These thoughts emerged from a late night discussion between SF and I. The quotes are from memory.
"The mystery is defiled by the problem. The problem is defiled by the solution."What is love? Love is not the state, nor reason, which is the same thing. Administration. Once a problem is identified (created) we enter a realm of objects; nothing is hidden from the human gaze. With a problem, there is already no mystery, no room for mystery. The problem is configured such that a solution is theoretically possible.
In the film, there are many obscure and obscuring aspects: the overlapping voices, the unfinished sentences in the mouths of the characters, the darkness of rooms and night scenes.
Why is the gaze dead? A gaze that sees all is not a gaze - it is God. Mystery, opacity, obscurity: these are what draw the eye into the world, presenting necessary and wonderful obstacles to deadening clarity and certainty.
"You are so present to me. We do not need to be together."How is it possible to love that which gives itself up to the adoring look, that does not flee, resist or hide? One cannot love an object, but only a subject. A subject is turned in on itself, concealing, masking, dissimulating.
"When a person plans ahead, they recognize that their former selves pass away into oblivion. Yet some people cannot accept this. They refuse time. They believe themselves to be a continuous unity."A subject calls itself into question. An object endures, submitting to its own solidity of being. The object is classified, studied, analysed. A subject can be studied but never classified. Never fixed. And yet this fixing is taking place as we speak. Narratives, myths, Hollywood, Julia Roberts. A subject
can be classified, but only a certain sort of subject. The subject as object. The subject as problem.
"Let feelings bring about events. Not the contrary."How to make a film about history? The past as fact can be 'narrated' into a story which
represents the past as it happened. And yet, once again, the
perspective of the gaze is lost. The self is ossified. Man becomes God, reason, the state. History cannot be
represented, only presented. Feelings take precedence over events. We apprehend subjects acting rather than objects reacting.
"This is not about you. This is about history unfolding through you."Love is a relation between subjects. Subjects
as subjects, and perhaps even objects
as subjects.
Transfigure, or be disfigured.
