The structure of films Cisse is confusing. It al'étrangeté things first, elements of nature constantly present around us and yet retaining all their opacity and mystery. Cissé's films always begin with images so familiar and yet so foreign that are trees, earth and sky, giving them new meaning, as if it was the first image of the world that was given to voir.Si the essence of cinema is " shoot for things to just name them "(Jean Luc Godard), Cisse gives this thesis a masterful illustration. His images back to the genesis of the world, a world where things have not been named yet, a world that must inform the bark rough skin so that finally it reaches the first illumination of knowledge.
This aspiration full and "premièreté" the world is announced by the titles of the films Cissé wind (Finye), light (Yeelen), time (Waati), who register their films in the search for the essence things, the only principle which derives all the other elements. These titles indicate the quest for the original, a world that would have solved its deep unity, condensed around a single point, before the bursting of its elements into a multitude of independent spheres.
However, this unity or oneness that announced by the Securities is belied by the very stuff of movies. If the titles reveal a deep desire for the unity of the world, the films themselves are subject to a constant duality, which turns a duel, as if the world, rebel at any attempt of confinement, it proved impossible to grasp, impossible to mold in a matter unique.Ses films did not quiet the structure of images flowing quietly, but the primary principle that guides them, and found at all levels of the film is that the clash between antagonistic forces, the confrontation by his filmmaker corroborates how to shoot and grapple with his images. It creates in the viewer the impression that the film material, characters, palpable and impalpable things, all entities that exist before the camera is constantly bent, like a huge iron plate that the filmmaker seeks to overhaul smith to give it a new form. Everything happens as if, in the constant battle between two entities that are fighting them fatally, the camera was a third term, which pulls its weight on the outcome of the fight.
In Cissé's films, the duel is the main topic. So is it of Finye, where he was to show the confrontation between rebellious youth and progressive and power, represented by the military governor. This political dimension of the confrontation, Cisse Yeelen happening in a more mythological dimension, giving the duel between the son, Nianankoro, and the father a more cosmic significance, making them fight alongside these two human beings of other forces supernatural, since each has a magical kind of substitute, representing the center of power that has been passed down from their ancestors.
In Waati, the idea of confrontation is Central entire film is that the violent melee between Nandi and the land of Africa. The film has that strength, that of a body that strikes against the world, not only his show but his living flesh and bruised. If Waati exceeds all images of African horrors, if not simply a demonstration of realistic battle between blacks and whites in South Africa is that it erects a body, a look like the only fighting force and change, and while the film is that face-to-face meeting between Nandi and images running through his conscience, especially bloody battle that is underground.
This persistence of the fight in the films of Cisse is accentuated by the presence of supernatural forces. Human beings do not only compete but revolve around them dark forces, impalpable, those that exist in every part of nature. Thus, the duel of men is doubled another duel between the gods, or more generally between charged objects with supernatural power. Such is the case Yeelen, where the final confrontation between father and son is supported by the struggle between the drumstick and the wing of magic Kore. However, this example is not a special case in Cissé's films. In Finye Waati and, although the gods seem to have deserted the land, leaving humans struggling all alone with their problems, there is always a tenuous presence, power transmitted by a character, mostly old, a sort of relay between gods and men (the grandfather of Baa in Finye and grandmother in Waati). Thus, the duel in reality is constantly exceeded, included in another duel, more cosmic, and seeks Cisse to show us not only the contradictions of reality and the social and political problems faced by its characters but also all the intangible forces that surround. In fact, this duality between reality and the supernatural is powered by the very way of filming. We notice that in his films (except Yeelen which is entirely subject to the mythological dimension, which makes no reference to contemporary reality) Cisse constantly oscillates between filming realistic situations where the crudeness sometimes turns into triviality, and filming more lyrical and legendary when it comes to film nature, which is never seen in an objective, but as a nature peopled with ghosts and he succeeds magnificently in making palpable soul, giving us the impression that constantly blows through the trees stirring despite their apparent fixity.
It is strange that Finye, such as film, however, placed under the sign of reality, since it tends to show the political situation in Mali in the 70's, begins with the image of a forest and a river from which emerges a child translucent body. He ends up the same image of the child arising from the water, holding his hands a bowl. Something in Cissé's films suggests the structure of a sphere that closes on the characters, in which they are deployed but they can not escape. So, after trying to grasp the complexity of reality, it curiously concludes his film on this original image, not yet reached by the debris of the real world, as if this was a phase that will pass through before humans arrive to find a certain purity symbolized by water, as if it was all a break from the movement of the universe.
Moreover, one might find this duality in the way of filming for Cisse in the reports between the titles of films and the films themselves. So Finye. A priori, there is no relationship between this element (wind) and the film has an essentially political dimension. Only the foreground, where we see the trees move in the wind, entered it in the matter of the film. In other plans, we will seek in vain any perceptible presence of the wind, things remain static and still, no breeze and does not raise the girls' skirts or loose clothing for men.
It would be so useless and unfair to make a symbolic reading of the title, giving the wind a metaphorical function: wind of change wind of revolt that blows on this once peaceful city of Mali. Only one report could be suggested that a force out in the world, beyond the control of men, beyond their understanding, a force made up of echoes and eddies, which rises from the depths of nature, and is humans live in his presence and bewitching impalpable. Only the music of the film has something to do with the wind, because it echoes of a thousand broken, because it is broken invocation, whose presence gives some immaterial images a strange significance, as if reality was constantly overtaken by a wind that carries it. Thus, some scenes very realistic and almost commonplace for young people who pass the test tray acquire, in the presence of this music emerged from a depth unfathomable any other value, undefined.
the same way to film thus incorporates mythological or supernatural dimension. At the front so he has to film scenes realistic, Cisse made plans succeed where the camera becomes more mobile, traveling with the slow movements of the trees that populate the entire space of the plane, standing arisen as the Heaven and unplanted in the ground. Besides this mystical way of filming not only the elements of nature. Even the body can sometimes be transformed into a surface which the camera explores the windings and protrusions, trying to navigate as if it were the first human being it encounters on its way. It was so from the scene of the confrontation between father and son, where the camera Cisse back throughout the body Nianankoro, endows a mineral substance.
was the impression that it is a constant reinvention the world, a pure discovery and first images as primitive. The final duel is indeed the one between the camera and reality. Cissé's films are thus a metaphor for the ontological force of cinematography.
0 comments:
Post a Comment