Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008)

[Elephant]

Birdsong opens in New York on February 25th, at Anthology Film Archives, for a weeklong run. Can't wait.

[zedz]

I've now seen Waiting for Sancho as well and recommend it as an excellent and throught-provoking adjunct to Birdsong. It's a rare making-of that largely occupies the same philosophical space as its parent film. It helps that Serra's cinema is much less about what he's looking at than how he's looking at it. In the documentary he comments that the narrative of his film is little more than a pretext for filming these particular people, and he could just as easily have filmed them shopping for groceries or hanging out at home - or, Peranson's extrapolation, shooting Birdsong. So Waiting for Sancho is also observational, discursive and corporeal.

One of the remarkable things about the filmmaking process revealed by the documentary is how collaborative and improvisational it is. You could watch Birdsong and assume that it was fixed within an inch of its life in the director's mind before a second of footage was shot, but on set Serra seems extremely concerned with leaving his collaborators with lots of room to move (even to the extent of not even looking at the action as it's being filmed, and rarely, it seems, looking through the camera) and drawing inspiration for scenes from what's happening on the shoot and in the shot as well as from what's written in the script.

I'm now seeing a lot more of Pasolini in Serra's approach, even though the end result is quite different (the starting point too: Pasolini is much more textually driven and content-rich, even in his most minimalist works).

[Nothing]

Birdsong is utter garbage. Serra displays some compositional taste and little/nothing else. Every shot is held far too long, for no useful purpose whatsoever other than to provoke / 'challenge' / bore / extend to feature length / impress the easily impressed - and I have nothing against a 'slow' pace (Alonso, Benning, Angelopoulos, etc, can maintain just such a pace whilst in fact injecting cinematic interest and excitement into every frame). The central concept has mould on it (the christmas story via. beckett - how amusing, yawn) and reveals nothing about humanity / the world / life in general, unless you are of a Christian persuasion, perhaps, in which case... well, I won't say it. Myself, if I want to see a fat man walking I'll go and visit my neighbour for an hour and a half.

Simply a very bad student film, truly the emperor's new clothes.

[Nothing]

Nothing, this is a bit unfair - you wrote that the film "reveals nothing about humanity / the world / life in general" but then went on to complain that I wasn't being specific enough? Seriously?! I thought I wrote enough in that thread to justify why I like Birdsong, but perhaps not - would you like another 1000 words or something (perhaps with a section on how citing the 'Bazinian real' implicitly refers to more than than slack editing)?

I doubt I (or anybody else) is going to change your mind, but feel free to continue venting your spleen...

will do...

the sensation and affect of duration within the shot assumes a far more prominent presence

That the viewer can feel the length of the takes is not an inherently positive quality.

Lots more 'cosmic' long shots too. The 9-minute plan-sequence where the Magi trudge towards the horizon, disappear and re-appear atop the next ridge before circling back is extraordinary, and produced nervous/astonished laughter in the audience - the audacity of making us watch this!

It is not a plan-sequence, the camera remains plonked on a tripod (here and throughout the film) and there is no significant adjustment to the composition. They wander aimlessly. It is dull in both action and aesthetic...

A somewhat comparable shot existed in Gallo's original cut of Brown Bunny. On the salt flats, Gallo gets out of his truck, removes his motorcycle, climbs onto his motorcycle and rides away until he has disappeared into the rising heat (this takes approximately 2-3 minutes)... in the same shot, he then rides back again, puts the motorcycle away and returns to his truck. However, the effect of Gallo's shot is very different:
1/ Gallo's shot has a fully conceived intent and structure to it; because of this, the shot has impact, building from the moment at which the motorcycle begins to return, a genuine sense of comedy and anticipation;
2/ This is also the moment at which the shot clicks thematically, bringing up a number of thoughts with a minimum of action - the impossibility of the Hollywood cliche of 'riding away into the horizon'; the impossibility of escaping oneself or one's past; the absurd and cyclical nature of human endeavour in the face of nature's infinity; etc
3/ The composition combined with the lighting conditions combined with the stark shimmering of the salt flats has a genuine visual appeal and interest that helps to sustain the length of the shot; this also genuinely lends the shot the contemplative / phenomological / Bazinian quality that you are ascribing to Serra.
4/ The shot also invokes the intangible pleasure of physical activity in a way not entirely disimilar to Pharon riding his bicycle in L'Humanite.

Of course, Gallo removed all value from this shot when, under intense financial and critical pressure, he sheared it in two for the final Toronto/release version, just one of many horrendous mutilations that really encourages one to see the final cut as a kind of self-mutilation, a collapse of self-confidence, that removed most of the edges and risks that made originally the film so engaging. Brown Bunny is truly the Magnificent Ambersons of the 00s (but that is for another thread...).

Of course, one could still theoretically argue the corner for Serra here - that his lack of meaning, lack of planning, the absence of "conventional" compositional and formal integrity, the absence of aesthetically pleasing lighting, the tedium, the pointlessness - that somehow this anti-cinema he has created is something newer, something unseen, more modern and therefore more advanced - indeed, franco's musings and your dismissal of Delta for using 'conventional arthouse techniques' would seem to lean in this direction (I didn't love Delta either, but I wouldn't dismiss it and I feel that the problems resided in the screenplay and not the technique). In a similar vein, and even more depressing - Jonathan Romney's review of Better Things in S&S this month: he acclaims the film's editing for 'not conforming to the art house cliche of long takes' - as if choping up Dumont-inspired compositions into horrible, televisual, fast-paced Soho-style shot-reverse-shot style montage is preferable and less of a cliche!! And, of course, Romney has long been a Dumont detractor, so this is really just the crowing triumph of the petty bourgeois middlebrow... In any case, returning to Serra, I would suggest that your thinking is clouded by the context. Place amateurish, boring material in the context of Director's Fortnight (or LFF or Palm Springs) and, suddenly, people are 'astonished' - perhaps they should be (at Oliver Pere)... But I'm not looking at the audience reaction, I'm looking for a personal relationship with the material. One could program a whole festival with You Tube entries and this would be 'new' and 'different' too - but interesting? Valuable? Cinematic? I guess I'd rather have 'good' than 'different'.

A question - if this shot were extended to the entire duration of the film, would that be even more 'audacious'? Would that get even closer to the 'philosophical ideal' of the Bazinian real?

The manner in which the central 'event' of the Magi's arrival is filmed is crucial to understanding the film's mode of de-dramatisation: the 3 men simply shuffle in from the bottom-left corner of the frame in long shot - a very cunning suppression of 'high drama' to maintain the illusion of 'reality' (or, the Bazinian real).

Pasolini did something very similar to far greater effect 44 years earlier. Cunning?

Nb. the suggestion that this (entirely predictable) shot carries any kind of emotional impact is frankly unfathomable.

The sequence where the Magi lie amidst the bushes and Lluis 1 (Don), quite clearly uncomfortable, encourages Lluis 2 (Sancho) to shift position (with negligible results) is nothing short of hilarious.

Personally I wasn't laughing, but I guess humour is subjective. If you're really trying to argue for the film as a comedy I'd perhaps be more receptive.

Serra devotes huge slabs of time to their shape, gestures and rhythm - this is deeply corporeal cinema. I could probably watch them fall over, roll down hills or flail about in water for hours.

Returning to the Alonso thread, apologies, but this is bordering into either fanboyism or fetishism.... Casting a fat man and an old man = "deeply corporeal cinema"?? You could watch them for hours? Why not just pay a fat guy to roll down a hill and flail about in water in front of you? All tastes catered for. Pleasure guaranteed.

But, seriously, again, this comes back to the question of the gaze. When Serra looks, he just looks. And he looks for loooong time.... Unlike Alonso, to whom you made a comparison, who makes a great effort to ensure that every camera position, every camera movement, every blocked action, every frame is in the right place. Serra's gaze is much closer to Herzog, I think, fairly unadorned, a belief in 'truth' of things, in placing 'truth' in front of the camera - the difference being, again, that Herzog has a genuine filmmaker's sensibility - he might equally show us a fat man flailing in the water or rolling down a hill, but he would know how long to hold the shot and he would place the shot into a wider context; he also has an inate sense for homing in on unusual and striking subjects that can transcend his lack of form.

both films are full of dilatory wandering, but there is a much keener sense of purpose here.

Yes, the three kings must find the baby jesus and offer up their gifts... there is indeed as much purpose and excitement as... a primary school nativity play.

quite a bit of effort is required to keep it in focus. This means that the rest of the frame becomes strangely 'negative' (or 'de-activated') when focussing on the Magi, and (whilst zoning in and out) I started to create graphic patterns of the entire image that weren't quite there but might well have been.

I saw this on a fairly large screen on another continent and didn't experience this effect at all (nor were the Magi ever 'tiny dots' during the afforementioned 9 minute shot). Perhaps the bulb at the BFI Southbank was in need of replacing?

[foggy eyes]

Nothing, thanks - underneath the barely-contained vitriol, there's a lot to think about here.

That the viewer can feel the length of the takes is not an inherently positive quality.

Did I say it was?

It is not a plan-sequence, the camera remains plonked on a tripod (here and throughout the film) and there is no significant adjustment to the composition.

It is. Plan-sequence = sequence shot. A sequence in a shot (which doesn't have to involve sustained camera movement). But, as you don't consider the event itself to comprise a sequence, I can understand why you're arguing the point.

Pasolini did something very similar to far greater effect 44 years earlier. Cunning?

Noted. Rossellini was also experimenting with similar (albeit neorealist) techniques 58 years earlier, so I certainly wouldn't suggest that Serra emerged from a vacuum!

Serra's gaze is much closer to Herzog, I think, fairly unadorned, a belief in 'truth' of things, in placing 'truth' in front of the camera

And therein (in a way) lies the Bazinian ideal...

I genuinely appreciate your thoughts, but have a creeping feeling that we could shout at each other all day like this and not get anywhere!

[Nothing]

But, of course, Herzog's is an ecstatic truth.

[foggy eyes]

Hoberman on Birdsong.

Ryland Walker Knight on both Birdsong & Waiting for Sancho.

[foggy eyes]

Albert Serra Interviewed - Senses of Cinema

[Dadapass]

It might be too early to ask but is there any news on a DVD release?
It would be nice to see it paired with Waiting for Sancho.

[Dadapass]

Intermedio will be releasing a boxset that will include Honour of the Knights, Birdsong, and Waiting for Sancho. Plus a book by Albert Serra.

[Guido]

Am I right to assume that this Intermedio set will be devoid of subs?

Edit: Never mind. Looks like the films will be subbed in both English and French, but not the supplements.

[zedz]

That set was supposed to be out a couple of months ago - has anybody seen a copy?

(And nice avatar, Guido! Has that film been released on DVD anywhere yet?)

[ola t]

has anybody seen a copy?

Yes, mine arrived today. One thing worth clarifying, since I thought Intermedio's specs were a bit unclear: there are no English (or French) subtitles on Waiting for Sancho.

[Peacock]

Serra's next feature film, which he's about to begin shooting, will be mixing the story of Dracula with that of Casanova.
I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive; but google translate that article from Catalan to English and have a read... still sounds in keeping with his previous films.


Also, anyone found anywhere cheap to buy that Intermedio boxset? Cheapest I could find it shipped to the UK was 51 euros...

[zedz]

Of the various projects he had in the works a couple of years ago, this sounded like the least adventurous but probably easiest to get funded: another 'canonical tale a la Serra' project. Still, if it gets him a step closer to the one I really want to see, more power to him.

[Anhedionisiac]

Speaking as a fellow fan of Serra's work, you've got me intrigued. Which one's the one that you really want to see?

[TheDoman]

has anybody seen a copy?

Yes, mine arrived today. One thing worth clarifying, since I thought Intermedio's specs were a bit unclear: there are no English (or French) subtitles on Waiting for Sancho.

Thanks for the information on this. I notice that IMDB lists the languages spoken as: Catalan | Spanish | English | Hebrew

How much of the dialogue is not English? I'm wondering how much you would miss out on, by only understanding the English passages.

Cheers

[Peacock]

Very little of the film is in english, the majority is Catalan. Peranson (the director) speaks English and Hebrew but he is a silent observer throughout his filming. Basically he films the pre-production and shooting of Birdsong so you have most of the actors speaking Catalan and the director as well.

That said I don't speak any Catalan or Spanish and understood what was going on most of the time. It's a fascinating little documentary.


One thing I'll say about the Intermedio set which annoys me though is that Birdsong is 1.66:1 in a 1.33:1 frame.. so it's a pretty small image unless you zoom, and upon zooming the quality of course drops quite a bit making it look like it was shot in a lower quality format than Honour of the Knights when in fact it was shot in HD while that film was SD....

[charlesboyer]

Albert Serra wins Locarno’s Top Prize

[shaky]

I accidentally posted this on the Lisandro Alonso thread earlier: Has anyone had a chance to look at this Albert Serra Capricci set from France?

I know from Peacock that BIRDSONG is letterboxed into a 4/3 image in the Intermedio set. Perhaps this is not the case for the more recent French set.

(This post might be more suitable for the Capricci thread; I'll move it to there if the administrators wish me to)

[zedz]

Is the second film in that Capricci set Serra's mammoth Correspondance(s) contribution?

In other Serra news, I see that he's contributed introductions to the films in Intermedio's Hong Sang-soo box set (no English subs). (Hong's his favourite contemporary director.)

[shaky]

Yes it is, zedz. Lord Worked Wonders in Me is also available in that 5 disc Correspondences set which I'm sure you all know about.

I emailed Capricci about their Serra set two weeks ago and haven't heard back. Nevertheless, I went ahead and purchased it. It's a gamble(viewing this movie letterboxed would be horrible), but I'm hoping for the best. I'll post an update once the set arrives.

[shaky]

The Capricci edition of BIRDSONG is, in fact, letterboxed.

[FerdinandGriffon]

In other Serra news, I see that he's contributed introductions to the films in Intermedio's Hong Sang-soo box set (no English subs). (Hong's his favourite contemporary director.)

God, I'd love to see those. I wonder if there's any way to get ahold of transcripts...