Object #36 - Razor - Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Dir. Godfrey Reggio

Koyaanisquatsi is an experience. Around the half-way mark, as a shot of a motorway packed with cars is shown, with accompanying music by Philip Glass, I was intrigued, in awe, and more than anything, exhausted. There is no dialogue in Koyaanisquatsi, no plot, no characters. The entire film is composed of shots of nature (primarily canyons), factories, airports, the city, and people. With only these tools, and a fantastically epic, brooding, sweeping score by Glass, I was left exhausted and anxious. It's masterful film-making, and one of the biggest steps in the use of montage since Battleship Potemkin, which I've written about previously. It's also one of the few times where the 'Life out of balance' (this being the translation of the Hopi word koyaanisquatsi) theme was conveyed by the film to me. Why in that shot of the motorway? I couldn't really tell you. I think it may be due to the simply overwhelming feeling of LIFE in those cars. Those are real people in those cars, captured on film, and still being viewed to this day thanks to this film.

This is where the razor come in. Nearer to the end of the film, we begin to see portraits of people, usually walking the street. They can see the camera, and do in fact look at the camera either directly or out of the corner of their eye. Their behaviour shifts due to their observation. This is a psychological and social phenomenon called the Observer Effect.  It's here in Koyaanisquatsi in pure form. Out of the many beautiful shots of people in this sequence, it is the old man with the disposable razor that stood out to me the most.

An aside, Blade Runner is probably my favourite film. At the end of that film, we have the monologue by the dying android Roy Batty. 

I've... seen things... you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate... All those... moments... will be lost, in time, like [chokes up] tears... in... rain. Time... to die.

This moment of film is the most beautiful I've ever experienced. It has stuck with me since I saw it for the first time, and it will stay with me for the rest of my life. I can even recite it from memory. Due to this, it weaves into my viewing of other films when relevant. In Koyaanisquatsi, in any moment when people are on screen, whether in close up or at a distance, I thought of the final part of that monologue. "All these moments will be lost in time". Here, on film, these moments survive. Look at the above screenshot. It's beautiful. That man's face is beautiful. The bags under his eyes, his hat, the way his jaw slackens as he stares right down the lens of this intruding camera. There are around 10 or so people portraits in the sequence, not including crowd shots. Each is beautiful in their own way. So why the old man with the razor?

Simply put, because it's unique. In this sequence of the film we see shots of factory workers, people driving around the city, and crowd shots, all sped up via time-lapse. It's astoundingly effective, making me think how like ants we appear as our crowd behaviour governs us as an entire species. The only true individuals in these overhead shots of crowds at a train concourse are the ones who chose to stay still in the middle of the crowd for an extended amount of time, but they also pass, in time. Contrasted with this is the slow motion shots of people walking the street, and so we study them, as they are not in a crowd, they are people, individuals. 

The old man with the razor is unique among this crowd. Mainly, due to the brightly coloured razor. He is shaving himself in this public city street, with no care in the world as to how socially acceptable this is. To be honest, it isn't exactly socially unacceptable, but it's unusual. In the context of the film though it comes across as a life-raft of individuality in the sea of interchangeable crowd members. His age though makes me think that this individuality is transient. To be blunt, he'll die sooner than the rest of the crowd, and so it feels pointless. Actually, even without his age, due to the editing of the film, we know that this man will be lost to us. This moment of individuality will be lost not only in the real world, but in the context of the film, as we see another crowd shot, another person in slo-mo, another landscape shot. 

Beauty comes from the fact that this moment was captured, and due to the editing of the sequence, is unique. This man shaving has reached an enhanced meaning due to its inclusion in the film, and this only happened due to him walking the street at this exact moment in time, and choosing to shave at this exact moment. Think of the chain of events that led to this moment being captured. His choice of when to shave at all times in his life for his hair to grow long enough to choose to shave on the street; the documentarians choosing that place to record, and that particular time; and the choice to include this person in the edit, and at this specific time in the film. I love this idea in general, the causal chain-of-events of life.  You know what's really great about Koyaanisquatsi? The very fact that it's acted as a looking glass for this interpretation. Other films do this, but honestly every person who views Koyaanisquatsi will have their own response to it, and to this single moment of a man and his razor.

Object #35 - Mirrors - The Guest (2014) / Mad Detective (2007)

Dir. Adam Wingard / Johnnie To & Wai Ka-Fai 

Double feature! I've wanted to do a double feature for a while but only now had the opportunity due to some lovely parallels between two films I've recently watched, Adam Wingard's 80's throwback-thriller The Guest, and Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai's unique, supernatural-tinged Hong Kong police procedural Mad Detective. (Also check out, if you'd like, my last double feature of sorts, on two versions of Les Miserables.)

What I intend with double features is to show how the same object in different films can convey completely different ideas. Mirrors are common enough objects that you'll find them in many, many films, but I wanted to write about both these films anyway, so here we are. With The Guest, the mirrors in question are placed as part of a haunted house attraction for the local school Halloween party. At this point in the film, Major Carver (the never-terrible Lance Reddick), and Anna (Maika Monroe) have escaped the murderous rampage of the titled guest, David Collins (Dan Stevens), who killed Anna's parents, special agents out for his capture, and, just for kicks, a diner full of civilians. David, as Major Carver explained to Anna on the way to the school, is a modified super-soldier who is compelled to kill any person who finds out his identity. To cut a long-story short, Anna and the Major are on the way to the school to ensure the safety of Anna and her brother, Luke (Brendan Meyer). 

Wingard sets up the haunted house by having Anna and the Major move their way through the various sections to reach Luke, so that when David arrives to hunt them down, we understand the geography of the location, a smart move, as the maze-house is, as you'd guess, confusingly set-up. The Major is dispatched quickly, as is Luke's substitute teacher, as David, with all his military skill, strikes from behind the mirrors. Their images are multiplied on and on, which gives David a sense of omnipresence, as if he's everywhere at once, and can strike from any location. He has been portrayed as a powerful figure throughout the film, muscled, skilled with guns and knives, and efficient in his intelligence. Now, on the run, he uses the maze and mirrors to his advantage. 

But what I find most effective about the final scenes is how they essentially parody horror films, particularly slasher horror-films, like Halloween. It's blatant from the beginning, with the film's opening - a shot of a pumpkin-head scarecrow, informing us that Halloween is near, and although the film isn't really a horror film for the most-part, this final sequence takes on all the tropes. The fleeing teenager, the all-powerful pursuer with murder as their goal, the maze itself, calling back, in my mind, to Kubrick's The Shining. It's great stuff, and The Guest isn't really meant to be taken seriously at face-value, Wingard himself has said this. Hell, even the neon-soaked cyberpunk soundtrack, with it's heavy synths calls back to the soundtrack of Halloween. The entire finale takes on the air of parody, or simple meta-ness (is that a word?). 

The ending of the film, with David's (eventual, again, another trope) death via Luke's fatal stabbing is not a few minutes later dropped, with David escaping the scene, having taken the disguise of a firefighter. Anna lets out a loud "What the fuck?" as she notices it's David, back from the dead, the super-soldier now set-up to be something more, something supernatural, exactly like those slasher killers like Freddy Krueger, or Jason Voorhees. We cut to the credits, and it's clear that the film is having fun with the downright silliness of it all. Frankly, it deserves to, as it fulfills it's purpose fantastically, to be an 80's throwback thriller. The mirrors then, to overthink it completely, with the many reflections of David could represent the multitude of times we've seen these types of slasher murderers, and will likely see them again. ...or maybe I've been watching too much Battlestar Galactica.  

Again, during the finale of the film, mirrors have an important role in Mad Detective. Bun (Sean Lau), former detective is different to everyone else, in that he can see the 'inner personalities' of people, and has used this in his career to great acclaim to solve murders. That is until he cut off his own ear to give as a retirement gift to his superior. Throughout the film, we are shown what the suspect looks like in reality, and then a personification of their inner personality is shown and heard, but only to Bun. In an earlier scene in particular, rogue cop Chi-Wai (Lam Ka-Tung) is shown at a urinal, but not as himself, but as his gluttonous inner personality, which switches to the executive inner personality, which controls his behaviour. At this point in the film, Bun follows Chi-Wai and fellow detective Ho (Andy On), with the intent of stopping their murder of Naresh (Singh Hartihan Bitto), which will cover-up Chi-Wai's crimes; except Ho is only there to arrest Naresh, not kill him. Look, to put it simply, it's exactly what you'd expect from a Hong Kong police thriller - complicated.

  

 What To and Ka-Fai do with the climactic scene is have some visual fun. As Chi-Wai walks past mirrors that are placed in the room, we see reflected some of his seven inner personalities. It doesn't need to be there, but then again, in a film this visually inventive, the scene would be lacking something without it. Visually, there are people pointing guns at people pointing guns at people pointing guns, on and on, and it shows us, instead of telling us (ah, that old adage!) that there are so many conflicting personalities in a person, each with their own motive, culminating in one person, whole, yet made of many. As the shoot-out occurs, the mirrors are shot, and it conveys a sense of each character's inner personalities dying, mostly Ch-Wai and Ho. Each shot is a nail in the coffin, coming closer and closer to reaching it's target. The complexity of the film is reduced with each shot, as the personalities disappear visually, the plot has done so as well; now, we have a shoot-out, simple. The shoot-out ends with a Mexican stand-off between the four, with their guns pointing at each other, and finally each person shoots the person they want to. In the end however, all except Ho lie dead on the floor, and we have them surrounded by the broken shards and fragments of the mirrors. The shattered mirrors are broken, just like the bodies of the four, as even Ho is injured. 

The complexity of the film lost in the shoot-out resurfaces as Ho rearranges the guns, as it's maddening trying to remember who has who's guns in the first place (this is one of the films' main plot-drives) and where they are being placed by Ho, and what this means. Thematically what it means is that Ho has become just like Chi-Wai, a rogue cop, who has inherited the executive woman as part of his inner personality, comforting his inner, innocent child-like spirit. 

Mirrors then, in both The Guest and Mad Detective are there to be visually stimulating, but they also convey a hell of a lot more ideas about each film. Self-reflection is normally associated with mirrors and it's interesting that in these two films, it isn't really what they are about. Even in Mad Detective it isn't self-reflection, but a reflection of the self.