Vernon, Florida

Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida

Errol Morris went to Florida with the intention of making a documentary called Nub City, about people who cut off their own limbs for insurance money. That project fell through when they threatened to murder him, and out of its ashes sprung Vernon, Florida. It embodies one of my favorite circumstances that can arise in art: that of chance and hope, last minute scrambling for something to make, just to appease your audience. I love the act of rummaging, assembling something great from the pieces left over, utilizing the unexpected once it becomes available. I have no interest in documentaries that take some stance on a certain issue. Vernon, Florida is merely an earnest observation of people, rendered in a light that puts their character into deep relief, outlining those intensely personal traits and eccentricities that make them individuals. Albeit particularly odd individuals.
This is a film I've dreamed of making.

I recommend watching the film before reading any further.

There's not much I enjoy more than talking to people I don't know, that I've never met and, once we've finished talking, probably never see again. It's a different matter than talking to friends, and yeah, sometimes it just ends in akward tedium. But then there are those transcendent moments: the foul-mouthed hippie sculptor in Paris (the one who actually left the US after Bush was elected, possibly the only man who took that promise to heart), the fat man with his shirt unbuttoned (beer in hand) in the campsite in Alabama, the two guys my roommate and I helped out of a breakdown thanks solely to a series of coincidences. I'd love to capture these moments on film somehow. And that's what Vernon, Florida is. Nearly an hour of conversations like that. With people you remember.
And you remember them. Oh, yes. The simple opening with that off-beat music (harmonica and old man humming?) and the truck moving down country roads, spraying what I presume to be some kind of insecticide, perhaps mosquito repellant. I'm familiar with these small, Southern towns, I know these places. The images ring true. And we hear the first words, spoken by an old man with a strange, almost adolescent voice:
"Reality. You mean this is the real world? (a chuckle) I never thought of that."

Not everyone will understand this film. Some will see it as humorous caricatures. That's a fucking pity, to say the least. These will be the same people who laughed at Grizzly Man without understanding what it was about Timothy Treadwell that drove him out to that wilderness. But when I see these people. . .

The one guy who talks incessantly about turkey hunting. Nothing but turkey hunting. Who understands what a double-gobble is and what it means. The utterly baffling sermon about the word "Therefore." The crawling sand. The pet collector with the fantastic story about the mule carcass. The man who's written dog shit and cat shit with two different hands at the same time, done it lots of times. And yeah, I laughed at times. In part because they reminded me that sometimes really simple things still fascinate me. Although I still don't know what wigglers are.

I'm talking a lot about meeting people, and these people in the film, who they are and why that's important. But that's the beauty of the film. Errol Morris made a brilliant film by letting it make itself. Oh, he edited it and he did it well. He picked great stuff, and arranged it well. Very well. (And I wonder what he left out.) But his greatest contribution is that he lets the camera act as our eyes and never tries to obstruct that view. Filmmakers like Michael Moore block out their lenses with their own personalities. Errol Morris knows that these people, the ones he's filming, are far more interesting than any less-than-witty half-jokes could ever be. The people speak for themselves, and the film does what film does best. It watches.

Stan Brakhage once said something about the documentation of true events on film. He differentiated between a documentary and a genuine document, stating that documentaries were "airy documents". It was great to see someone agree with me, and couldn't think of a better way to phrase it. I'll be referring to that statement a lot, I imagine, but Vernon, Florida is a document in the purest sense, without agenda or political fluff.

Errol Morris's careful fingerprints can be found one other place. The film wanders about freely, only constrained, we can assume, by the size of the town. We meet an interesting range of people with all sorts of stories to tell, with no connection aside from all living in Vernon. Yet something runs through the center of it, a very thin but very distinct thread, or a suggestion of a thread. It can nearly be ignored, because Morris wants us to see them for who they are. But we do see a theme arise, however briefly, at certain moments. Rare instances that give us a glimpse of some melancholy truth lurking beneath the stories and ramblings the excited townspeople tell to the camera.

We hear it when the cop is talking, about how crimes seldom happen. That, when they do, they are the trivial sort. How at the moment, his radar gun is in for repairs so all he can do is sit and watch the cars go past.
In the man showing us fuzzy pictures of stars and telling the joke about two sailors, "Yeah, that's just the top of it."
With the man, talking about a four track mind and the demonstration of his skills in this department.
Those finding God (or something like Him) in everyday moments, finding answers to their prayers.
The belief in the wonder of crawling sand.
It's hinted at in almost every moment we see, every moment Morris chooses to show us. The suggestion of it. And there's an optimism there, don't get me wrong, and something beautiful about their lives. But still. . .

It's most prominent at the ending. The thirty five buzzards looming over the camera. We know why they're there, crouching over the struggling remains of this dying town. In all these stories, these tall tales and obsessions and showings off, we see their accompanying regrets, missed opportunities, lost lives; the camera never leaves Vernon, and does anyone else? Waiting for something to happen. Justifying their existences.

And the last words we hear: "I wish there were as many turkeys as there are buzzards." We know what that means, when the man who loves turkey hunting so much (too much) says it. If these people could only do more than count buzzards and wish them turkeys.


Links:
Imdb Listing
Errol Morris' Website

For background about the city of Vernon and some context, you can read the article here.

La Belle et la bête

Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête
or Beauty and the Beast, if you couldn't figure that out.

I don't recommend reading unless you've already seen the film.

Cocteau's rendition of Beauty and the Beast moves through itself strangely, and upon viewing it I'm not sure what to think. Everything about the film is scattered and the story and setting feel as though were lost long ago and only traces remain. Elements of satire are obvious in Belle's sisters, in the hyper-gallant Avenant, even in central characters like the Beast on occasion, yet other parts are almost laughably somber. It portrays romance, but the awkward love between Belle and the Beast is meandering and uncertain. We have the fairy tale tradition of purely unexplained phenomena which we are expected to accept as truth, like the smoking paws and the events that follow the arrow hitting Avenant. And between all of this something else lurks, hiding in the mist and behind doors that open themselves, something subversive we see most clearly in the bizarre and (intentionally, from what I understand) unsatisfying ending.

I don't mean to imply that I didn't like the movie, because it gave me beauty and mystery at face value, the way they should be given, and it does so with extroardinary delicacy. It's the otherworldliness of everything and the inconsistent attitude of the film that captured me, the sheer defiance toward explanation and logic. The characters in the everyday parts of the film, Belle and her family and Avenant, are funny and simply likeable, even the mean sisters. We can't take the sisters too seriously, conniving though they may be, because we know how the story ends and they won't prevent that. It's not that sort of film. So these average people give the film a lot of vitality and movement, qualities it often lacks in the abstractly beautiful sequences in the Beast's castle. The setting is used to great comic effect, the dialogue is fantastic (in that inexplicably French way), and it provides contrast and relief when put alongside the scenes of the castle. It's good to know that Belle still wants to live her life in a place that is real, where things don't always go in slow motion or move without your help. Later, the Beast's implements gradually invade this territory, when he begins eclipsing Belle's concerns, with the mirror and the key and the horse and everything else. But that's what happens when you step into another world. It invades you.

Appropriately enough, that other world is what everyone remembers about the movie. Looking back, we see Belle's room: half palatial and half pastoral, a blending of leaf and wood with the fineries of silk and stone. We see Belle herself, gliding down the hallway, past the billowing, translucent white curtains. We see her running through the front corridor and up the stairs, crossing over to the Beast's world at that dreamy pace and allowing us to see every graceful motion she makes. We see the Beast, too, bowing before Belle the instant he meets her, in spite of his savagery elsewhere. We see him backing away from Belle very slowly after her refusal, keeping his eyes upon her frame as he slinks back into obscurity. Everything is slow and deliberate yet in a manner that defies reason. Their exchanges, like their surroundings and the time they seem to move through, are delicate and confused and endearingly unnatural. This is a world where a beautiful girl could relate to a beast and learn to love it.

My favorite scene in the film is the first approach to the castle, when Belle's father wanders there unwittingly. Even at the start, when the branches move away and we see the facade of the castle, there is a sense of the unknown. Anticipation when he stood on the stone steps and carefully ascended. The first thrill came when his shadow loomed large against the doorway suddenly. The door opens by itself, which is commonplace by now, although I wonder whether this was the first film to ever use the idea (and doubt it). And then follows the most beautiful moment of the movie: Belle's father moving hesitantly forward while the candelabras on the walls, held by pale human arms that stretch out as he passes, light themselves in a flurry of smoke and colorless flame.

The ending also lingers with you. The disappointment we feel, which Belle actually expresses, when the Beast turns into the prince, so similar to Avenant. He loses all his mystical charm. He's handsome and a bit sly, and he now lacks that simplicity and innocence that only animals can possess. We see Belle turn away from him and then, with a sudden change in attitude, accept him the next moment, as a prince, as an Avenant look-alike. Together they float off into some magical land in a very pale rectangle highlighted against the dark clouds (an admirable attempt at such a special effect, for the time). The situation seems as phony as the block around them. That's what Cocteau wanted, though. According to the man himself, he wanted to make a film where his "story would concern itself mainly with the unconscious obstinacy with which women pursue the same type of man, and expose the naiveté of the old fairy tales that would have us believe that this type reaches its ideal in conventional good looks." Why he went for that, exactly, when the rest of the fairy tale seems so earnest and tender, I can't say, but it works along with the same haphazard logic of the rest of the film. Somehow, this unexpected and almost disappointing ending serve to make this film something more than just the beautiful but standard fairy tale it would have been otherwise.

Quotation taken from Jean Cocteau's essay on the film, included in the Criterion Collection DVD (insert).

Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038348/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_(1946_film)
http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=6

Cast and crew:

Cast
Avenant/Beast/Prince Ardent	Jean Marais
Belle	Josette Day
Félicie	Mila Parély
Adélaïde	Nane Germon
Ludovic	Michel Auclair
Moneylender	Raoul Marco
The merchant (Belle’s father)	Marcel André
Credits
Written and directed by	Jean Cocteau
‘Illustrated by’	Christian Bèrard
Based on the story by	Mme. Leprince de Beaumont
Technical consultant	René Clément
Art directors	René Moulaërt
	Lucien Carré
Costume design	Marcel Escoffier
	Castillo
From the house of	Paquin
Music	Georges Auric
Orchestra directed by	Roger Désormieres
Director of photography	Henri Alekan
Camera operators	Henri Tiquet

Note: I know this is wordy, a bit much. I intend to break later posts up a bit with visuals, such as stills from the film, artwork, posters, and possibly videos if they're available. My writing style and format will also vary drastically depending on the film and the mood I'm in while writing.

Cinema/Cinnamon

CineMafo (the name I decided upon after discarding some pun involving the word cinnamon) exists to function as a perspective on cinema and all things cinematic (and probably some things that aren't). The reason for the word Mafo in the title is significant because it represents my presence in this blog, that aforementioned perspective. But I am not a critic, and these are not reviews.
The purpose of the blog is to document every film I see, not just for myself (which I already do), but publicly.
I will write about the films I see, not dwelling upon what could make them better, because that's a miserably flawed way of perceiving art, but upon what makes them great, or interesting, or mystifying, or beautiful, or funny, or ridiculous, or whatever the fuck it might be.

So I'll write about the films I see and what I see in them. You can watch and read along if it does something for you, but this is a masturbatory experiment more than anything else. Nearly everything I write will reveal something about the film, so I recommend watching the film before reading. As I said, not a review. But the fact that I'm writing about it probably indicates that it's worth watching.

I may also include tidbits about my own personl filmmaking efforts from time to time, or relevant news, or whatever else strikes my fancy. We're going freeform here. So here goes nothing.