For Nitesh Rohit
When I saw this film, one
of my first thoughts which came into my mind was a memory in a series of dreams I
had long time ago after the impact my favorite film by Yasujiro Ozu,
Bakushu had on me. These were dreams about buildings and rooms where
I felt safe with strange connections between private rooms and public
rooms where I was connected with people. Another thought was a memory
when I wrote about Ozu´s last film Samma no aji and my desparate try
to find an order in my chaotic admiration for this film. I made a
simple list of all the rooms; living rooms, bars, restaurants or
offices where the film takes place. That revealed for me that except his
famous establishing shots and very few open air scenes, almost each
scene of the film could be identified with a certain room, some of
his rooms/scenes appeared like Leitmotivs and most of the rooms were
connected with a certain emotion of the characters. I think it was
the first time I felt that films can be built like imagined
buildings. Even though I can´t say I am an expert for architecture,
I felt comfortable with talking about an “architecture of a film”.
The Wounded Brick is on the surface a
documentary on architecture and urban planning. Several interviews
with architects and a social scientist from Berlin appear but also
interviews with Italians who lost their home during the earthquake in
2009. Now they live in provisional domiciles. Some of them return to
their damaged homes in an old Italian town. It is clear that they do
not just miss their property but a whole social life which was
connected with these houses. More and more the film turns into a
kaleidoscope of interesting thoughts and ideas how architecture can
be used for the life quality of the people and fragments of stories
from people who have lived in their own houses. How especially the
victims are telling about their now destroyed or at least heavily
damaged homes, these rooms become rooms of life time, connected with
memories. If Proust defines human memories as “beings of time”,
the film by Sue-Alice Okukubo and Eduard Zorzenoni define them as
“rooms of time”.
The interviews with the
architects and the German social scientist are filmed in static
shots. At the second viewing of this film I discovered a subtle but
strange relationship between these people and the rooms they are
living in, if private rooms or their offices. One of them, an old
Austrian architect sits on a very huge couch and he talks mostly on
projects he once worked on. Another architects appears in his living
room which is flooded by light through big windows. He is framed
between two mighty statues. As the Austrian architect seems a bit lost
on his big couch, even fragile, this other man seems bold in this
room he probably designed himself. The German social scientist who
tells about the history of urban planning in the parts of former
separated Berlin is framed by book shelves, a lot of paper work and
even a printer is visible. He who himself is a living archive of the
social history of urban planning is in a strange harmony with the
room and the things which surround him. One Italian architect appears
on the street. All of them are full of knowledge but also of ideas
and visions how to make architecture more human and not only in the
interests of politic and capitalism.
There is an Italian
architect and activist. His office is small, his desk almost tiny. He
seems to be pushed aside in this narrow room and this room is almost
a contrast to his ideas and visions to make architecture for the
people and his plea for the right of the people to create their own
living space.
Between all these
interviews, there are interwoven images of landscapes, parts of
nature sometimes with slight traces of human existence. If I remember
correct there was as well an image where nature almost recaptured a
ruin. Another moment shows rocks. With a little bit of imagination we
can recognize a cave, the archaic form of human dwellings.
A hint to the beauty of
this film can be found in an interview with an architect from
Frankfurt who always pleas for creating a living space for people
more playful instead of reducing architecture only on the functional
aspect. As the film reveals the problems of architecture to remain
independent from the interests of a capitalistic order or certain
politicians there is a lot we immediately recognize, especially if
you live in a European metropolis. But the film always opens a space
for alternatives even if they exist often only in dreams, visions
ideas or projects rejected by the political and economic powers. As
the worldwide tendency in urban planning is more or less a
destruction of social lives for the interest of money and politic, the
film makes a sharp difference between natural disasters and
economical and political intended destruction.
I remember a scene which
has the quality of a heavy melancholic dream. A man enters an old
Italian town which was heavily damaged by the earthquake. It is
locked and it seems to be a forbidden place now. We see a lot of
scaffolds backing the old and damaged buildings. The man is alone on
the way home to his damaged house. This could be an opening
for a post-apocalyptic fiction film. It is also one of the many fragments of
human stories the film offers. The man is mourning about the loss of
his home but he shows as well a strong and defiant will to recover
this loss. This is not only a great visual moment but also another
hint for the spirit of this film.
Every film seems to be
constructed like a building and to use another time my analogy
between Ozu and The Wounded Brick, this film also looks on the
surface like a very rigorous construction but as it proceeds it is
filled with human emotions. A film is like the rooms we live in, it
is not for consumption but for living in. How the rooms we call our
home is filled with memories, encounter , our whole social and
individual life, The Wounded Brick offers a lot of fragments of
stories and emotions.
If one is affected by how
urban planning is realized today, one will recognize a lot of these
problems in this film. But even in a formal cinematic way The Wounded
Brick by Sue-Alice Okukubo and Eduard Zorzenoni is an exellent
example that cinema is more than revealing the mostly dark sides of
the world we live in but also offering an attitude to this world.
The Wounded Brick is a film you can literally indwell.
The Wounded Brick is a film you can literally indwell.
Rüdiger Tomczak
The film is not only
independently produced but also distributed. It will be screened in
the next weeks and months in some film theatres in Germany or
Austria. For more information please follow this Link.
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