, or a few select individuals, despite knowing that they themselves didn't work alone.

So, when we look at films, we are seeing the expression of an individual. Cinema then becomes a form of communication that is part biographical and part entertainment. (And entertainment is there to ensure that the communication doesn't fall into completely masturbatory paradigms of vanity and the audience isn't forgotten; this 'entertainment' doesn't just need to be flashing lights and explosions, but something that an audience desires). With cinema conceptualised in such a way, the way in which the individual - a writer through their script, a performer through their screen presence, an editor through their assembly or a director through the organisation of the 'cinematics' of a story - becomes a focal point of the medium. It's now then that we can return to Rollins' Talking From The Box.

With Rollins as the auteur of this film, the performer and writer, there exudes an incredible amount of personality and character from the screen. This is, of course, the consequence of the nature of spoken word. Spoken word, as Rollins presents it, is the rawest and, arguably, truest form of self expression. This is because the auteur's body becomes the 'router' of the communication between artist and audience; their natural facial expressions, body language, thoughts and voice are all laid bare. Actual, staged spoken word performances then differ from cinema as there is a natural presence of the audience sitting before the speaker. With cinema, there is, of course, a huge technological mediation (a camera, editing, screens, such and so on) in between audience and artist. Nonetheless, with Rollins exuding such an eminent and overwhelming sense of character through his auteurship, he comes to separate the kind of biographical and entertainment-based communication that is occurring through the medium of film from your average narrative movie. With 'strong characters' being a very abstract idea in screenwriting, we can then use Rollins to better understand how great characters (Amélie Poulain being one perfect example in my view) may function.

With Rollins as auteur and performer, we see the 'voice' of his 'movie' concentrated in one specific entity. Because Rollins has information of, what I and many others would consider, great value that can be funnelled into this entity, he begins to become a strong character. And because Rollins knows how to present himself, to sell his inner-self with a genuine and effective persona, he becomes a 'great character'. Great character, like great art, is then an amalgam of intriguing content and dazzling form; again, we come to the idea that art needs quality biographical information and entertainment. With these two essential components concentrated in one entity - Rollins as writer and performer - we can come to understand his kind of cinema as one predicated on 'subjective impressionism'.

'Subjective impressionism' (an unofficial term that we shall be using in this essay), re-defines 'impressionism'. With impressionism as an approach to art that is concerned with the projection of the experience or perception of an individual, subjectivity is deeply embedded into the term. However, whilst filmmakers such as Epstein mean to evoke the inner feelings of characters through impressionism, art - cinema - can only communicate with entities, what you could also refer to as, to reference Saussure, 'signifiers'. Characters can be these symbols, these signifiers, routers or entities, but they are a particular variety of signifier. Characters are alive and, if they are believable, they have a certain quality that allows us to pretend they are real people. As a result, we believe that they have a subjective view-point. And so, to conduct an impressionist approach through an individual with their own subjective perspective is 'subjective impressionism'. A brilliant example of exactly this comes with Rollins (but also other great characters such as Amélie Poulain - I'm sure you have your own examples of a great character, too).

Rollins, as we have discussed, uses his own body as the medium through which he expresses and tells a story. However, when he is filmed, more routers, symbols and signifiers come to be involved in the process of his storytelling. Thus there is an influence from the editing and camerawork that would become very obvious with shots like this:

With Rollins shown in a close-up and a wide shot simultaneously, and almost as if he is an angel or devil on his own shoulder, we see cinematics introduced to his storytelling, and they allow us to see him as two people; one defined by his body language, and one defined by his facial movements. Here we then see cinema use impressionistically to bring out new personality and character in the already cultivated screen persona that Rollins creates; a subjective entity is further brought to life through cinematic language.

What we then see with this shot is a kind of impressionism that sees form and content interact. So, to come back to the idea that Rollins is a great character, we see his own form (his persona) and his own content (his internal biographical information) fuelling this idea. However, the cinematic elements of this film also have their own form and content - as we see with the above shot. This introduces an idea of subjective impressionism whilst also implying that cinema has many different signifiers that it can capitalise on to create engaging form and content and, in turn, be a worthwhile piece of art.

If we take a step back from this subject and now question the relationship between spoken word and cinema, we can see that spoken word has a lot to say about how cinema works in relation to its characters and subjective impressionism. For information on how to create strong characters, we can then look to Rollins to see how, through dialogue and presence, he manifests a strong persona. It is clear that Rollins does this himself by exuding worthwhile information about his existential being and its relationship with the world (see how he often talks about individuality, relationships, travelling, strength, facade and emotion - core social themes of great interest and, potentially, controversy). Simultaneous to this, Rollins himself is a formidable character; one word seems to define his stature: intensity. Because his outer facade resonates so well with his inner being and he is self-aware - he practices what he preaches, and well - we see a great harmony exude from the symbol or signifier that he becomes when on stage: he becomes a great character. What this implies to screenwriters, directors and performers is that the form of characters must interact with their content to create harmony; a general rule for creating strong screen presences.

Added to this, however, it is key to understand that cinema does not function like spoken word performances. Rollins gets to use himself as the medium through which to tell a story whilst those who work in cinema must use their respective tools to construct and manipulate such an entity. And this is where subjective impressionism comes into the frame. A, for instance, character, is created and given form by an auteur's own biographical information (maybe biographical information that they collect from others and integrate into their subconscious which they use to write with). This is creating a subject. To manipulate this subject, impressionism needs to be employed; a writer or director need to use their given language (that of words and/or images) to project the inner workings of their pre-constructed subject. And, in such, we have subjective impressionism.

To conclude, the spoken word, as presented by Rollins' film, can lead us to think of character and cinematic storytelling from new angles. And from these angles, we may learn lessons on how to construct and then manipulate characters in a script, on a set, or on film.

Before we end, I should note that this post says much about stand-up comedy, too. And, as you may know, I have a strong interest in stand-up comedy and use it as inspiration in some of my dialogue-centric writings (you can look for example to For Annabelle). It is then through that screenplay that you may see 'subjective impressionism' tested. (Though, I believe that this is the kind of theory that can be applied to many films as it is more an observation and less a technique - even though it could be used to inform an approach). Added to all of this, however, with 'subjective impressionism', there is an implied antithesis. And this is what we'll have to explore another time.

The Wizard Of Oz/No Country For Old Men - Objective Impressionism

A continuation of a previous talk on a bit of film theory.

  

A while ago, we talked about an idea of subjective impressionism, and after doing so alluded to an antithetical concept. Today, we will be discussing just that. But, before jumping straight into things, let us go over a little of what we discussed previously.

Impressionism is an approach to art that essentially means using one medium to represent or give the sensation - the impression - of something or someone else. The definition of this term varies when you look into painting, music and writing, but, with cinema, impressionism is largely defined by a 1920s movement and represented by figures such as Jean Epstein and films such as The Fall Of The House Of Usher and The Faithful Heart. Like impressionist paintings, the impressionist films of Epstein have you see the world as he wants you to - or, at least, in the manner that he sees the world. This is the crux of impressionism: an artist giving you the impression of their own perspective. However, and this is particularly true when we talk of cinema, there can be a question of an artist's intentions: are they always trying to give us an impression of their perspective, or are they attempting to show the world as a character sees it?

In response to this question, I think it is important to make a distinction between scenes such as this from The Faithful Heart...

And the first minute of this scene from Kirsanoff's Menilmontant...

Both of these scenes utilise montage (cutting) and violent movement - for The Faithful Heart, this movement is of the camera itself, but in Menilmontant, the motion is of the fighting bodies. They are both impressionistic scenes as, more than we would see in, for example, realist films like Bicycle Thieves, cinematic language is used to say something; to give the direct impression of something that a scene by itself may not otherwise be able to say. In a sense, impressionism and constructivism (Soviet Montage) are then very closely linked as they are all about a camera being used by a director to show the world in a way that an audience could not see with their naked eye.

However, there is something key separating the Faithful Heart scene from that from Menilmontant: perspective. The source of impressionism in Epstein's film is primarily the POV; is the tilted shot-reverse-shot that gives you the sensation of being the woman, trapped in a world that has spun out of her control. In Kirsanoff's opening, the source of impressionism is the montage: the way in which the scene is cut up into specific sections - a window, a hand, a door knob, an axe, etc. - to give the impression of violence. What we can then clearly see to be separating these films is the fact that Epstein gives you the impression of what it is to be like a character whilst Kirsanoff gives you the impression of the violence of a scene, of spectatorship. In my opinion, Kirsanoff's scene then represents a fundamental impressionism whilst Epstein's represents subjective impressionism. Fundamental impressionism is the basic concept of impressionism: an artist giving you the impression of their perspective of something, e.g, an impression of a violent scene. Subjective impressionism is an artist using a conscious body as a voice; they give the impression of what it is like to be a conscious body in a specific, subjectively perceived, situation.

Let it be noted that in the example from The Faithful Heart, Epstein uses montage to cut away from the character's perspective and so strays from subjective impressionism just like Kirsanoff strays away from fundamental impressionism by utilising a kind of POV by showing a man look off screen before cutting to an axe. As we will later realise, you often get different kinds of impressionism merging together to create an impressionist scene. And it should also be noted that, impressionism is a little bit of a redundant concept. After all, with cinema, we are always using one thing to give the illusion of something else: an actor is a character, a fake set is a real location, CGI objects are material objects, flickering light is movement. As a result, even with realist films - which do not mean to interrupt, dress up or disguise the 'reality' within a frame with cuts, professional actors, fake sets and studio lighting - the camera always ends up saying something. Thus, not only is the impression of cinema (the impression of pictures moving) constant, but so is the presence of a director and contrivance: they have to choose a shot type, a script is almost always written, people act in a manner that is not perfectly realistic, etc. With this, I'm not trying to suggest that realism does not exist (cinema can come close to capturing reality within the constraints of the form and so let's not be pedantic). I am, at this point, suggesting that there is always a print of an artist's finger and perception: impressionism. That said, just like I won't say that realism does not exist, I also won't say that impressionism always exists. In such, we should recognise that both of the previous statements can be perceived as true, but we should also respect the fact that cinema works in relation to intention: an artist always tries to say and do something with their film and it is an audience's job to confront this. So, if a filmmaker is consciously attempting to replicate reality, and manages to do so to a satisfying degree, we should call their work realist. Equally so, if a filmmaker is consciously attempting to project a perspective, we should call their work impressionism.

The reason why it is important to recognise that we can argue that all film is a form of impressionism concerns what exactly a director may do to a scene to make it impressionistic. Fundamental impressionism comes from a director merely emphasising the fact that cinema is always about perspective. Thus, they may not want to represent a character's thoughts with POV, instead, a more abstract idea - such as a theme - through their cinematic language, and so they will select specific camera angles and a certain kind of editing, to imply that. This mere emphasis of inherent impressionism is fundamental impressionism and we see it Menilmontant. Further examples, in my view, would come from certain montage films such as Man With A Movie Camera and Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City. The crux of both of these films is to show a city, or a selection of cities, in the way in which the director wants you to: Berlin as a great, industrialised city and Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov and Moscow as great, communist cities. Because the director imposes his opinion on you with cinematic language, we have fundamental impressionism.

Having gone into fundamental impressionism, we will not dive into the nitty gritty of subjective impressionism as we did this in the mentioned post. In short, however, subjective impressionism can be used to create great characters; a director can use a person to exude an impression of their being alive (and if we accept them as an alive person who we derive meaning and worth from, they become great characters). What we will talk about today, however, is how to create a create great symbols through objective impressionism.

If you understand subjective impressionism, you should be able to accurately assume what objective impressionism is: it is the use of an unconscious entity to impress meaning onto a viewer. Given this definition, we could argue that we are merely talking about symbolism. However, basic symbolism or the symbolism you find in a painting or a book, is different from some forms of symbolism in cinema. Two examples, we can then reference here are The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's ruby slippers...

As well as Anton's coin in this scene from No Country For Old Men...

There are many theories on the subtextual meaning of The Wizard of Oz, but, in my view, this is ultimately a story about finding out who people are through objects. If we recall the scene in which Oz solves everyone's problems with gifts - the Scarecrow gets a diploma and is suddenly smart, the Lion gets a medal and is suddenly brave, the Tinman gets a clock-heart and can suddenly feel - we see that, whilst the Scarecrow has already proven that he is smart, the Lion that he is brave and the Tinman that he is affectionate on their journey with Dorothy, they need something to seal the deal: an object. The meaning of the film lies in a question of why? It seems that these rather pointless objects, just like the rather pointless Oz - which seems to just be a dreamland that she sees after being knocked cold - teach Dorothy to see the depths of people; she should see through them as mere objects and into the people that they represent.

Her ruby slippers do exactly this too, but for herself. She then learns that a journey - her feet and what is on them - can take her to places and through things that she will learn from. Thus, the slippers teach her that she could have always have gone home. She just needed to know how to use them; she needed to learn how to take a specific journey that she would be able to grow from so that she can defeat 'wicked witches' both in her imagination and reality.

The fact that we may not have been able to articulate this idea when we were children, but nonetheless followed and accepted the idea that the diploma made the Scarecrow smart, that the heart made the Tinman affectionate, that the medal made the Lion brave, that the slippers took Dorothy home, says a lot. This is especially true with the slippers; they symbolised magic power and were present throughout the film. With the slippers on, Dorothy was always safe. Thus, the slippers signified more than the average shoe does; more, even, than the basic symbol of the shoe that we see in a film such as Forest Gump:

Whilst Forrest's shoes symbolise direction in his life and Jenny's love - she gives him the shoes and he knows the path to tread, she leaves and he runs around America for no reason - they aren't as powerful and alive as Dorothy's slippers (though, they are pretty close). Dorothy's slippers, much like Cinderella's slipper, brings rules with it. When we see their slippers function - when the slipper slides onto Cinderella's foot, when Dorothy is sent home - we are then imbued with abstract emotions of fulfillment.

This are exemplary projections of objective impressionism as the crux of the concept is that an object and its rules give meaning and emotion to a story much like a strong character will. Thinking back to the scene from No Country For Old Men, we will discover a similar paradigm: the coin not only carries the subtext of the film, but it is a source of emotion. We won't delve into the subtext of No Country For Old Men as we have done this already, but I think this film holds a particularly relevant and striking example of objective impressionism for the manner in which the coin exudes such power, tension and nihilism.

Now we know what objective impressionism is, we should reflect upon the idea that, both now and when we discussed subjective impressionism, we didn't talk about impressionist films. Already, we have discussed the idea that we can identify impressionism in cinema when it is not consciously inserted into it. Seemingly in contradiction to this, when we discuss objective and subjective impressionism, we are talking about a kind of impressionism that doesn't stem from impressionist filmmaking. This is because objective and subjective impressionism aren't actually bound to impressionism per se, rather, symbolism and character-construction. What I am implicitly suggesting here is that, whilst not all films are impressionistic, all films that have powerful symbols and characters utilise subjective or objective impressionism.

This is yet another reason why it is so important to recognise redundancies such all 'all films are impressionist films'. All films have hints of impressionism in them, some more so than others, but unless they explicitly and consciously use them, they don't really need to be called 'impressionistic'. Moreover, if a film doesn't use fundamental impressionism in conjuncture with objective and/or subjective impressionism, it doesn't necessarily qualify as impressionist as it won't bear the impressionist aesthetic (the impressionism won't be imbued into images).

No Country For Old Men and The Wizard of Oz clearly want you to feel a symbol's presence; they are integral to emotional beats of the film. Thus, whilst they may not be impressionistic for their lack of fundamental impressionism, they do utilise objective impressionism to construct powerful symbols and meaning from objects, which, notably, we have to perceive critically and objectively to fully understand. And such is a key reason why subjective impressionism and objective impressionism need to be distinguished; we can accurately articulate how objective impressionism functions, whilst we cannot accurately describe subjective impressionism as it is so subjective.

It is now that we have to leave another open end. There are greater complications to the manner in which subjects and objects - objective and subjective impressionism - function and interact in a film. This is another topic for another time.

As always, thanks if you got this far... cold, hard, exit