Film art rises as night falls over Europe
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"Film grammar" -- the accepted notions of editing and framing that impart meaning to images -- is supposed to help the filmmaker tell the story. However, the moviegoing experience has become so controlled that audiences now tend to feel uncomfortable when the "syntax" isn't what they expect.

For this reason, the art film is dying because viewers are increasingly less tolerant of methods that challenge these received notions. Hollywood is the usual culprit, with its dependence on scores and reaction shots to provoke specific responses. Even "indie style" has its own prescribed subset of narrative signifiers. In the end, the death of the art film can be interpreted as the audience refusing to give something back to the film. Moviegoing has become the ultimate passive pastime.

German filmmaker Fred Kelemen understands this dilemma at a basic level. "All art is a form of manipulation," he says. "It's up to the audience to see things in their proper place, but if they miss it, well, that's life."

Life at its most elemental is the theme of Kelemen's art. In town for the Tokyo International Film Festival, where his most recent film, "Nightfall (Abendland)," was being shown in competition and his previous film, "Frost," was being screened as part of the Cinema Prism program, the 35-year-old Berlin native discussed his craft in the noisy coffee shop of the Capitol Tokyu Hotel.

Dressed (unsurprisingly) in black, with a shock of blonde hair careening across his forehead, Kelemen hunched over his Coke and seemed slightly put off at the usual query about "influences." He mumbled something about "Red Desert" and then said, "I'm more influenced by life. My purpose is to find an adequate language that allows me to transfer life itself to the screen."

In terms of verbal language, "Frost," which won the International Critic's Prize at the 1998 Rotterdam Film Festival, is notable for its paucity of dialogue: three hours and 20 minutes of empty, gray, very cold vistas. "Nightfall" as well, which is set in an urban environment, is relatively free of verbiage. "We don't really talk much in real life," he told a festival audience at Shibuya Joy Cinema. "Most movies are all talk, but in life there's much more silence."

"Nightfall" chronicles a single long night for two people whose relationship has hit a wall. Anton and Leni go their separate ways when Anton's implacable reticence provokes Leni's need for a more responsive human connection.

"These people are struggling with a love that's no longer obvious," Kelemen explains. "They are surrounded by a society that makes it difficult for them to understand their emotions."

As the two move separately through a blasted landscape of dingy bars, dirty streets and industrial graveyards located somewhere in eastern Germany near the Polish border, they each confront their demons in frightening ways. Leni, in her desire to rid herself of Anton's numbing influence, goes through a series of more-or-less debasing sexual encounters.

Although Kelemen's mise en scene is ostensibly naturalistic, his methods create an enveloping atmosphere. His most striking means of accomplishing this is with lengthy one-shot scenes punctuated by video inserts, usually of closeups of faces. Viewers are essentially forced to dwell in the same space with these people and share whatever it is they are feeling, an experience that many people will find uncomfortable.

"Our lives are not filled with action," Kelemen says. "They're mostly filled with waiting. What's the point of always cutting from one action-filled scene to another? The time between activities is just as important."

Sound is also important. While the camera lingers on a tableau, the setting's ambience becomes almost cacophonous. "When you're in Leni and Anton's flat, you hear noises of industry but you don't see any industry. It makes the flat seem sadder, because you get a sense of where they're living."

These elements give Kelemen's films a pronounced sense of place -- not a place we are necessarily familiar with, but one that we recognize in its own completeness. Like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Sokurov, "Nightfall" seems to exist as its own world, a place that feels unique yet comprehensible. The movie forces viewers to reflect on its images.

"You can't just reduce an image to its information," the director says, elaborating on his desire to produce "emotional messages" rather than stories. "To do that you need time, long shots. Time transforms everything, and eventually you feel the film looking back at you."

Kelemen's intentions reminded me of Dogma 95, the manifesto signed by several Danish filmmakers who pledged to avoid all cinematic gimmicks -- scores, artificial lighting, constructed sets -- in order to create movies that were closer to reality.

"My first film, 'Fate,' was a Dogma film, even though there was no Dogma yet," he says. "It was handheld, video, real locations, only natural lighting. But we don't need Dogma. We live in a world filled with dogma. I have a problem with an antisystem that is itself a system."

He smiles and adds, "But it's a good marketing strategy. It calls attention to Danish filmmakers, who were ignored before."

He himself is not involved with marketing his films, and admits that selling them is a chore. (None are yet slated for release in Japan.) He's adamant that the current indifference to art films has been brought about by middlemen, industry people who stand between filmmakers and their potential audience.

"They always differentiate between commercial films and what they call 'difficult' films. Why are they difficult? Why can't they just be different?

Cinema is like a garden. If all you grew were one kind of flower it would be very boring, and after a while it would all die and turn into a desert. It's the same with culture.

What are we afraid of?"

Philip Brasor, The Japan Times, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999

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