CINEMA ACCORDING TO KIDS: CHILDHOOD AS A SENSITIVE PLATE
Jordi Ferret, Vilafranca del Penedès, 11/03/2014 . actius.media@gmail.com . www.actius.org
Lenguages: català · english
«Never work with children, animals or Charles Laughton», Alfred Hitchcock
Desmond Tester as a teenager holding a package that hides a bomb, in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936)
|
Thus, Hitchcock admits having committed a serious error in Sabotage (1936), because he shot a «kid character who was sympathetic to the public, who later did not forgive that the kid died when a bomb explodes inside a bus...»
|
François Truffaut adds that we can agree the existence of a "dramatic rule" in favor of children, that allows to build a unique bond between the teenager and the audience: «In Sabotage beginning we can see the kid behaviour when he is alone, performing forbidden and clandestine actions. He tries to eat hidden, later he breaks the dish and tries to hide it. But all these actions made the kid more sympathetic to the audience because of a dramatic rule in favor of childhood».
To use children's point of view gives us a message of innocence and authenticity in any story. This is a resource used many times. The child is a refractory model that projects a unique empathy and acting performance. We can have a look at a recent example like What Maisie Knew (Scott McGehee, David Siegel, 2012), based on the Henry James novel. The movie explains the divorce process of Maisie's parents, focusing exclusively on the perspective of the six years old child character, played by Onata Aprile. Using a similar plot close to Kramer vs Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979), tenderness and fragility of the child is especially dramatic because this movie choose to adopt only the point of view of the child.
Onata Aprile, at six years old, starring What Maise Knew (2012) by Scott McGehee and David Siegel.
Sigmund Freud wrote some words about this infant stage, describing its tendency to animism. In Totem and taboo (Totem und tabu, 1912) already indicates the mechanisms of Animism, magic and omnipotence of ideas, that can be detected in children. And he also writes another chapter related to The infantile recurrence of totemism, the return of totemism in childhood.
We can also remeber the brilliant anthology The uses of enchantment. The meaning and importance of fairy tales (1975) written by Bruno Bettelheim. For Bettelheim, childhood represents the beginning of a path to meaning, towards understanding of sense. The child is in need of magic. He lives in an animistic concept of the world, where there is no difference between objects and real alive world. He is focused on himself and expects that animals, the wind, the sun or stones will speak to him. In this particular universe, fairy tales are a promise of a happy ending.
Childhood theme opens a door towards dreaming scenes in cinema, a day dream aesthetics. French philospher Gaston Bachelard refers to this state of childhood mood in The poetics of reverie (La poétique de la rêverie, 1960). According to Bachelard, day dream aesthetics talk about our childhood, in a complex process where memory and imagination become blurred: throught these stored images that refer to our past, our imagination works to take back memories from our childhood (les rêveries vers l'enfance).
Bachelard refers to the anonymous childhood first ages state of loneliness, where children suffers its tendency towards day dreaming, towards reverie, allowing kids to imagine a non ending life, a life without any limit, an unlimited/eternal life. This kind of reverie allows the contemplations of magic in world, throught an eternity feeling that is possible thanks to live without nostalgia. This childhood stage stands as an arquetype, that is communicable as a value of childhood. The melancholic childhood shows us how nobilty and goodness of the human heart is a state of mind. A "childhood spirit" that can remain throught time and enriches our being.
Small change (L'argent de poche, 1976) by François Truffaut.
According to Gilles Deleuze, the child is immersed in an adult world, where in one hand he suffers a certain kind of impotence in his movements, but in the other hand, thanks to its weakness, child is allowed to see and listen better than adults. Also cinema historian Domènec Font saw in childhood a remarkable figure of modern cinema. In his book Landscapes of Modernity (Paisajes de la modernidad, 2002) he wrote a whole chapter called Zéro de conduite, dedicated on building the path of the child role in this modern cinema period (between 1960s and 1980s). This journey starts with the scene starred by a kid, Edmund Meske, in Roberto Rossellini's film Germannia anno zero (1947), placed among the ruins of history, between physical and moral desolation, against the historical catastrophe of fascism. Rossellini's film aroused the interest of François Truffaut, fascinated by the character of the child in a documentary filming style, by combining the severity of adolescent world against the frivolity of adults life (in Les quatre cents coups, 1959, L'enfant sauvage, 1969; also in L'Argent de poche / Small change, de 1976).
«It is precisely this condition of otherness played by the child, often linked to any trauma of an historical event, why modern cinema recalls childhood: from Ivan's childhood by Tarkovsky and L'enfance nue by Pialat, to Kes by Ken Loach and The young Torless by
Schlöndorff... Anyway it is not childhood as a subject what interests me note here, because I am really interested in the narrative techniques and procedures used in childhood in cinema» FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Paisajes de la modernidad (2002). Pàg. 152
According to Domènec Font childhood subject is a true hypotesis in film studies, including a high voltage emotional charge; using a brillant allegory, Font sees children as a sensitive plate:
«The kid as the power of a gaze linked to discovery and secrecy, fear and desire, a real sensitive plate» FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Paisajes de la modernidad (2002). Pàg. 153
The night of the hunter (1955) by Charles Laughton.
Its a need to start these notes from a film that stands out in this field: The night of the hunter (1955) by Charles Laughton. In this popular movie, a father leaves two childreen after a robbery, giving the amount of money to his kids called John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). The father shared this secret with the preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). This premise allows Laughton to build a cinematographic fairy tale able to build a great hypnotic day dream aesthetics.
Laughton's movie forms a core plot that connects with another highlighted example: The spirit of the beehive (El espíritu de la colmena, 1973) by Víctor Eríce. We must remember the singular scene where, as a phantom in front of her innocent gaze, Frankenstein monster appears in front Ana (Ana Torrent), with her eyes wide open looking at the reality of after civil war live. Placed in this after spanish civil war scenario, fathers and other adults live in its own fiction, to survive the defeat of civil war. By contrast, two young girls Ana and Isabel are linked to a kind of poetic realism, associated with a certain day dream point of view towards reality.
El espíritu de la colmena (1973) by Víctor Eríce.
This is also a popular scene the premature exposition of the child emperor in an adult world at Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). The film explains the story of emperor Pu Yi (played by Richard Vuu, at the age of 3), in the period when he rises to the throne, following him from 3 years old earlier childhood and beyond until he becomes an adult, a period from 1908 until 1967. Particulary, we can mention the scene where child emperor passes throught the palace rooms towards the great square where a multitude of people from the court are awaiting, inclined in a reverence and tribute position. The camera follows every step of this 3 years old kid from his eyes height, meanwhile he crosses the palace sorrounded by adults whithout reaching their waist (waist-height position where camera is placed). The film reflects the life of a child who was a too early emperor, and the loneliness that he suffers, throught the guidance of the instructor Reginald Johnson, character who played the unforgettable Peter O'Toole. Shortly after the entrhonement of the child emperor, China proclaimed the Republic and the teenager emperor is imprisoned inside his own palace, until he falls into oblivion.
Richard Vuu, at 3 years old, at Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987).
Childhood provides an opportunity to remember fairy tales in a cinematographic context. We can remember the popular movie Matilda (1996) shot by Danny DeVito, a comedy full of irreverence and camera effects that resemble a comic style, based on the plot of a story by Roald Dahl. The film shows Mathilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson) life, the most intelligent child in an american standard family. As she grows she will discover telekinetic powers related to the childhood omnipotence of ideas. Film making aesthetics style of Matilda remember the comic efectism of a popular 1990s TV serial called Parker Lewis Can't Lose (played at FOX, between 1990 until 1993). This TV serial was shot using a fast rhythm that remebers Hanna-Barbera, Tex Avery or Bugs Bunny cartoons throught using bright colors, impossible camera angles and points of view, fast action rhythm, and constant metalinguistic references and recalls to the classics of cinema.
Embeth Davidtz i Mara Wilson a Matilda (1996) de Danny DeVito.
Also La vita è bella (Life is beautiful, 1997) by Roberto Benigni holds much of his story in the sweet power of the teenager main character Josué (played by Giorgio Cantarini, at the age of five), and Guido's tenacity (the popular character played by the director Roberto Benigni) who will reach to change the deportation pain became a game of wit and survival. A dramatic structure supported by an iconic soundtrack that was composed by an specially inspired Nicola Piovani.
Giorgio Cantarini, at the age of five years old, playing the main child character at La vita è bella (1998) by Roberto Benigni.
Life is beautiful merges the particular humor sense of Guido with the absolute tragedy suffered in the nazi Holocaust, attenuated by this childhood mood that embodies the hope for the future. The movie was created throught Benigni's admiration for the work of Charles Chaplin. In particular he was inspired in two popular films: The great dictator (1940), because of its meaning against the dictatorship, and The kid (1921), a pioneer movie that shows this childhood universe in Chaplin's aesthetics.
The kid (1921) by Charles Chaplin.
This genre of movies played by a kid who is in company of an adult have become also the argument of Une vie meilleure (A better life, 2011) by Cédric Kahn, where Yann (Guillaume Canet) must survive with low budget with his girlfriend's son (played by Leïla Bekhtl). The kid Slimane (Slimane Khettabl), who holds the main desire of buying a basketball sport shoes, reaches step by step to understand the complexity of adult world. We can remember also the french movie Le père de mes enfants (The father of my children, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2009) where a film producer is under hard economic difficulties that will suffer his family. And finally there is a popular movie about son's absence pain feeling, played in movies like La stanza del figlio (The son's room, 2001) by Nani Moretti, and also in Génova (2008) by Michael Winterbottom.
La stanza del figlio (2001) by Nani Moretti.
The child Slimane Khettabl at Une vie meilleure (2011) by Cédric Kahn.
In the documentary genre, we must also remember Être et avoir (To be and to have, 2003) by Nicolas Philibert. This movie showed the mechanisms of education and authority learning process in the French culture. Nicolas Philibert shot a documentary during a whole year course in a small village rural school, placed at Saint Etienne Aur Usson. From december 2000th to june 2001th the filmmaker remains in the small class where there are only twelve students from the age of 4 until 12 years old. These students were supervised by the teacher Georges López, who hold this position the last 35 years in this small school, at the age of 55 years old, last year before retirement. This is so an emotional full season from summer to spring, the last course of Georges López after a whole life dedicated to education.
Être et avoir (2003) by Nicolas Philibert.
Russian movie Vozvrashcheniye (The return, 2003) by filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev also is powerfully focused in childhood aesthetics. The movie explains the history of two young brothers, Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) and Andrei (Vladimir Garin), in front of their father return at home after being gone for years.
Vozvrashcheniye (2003) by Andrei Zvyagintsev.
Both teenagers will start a journey with their father, who was someone unknown for them, inside a claustrophobic car. An uncertain trip, that holds this road movie and brings this particular family of unknown to a mysterious island. The family travels to an uninhabited island that is the central space of the film. The island is a central element in the plot of The return, a topography that recalls a modern cinema figure used in movies like Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika, 1953) by Igmar Bergman or L‘avventura (1960) by Michelangelo Antonioni.
All the background family relationship remains partially hidden to the audience, who faces to mystery and full symbolism meaning. The tower who children must climb, the lake the family must cross, the boat that crashes to the bottom of the lake with their father, build a lyrical movie full of metaphysical elements related to the difficulties in the relationship between parents and children, in their journey to become adults. The first and last father image link this character to death, using two shots that link all the story in a day dream funebre aesthethic. A plot related with rêveries vers l‘enfance, a childhood marked by the absence of nostalgia. But also related with a primary mith, the founding myth about killing the father written by Sigumund Freud in Totem and taboo (1912), where Freud reveals the hypnotic gaze of the father as the main element that sustains the pshycological structure of any subject. The return draws a spectral fable about learning in life, full of bitterness and cruelty, throught a story based in refounding and losing the father.
The shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick.
Twins (1967) by Diane Arbus.
Twins (1967) by Diane Arbus.
Childhood mood is magical, but has also something strange close to the sinister, that has been placed in horror films. We must remember the sinister visions hold by young Danny (Danny Lloyd) at the Overlook Hotel. The dualty of sinister twins refers to Diane Arbus' photographs, that hypnotize our gaze making strange everyday world. In The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), something real unsettles reality.
The labyrinth of corridors and the Overlook Hotel garden is the main scenario that holds this popular family psycho, "psycho in family", according to Domènec Font: "Kubrick's movie creates a journey throught Jack Torrance deep psychotics (Jack Nicholson), the neuroses of his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and the schizophrenia who suffers the child Danny (Danny Lloyd)". The family decides to isolate themselves in a hotel during a whole winter, in order to allow Jack to concentrate on the completion of a book.
The shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick.
Little Danny feels the spectral presence of two twins who were murdered in 1970. The veteran chef Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) intuits Danny's ability to hold two personalities, to give voice to a inner double, called "Tony", who is in contact with murdered people in past. This is popular the twins image that evokes the Diane Arbus' picture Twins (1967), mesmerizing gaze throught portraying the bizarre in the everyday's life in a sinister aesthetics throught image of double.
Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis at The sixth sense (1999) by M. Night Shyamalan.
Nicole Kidman in Los otros (2001) by Alejandro Amenábar.
Also in this horror movie genre, we must remember The others (2001) by Alejandro Amenábar. The history is set shortly after World War II in England. Grace (Nicole Kidman) lives in an isolated house educating alone her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley).
Those children are suffering from a strange disease: they can not recive direct daylight. So the house is always in the dark, and it is not possible to open any door if there is not closed begore the previous one. But this well-organized life changes when three new crew members arrive and strange events start to happen because of "the others". This is a rather peculiar aesthetic proposal, that won spanish academy Goya Award for the best photography director thanks to Javier Aguirresarobe's excellent light work. In order to follow the main plot, the light work was based in using only candles and natural light sources, that lighted children who literally became a sensitive plate.There are two popular previous photography director works based in using only natural light sources: John Alcott at Barry Lindon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) and Vittorio Storaro at Goya en Burdeos (Carlos Saura, 1999).
Twelve monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam.
We must consider another example, one step forward from horror genre against the paradox movies: ¿because what tragedy can be more powerful than a child looking a man dying infront himself who is also himself some years after?
This is the powerful image that begins and ends Twelve monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam (EUA, 1940). In this airport scene it seems that the main character James Cole (Bruce Willis) must repeat eternally and cyclically the main plot, based on La jetée (1962) by Chris Marker.
Twelve monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam.
The main character wakes up after suffering this himself death reverie nightmare that opens the film in a futuristic context. The plot is located in the year 2035th, were earth became uninhabitable for humanity, and people must live in underground cities. James Cole is a prisioner who will performance a government mission on the earth, looking for the twelve monkeys freedom army.
A.I. (2001) by Steven Spielberg, based on a project of Stanley Kubrick.
But on the other hand, when any cyborg tries that human people recognize their feelings, its nature becomes ambiguous between the animated and unanimated world of the sinister aesthetics. A big desire fills the cyborg gaze of melancholy, because of the impossibility for humans to recognize their capacity to feel like any human. As the half man half animal ancient greek minotaur myth, the cyborg is an hybrid being that represents the otherness.
A.I. (2001) by Steven Spielberg, based on a project of Stanley Kubrick.
This is also significant the Artificial Intelligence (A.I., 2001) example shot by Steven Spielberg, where it intersects the problem of being a cyborg in one hand and the childhood universe in the other hand. David's gaze (Haley Joel Osment) will be frozen, like happened with Jack at the end of The shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), after having a look at the future world. Childhood is shown as a world without nostalgia (of a cyborg in this case), projected in a future world full of anachronsims and failed technologies that try to survive over time.
Child cyborg world is also the main plot in the recent catalan production Eva (2011), as a brilliant opera prima shot by the filmmaker Kike Maíllo, who studied at Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya ESCAC. In this movie appear the cast formed by Daniel Brühl (playing the role of the scientific Alex Garel), Marta Etura (playing the girlfriend role called Lana Levi), and the talented young actress Claudia Vega (playing the cyborg main character called Eva). The movie purposes a particular aesthetic world, where we can see merged a futuristic plot about robotics sorrounded by nostalgia for the eighties; future technology, combined with the clothes and the classic Volvo and Saab car models from 1980s (especially the Saab 900 car model with angular shapes). The scientific technological futurism of cyborgs faces with the melancholy of snown winter landscapes, that shows us this world without nostalgia that chacraterizes childhood, opened at a limitless future full of potential.
E.T. (1982) by Steven Spielberg.
Following Artificial Intelligence (2001) plot, we must see also Steven Spielberg's tendecy to an idealized childhood as a resource that used the american filmmaker at his popular movie "E.T.". In E.T. Spielberg focusied on the views of children and their relationship with this alien otherness who faces against the parental authority and family order. We can see this strategy also in other fiction projects, like the last Albert Espinosa TV serial successes, the famous tv serial called Red band society (Pulseres vermelles, 2012 at Catalunya, 2014 in USA) or also the script that holds the movie Herois (Pau Freixas, 2010).
Nerea Camacho and Àlex Monner at Herois (2010) by Pau Freixas.
It should be also noted in these notes the tendency to talk about childhood universe by successful catalan filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona also from Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya ESCAC. From his earlier college works, as a graduation project, he talked about childhood in his first shortfilm My holidays
(Mis vacaciones, 1999), winning multiple film festivals thanks to his childhood humor sense and psychodelic world. Bayona also returned to childhood in his first movie, in the horror genre El orfanato (The orphanage, 2007). A thriller based on the search work of a mother called Laura (played by Belén Rueda) looking for his lost son, who has been lost in a gothic mansion during his birthday party. Bayona merges this way the absence aesthetics
with the horror genre, played in it childhood variant.
Mis vacaciones (1999) the first shortfilm graduation project shot by J.A. Bayona.
L'orfanat (2007) by J.A. Bayona.
Childhood gaze is also adopted in Bayona's last movie in apocalyptic genre The impossible (2012), based on a true history about the experience of a family who suffered a tsunami at the Indian Ocean in 2004. The movie was shot thinking in a mainstream audience (not so related to the horror genre). The movie had an excellent cast, lead by Ewan McGregor (Henry), Naomi Watts (Maria) and Tom Holland (Lucas) in the role of the kid who must search his lost fathers after the tsunami disaster. This way J.A. Bayona recreates the natural disaster and catastrophe aesthetics, that suffer these western tourists in a remote and hostile eastern landscape.
The impossible (2012) by J.A. Bayona.
A final approach to childhood in cinema should be noted following the successive Medea myth versions, according to ancient greek tragedy wroten by Eurípides. Medea murderd her sons in revenge for his husband Jason abandoning. There is a version shot by mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein, who was Luis Buñuel assistant director, in the mexican movie called Así es la vida (This is life, 2000). In this film shot in digital technique, Ripstein uses over ten minutes long shots, that talk about fatigue over time. This Medea plot is also shot at Joachim Lafosse french filmmaker movie called À perdre la raison (2012). So childhood builds a story line main plot related to the vulnerability of this life earlier stage, full of innocence, faced to the hard life of adult world.
À perdre la raison (2012) by Joachim Lafosse.
We can not put an end to these notes without a reference to the popular american serial from CBS called Two and a half men (2003-2014), set around this half-man (Jake Harper's caracther, played by Angus T. Jones at the age of 9 years old) who tries to understand adult world, eating sweets and fast food, enjoying his uncle Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and his father Alan (Jon Cryer) storyies. Here is a brillant humor sense around childhood shown throught this half man that portraits the childhood being.
Jake Harper, played by Angus T. Jones, at TV serial Two and a half men (2003-2014)
Jordi Ferret, Vilafranca del Penedès, 11/03/2014 . actius.media@gmail.com . www.actius.org BALLÓ, Jordi i PÉREZ, Xavier. La llavor immortal. Els arguments universals en el cinema. Barcelona: Empúries, 1995.
BALLÓ, Jordi. Melina i medea. La Vanguardia, 12/03/2014.
BETTELHEIM, Bruno. Psicoanálisis de los cuentos de hadas (The uses of enchantment. The meaning and importance of fairy tales, 1975). Barcelona: Crítica, 2001.
BUKATMAN, Scott. Blade runner. Londres: British Film Institute, 1997.
DELEUZE, Gilles. La imagen-tiempo. Estudios sobre cine 2 [L’image-temps. Cinéma 2, 1985]. Barcelona: Paidós, 1986.
FERRET FORTUNY, Jordi. L’efecte hipnòtic en el cinema postmodern. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2010.
FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Charles Laughton. La noche del cazador. Barcelona: Paidós, 1998.
FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Paisajes de la modernidad. Cine europeo,1960-1980. Barcelona: Paidós, 2002.
FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Cuerpo a cuerpo. Radiografías del cine contemporaneo. Barcelona: Galaxia Guntenberg, 2012.
FREUD, Sigmund. Tótem i tabú (Totem und tabu, 1912). Madrid: Alianza, 1992.FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Paisajes de la modernidad. Cine europeo,1960-1980. Barcelona: Paidós, 2002.
FONT BLANCH, Domènec. Cuerpo a cuerpo. Radiografías del cine contemporaneo. Barcelona: Galaxia Guntenberg, 2012.
JAMESON, Frederic. El postmodernismo o la lógica cultural del capitalismo avanzdo [Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism, 1984]. Barcelona: Paidós, 1991.
JAMESON, Frederic. Signatures of the visible [1990]. Londres: Routledge, 1992.
JAMESON, Fredric. Teoría de la postmodernidad [1991]. Madrid: Trotta, 2001.
JAMESON, Fredric. La estética geopolítica. Cine y espacio en el sistema mundial [The geopolitical aesthetic. Cinema and space in the world system, 1992]. Barcelona: Paidós, 1995.
KOOLHASS, Rem. Delirious New York (1994).
LEBEAU, Vicky. Childhood and cinema. Reaktion books, 2008.
PIAGET, Jean. The child's concept of the world (1929)
SIMMEL, Georg. The metropolis and mental life (1903)
TRUFFAUT, François. El cine según Hitchcock (Le cinema selon Hitchcock, 1966). Barcelona: Alianza, 1998.
VALLET, François. L'image de l'enfant. Cerf, 1991.
ŽIŽEK, Slavoj. Mirando al sesgo [1991].
