The Movement Image The Movement Image is a new project to encour- age and share new works of writing about film. Last year the two of us started a home-viewing film night, and this issue’s contributors were par- ticipants (with the exception of the three-thou- sand-miles-away Thom Donovan). An emergent theme of our film night selections was cinema as a vehicle for the repositioning of myths and of the reverse, myth as a vehicle for revolutions in cin- ema. Some used myth as a sort of prism of he- roic time for the ongoing ground of contempora- neous political and social struggles (Electra My Love), others used myth in ironic or exaggerated ways (Parajanov, Funeral Parade of Roses), and still others seemed to use myth to reveal without commentary the ancient in the present (Yeelen, EDITOR’S Dekalog). So, this issue foregrounds writings on films that NOTE use myth, the myths of film itself and of film-mak- ing, myth-making and the unmaking of both. Jamie Townsend writes about the perils of fame and my- thologization of tortured celebrity. Thom Donovan VOLUME kneads nuances of Midsommar and deathless cin- ema screams. Katy Burnett takes on Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Tarantino’s retelling of the ONE Tate murders, a Hollywood myth which is mostly a truth, and which Tarantino’s film revises. Paul ex- amines Kieslowski’s Dekalog cycle, nominally in- spired by the Ten Commandments but which, over MYTHS ten hours, never names or even remotely alludes to them. Grant writes about Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse, which mythologizes the man who caused Nietzsche’s mental collapse. We look forward to more adventures in film writ- ing and conversation, in homage to the still-new, still-strange, grand mass camaraderie of cinema. If you’re interested in contributing to an upcoming issue, email us at [email protected]. Watch! Cover image from Miklós Jancsó’s Electra, My Love Paul and Grant Interior collage from Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses 2 3 CONTENTS from BIG STAR 6 By Jamie Townsend At Whose Expense Are You Held? 14 By Thom Donovan Death and The Maiden 1969 20 By Katy Burnett Parergon on Dekalog 26 By Paul Ebenkamp Don’t Be a Body: Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence and The Turin Horse 36 By Grant Kerber Questions? Comments? Interested in contributing? Email [email protected] From Derek Jarman’s The Angelic Conversation 4 5 from BIG STAR By Jamie Townsend -Sextile Sun - Moon: They have lots of vitality. They like public life, are popular and their company is appreciated. They are balanced, at ease with themselves and usually get on very well with their parents. It’s June 15th, 1959 and Jayne is on the set of Too Hot to Handle getting ready to perform the film’s titular song-and-dance number. There’s something palpable in the air, a slightly dimmed light or chill that precedes the scene of a disaster. At any moment something could go horribly wrong. It’s almost five years into her career Jayne’s star is quickly fading. Overexposure coupled with an almost constant stream of tabloid gossip has reduced the vivacious blonde bombshell persona she pioneered in the mid 50s to mere parody. Recently eclipsed by Marilyn as America’s voluptuous yet vulnerable sexpot in a time where squeaky clean family values were de rigor, at the end of the decade Jayne finds herself in a world more weary, troubled, performing to an audience largely bored with schoolboy titillation. Filming in London with early James Bond impresario Terence Young, Jayne is hoping to recapture some of her early magnetism. 6 7 Buttressed by two men in white tuxedos, Janye love interests—a noble Grecian Queen, and the sciousness by an al- rises in front of the velvet curtain. Her unmis- treacherous leader of the Amazons—unknow- ternate route’ ‘The result is a portrait takable hourglass figure further emphasized by ingly pregnant with the couple’s third child. without a face’ a sheer nylon dress appliquéd with strategical- *** ly placed spangles, she coolly smokes a ciga- ‘A road movie sense of *** rette held in a slender ivory holder and sways -23 Square Saturn - Uranus: looseness gave him an ‘In a curious coda he as the title song commences. Under the threat They do not like routine, whether at work or in opportunity to express shows Blake’s ghostly of suspension by 20th Century Fox for flagging their emotional lives. They fight to keep their in- himself like never be- image leaving his body box office numbers in the states and tempo- dependence and freedom of action. They would fore’ and ascending, not by rarily on loan to Britain’s Wigmore Productions, gladly re-make the world. floating up to heaven, Jayne throws herself into the scene’s flirtatious ‘His close identifica- but by climbing – using choreography with an impassioned though ‘It’s the script that leaves Phoenix in a state of tion with troubled out- the frames of a win- slightly robotic vigor. Within two years she will constant vulnerability’ siders dow as a ladder’ be released from her US contract in full. ‘The shifts in narrative aren’t…conventional’ his feel for both litera- In a breathy, slightly inflected British accent ture and the poetry of -Mercury in Capricorn: Janye works the room with ease; her cote- ‘The idiosyncratic stylization…seamlessly inte- the streets Their minds compart- rie of smitten dinner-jacketed backup singers grated with classic tragedy; it’s ambitious, but mentalize impres- sporadically employed as props, backdrops, or he pulls it off’ the way he uses shots sions. They appre- furniture; she navigates the club effortlessly, of lonely highways, ciate structure and assured of their constant presence, attention *** condemned buildings, order. Resourceful, and motility. It’s undeniable; all eyes are on her. landscapes, and natu- reflective, deep think- A single mirrored ball languorously swings, ro- ‘It’s brave of Van Sant ral phenomena to sug- ers. They undertake tating above the tiny stage in the back of the gest the inner lives of lengthy studies or, if club, as she pivots to allow his characters his characters -- all circumstances do not against an ornate pole to simply wander off, these gifts are on full allow, they will teach stage right then de- in the words of John display.’ themselves. Rational, scends to mingle with Webster, “to study the though can be pessimistic, skeptical, and sar- an audience a little long silence”’ ‘He’s essentially making a human comedy, il- castic. Possessing very sharp senses of humor. hot under the collar. luminated by the insight that all experience is Notice everything. Her performance con- ‘That is to say, he’s potentially ridiculous’ cludes yet an afterim- easier on his charac- It’s June 15, 1429 and Joan, dressed in a thin tu- age hangs in the air, ters here, more openly ‘The Shakespearean conceit here is a tricky one nic, hosen, boots and coif mail armor, is swift- a thick faceless vapor affectionate, perhaps but he goes all the way with it’ ly making her way to Chinon. Upon arrival, she undulating to the fad- even sentimental. The petitions the head of the company to fight En- ing notes of hot jazz. style is pillowy and ca- *** glish and Burgundy troops under the banner ressing, silvery mist of France. News of her ecstatic vision of the Before the film is re- hovering over a black ‘Van Sant has made three movies in which the French victory at the Battle of Herrings had leased in December lake. camera follows young men as they wander to already reached the encampment and, though of the following year their deaths’ she had been denied a similar request the pre- Jayne will fly to Italy ‘Gorgeous time lapse vious year, is immediately granted admittance with her bodybuild- shots of nature gath- ‘These deaths are not heroic or meaningful, and to join the Armée de Terre by the capitaine col- er husband Mickey ering its forces, or although they may be tragic they lack the stat- onel. After serving under the Duke of Alençon Hargitay to co-star in dreams of his mother ure of classic tragedy. as standard-bearer in several successful cam- the B-movie flop The collapsing into a vi- paigns, Joan is raised to the status of nobility Loves of Hercules. sion of home, dropping They are stupid and careless. by King Charles before being captured by Bur- With Mickey in the ti- from the sky’ gundian troops and held prisoner in England. tle role, Janye por- If Van Sant is saying anything (and I’m not sure King Charles threatened vengeance for Joan’s trays both of Hercu- The images seem to that he is), it’s that society has created young imprisonment by exacting violence on English les’s broadly painted slip into your con- men who do not live as if they value life’ women captured by the armies of France. But 8 9 nothing could stop a fire inside es showcased to great effect now burning across Europe. on the chart-topping hit “Back and Forth” Aaliyah is quickly No Golden Rose and widely praised as one of the most original, influential It’s June 15, 1928 and a crowd new voices in urban pop. Age is slowly filing through the exit Ain’t Nothing’s co-writer and of Paris’s Cinema Marivaux. producer R. Kelly had become Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Aaliyah’s mentor and confi- Passion of Joan of Arc has dant during the process of re- just made its long delayed de- cording the album and the two but in France.