10—La Ciénaga Entre el Mar y la Tierra (Castillo y Cruz)
9—Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis (Diaz)
8—Hymyilevä Mies (Kuosmanen)
7—Smrt u Sarajevu (Tanovic)
6—Fuchi Ni Tatsu (Fukada)
5—Kollektivet (Vinterberg)
4—It’s Tough Being a Teen Comedian in the Eighties! (Apatow)
3—En Man Som Heter Ove (Holm)
2—Kimi No Na Wa (Shinkai)
1—Under Sandet (Zandvliet)
It’s a list of which I am proud. It is a list that under normal circumstances would set the world of cinema on fire. But today the world of cinema is abuzz with other news. H. Hackstrom Babor, professor adjunto in the filmic studies department at the Mr. Jam Centro Moderno de Música in Bilbao, Spain, has stumbled upon a heretofore undiscovered film in the back of the basement of an abandoned bordello in the Basque Country. This so-called “orphan” film by an unknown outsider artist has been dubbed by some “scholars” as the creative link between the Spanish Rectangulists of the sixties and the Barcelonan Rapturists (Los Realizadores de Rapto de Barcelona) of the early to mid-seventies. Be still my heart. Not only are the Rapturists a movimiento falso in all but the most naïve academic circles, but EVERYONE acknowledges that Soy un Chimpancé is the film that brought Rectangulism into the postmodern age. Far be it from me to rain on Babor’s filthy, despicable parade. It is, however, galling to have to abide this collective orgasm with clenched jaw as I sit on the ashes of the truly monumental cinematic discovery of the age. Tonight I will attend a screening of and Babor’s lecture on this “film” at the 92nd Street Y Overflow Auditorium at the intersection of Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines Boulevards in Harlem. Babor and the film will appear on closed-circuit television at this venue. Questions from the overflow crowd can be asked of Babor through a series of relays by typing them into one of the three electronic keyboards on a desk in the corner, and I intend to ask many questions. For now, I must busy myself in preparation.
I WAIT MY turn, impatient, imperiously crowding the fawning dimwit ahead of me at the keyboard. I have long admired your work … he is hunting and pecking at the lightning speed of a word a minute.
“C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon,” I chant into the back of his head.
… and am curious as to your take on the films of Fra—
“All right, that’s enough,” I say, pushing him aside. His keister-kissing is doing nothing to further this discussion.
So, Babor, I begin, we meet again. So to speak. I trust Bilbao’s finest guitar emporium/after-school education center is treating your filmic research with the seriousness it deserves. My question for you tonight is this: How do you square (no pun intended!) your woeful misapprehension of the work of the Rectangulists with your arrogant proclamations about the cinematic value of this newly found “work,” and I put work in quotations because to characterize this as a work, as in a work of art, diminishes both the concept of work and the concept of art. This “film,” and I put film in quotes as well, because to characterize it thusly diminishes the concept of film, is a travesty at best and deserves no place in the canon of essential Spanish films of the mid-twentieth century. Yo Soy Chimpancé, a movie that you, in your reckless pursuit of personal aggrandizement, shamelessly attempt to relegate to the ash heap of film history, is the undisputed link between the Rectangulists and all else of any remote import that comes after. Gomes himself has said as much. Are you prepared to wage war with me over this? With Gomes? Keep in mind (if you’ve even seen the film) that the final sequence in Chimpancé is Manuel cinematographed from every conceivable angle, both from outside and inside his body. As I’m certain, since you are a scholar of film, you realize that the Rectangulists did for cinema what the Cubists did for painting, namely utilizing a single frame of reference to explore multiple frames of reference. Keep in mind the producer of Chimpancé, Guillermo Castillo, was so concerned about potential mental anguish among the film’s spectators that he hired actresses dressed as nurses to stand in the back of the theaters showing the movie to attend to those who might have heart attacks. Its pyrotechnic display of photography and editing illustrates the reach but also the ultimate limitations of the Rectangulist manifesto of Frame/Reframe (see my footnote at the bottom of this question). I’ll take my response off the air.
Then I wait through the interminable glad-handing and self-congratulations that pass these days as conversation, but the moderator never asks Babor my question. Quelle surprise. It was a powder keg. I collect my gift bag and leave.
Lurching through the streets, blinded by rage and disappointment, I stumble upon an unadvertised orphan film festival at the 65th Street Borkheim Palace. Perhaps this is the very medicine I need to cure my current state of violent melancholy. I flash my press credentials to the box office attendant.
“Fifteen dollars,” she says.
The world I view inside is enframed in a rectangle. I can see only to the edges of this frame; beyond it is darkness. It exists only as this: light, absence of light, and combinations thereof. The various meanings found within are no more than tricks of the brain. This play of light and dark is predetermined and therefore unalterable. It simply plays out. Then it plays out again. It can be observed. It can be processed, judged. It can elicit emotional responses in an observer. It can be criticized, but it cannot be hurt. For it does not have wants or desires. You can literally stop this world in its tracks and it will melt, but it does not care. Only you care.
The world outside, I decide, is also a rectangle of light surrounded by darkness. It has no mass. It exists outside of me, but not truly as I see it, not as I understand it.
The unattributed, untitled film begins: The lights are off. In the room depicted onscreen, the heavy drapes have been drawn. He knows they are drawn, this man in the room, but he cannot see that they are drawn, for there is no light at all in the room. But he knows they are drawn because he drew them himself only minutes ago. Similarly, he knows well enough the placement of furniture in the room, where the desk is, the bookcase, the bed in which he now reclines. He needs it to be as dark as possible if he is to get any sleep. This much he has learned after a lifetime of sleep problems. He has tried all the remedies over the years: the drinking of warm milk, the drinking of whiskey, the counting of sheep, the reading of books, this very dark room.
And as in a dream, I find myself in this room, too. When did that happen? I can’t say, so slippery was the shift of consciousness from the constant jabbering noise in my head into the silent black rectangle before me. I know this rectangle depicts a room in absolute darkness and I know the objects in this room as well as the man who I know is in the bed in this room knows these things. I know the dresser is over there to the right, that it is squat and wide and of a highly polished wood. The cherry desk is against the window. I know the funny story about its purchase almost five years ago. I know how the story has changed slightly in the telling over the years. I know his clothes are piled on the gray rug at the foot of the bed: black slacks, white dress shirt, white boxer shorts, two black socks. I know he leaves his clothing there every night. I know he is ashamed of not being neater. And just as the man knows what’s outside the bedroom door without looking, so do I: the boxy second-floor landing dimly lit by a Popeye-faced night-light, four closed doors, including his own. The wife behind one, the son behind another, the bathroom behind the third. The bathroom door is closed because the faucet has a drip that keeps the son awake. I know the town in which the man lives, which streets to take to get to the supermarket, the house two doors down with that little dog that incessantly barks. And I know what’s inside the man in bed, too, his feelings, the constant