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Visceral Imaginings: Sombre
Watched this film by Philippe Grandrieux earlier this week (after seeing him highlighted on Dennis Cooper’s blog), and still haven’t been able to shake this opening montage from my head.
Has gotten me thinking even further about the collaging of extremely visceral on extreme levels (the children) to the more intuitively visceral, on a calmer level (the car), a quiet/loud compiling that has been well put to use in the music land but perhaps less so in text.
It seems to me that Burroughs was able to pull some of this off in his cut up methods, but I’m also wondering what other textual artists could be pointed at or explored in such a way? Seems like the leaping times are much more drawn out on the page most often, when they do not necessarily have to be? To what effect?
Here also music and sound have as much if not more prowess on the experience as do the images themselves, the motion. How can music and noise be added to a paragraph, a page? What texts might replicate such a feeling?
Anyhow, Sombre surely has some of the best shot work I’ve seen in a while, even if it is another serial killer film.
Tags: philippe grandrieux, sombre
This is amazing. Won’t be forgetting those screaming french kids any time soon.
This is amazing. Won’t be forgetting those screaming french kids any time soon.
the whole film is full of jarring bits like that. you should netflix it. it is pretty gorgeous.
the whole film is full of jarring bits like that. you should netflix it. it is pretty gorgeous.
what are the distinctions, for you, between “intuitively visceral” and “extremely visceral”? i don’t think they are so distinct.
i think one of the reasons you see this movement–where the calm encounters the violent–so rarely in text form is that it’s sort of always happening on the level of textuality. that is, there’s always this uncanny sense of at once having arrived, and of having been torn away. as such, there is a certain sense in which any given text will always/already be “cut-up”; what burroughs was doing might’ve only been a formality. look at ronald johnson’s “radi os.” it seriously minces up the source material, but what’s preserved is ultimately what was already lost, or something (“paradise lost”)–but i don’t know, i’ve never read the latter. i.e., we’re at once jarred by the rending of what has been familiar to us, and calmed by the remainder.
if we’re talking on a purely stylistic level, i’m not sure. i read “carrying the body” by dawn raffel last night, and to me there was a movement of feedback/silence, or something like that, fueled by some kind of pressure in the characters which we do not have access to. instead, we are only given bodies, surfaces, etc. so structurally, again, there is the “noise” and chatter of surfaces, of phenomena, and the silence of what, to the reader, is radically unknowable.
sorry if this does not really address the question at hand, just some thoughts.
what are the distinctions, for you, between “intuitively visceral” and “extremely visceral”? i don’t think they are so distinct.
i think one of the reasons you see this movement–where the calm encounters the violent–so rarely in text form is that it’s sort of always happening on the level of textuality. that is, there’s always this uncanny sense of at once having arrived, and of having been torn away. as such, there is a certain sense in which any given text will always/already be “cut-up”; what burroughs was doing might’ve only been a formality. look at ronald johnson’s “radi os.” it seriously minces up the source material, but what’s preserved is ultimately what was already lost, or something (“paradise lost”)–but i don’t know, i’ve never read the latter. i.e., we’re at once jarred by the rending of what has been familiar to us, and calmed by the remainder.
if we’re talking on a purely stylistic level, i’m not sure. i read “carrying the body” by dawn raffel last night, and to me there was a movement of feedback/silence, or something like that, fueled by some kind of pressure in the characters which we do not have access to. instead, we are only given bodies, surfaces, etc. so structurally, again, there is the “noise” and chatter of surfaces, of phenomena, and the silence of what, to the reader, is radically unknowable.
sorry if this does not really address the question at hand, just some thoughts.
Raffel is a great example. Carrying the Body is so calm, and then suddenly so freaky. And then right back again. That’s exactly what I mean, I think, more than a stylistic form. She manages to be so powerful in that balance, and again it’s one I don’t think I’ve seen very often. Burroughs, you’re right is much more successful in that way as a style than in content.
I think there is a distinction between intuitively and extremely in that with the Sombre film, you basically have no choice but to be razed by it. The sound is sudden and immense, coming out of a period where you are listening hard for something. In writing I think viscerality often comes from intuition more than that kind of effect: you sense the swings, but they do not beat your face.
Or something.
Raffel is a great example. Carrying the Body is so calm, and then suddenly so freaky. And then right back again. That’s exactly what I mean, I think, more than a stylistic form. She manages to be so powerful in that balance, and again it’s one I don’t think I’ve seen very often. Burroughs, you’re right is much more successful in that way as a style than in content.
I think there is a distinction between intuitively and extremely in that with the Sombre film, you basically have no choice but to be razed by it. The sound is sudden and immense, coming out of a period where you are listening hard for something. In writing I think viscerality often comes from intuition more than that kind of effect: you sense the swings, but they do not beat your face.
Or something.
i just a read a story by raffel in noon 8 yesterday that woke me up to her. i will have to check out carrying the body.
i just a read a story by raffel in noon 8 yesterday that woke me up to her. i will have to check out carrying the body.
Somebody should publish another collection of her short fiction too. Oh wait: http://www.dzancbooks.org/store/raffel-adventures.html (sorry for using the forum for a plug). Check out both Carrying the Body and her earlier story collection, Darby, both are wonderful.
Somebody should publish another collection of her short fiction too. Oh wait: http://www.dzancbooks.org/store/raffel-adventures.html (sorry for using the forum for a plug). Check out both Carrying the Body and her earlier story collection, Darby, both are wonderful.
hey darby, i read that story yesterday in noon 8 too, weirdly enough, which compelled me to read her novel. the novel isn’t what i was expecting–at all–but it’s beautiful and somewhat perfect, i think, and was a very moving experience for me.
blake, i see what you mean now re: intuitively v. extremely. no prose fiction really springs to mind as an example. in what sense are we using “intuition” though? oh, wait, i was reading “swings” as actual swings–as a possible example of what we’re talking about–rather than the action of swinging, haha. talk about a lack of intuition. so yeah, i agree. i feel like that happens a lot in, say, dennis cooper (but i might be saying that because i’m reading him right now–further evidence that maybe this is always happening). but i cannot think of anywhere where i’ve been beaten in the face with it, no.
weirdly, the film does not appear to switch in tone when it switches from the “calm” scene to the “extreme” scene. both are presented under the same conditions. this is i think what’s essential to the quiet/loud sensibility, and what differentiates it from, say, a pastiche, or a collage or something. maybe.
hey darby, i read that story yesterday in noon 8 too, weirdly enough, which compelled me to read her novel. the novel isn’t what i was expecting–at all–but it’s beautiful and somewhat perfect, i think, and was a very moving experience for me.
blake, i see what you mean now re: intuitively v. extremely. no prose fiction really springs to mind as an example. in what sense are we using “intuition” though? oh, wait, i was reading “swings” as actual swings–as a possible example of what we’re talking about–rather than the action of swinging, haha. talk about a lack of intuition. so yeah, i agree. i feel like that happens a lot in, say, dennis cooper (but i might be saying that because i’m reading him right now–further evidence that maybe this is always happening). but i cannot think of anywhere where i’ve been beaten in the face with it, no.
weirdly, the film does not appear to switch in tone when it switches from the “calm” scene to the “extreme” scene. both are presented under the same conditions. this is i think what’s essential to the quiet/loud sensibility, and what differentiates it from, say, a pastiche, or a collage or something. maybe.
The entire last 20 minutes or so of La Vie Nouvelle feature similar tactics (intuitively visceral collaged with “extremely” visceral) except amped up 10 fold. seriously intense and incredibly inspiring? i can’t even tell you exactly what happened but it was really. fucking. intense.
The entire last 20 minutes or so of La Vie Nouvelle feature similar tactics (intuitively visceral collaged with “extremely” visceral) except amped up 10 fold. seriously intense and incredibly inspiring? i can’t even tell you exactly what happened but it was really. fucking. intense.
funny, i just watched sombre last week. were we both turned on to it by the same dc post? i thought it was a fascinating film, viscerally stunning. i wasn’t expecting it to turn into a love story at its core which added something extra the usual serial killer thing. friends say his next film “a new life” is even better but that one’s not so easy to track down.
how much music and noise can be added to a page is an excellent question
as for jarring shifts, on a micro-level isaac babel was a master of this in some of his red cavalry stories (walter morrison translations, not more recent botches). from graph to graph he’s constantly shifting tones, often violently, from bureaucratic office-speak to violent lyrical outbursts to placid descriptions to wrenching emotional explosions. but it’s still not the grandly sweeping dislocations achieved by grandrieux.
funny, i just watched sombre last week. were we both turned on to it by the same dc post? i thought it was a fascinating film, viscerally stunning. i wasn’t expecting it to turn into a love story at its core which added something extra the usual serial killer thing. friends say his next film “a new life” is even better but that one’s not so easy to track down.
how much music and noise can be added to a page is an excellent question
as for jarring shifts, on a micro-level isaac babel was a master of this in some of his red cavalry stories (walter morrison translations, not more recent botches). from graph to graph he’s constantly shifting tones, often violently, from bureaucratic office-speak to violent lyrical outbursts to placid descriptions to wrenching emotional explosions. but it’s still not the grandly sweeping dislocations achieved by grandrieux.
Scary.
That montage works on so many levels. Damn.
Scary.
That montage works on so many levels. Damn.
it was totally Dennis’s post on it. had to see after that.
babel is a great one, yes. he condenses a lot of moods in ways it seems like no one else has since then, which is odd.
it was totally Dennis’s post on it. had to see after that.
babel is a great one, yes. he condenses a lot of moods in ways it seems like no one else has since then, which is odd.
definitely agree about babel. but rather than shifting–and i don’t have any babel near me, and i haven’t read him in a while, so i might be wrong–it seems like he tends to express extremely violent, grotesque stuff lyrically. i’m reminded of bakhtin on the grotesque body–that death, decay, and dismemberment are all bound up with life, fertility, and birth, such that the body is a sort of passageway for the material world, repeatedly taking and giving life. i think this idea is intensely tied to our music/noise via text question. namely, in that music and noise are both incorporated in the body of the text, often in the same moments.
in the same way, the lone car driving on some desolate highway is at once familiar and disquieting, because there is a tension set up–we know, don’t we, that there is some countervailing image on the approach? it is not an inherently calming image, though. placed elsewhere in the film, it might be more violent than serene. the screaming children, then, are an interruption, but a very ambivalent one. visually speaking, we should be calmed, or relieved, but because of the audio we are not. it is so effective precisely because of the juxtaposition, etc. etc. so i don’t even know if what’s going on is a “shift” or “swing,” but perhaps instead a series of images appropriated by a certain “tone” or, in terms of fiction, voice.
definitely agree about babel. but rather than shifting–and i don’t have any babel near me, and i haven’t read him in a while, so i might be wrong–it seems like he tends to express extremely violent, grotesque stuff lyrically. i’m reminded of bakhtin on the grotesque body–that death, decay, and dismemberment are all bound up with life, fertility, and birth, such that the body is a sort of passageway for the material world, repeatedly taking and giving life. i think this idea is intensely tied to our music/noise via text question. namely, in that music and noise are both incorporated in the body of the text, often in the same moments.
in the same way, the lone car driving on some desolate highway is at once familiar and disquieting, because there is a tension set up–we know, don’t we, that there is some countervailing image on the approach? it is not an inherently calming image, though. placed elsewhere in the film, it might be more violent than serene. the screaming children, then, are an interruption, but a very ambivalent one. visually speaking, we should be calmed, or relieved, but because of the audio we are not. it is so effective precisely because of the juxtaposition, etc. etc. so i don’t even know if what’s going on is a “shift” or “swing,” but perhaps instead a series of images appropriated by a certain “tone” or, in terms of fiction, voice.
Babel expresses the grotesque lyrically, for sure. But he also shifts gears within the same piece – see “Crossing into Poland” for numerous tonal shifts within a mere two pages.
Babel expresses the grotesque lyrically, for sure. But he also shifts gears within the same piece – see “Crossing into Poland” for numerous tonal shifts within a mere two pages.
ok, i might go check him out from the library and take a look. dude was a genius. my copy of his collected stories has an intro by lionel trilling, and judging by that, his life was fascinating, too.
ok, i might go check him out from the library and take a look. dude was a genius. my copy of his collected stories has an intro by lionel trilling, and judging by that, his life was fascinating, too.