Elaborate a bit more on the Sanskrit concept of Sphota…
Lodge Kerrigan is one of my favorite directors.
Me too. He’s incredibly good, I think. A rare talent, true auteur.
T, you nailed it, no pun intended, I couldn’t have said it better. I hope people can contribute to this thread more…
T
“There is nothing linear or sequential about the total field of human consciousness. Consciousness is not a verbal process.” Marshall McLuhan.
I’ve written a review of this film elsewhere on the site. What interests me most about this film is the convergence of two distinct approaches to filmmaking, and the touching upon something else in the ensuing maelstrom.
On one hand, we have a extremely seriously acted (Greene doing realism via the Strasberg school) portrait of untreated schizophrenia. The performance is intense and internalized, and Kerrigan captures it without cascading camerawork or special effect. He keeps a clean focal attention throughout and lets the actors move about in the frame. When he
does create tension and/or disturbia, it is largely framed by absence (what we don’t see, the lurking shape just outside the screen) and pointed dwelling upon symbols of industry and communication (telegraph wires, construction machinery) juxtaposed against nature.
It’s a line-up-the-crosshairs-and-shoot tactic, raw as a fingernail torn from a shaking hand.
The second level is the imposition of a dense, immaculately conceived soundtrack. This works counter to the visual realism —a dreamscape of experimental sonics and evocative noise. Where the camera is painting a world void of artifice, the sound is the work of pure imagination, fantastical, disrupted and synaesthesiac.
The film itself is created by the juxtaposition between these approaches. Turn the sound off, and it loses momentum. Listen to the soundtrack alone, and it lacks bite.
I experience a deep, symbolic cinematic language here, born out of the space between the through-composed idea and the blank, cold eye of the lens. It is the meaning uttered beneath and between the elements that resonates most deeply. Clean, Shaven is the first film I have encountered that actually embodies the Sanskrit concept of Sphota.