A thing that makes cinema a unique medium is it's temporality. Unlike theatre or Performance Art, film works to create an internal temporal field, which can be manipulated to suit the needs of the narrative. Thinking of memories as a break in the time-space that signified the action, we must look at two aspects of memory. Memory exists within a framework of temporality that is dependant on the present, just as the present is dependant on the past. Likewise, compared to a "truthful" archive of events (such as a old news reel, or footage), memory is by definition subjective and reliant on the subject of the memory.
Deleuze adopts a model of an upside down cone to explain the time-image. This model, taken from Leibniz, represents the present as the function of it's past. So the base of the cone is past that stretches into infinity, and as we reach the apex, we cross strata of the past, with their own succession and chronology . This system allows for the co-existence of the past with the present. Deleuze comes to call this unity the crystal image, comprised of the virtual image (the subjective past) and the actual image (the presently perceived image ). In the films to be analyzed, we see the crucial link between the action in the present and the past. Memory interjects the action to add a different dimension to the narrative.
Night Cries
Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries is reliant on the use of the virtual time-image, as the sensory action gives little clues about the essence, or the Whole of the film. In these 15 minutes of film, Moffatt creates a densely codified look into the life of a middle aged Aboriginal woman caring for her aging white mother.
The film's use of codes is paramount in the understanding of the concepts that are proposed. Moffatt has created a space of her own, a landscape made up of symbols. The action takes place in a small house in an outback town. Instead of using a real life location, Moffatt has chosen to create her own aesthetic, a recreation of the outback using stage-style sets. In a quasi minimalist fashion, what she manages to achieve is a perspective that is hyper-real. Moffatt extrapolates the necessary icons of the landscape and arranges them to give us insight into the protagonist's emotional and historical field. For example, the sounds of the dingo and the wind in the first scene build the sense of loneliness, a hollow sound that is nearly tactile in its resounding echo. Not only does this aesthetic give us a complex understanding of the action, but it also alerts the viewer straight away that the director is deliberate in her style. By creating an artificial space, the viewer is made aware of the importance of composition and detail in the space.
Looking at the way that memories are used, we find that their introduction is always intentional, and highlighted by Moffatt, what Deleuze would call "de-actualized" . The first instance of memory that we see is the Aboriginal woman cooling herself down with a hose, getting visual memories of her childhood, being dressed and cleaned by the mother. There is a stark jolt in the action when we see the memory shots; the background noise, which had been a constant wind sound till this point, suddenly stops and you see the soft lens shot of the child and mother. This lens is a contrast to the sharp color intensity of the present décor. This leads to a complex montage sequence; woman hosing herself, a close up of child and mother's hand, woman hugging herself, and mother cleaning child's hand. Through this creative juxtaposition of virtual image and actual image, more is revealed about the character than is in the action. We sense the child/woman's need for affection, which her mother failed to provide in the virtual image. The viewer is aware of the detachment between mother and child in the shot, both off them facing off camera in a frozen fashion.
The second accentuation in the sensory-motor is heralded by a moment where the woman is washing her mother's feet. Spontaneously they start humming in unison. This becomes a form of dialogue between the women, showing that they both have a shared past. It also the shows affection that they hold for one another. This auditory memory spawns a visual one, that of a seaside scene. Sounds of the sea are matched to images of the mother and the child playing together. There are also 2 other aboriginal boys, with which the child plays. The scene turns from a happy scene to a sad one in mere seconds. The child is engulfed by seaweed that the boys put around her. A female figure is seen, which we immediately try to associate with the natural mother. However, instead of the motherly love that is shown by the white woman, the aboriginal mother offers only her back. The scene show us the unique nature of memories as subjective events. We cannot be sure that the memory is a real one. Did this child know her mother? Did her mother give her up voluntarily? These are questions that we are not meant to ponder upon. Rather, the memory shows us the aboriginal woman's loneliness, and her emotions towards her identity. She is torn between the idea of a woman who physically gave birth to her, but provided no comfort, to the mother that treated her as her own child, and loved her as such.
Jimmy Little, a well known aboriginal singer and a Christian, frames the film with his song "royal telephone", a Christian gospel. It is unclear whether he is a memory or an image in the present. It would seem he is outside the realm of the action, giving us a haunting look at the assimilation of the aboriginal. The one time he does interject the action is when we see an image of him singing, which doesn't link up with the audio, bad radio reception sounds. This aural/visual contradiction is used creatively by Moffatt. At the point when this happens, the woman is outside using a whip, much to her mother's horror. Is this a sign that the assimilation of daughter is incomplete, since she cannot "tune in" to Jimmy Little? The other time when this aural/visual discrepancy is demonstrated is the final scene, when the two women lay side by side on the floor. The mother has died, and the woman sits by her side crying. We see her crying, but it is not her voice, but that of a young child. Here we see the culminating point of the memories. In the end, the woman is likened to a child, scarred and lonely. Even though the action at the start of the film depicts contempt for the mother, the final scene shows the inseparability between both characters.
With this short but dense movie, Tracey Moffatt is making a statement about the aboriginal women that, like herself, where fostered into white homes. Moffatt does not make a direct political statement. She neither condemns nor condones the actions of the government towards the stolen generation. Rather, she leaves the political commentary aside, and steers our focus towards the personal struggle of those who have to endure the consequences of the decisions taken externally. Instead of laying blame, we are given insight into the lives of these people that must live on regardless.
Ulysses Gaze
In Ulysses Gaze, director Angelopoulos gives us a completely different temporal representation of memory. Whereas Moffatt accentuates the break between the action and the memory, Angelopoulos gives us a seamless interaction between present and past. The film deals with the protagonist, known only as "A", a Greek-American film maker who is trying to go on a quest for three lost reels by the Minakis brothers. The search becomes an epic journey for 'A' who, as the title describes, is a modern version of the Greek tragic hero Ulysses . A is looking for the "first gaze" of the Minakis brothers, who are supposedly the producers of the very first film to be shot in the Balkans. To reach the reels, A must leave Greece and cross a War-torn region of Yugoslavia, reaching his ultimate goal in Sarajevo.
There are several levels of memories at work in this film. The first strata of memory is narrative memory, one which is conscious and aimed at other characters. The first of these happens in Florina, where he recounts his memory of the town 35 years ago. Physically, he can interact with his memory; he "sees" the house that he remembers. Another instance of this conscious memory is seen in the train scene, where he recalls the initial motivation he had for starting his quest; how he lost his own "gaze".
However, the most interesting and innovative way in which Angelopoulos utilizes the memory sequence is by incorporating it into the present action without discontinuation or montage. Thus, in a single scene, the time space might change 60 years in a minute, without having the scenery change, or the shot cut. This lends the film a temporal ambiguity, that helps the viewer understand that A must incorporate the past in order to deal with the present. The first instance of this type of memory sequence is given on the first scene. Here we see the assistant of the Minakis brothers resting Yanakis down to die. He walks to the right of the camera, and as the camera pans with him, he meets up with A, without a cut to the shot or the soundtrack. The camera then follows A back to where the film-maker would have been, only to find a blank.
The most intricate memory scene in the film is the one that constructs A's childhood in Kostantza. As A's train is pulling into Bucharest, the scenery slowly changes to WWII, and all of a sudden A's mother appears. The whole sequence is a memory scene in that is it subjective rather than strictly factual. Angelopoulos emphasizes this by having Kietel play the "young A", as though he were a child. Subjectivity is further highlighted by the insinuation of a dreamscape rather than a memory, when the sequence is cut with an image of waking up in a hotel. This incredible sequence of events reveals some of A's past, and takes us from 1945 to 1950, where the several events pass in the midst of new year's celebration. The sequence not only serves the purpose of filling in some of the narrative, but it also emphasizes that the past does not exist separately to the present, rather, that A cannot distinguish himself from his past. Both the past and the present are intermingled, and inseparable.
Just as A projects his own recollections of events and people, so do others in the film. The woman in Bulgaria returns to find her home completely burnt out, and the realization that her family has been killed. She them makes A dress up in her "husbands" clothes. Here, we see an example of when A is projecting memories of a former lover onto the woman , while the woman is projecting her departed husband onto A.
Angelopoulos takes a look at the problems of modern Greece (as the cab driver points out, "Greece is dying"), and the conflict in the Balkan area. However, just as we saw in Night Cries, instead of making a blatant political statement, we see the way that events in the external space of the film invade the intimate scene of the protagonists life. A himself states this in reciting a verse written about the Minakis brothers, which says that the first gaze transcends all the political and cultural conflicts of the region. So to reach it, A must also cross these boundaries. Through his journey he explores the region, and gives us a glance of the conflicts of the Balkans from a ground up perspective. Especially in the Sarejevo stage of the film, there is a distinction between the action happening in the external space (i.e. the war), and that which is happening in A's Journey. In a way, A is unable to see what is around him. His journey relies on memories, for he must go through a journey of the past, symbolized by the ancient films, to recover his gaze, so that he can start looking at the present.
Ashes of Time
Director Wong Kar- wai gives us a different perspective of temporality in his film Ashes of Time. Not only do events happen in chronologically awkward moments, but the time speed gets rearranged in mid scene, to create a mixed sense of time. Time is not something that stands still, nor is it something that happens strictly chronologically. Time and memories serve to create the context in which Ouyang Feng, the main character and narrator, sees himself. To form his inner self, he must reflect on the actions of the people around him, as well as his own memories. His quest for inner peace is not unlike A's in Ulysses Gaze, except that Ouyang is not guided by a goal, but rather by his experience and fate.
The main memory in Ouyang's life is that of his former lover, his brother's wife. Although they loved each other, Ouyang leaves her in their home village to pursue his martial arts adventures. To avenge herself, she marries Ouyang's brother. Both live with the pain of their perspective decisions, and both feel the hurt. Though the movie is filled with instances of chronological incoherence, the only real subjective memories that belong to Ouyang are those concerning his love.
The first such instance is in the love scene between Ouyang and Murong Yin. This Intimate scene shows both characters pretending that they are interacting with the person they really love. In this way, the crystal image is achieved by the montage sequence where we see a shot of Ouyang, then a shot of Murong Yin, followed by Ouyang's lost love and then cut by an image of Huang Yoashi.
Other times when Ouyang recalls his wife, the sequences become de-actualized. The visual image cuts the sensory motor action in a blatant manner. As Ouyang looks at the peasant girl who sits at his gate, the scene is interjected with a shot of his lover. Ouyang gets similar visual images when he observes Hong Qi leave his house. Hong's unselfish act heralded undying gratitude from the peasant girl. Ouyang laments in an inner dialogue that he could have been like Hong Qi, but that it is too late now. Once again, the visual scene is cut with a shot of the lover.
There is yet another form of memory, and that is memory that is portrayed by objects rather than subjects in the movie. A body lying in the dessert serves as a physical reminder of the fight with the thieves, and of the lessons that can be learnt from it. The cane bird cages that Murong is associated with serve as a reminder, a symbol of the Yin/Yang character. Huang at one stage looks at it and recalls the cage as being important. However there is no better example of the materialization of memory than the "Happy go Lucky Life" wine that Ouyang's former lover provides. This wine, which is sent to Ouyang just before she dies, is the encapsulation of the story. The wine is supposed to have the properties to make Ouyang forget his past, his regrets and mistakes, and thereby making him a happier man in the future. Throughout the movie we are taunted with the possibility of the wine's properties. It provides a happy escape from pain. But in the end Ouyang realizes that the wine is just a farce. He cannot erase the past, and this past is something that he has to carry into his present. As is pointed out by Abbas, this movie is about he weight of dead time (i.e., the past) .
This leads to another underlying concept in the film, that of fatality. Ouyang's narrative dialogue serves as a keeper of time. He recounts seasons, and the cyclic nature of his surroundings. There are episodically events, like the coming of the insects, which happen every year without fail. This is how it is written in the Almanac from which he reads. The viewer is also aware of his faith in fortune tellers and "The Book", in which all of history seems to be already mapped out. This is vital in our understanding of memory. For, if time is already planned out, then there is essentially no difference between the future, the present and the past. Since all components are set in stone, the only difference is that the subjects have not yet experienced the future, and have to be content with memories of the past. This is why Wong Kar-wai plays with the temporal structure in this film. He can slow the speed of time or accelerate it, since it is not necessary for life to be strictly timed. This differs drastically with traditional deployment of time as a function to sensory drama, where temporal space is a tool for pacing the action. But just as fates cannot be altered, neither can time, and the only constant is that it has to move in a certain direction. This is why the wine is ineffective, because there is no way of stopping the continuum, or moving contrary to it's momentum.
Bibliography
Abbas, A Hong Kong; Culture and he Politics of Disappearence, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Deleuze, G Cinema 2, The Time Image, Minnesota Press, 1989
Horton. A, The Films of Theo Anelopoulos ; A Cinema of Contemplation, Princeton University Press, N.J 1997
Rodowick D.N, Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine, Duke University Press. London 1997
Totaro, D, Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian Film Project, France 1999.