By [From April 19th to the 29th, Flixist will bring you live coverage of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Keep an eye out for news, features, interviews, videos, and reviews of some of the most anticipated films to hit the festival circuit in 2012.]
Art with prompts and constraints is pretty fascinating to me, especially when groups with higher ideals are involved. Take the Oulipo movement, started by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. They were committed to writing stories and poems fettered by language games in order to create new and exciting literature. There’s also the games of the surrealists — the exquisite corpses, for instance — and ditto The Five Obstructions from Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth.
There’s a bit of that spirit in The Fourth Dimension, a trio of short films by Harmony Korine, Aleksei Fedorchenko, and Jan Kwiecinski. The idea was to use a prompt by Vice’s Eddy Moretti to create unique visions of the fourth dimension. “Dear Director from another land, here are your instructions,” Moretti’s creative brief begins. It says that the hero needs to be bold in an unexpected way, that there needs to be love, and that eccentrics and electronics are good. There are formal constraints stipulating the inclusion of a stuffed animal and tap shoes, and one scene that must be directed while wearing a blindfold.
It all crescendos with the big, impossible task: “Director, your audience must walk away transformed, transfixed, excited and even afraid of their own potential as human beings. Catch lightning in a bottle. Give us magic. Director, you cannot fail. We’re all behind you.”
The Fourth Dimension
Director: Harmony Korine, Aleksei Fedorchenko, Jan Kwiecinski
Rating: TBD
Release Date: TBD
Since this is an anthology, it may be easiest to tackle each film on its own and then how they function as a whole. Let’s go ahead and do that.
The Lotus Community Workshop by Harmony Korine
Val Kilmer plays an odd caricature of himself as a motivatinal speaker in this first segment. He’s giving a grand old speech about his encounter with the fourth dimension to a roller rink full of downtrodden folk. Kilmer’s performance is hysterical, and his spiel is so strange and over the top that it’s funny, though it borders on sublime a few times. He’s part televangelist and part snake oil salesman, and he’s so manically overjoyed at every moment you can’t help but catch whatever he’s on. It’s too bad it’s just a short, because I kind of wonder what this Val Kilmer’s life is like and if it could sustain a feature.
Korine shot the segment ultrawide, perhaps to add a certain level of oddness and disorientation, which is also accomplished through rack focuses and sound effects. Maybe it’s just to look really cool. In the background of this neon-lit setting, you can just make out the words “It’s fun you can feel.” And I could.
Chronoeye by Alexey Fedorchenko
Federchenko’s piece deals with alienation, science, and time. It’s the saddest of The Fourth Dimension‘s three films (at least relatively speaking, and up to a point), but it’s still quite odd and philosophically rich. Here the fourth dimension is expressed not through a spiritual realm but as a place in time. Using his invention known as the chronoeye, Russian scientist Grigory hopes to see into the past in order to escape his loneliness in the present.
What’s most fascinating in this segment is the idea of subjective human experience, and how a human’s view of time is much different than a God-like view of time. It’s all about limitations in seeing and the solitude of the subjective experience. Upstairs, Grigory tries to shut out the sound of his dancing neighbor, but maybe isolation is more about shutting out the possibility of time. Chronoeye is all about the relationship of time and the other.
Fawns by Jan Kwiecinski
I seem to be watching lots of “hanging out at the end of the world” things lately. Fawns is like a much more tolerable version of First Winter, and not just because it’s shorter. A group of Polish hipsters have decided to stay in an evacuated town that is about to get flooded. They fritter away their dwindling time, they have their fun, then confront mortality. Thankfully there’s more to it than that. They show moments of genuine human concern, and that saves Fawns from being a static waste.
Fawns ends in the way that lots of short stories tend to end: an enigmatic moment of revelation just a few steps before a complete resolution. It’s filled with weight because it’s unexpected but inevitable — a sort of pregnant moment of meaning and possibility. It takes a while to get where it’s going, but I was glad it got somewhere.
As three films in a row, my personal preference ranked them by their order in the film. The Korine piece was my favorite followed by Chronoeye and Fawns. I think the Korine piece sticks out so much since it’s Val Kilmer getting so strange with his persona. He’s got his turquoise and his fanny pack, and when not regaling others with his bizarre wisdom, he’s rolling around on his bike. This is a case where celebrity and inversion of celebrity enhanced my enjoyment of the piece. It might be my favorite thing Korine’s made.
I can’t really speak about the filmographies of the other filmmakers, but I can at least say that there are moments where it seems like there’s a bit of lightning caught and maybe a tad bit of magic. There’s thematic connective tissue in The Fourth Dimension, and as short films they’re all solid. As a full film linking them together, I don’t know. I kind of want to see another formal game from these directors, maybe a cinematic exquisite corpse.
Have I been transformed? Transfixed, yeah, but I don’t know that I’m that excited and afraid in my own potential as a human being.
If anything, I hope othes will find the Moretti creative brief and make their own vision of the fourth dimension. That’s something that could be grand. A bit more magic in the world and a bit more lightning under glass. I’m sure it’ll pop up online in its entirety some time in the near future. I’ve given the whole thing a read myself and I’m excited and even a little afraid of what someone else might do with it.
Future directors, you cannot fail. We’re all behind you.
