THE FURTHER QUESTIONS
By Jan Philippe V. Carpio
"The element I am trying to emphasize is the lack of pride." - Andrei Tarkovsky, filmmaker
In filmmaking, an uncertainty hangs over the creative process all the way up to the edge of completion and beyond. When we sit in that darkened screening room alone or together with those we might possibly call kindred, staring up at what we hope to call specific truths of an experience on film, doubt, regret and dissatisfaction continue to hover around us. If we are honest with ourselves, we always wish we could have done better. Then sometimes comes the painful realization of that is the best we can do for now. And more often than not, it will really not be enough.
These feelings are not exclusive to film. Even those whom we look up to as exemplary practitioners of other art forms do not find themselves immune to the discomfort as Spanish painter Pablo Picasso “confesses” in 1952:
"From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothings', the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown - a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest."
Considering Picasso’s undeniable talent and artistic achievements, at first glance this statement seems to reek of false modesty and seems so uncharacteristic of the bluster and brash depictions of his personality in biographical texts and film. But one must go deeper into understanding the artistic process to see that this is a valid admission and part of a vulnerability and openness necessary in the creation of art.
In connection with this, others see these unstable feelings as a necessary discomfort and even integral part of the artistic process. One incident illustrating this was a brief drunken but lucid exchange between two Filipino artists – a painter and a writer – during a Quezon City art space party last year.
The painter exclaimed that in art, “Doubt is good.” To this the writer retorted, “What about self doubt?” The painter replied, “Even better.”
In his artistic testament “Sculpting in Time”, Tarkovksy further acknowledges this internal artistic wrestling match by quoting its beautiful and disconcerting depiction in lines from Russian poet Alexsandr Pushkin. “Rewards are within you. Your supreme judge is yourself/None will ever judge your work more sternly./Discriminating artist, does it please you?”
The final line becomes a kind of poetic “calling out” of sort. A literary put up or shut up question to all artists and those who pretend to be so.
For in the act of creation, its measures of art are somewhat unforgiving in the sense that it does not end. For any film that matters to our day-to-day living – and this goes for all other works of art – its creation continues long after the final edit. What do I mean by this? These films invite or sometimes force their witnesses to participate in this continuous creation. Depending on the depth of perspective expressed, this possible collaboration can mean a lifetime.
As we mature, we work towards a personal evolution, and each time we return to a particular film, it somehow seems to evolve with us. Or amazingly, we seem to be evolving with it as it continues to be capable of reading our minds and speaking of the depths of our hearts and souls at that particular point in our lives. What appears a startling illusion at first is actually as tangible and intangible as the wind that occasionally blows against our skin with the power to caress, chill our bones and knock us off our feet all at once.
From personal experience, I look to the works of American filmmaker Tom Noonan and Filipino filmmaker Manuel Silos for two different examples of the convergence of these upheavals in art and life.
With Noonan’s “What Happened Was …” the experience was more specific. The film depicts a man and a woman’s Friday night date set in the woman’s apartment. I first saw the film when I was nineteen, deeply immersed in both my personal immaturities as well as a shallow understanding of cinema. Needless to say the first viewing was like taking a blind and deaf man on a circus visit. I completely missed everything essential. Fast forward five years later, I am twenty four years old and decide to view the film a second time … It was as if the film opened itself up to me or perhaps I was the one who finally opened up to it: talk turned into interaction, words turned into tones, gestures and expressions turned in my stomach as they acquired an awkward painful familiarity that I recognized from my own experiences. Without giving away too much on both ends, I later sent a letter to Noonan asking him how he was able to put five years of my life into one night …
In the case of Silos’s “Biyaya ng Lupa” the experience was more unstable and unpredictable. I have seen the film six times and each experience of the trials and triumphs of a rural family and their lanzones plantation was completely different from the other. Most notable were the first three viewings, each one at least a year apart from the other. The first left me in wonder as I mouthed silent exclamations of praise. Sophomore doubt upset the second encounter as I pondered whether or not I had been mistaken about the film’s merits. Finally, during the third, emotion for some unknown reason decided to unmask itself as I tried to hide my tears from my grandmother seated beside me in the living room during moments where I had not wept before.
So art that matters is not an immobile mirror reflection of life, but rather the surface reflection on a body of water that constantly shifts, rises, appears and disappears depending on the external forces of the heavenly bodies, the weather, the internal forces of the original and subsequent bearers of the reflection, and what remains unseen but felt beneath its surface.
Knowing all these things, our tasks as filmmakers seem all the more difficult, but still necessary. It took me a long time to grasp what Tarkovksy meant when he said you should not determine whether cinema is for you, but rather if you are for cinema. So this initial position he asks of us becomes very necessary as well to address. The latter part of his statement is actually better posed as a question, though one most of us would care to avoid. A radical notion lies in both its declarative and interrogative forms. Instead of the usual self-centered notion of discarding something not befitting you, we should instead take the time to examine our possibilities and limitations.
Why is this important beyond the obvious virtue? It speaks of our individual responsibilities as artists. We all talk about freedom of expression, but forget most of the time the responsibilities that go with that freedom. Their awareness and practice help distinguish intellectual masturbation from again, work that matters to our individual and collective experiences.
So how would we first determine whether or not we are suitable bearers for cinema? Honestly, there is no set answer to that question unlike in arithmetic or the color of the sky. But even though there is no set answer, there are also such things as right and wrong possibilities, just as there are concepts of imaginary numbers and all light being actually the color white until passed through a prism.
Possibilities vary from person to person. Some of us feel that we are suitable bearers and yet never actually get to make a film due to different and valid circumstances … or our own complacencies and excuses. Some of us already know from the first feel of the camera in our hands. Some find it somewhere in the lull between films. Some actually believe this to be birthright. Still others come to the end of a creative lifetime only to unfortunately realize that this has been otherwise.
For those of us who get to claim the responsibility for a better cinema, our certainty of this claim can continue to elude us for better or worse. In the end though, we shall always return to the work for the possible answers, as well as more importantly, the further questions.
It is the work, and the depth of difference it makes to those who care to go through its experience over and over again through the course of time that shall give the loudest affirmations.
Cinema also speaks for those that speak true through it.
This essay was originally published in multi-part form at www.spacephilippines.com