Word: delirium
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Cinema Europe's hero is Abel Gance, who in the 1927 Napoleon harnessed an epic delirium unmatched before or since. "Here," Gance said, "was a new alphabet for the cinema." But with the entry of talking films that year, the language of silents became as obsolescent as Yiddish. Films got chatty, conservative; they still are. Most modern directors don't know Gance's "alphabet." They can barely spell...
Mindy Faber's "Delirium" stood out as the most powerful of the previewed films. When the video opens, Faber's mother, draped in a long black housecoat, is pitching herself against moving cars, attempting suicide. With background music, the scene is almost funny, until the audience slowly understands what they are actually witnessing from Faber's voice-over. The intense opening sets up the video's exploration of female madness in history as both a spectacle and a rebellion. "Delirium" is so visually engaging that images move almost too quickly from the screen. At the same time, Faber doesn...
...family garage falling in on her (possibly) abusive father while neighbors look on. Some clips of the ghost that watched the artist throughout her childhood are appealingly Gothic, but I was less interested in the exploration of the artist's homosexuality and childhood abuse that follows. In contrast to "Delirium," there is no overarching theme to rescue this video from a swamp of tedious personal history. Over a clip of unidentifiable squirming insect life, Stratton's voice introduces the video: "This video is about seduction... This video is about you." Excuse me, but this video is not about me. Later...
Unfortunately for Stones devotees, the feeling that these guys are really far out has disappeared. Where is the haunting space and humming jive of "2000 Lightyears From Home"? Where is the delirium of "Midnight Rambler"? You just can't dance or roar with the new stuff. Dare one suggest that Mick and Keith are too straight and sober these days to truly do justice to their reputation? The creativity and let's-all-blow-this-joint-to-pieces attitude of the Rolling Stones has, woefully, subsided...
...Rock West straight to cable and video. Another outfit picked it up, however, and it is belatedly making its way into a few theaters. It's well worth tracking down, wherever you can find it. For it has the kind of tension and energy -- maybe even a touch of delirium -- that is only a memory in most of today's big studio movies. You just know that no one connected with Red Rock West owns a suit or a tie or knows how to write a self-protective memo...