jean-luc godard jean nouvel, thomas , rüdiger vogler
There's no time to discuss what a review should or should not be right now. Perhaps there's no time for anything anymore. Maybe you bumped into this piece by accident, trawling the empty net after taking an unfulfilling mitful of porn and spam. You will search till you're tired, then you'll sleep. You've already worried about tomorrow, responsibilities, of how cinema should be a distraction, art balanced with life, how lately the scales have been tipping heavily on the side of all things self-expressive (ideally?), how this might explain the rashes, the headaches, the lack of mail in your in-box. Maybe your friends are busy busy busy also. To analyse and understand just one thing in a day might take all your energy and time. And the day is filled with many distractions.
How long can you sit and ruminate on something before finally making your peace with an object wholly ephemeral? It's like catching a speeding UFO out of your left eye for just a second and then being asked to write a thesis on extraterrestrial life with a shotgun politely pointed at your head. OK, so I loved this film and found it inspiring. Still, I didn't know what to write. I get a call from a friend demanding I write about it NOW!!, quicksmart you fucking slacker. ook, most people aren't going to get this film at the festival Adam. They suffer through this stuff. You have a headstart. You need to offer some explanation. And hey, my friends liked the last thing you wrote. They think you've becoming a better writer? Or something like that. So my job is to take the clumsy would-be poetry from my heart and recast that as objective analysis supported by false memory. I've been assigned to kill the transitory with the concrete, to bury it all under would-be sophistry in a voice Ie got on loan from a real writer, the obscure object under not-quite-yet exegesis and asinine puffery.
No. You can, afterall, say no at the end of the day, especially when you're not getting paid for it. It's a privilege and a duty we should take up more often. So no, OK. One night I'll be rummaging through unsorted piles of this or that crap or trying to get to sleep by watching some bad TV when all the loose ideas and fragments of a million films will merge and revelation will be mine, ha ha ha, na na na, so there. Until then, I nod and plod politely and say that Berlin-Cinema was a highlight of the festival, that I liked it a lot, that I'm not so sure, not right now. It may seemed half-assed to be certain, and I'm not going to deny that there's no small amount of half-arsedness in my everyday wheelings and dealings. But if you saw the film you might understand why. Which reminds me....
Adam Rivett
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