Go Forth and Multiply

Terah Maher ad infinitum in Choros.

«««« Choros. Film by Michael Langan & Terah Maher. Available for streaming at http://langanfilms.com/choros.html.

«««« Solipsist. Directed by Andrew Huang. Available for streaming at http://vimeo.com/37848135.

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Likewise, many film critics complain about the lack of inspiration, the dismaying sameness of mainstream American movies—yet they go on reviewing the same feature product, week after week. Entertaining as they may be, does anybody really believe that The Avengers or Wreck It Ralph represent the very best we can do? Is Jack the Giant Slayer really as imaginative as it gets?

          This week we do something about it. There are two experimental short films available now for online streaming that are well worth checking out, and they don’t even demand ten of your hard-earned bucks. In exchange for twenty-three minutes of your time, these films will 1) blow your mind, and 2) restore your faith that it’s still possible to do something truly visionary with a moving picture camera.

          Michael Langan and Terah Maher’s Choros (2011, 13 minutes) is a seductively hypnotic dance film. Using an advanced video compositing (essentially, combining multiple images into one), Langan captures 32 temporally-offset images of a dancer (Maher) as she moves to Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians”. Though the idea is simple in principle, the results are spectacular: Maher’s movements are ramified in almost sculptural fashion, pouring through postures in a way that suggests some third mode of being between stillness and movement.

          The filmmakers are well- aware of the historical legacy of their project. In the late 19^th century, Eadweard Muybridge used multiple still cameras to capture successive images of moving figures, making the world look at movement in a new way (and, in the process, presaging the new art of cinema). In 1968, Normal McLaren used conventional celluloid superimposition to make his classic Pas de Deux. The technology of McLaren’s time, however, permitted him to shoot his dancers only in black and white, with no pauses in motion, and only against a black background. Modern video compositing freed Choros of these limitations—a liberation the filmmakers wryly celebrate when they describe their film as a pas de trente-deux.

Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase"

          In an important sense, though, this film harkens not to other films, but to modernist landmarks like the Marcel Duchamp painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912). Where Muybridge essentially taught his audiences to see cinematically, to give in to an illusion of movement built out of still elements, Langan and Maher follow Duchamp in envisioning a subject that is neither still nor moving, but in a fluidic state that is validly (and entrancingly) its own. As Maher’s body(ies) evoke helices, landscapes, butterflies and a thousand other fleeting forms, we begin to appreciate what she and Langan are on to here: a merging of traditional art and modern technology that multiplies the expressive power of both.

          Equally good is Andrew Huang’s astonishing Solipsist (2012, 10 minutes). A visual symphony in three movements, this combines elements of dance, costume, puppetry, video compositing and old-fashioned physical effects into a wordless poem to growth, evolution, and enlightenment. Movement one presents two dancers swaying in unison as they are gradually enveloped by a riot of vaguely organic detritus, until they become a gently undulating polyp. In movement two, worm-like, feathery organic forms swirl and pulse in an alien ocean, combining into ever more complex, baroque forms. Or are they nerve cells in a developing brain, boot-strapping their way toward consciousness? For the purposes of Huang’s theme, it hardly seems to matter whether these are dendrites in an infant’s cerebrum, or dwellers in the sub-ocean of Europa.

The dance of evolution plays on in Solipsist.

          Movement three gives us two figures on a beach, oddly aloof to each other until they merge in a surprising way (hint: think about the party scene in Donnie Darko). In each of these tableaux, Huang seems to allude to evolution and sex and development—the essential dramas of organic life—but also conjugations and conjunctions more spiritual in nature. In either case, the film seems to belie the isolation implied by its title.

          Perhaps Huang is suggesting the distinction between physicality and spirituality means not much. Or perhaps he’s just messing around with cool imagery. In any case, there’s more to marvel at and more to think about in Solipsist than in all 139 minutes of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

          One can’t help thinking that visionaries like Langan and Huang are like the bright, quick mammals waiting for their turn during the twilight of the dinosaurs. Choros is in regular rotation on European television, but as described on Langan’s website, it is “not coming to a theater near you.” Solipsist got made after Huang raised a mere $9000 on Kickstarter.com (the budget for Tree of Life: $32 million). The multiplex may be wall-to-wall T. rexes for now, but rest assured, the asteroid is coming. 

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro