(International Forum)
There are films which leave you for the
first moments after the screening speechless. Just a
few hours after I have seen a film like I used to be Darker by
Mathew Porterfield, I will fail to articulate in words what I have
seen and what I have experienced. It is like with films by Eric
Rohmer, Mikio Naruse, some films by Rufolf Thome or Yasujiro Ozu,
Film in which seemingly very few happens but the mind is so full of
images, impressions – sometimes only short moments.
First of all you have to take home all
these impressions in your mind, impressions which are not yet
translated into terms, words , not to mention opinions.
Films like I used to be Darker
seem to be made by itself.
The plot of this film seems nothing
else than a set up of situations on which the characters have to
react , have to live
with it.
The situation is about this: A young
Irish Girl (Taryn), stranded in America visits her aunt Kim and her
cousin Abby in Baltimore. But she drops just in when Kim is in the
process of a separation from her husband Ned.
I do not really “know” what the
persons feel. There are hints.
Abby does n´t talk with her mother Kim
(a folk singer) who moved out and lives together with members of her
band. Taryn is probably disturbed because she is a runaway and her
only family in this strange country is her aunt who is just separated
and her cousin.
These hints, the film gives us about its
characters are like cinematic Haikus.
In one scene Ned, the husband suffering
under the separation from Kim is singing alone an elegy on his lost
love. Later he smashes his guitar in anger.
Kim who suffers because she feels
rejected by her daughter gives a concert with her band. The song she performs is called “American Child” and it is sung (or at least I imagine) with a special
fervency like she put all her emotions in this song.
How do I describe this moment without
being able to sing the song, Kim has sung?
Abby, Ned´s and Kim´s daughter finds
at the internet an old video from her father, performing a folk song
with a harmonica. In this old video he can hardly be recognized as
the Ned of the present.
When Taryn and Kim are talking about
Taryn´s mother (Kim´s sister who”was a punk”) we get small
hints of the history of the characters, not enough to put the finger
on but more than enough to imagine or to dream yourself in the world
this films offers. When Taryn and Kim open an old foto album, we are not seeing all the old pictures Taryn and Kim see.
Did I say, almost nothing happened in
this film? Maybe I am totally wrong and there is happening too much
in this 90 minutes. I didn´t realize it at the first moment neither
did I realize it just after the screening. Just a few hours later, my
head is still full of all these small but wonderful moments the films
has given to me.
Sometimes you just need a Haiku and you
feel that the world is rotating around itself and around the sun.
I remember the rooms the characters
occupied and I remember even the cat in Kim´s house. We see the cat
very seldom but it is always there. A lot of things about the
characters and the world they live in we do not know, we just feel it
is all there. Sometimes we feel that strange presence through hints,
sometimes we feel that it is hidden in the memories of these
characters, hidden in their sorrow their anger their tenderness.
At the end, Kim is alone , plays her
guitar and sings the song “These days..”
A magic moment which evokes in me
again one of these “Haiku-scenes” in the films by Yasujiro Ozu.
We are aware that this wonderful will finish without answering all
our questions.
Oh, these films.
The last moment with Kim singing a song
just for herself and giving us the privilege to share it with us. How shall I describe it without being able to sing this song?
The compacted 90 minutes of this film
just begin to unfold itself. The more I recall certain moments of
this wonderful piece of cinema in my mind, the more beauty I
discover.
I am not yet finished with this film, I
just got a hint that I am in love with it.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Next screenings:
Delphi: 08.02 21.30
Cinestar 8: 09.02, 13.30
Cubix 9: 10.02, 22.45
fsk: 13.02, 18.30
Cinestar 8: 17.02, 21.30
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