Title: News From Home
Rating: 2 Stars
The BFI giveth and the BFI taketh away. According to the official list, there are two films tied at fifty-two. Last week or so, I watched Ali: Fear Eats The Soul. Having never heard of it, I didn’t have a lot of expectations. Seeing racism and ageism through the lens of 1970s Germany was interesting and engaging.
This week, I watched the other film listed at fifty-two, News From Home. It was another film that I’d never heard of. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as enchanted as I was with Ali.
I probably should have guessed. The director of News From Home is Chantal Akerman. There’s a good chance that this name doesn’t mean much to you. She’s the director of the number one ranked film on the BFI list. That film had the unlikely, ungainly title of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (I wrote about it here). Although, against all odds, I ended up loving the film, it was quite a challenge. Akerman apparently loves stationary one camera shots with very long takes. With Dielman, it ended up working because this approach made you feel uncomfortably like a voyeur into Dielman’s lonely, repressed life. I think, in my review, I might have said something along the lines of I loved the film but will probably never watch it again.
From a strictly technical point of view, a similar approach is taken with this film. Essentially, Akerman set up a camera, pushed play, and let whatever happen happen. In this case, it was scenes of New York. There were no actors. There was no dialog, per se. Occasionally, Akerman would, in voice over, recite a letter that she received from her mom. These were apparently real letters that her mom sent her when Akerman first moved to New York City as a struggling artist.
That’s about it. She would set up a camera on a street, perched high on a roof shooting down, in a subway car, in a moving car, or pointing at some random store front. The camera would run several minutes. Whoever walked in front of the camera during the time that it was running became part of the film. Every now and then, you’d hear Akerman reciting a letter from her mom in a monotone.
You can now probably understand the title of this post. Exciting film making this was not. This was a film with no character and no plot. Watching, you just stare at the film and try to see if there’s some reason why Akerman chose to include this particular scene in her film. The film has a modest running time of ninety minutes but it seemed much longer.
This was an experimental film. So, what was the point? Well, I can make a couple of guesses, but to be clear, they are just guesses since I’m no expert.
I’d guess that one theme was alienation. I found her mom’s letters to be somewhat amusing. They are suffused with passive aggression. Clearly her mom did not want Akerman to move to New York City and does not approve. Her letters are full of complaints about how Akerman doesn’t write enough. Her mom regularly complains about various ailments that she suffers from. She begrudgingly sends Akerman twenty dollars but then complains when Akerman doesn’t write back immediately thanking her. After her litany of complaints, she ends every letter with something along the lines of “your loving mother”. Her mom is not happy that Akerman has left her, feels alone, and wants her to come home.
Meanwhile, you see the scenes of life in a big city. Although the city is teeming with people, most people are in their own little worlds, barely cognizant of each other. Living in such a large city can leave people feeling anonymously alienated.
An artist that basically made a career out of exploring that kind of alienation is Edward Hopper. Think of the painting Nighthawks. Set late at night in a diner, there are three customers and the cook. Although they are in a relatively tight space, all four of them are set in different planes, almost aggressively disconnected from each other. Watching scenes from News From Home, there were several times where I got that same feeling.
Another interesting thing that I noticed watching the film is that, even though many millions of people live in New York City, Akerman captured moments where the city seemed empty. There were several scenes that she filmed from, I would guess, a rooftop. Shooting down the street, there would be no sign activity. If you looked closely, you might see one tiny, solitary figure walking down the the street. This reminded me of old Japanese watercolor prints. These prints would be impressive landscapes. If you looked closely, stuck away in one corner you might see one tiny human figure. Doing so makes it obvious how insignificant humans are in the majesty of a landscape. By taking a similar approach to the New York City skyline, it shows how we have managed to create a world in which we have rendered ourselves insignificant. Instead of a luscious landscape, we have created a monstrous concrete jungle.
Akerman also did interesting things with sound. There were times, especially in the subway cars, where the noise was nearly intolerable. It was like living in the middle of a factory. Other times though, there was relative peace and quiet, something that you might not expect from the city that never sleeps.
I did notice something a bit amusing as I watched it. Filmed in 1976, this was in the days before VCR’s or small cameras. These stationary shots had to have been filmed by what was obviously a movie camera. Especially in tightly constrained areas like a subway car, this must have been noticeable. Indeed, you see several of the subway riders staring at the camera with a pretty clear WTF look in their eyes. Being 1976, where the subway cars were pretty beat up and graffitied (as was New York City in general during this time), several people in the car seemed mighty suspicious of whatever this thing was that was pointing at them. One man in particular never took his eyes off of it until finally he had enough and moved to another car.
So, it’s not as if I didn’t get anything out of News From Home. It’s just that, if it’d been even twenty minutes longer, I might have seriously considered bailing. I certainly didn’t get as much out of it as I did Dielman. Just like Dielman, although I don’t regret watching it, it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever watch it again.
dorkenstein 