In my previous text I discussed the bear attack happening early in the film; here, I'll concentrate on the last scene of 'Siberia' with the talking fish. It is highly significant that, at the end of the film, Clint finds his post destroyed. The storm of fantasies that is 'Siberia' has knocked down the walls of Clint's refuge; his psyche is raw, tender, naked and exposed. The defenses to which he clung in order to keep the unconscious at bay have been severely weakened...
Tag: #SCENE ANALYSIS
The Bear Attack and the Talking Fish [I]: ‘Siberia’ (Abel Ferrara, 2020)
There are only a few episodes in 'Siberia' that can be unmistakably traced to Jung's 'The Red Book' (its source of inspiration). Neither the scene with the bear, nor the scene with the fish, are among them. But, since everybody seems to agree that 'Siberia' is a trip to the unconscious—and since the unconscious speaks in symbolic language—I'll attempt here a psychological interpretation of these two scenes (influenced by Jung's discussion on symbols and archetypes), while offering a close analysis of their filmic form.
Prefiguration and Apparition: ‘A Burning Hot Summer’ (Philippe Garrel, 2011)
The most haunting image of 'A Burning Hot Summer': Angèle naked, on her back, lying over the blue linen of the marital bed. She turns her face toward the camera, extends her right arm, and mutters a word that we can't hear because the sound of this fragment has been suppressed. Where does this image come from? Is it a memory, a vision, an hallucination? The stillness is only broken by Angèle's rhythmic breathing, by the movement of her head and lips, and by a gesture (her arm extended forward, in a pleading attitude) enacted, almost exactly, twice in a row.
The Audition: ‘The Killing of a Chinese Bookie’ (John Cassavetes, 1976)
What is a scene? Some books and manuals say that a scene is a portion of a film where the action has a spatio-temporal unity. Well, maybe that's what some people call a definition but, personally, I'm amazed that anybody can do anything with that. I like to think of a scene in terms of its internal movement: how it shifts parameters from one shot to the next; how it builds sections animated by different energies; how it introduces, combines and recombines its elements; how it brings something new to the atmosphere or transforms the atmosphere altogether...
Into The Dark: ‘Sombre’ (Philippe Grandrieux, 1998)
A car is driving along a mountain's curvy road. The camera intermittently approaches and detaches itself from the vehicle. We are carried away in this hypnotic movement, this rubber-band movement of the camera, this snaking movement of the ride – landscape and light changing at each turn. With each new shot, the sun’s setting is closer, and the contrast between earth and sky is sharper. We sink under the pitch-black silhouette of edgy trees cropped against the blue sky. We descend into total darkness. And from this darkness, terrible screams emerge...
The Sadness Will Last Forever: ‘À nos amours’ (Maurice Pialat, 1983)
Before becoming a director, Maurice Pialat had been a painter. In his youth, he adored Van Gogh. Later in life, he spent years imagining a project about the last months of the Dutch painter, culminating in his 1991 film, Van Gogh. Despite all this, in a 1992 interview, Pialat remarked: "Van Gogh was quite unlike me". Quite unlike him, but not so unlike him as to not cling onto his last words and hurl them against the people seated at this dinner table – his family in the fiction, but also his film family, his group of collaborators...
White of the Origins: ‘Liberté, la nuit’ (Philippe Garrel, 1984)
Blown by the wind, a white sheet enters the frame, like a candle swelling and shrinking. Its hypnotic and unpredictable movements obliterate (sometimes partially, other times entirely) the action in the background. It is a spectacle of heightened, Epsteinian poetry that demands to be read under the lens of Jacques Rancière's “thwarted fable”...
Gravity and Grace: ‘Wings of Desire’ (Wim Wenders, 1987)
At the end of 'Wings of Desire', Damiel – the guardian angel turned human – meets Marion, the woman he's fallen in love with. The scene is built on a long monologue, delivered by her, that will be filmed, almost entirely, from a single camera set-up. Upon watching the recently restored version of the film in a cinema, I was struck by a detail of which I didn't have the slightest recollection: the incredible force of a cut that, midway in the scene, introduces an astonishing close-up of Marion...
Cinema Invents Smoking: ‘Barrier’ (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1966)
In detonations and flashes of light, a brazier – or better still, its shadow – discharges an explosive poetry. The off-screen fire, burning in the midst of a deserted landscape, is projected onto and fuelled by the hero. In his face, we can guess tales: of the orphaned rascal, of the tired voyager, of wars and bombs. His bowed head and her pair of white boots stumble upon each other. A dog – sniffing the ground, shaking the water off his hair – meets the stranger who will, perhaps, feed him: love at first sight...
The Expert’s Speech and The Director’s Gesture: ‘Hole in the Soul’ (Dušan Makavejev, 1994)
"If you ask a connoisseur for his opinion, you'll get what you deserve" – these words introduce a scene from Dušan Makavejev's 'Hole in the Soul': the director's meeting with Dennis Jakob. 'Hole in the Soul' is an autobiographical documentary but it's not always clear what has been staged and what has been captured, what kind of arrangements and agreements have been made behind the scenes. I'll be writing here about Jakob and Makavejev as characters: dramatised characters. Jakob is the film Expert, Makavejev the lost Director in search of advice...
Motion, Propagation, Transmission: ‘Devil in the Flesh’ (Marco Bellocchio, 1986)
Marco Bellocchio’s 'Devil in the Flesh' starts with a shot of several, interconnected buildings: a high-angle view encompassing the three areas where the action of the eight-minute opening sequence will take place. He draws a precise diagram of the struggle at the centre of the film: madness, besieged on all sides by two institutions – church and school (a third, psychiatry, will make an appearance later) – that are both seduced and horrified by its manifestation...
Isak’s Tale: ‘Fanny and Alexander’ (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
The sequence is part of the fifth chapter – titled “Demons” – of the TV version of 'Fanny and Alexander'. When it takes place, we have already been immersed in the misfortunes of the Ekdahl family for more than four hours. Isak Jakobi has managed to rescue Fanny and Alexander from their wicked stepfather, Vergérus, whose abuses have become intolerable. Isak shelters the siblings at his labyrinthine residence, shows them the room where they will sleep and proceeds to read them a story...
Missing, Misunderstanding, Noticing: ‘Le Cercle rouge’ (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about one shot from Jean-Pierre Melville's 'Le cercle rouge'. The first thing I must confess about this shot is that I had never really seen it before – at least, not properly. It belongs to this scene happening 35 minutes into the film. The scene is the culmination of a particular idea: using intercutting to bridge the gap between Corey and Vogel – two characters that have never met, but whose destinies are, thanks to a magnetic parallel montage, intertwined from the very beginning...
The Geometry Lesson: ‘The Book of Mary’ (Anne-Marie Miéville, 1985)
The triangle is an important figure in Anne-Marie Miéville's 'The Book of Mary'. This short film chronicles the separation of a couple focussing on the effects it has on their 11-year-old daughter, Marie. This sudden mutation of the stable family triangle is abstracted in a geometry lesson – a scene between father and daughter, happening halfway into the film...
Laugh Motel 