Clean, Shaven by Lodge Kerrigan: The Sound and the Fury

A montage of stills nearly as seen in just over a minute of the film Clean, Shaven, featuring Peter Greene. Can a film be captured in its parts? What sense does a performance make if it is given to us in frozen segments? Film commentary is a mode of observation. If stills can help communicate observation then something is gained.

Clean, Shaven is a small indie by Lodge Kerrigan made in 94. Kerrigan's recent film Keane was astonishing (as was Damian Lewis). Like Keane, this film features a genuinely real and captivating performance by an actor playing a schizophrenic. The film's movement is fragmentary, roped together by a soundtrack that reveals the voices we might suppose are echoing within our character's unbound mind. His actions are confusing to him, and make us increasingly reluctant to watch, as watching makes us complicit with what he does, which is bad. As many bloggers and reviewers have written on this film as have seen it, possibly more. So I won't address the story but instead touch on Kerrigan's use of sound—a cinematic element that Kerrigan here turns inside out, and which I hope I can explain here.

The use of sound in this film practically makes it worth watching in its own right, pun intended. In the critic's video essay that accompanies the Criterion release of this film, which is pitched to grad level film students (and that's not a complaint), Michael Atkinson remarks that the director uses "objective" sound, not "subjective" sound. It's true that the sounds that fill the film's soundtrack are given us from the external world, often through the protagonist's car radio and sometimes simply through the ether. But I'd disagree with Atkinson. I don't think this is just use of objective sound to a parallel the film's fragmented and "subject-less" subject and narrative. Yes, it's a different use of sound, but it's a complication of subjective sound, not a departure from it. After all we hear the soundtrack, and therefore we can't but believe that the subject hears them.

The use of sound here is interesting, I think, because the protagonist is not hearing them but producing them. We're given the sounds as he hears them, but they echo and resound within his schizophrenic mind, as they are the schizophrenic's world. Voices unattributed, perhaps real, perhaps recollected, but certainly not sounds that anchor the schizophrenic to reality. Rather, sounds that divorce him from the world, catching him as abruptly as an unexpected blow to the head. Short, sharp, shocks that knock about and bring into consciousness commands, put-downs, and other forms of verbal punishment that trouble us for their detachment. We don't know who's saying them. Which means we don't know why they are being said, which means (as Atkinson notes), we don't know what to think of them.

Where Atkinson hangs these sounds on a reel of film though, my sense is that they should be hung on memory, which is not a reel of film, is certainly subjective, if not multiply subjective, and is not objective in the slightest for the simple reason that memories can't be. Our schizophrenic protagonist's relation to sound is that he's caught in a compulsive listening, but cannot hear. The coup in Kerrigan's sonic genius, I think, is that in memory is the protagonist's pain, and it's a pain he suffers, often, without making the slightest of sound. But for the one that we hear.

Related:
Clean, Shaven on Criterion
Blogcritics
Keane, reviewed by Michael Atkinson


Technorati tags: dvd, films, indie,movies, movie-reviews, movie reviews, reviews, video

Anatomy of a Scene: Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect

Anatomy of a (couple) scenes.

British crime film and television excels in transposing the elements of drama—itself a form brought to peak performance by none other than William Shakespeare—to filmic narrative. Our domestic tendency favors action as a means of propelling a story forward. Actions change situations, as events create new conditions, and a new situation calls for adjustments on the part of our actors. The rule for narrative tension and suspense is in compressing tension into time, producing a waiting of sorts, anticipation for resolution drawing the audience to the cliff's edge from which nothing can be seen until one is allowed to peer over the edge.

Action spawns the tension of resolution by challenging actors to respond adequately. In British dramatic crime, on the other hand, tension is held in and amongst relations between persons. The challenge presented to actors is in the personal negotiation of relationships, not of action, events, and new circumstances. When an actor playing a role must negotiate personal conflict, s/he can do it by means of the power and authority granted by his or her role, or by his or her personal resources and character. I think it's this ambiguity that British crime films and television series unfold so powerfully.

Look at the images below. Is it Helen Mirren and David Thewlis as cop and criminal? Or is it Helen Mirren and David Thewlis as individuals? Which drives the story forward and grounds the tension? Can you tell?

My sense of it is that the dramatic frame doubles the performances (personal as well as position or role), thereby granting actors a greater depth and giving them, as performers, a greater range of options from which to choose. A good actor will deliver ambiguity in his or her performance, draw in the audience, and thicken the plot with little more than a gesture, look, or reaction. It soon becomes unclear whether or not the actor is giving us a look at his or her character or role. And because dramatic passages involve inter-personal interactions and encounters with other actors, the doubling is doubled again.

As it turns out, there are more than just eyeballs awaiting spectacles and unexpected thrills watching the show. As it turns out, it takes little to involve us. But a few superb performances can never hurt.

Prime Suspect 3, starring Helen Mirren, David Thewlis, and Ciaran Hinds.



(I shot these from the TV screen)

Full size versions are here: Prime Suspect and Helen Mirren

dvd, films, Helen Mirren, indie,movies, movie-reviews, movie reviews, Prime Suspect, reviews, TV, video