Manjeet S. Gill called his film openly
as a film “inspired by the films by Hou Hsiao Hsien”. Which
reminds me in the long obsession I had in the Nineties for his films,
especially his trilogy and until his last and very underrated
masterpiece Kohi Jikou (Cafe Lumiere).
And especially Kohi Jikou, Hous homage
to Yasujiro Ozu is a good key to Gills film.
How to live in the world of images of a
director one admirers? Hous Ozu-Hommage has nothing to do with just
quotations of images, it was a love declaration of a director to
another despite all differences and from an own personal perspective.
If Hou as a Taiwanese or Manjeet S. Gill as a british with Indian
roots, both films have an own unique way od revealing their
admiration for Ozu and respectively Hou.
There is also another more recent film
which comes to my mind, the Edward Hopper-Homage , Shirley-Visions of
reality by Austrian Gustav Deutsch whose films is divided in 13
scenes all based on a certain painting by Hopper. Manjeet S. Gills
long takes are not based on easy recognizable moments from the films
by Hou Hsiao Hsien but his it also does not stop at pure admiration
and transforms influences into an explicit personal and vital
cinematic kind.
At the first sight, very few happens in
the long sequences, the film is built of. But very soon the film
reveals itself as a very tight meditation of both, fragments of human
lives and cinematic images.
The prologue which looks like an
audition shows two of the main characters Kim and Rod introducing
themselves. Even though the film is fictive I have to think what
German Rudolf Thome once said about his films as “documentaries
where we watch actors working”.
The story is rather a situation which
unfolds itself from scene to scene. Rod, a man of Indian origins
quits his job and studies photography while his wife earns now alone
their living. During classes he meets a younger German students whose
enthusiasm seems to be an inspiration for him who tries to escape his
triste every day life as an adult and his obligations in family
traditions and expectations others have in him.
Rod and Kim work together on their
photos and meet more and more often for dinners and drinks. The film
is not only structured in long and almost entirely static sequences
but as well in single situations which keep its own independence from
the plot – which is probably another affinity to the films by Hou
and last but not least by Ozu.This sequences, very often separated
from each other by long fade outs and black leader. The more we find
orientation in these composition of sequences the more we are enabled
to connect and re-edit the film in our imagination.
One of the layers of the film is
reflected near the end: The films is among many other things as well
about making images, collect and select them and bring it in order
like Kim and Rod do for their exhibition.
Like Ozu and Hou, the connection
between the sequences – even though a result of the director´s
decision – seems to happen by itself. It is a bit like André Bazin
once wrote about a film by Jean Renoir, that “we feel for moments a
fleeting and temporary privilege to see the reality of the things.
That life is not one story but a whole
universe of them we could see in Ozu´s most beautiful film Bakushu,
and idea which stayed with me since a long time. The single little
stories the sequences of Coffee in Winter are telling remain in my
memory. One of these moments is a seeming banal sequence . Hema and
Rod are sitting on the couch, side by side. The spectator´s point of
view is strange. We see them in front of us, but they are sitting and
we are standing like guests who are not yet allowed to take a seat.
Another moment is as subtle as intense. One night, Rod comes home
late at night. His wife is already sleeping. He sits on the bed and
looks at his sleeping wife – for a very long time. As cinema can
not reveal what a person thinks we at least get an idea that
he is reflecting about something which moved him without being able
to put the finger on that. A strange and touching moment.
When he talks with Kim, they exchange
experiences, family stories, attitudes and decisions made or not made
by cultural conditions. Sometimes it seems to me Rod moves between
his home and his excursions with Kim like a spectator between his
every day life and the longing and promises evoked by a film. These
two poles seem to me also two very elementary poles in Cinema at all.
As soon as one gets adapted to the slow
pace of the film and the long sequences, the film seem to be filled
with fleeting moments of beauty, traces of happiness. A lot of
farewells between Kim and Rod take place at bus stations or tram
stations. A tram departs and people are again separated. Each of them
has to return to their own lives.
That remembers me in Ozu´s wonderful
swan song Samma no aji where the little escapes of a lonely widows ends always
again in his house and his every day life.
Finally, when Rod and Kim watch their
photos and select them for the exhibition, we see finally the images
they made in a frame, hanging on a wall. They seem to be very
engrossed and even more fleeting moments now conserved. When they
look at them, they look at fragments of a lost world.
The last shot we see them from behind,
drinking coffee and watching at a big building like watching at a big
screen.
It is not our business anymore if Rod
and Kim are lovers or not. As we witnessed fragments from their life
for a limited time we have to get back to our own business. The last
shot reveals the very special intense of how Hou is leaving his
films, this caesura between between a film as images of fragments of
life to our own.
Coffee in Winter brings a lot together,
a homage to Hou Hsiao Hsien and finally a love declaration for
Cinema. But as love is a very personal affair, this film is much more
than a homage, a personal reflection incarnated in a strange and
beautiful cinematic poem.
Rüdiger Tomczak
More about Manjeet S. Gill and the Black Country Cinema
No comments:
Post a Comment