{"id":296,"date":"2011-12-21T09:14:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T09:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=296"},"modified":"2011-12-21T09:45:31","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T09:45:31","slug":"stranger-than-fiction-wenders-pina-in-3-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=296","title":{"rendered":"Stranger Than Fiction: Wenders’ PINA in 3-D"},"content":{"rendered":"

I bought a winter pass for the ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ Winter Season at the IFC<\/a> in NYC, which started off with Wim Wenders\u2019 3-D documentary Pina,<\/em> on Pina Bausch.\u00a0 I had just seen Werner Herzog\u2019s Caves of Forgotten Dreams<\/em> (2011)\u2014on 3-D TV in Yale\u2019s Film Study Center as the concluding film for the World Documentary course I was teaching with Raisa Sidenova\u2013\u2013and was curious to see how these two veterans of the New German Cinema would deal with 3-D and Art.\u00a0 Wenders was getting ready to make his documentary on Bausch when the dancer\/choreographer died.\u00a0 The film is really a portrait of dance troupe in mourning: they dance in her memory as individual dancers talk about their sense of loss.\u00a0 If the essence of dance is bodies moving through space, 3-D would seem a natural vehicle for such a portrait.\u00a0 Many of the scenes were wonderful in this respect but at other times bodies seemed to be flat cutouts arranged in space (something I found to be true for Scorsese\u2019s Hugo<\/em> as well).\u00a0 Overall, it was a rewarding experience though my eyes ached by film’s end.\u00a0 I wonder if this is what people felt when first seeing motion pictures in the 1890s?\u00a0 Anyway, the documentary had loose ends\u2014it was definitely not a biographical portrait which told the unfold story of Bausch’s life.\u00a0 The four dances are never named nor the dates in which they are choreographed.\u00a0 Indeed, to the uninitiated is not always clear that we are watching elements of fully developed dances as opposed to improvised movement.\u00a0 Perhaps this sense of being at sea mirrors the disorientation that performers and filmmakers must have felt as they made the picture.\u00a0 Or they knew their subject too well and lacked distance.\u00a0 Anyway, I went to Wikipedia after the screening and I suspect that seeing the film after gaining a better overview of her career would yield a different, perhaps better effect.\u00a0 (Nota bene<\/em>:\u00a0 the dangers of leaving too many loose ends for the viewer.\u00a0 Perhaps I should add the years for Errol Morris\u2019s documentaries in Lightning Sketch.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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The most interesting and innovative aspect of Pina<\/em> was not the 3-D.\u00a0 It was the interviews.\u00a0 How did they come about?\u00a0 Hard to know, but presumably Wenders interviewed members of the troupe and then had them perform his chosen excerpts of their interviews\u2014silently, expressively. And on a couple of occasions, the dancers performed their silence.\u00a0 A compelling, new approach to a too-familiar element of documentary, I think.\u00a0 This alone made the film a memorable success in my book. The other element of this film I found compelling was its exploration of advancing age.\u00a0 Age and dance are in brutal tension with each other.\u00a0 Lifers are few, but Bausch was committed to allowing dancers to age.\u00a0 One dance has three sets of actors \u2013ages ca. 20 ca. 40-45 and ca. 60-70.\u00a0 As we confront advancing age, works about growing old gracefully and vitally is something that catches our attention!<\/p>\n

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As for Cave of Forgotten Dreams.\u00a0 <\/em>Herzog finds an occasion to mobilize his theories of Ecstatic Truth by finding them realized in an earlier era.\u00a0 Art as truth.\u00a0 Art as an expression of the soul, such that without such as expression there is no soul.\u00a0 So, Herzog suggests, this is the moment when the homo spiritualis<\/em> was born.\u00a0 The exploration of the cave through 3-D was lovely, emphasizing the contours of the space and underscoring these paintings were not done on flat surfaces.\u00a0 And some of the cave paintings were stunning.\u00a0 Particularly sobering were the drawings of rhinos, lions and some other animals long extinct in Europe.\u00a0 These animals, which obviously flourished there (including cave bears), were relegated to Africa where they face an uncertain future.<\/p>\n

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With Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Pina<\/em> and\u00a0 Errol Morris\u2019s Tabloid<\/em>, 2011 was an interesting year for documentary.\u00a0 Last night, I saw Buck<\/a>, <\/em>which is short-listed for the Oscars, <\/em>at the STF\/IFC.\u00a0 The filmmaker was there as were quite a few dedicated horse people in the audience.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have great expectations, but it was a lovely, complex biographical portrait of a cowboy-horse trainer, \u201cBuck\u201d Brannaman, who identifies with horses and shows how respectful, non-punitive treatment produces soulful results \u2013for horse and rider. \u201cYour horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see,\u201d <\/em>he remarks. Herzog would embrace this topic as yet another instance of ecstatic truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought a winter pass for the ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ Winter Season at the IFC in NYC, which started off with Wim Wenders\u2019 3-D documentary Pina, on Pina Bausch.\u00a0 I had just seen Werner Herzog\u2019s Caves of Forgotten Dreams (2011)\u2014on 3-D TV in Yale\u2019s Film Study Center as the concluding film for the World Documentary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}