Poetics of Cinema 2

by Raúl Ruiz

"Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my Poetics of Cinema . Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. Poetics of Cinema, 1 had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today is rather more of a consolatio philosophica . However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism." Following his research in Poetics of Cinema, 1 on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Ruiz makes an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing and conceiving the image. 'Light, more light,' were Goethe's last words as he died. 'Less light, less light,' Orson Welles cried repeatedly on a set--the one and only time I saw him. In today's cinema (and in today's world) there is too much light. It is time to return to the shadows. So, about turn! And back to the caverns!"

Genres: Film

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino (25 July 1941 – 19 August 2011) was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher whose work is best known in France. He directed more than 100 films.

Reviews

[Zadignose]

Ruiz is an enchanting mystic. He is a philosopher, artist, and mesmerist (maybe not literally... or maybe, yes, literally). He communicates some awesome, inspiring ideas via metaphor, for which rhetorical-tactic he occasionally apologizes:

Often, and at times immodestly, I have made use of metaphors in order to approach intuitively certain ideas; many of which could best be described as images and half-glimpsed visions. I hope that among them it is the angelic smile rather than the sardonic irony or the biting impetuousness that has the upper hand.

'Metaphor' is a word that has a bad reputation among theorists. To use it implies that one does not have clear ideas, and in that case, the best thing to do is to remain silent. That may be so and I regret it. Yet, in the present state of the arts: does anyone have clear ideas?

Yes, Ruiz is a deeply thoughtful man and a theorist, a clown and a nose-tweaker, and he may be half-dervish-half-lunatic, unless all dervishes are lunatics, in which case he's all-lunatic.

Any reasonable reader will appreciate that these intuitions are rather more akin to feelings than general ideas. These feelings approximate emotions such as fear, vertigo, anger and adoration. In fact, they are closer to mysticism than to a philosophy of art.

In any event his book can teach a lot, at least assuming one can puzzle out at least a few of its implied meanings, and I should probably study it over and over again until I've memorized it. In looking back and reviewing passages I find they often seem more lucid than I imagined them to be when first struggling with them. But perhaps they've changed. Certainly Ruiz would encourage me to believe in that possibility.

... a film is valid, aesthetically valid, insofar as the film views the spectator as much as the spectator views the film.

... A theatre director who had made a film and who could not overcome his surprise at how different cinema could be from theatre said to me: "The worst is the ineluctable aspect of film." In each sequence, the image cannot change; there can be no modification or accident. I replied that in my experience, I had come across films that after having seen a dozen times would start changing, and that by the third or fourth viewing I had had the impression that the film was looking at me. Like the sea looking at the old man, like the steam engine looking at Malcolm de Chazal. That I knew people who after many viewings had reached the point where they would start failing to recognise the film, or perhaps, it was the film that had ceased to recognize them and was now leaving. Friendly films, vicious films. Friends and foes.

Here is my own theoretical fiction: in the waking dream that is our receiving the film, there is a counterpart; we start projecting another film on the film. I have said to project and that seems apt. Images that leave me and are superimposed on the film iself, such that the double film--as in the double vision of Breton traditions--becomes protean, filled with palpitations, as if breathing.

I wonder, if I made a list of all the books and authors referenced within this book, whether that list might magically turn out to be longer than the book itself. An experiment worth trying.

I recommend that Ruiz's Poetics be read alongside Shih T'ao's Enlightening Remarks On Painting to gain new and unexpected insights into aesthetics and the arts generally, though it will be your own personal journey that may leave you stranded on far distant shores from the one I've found myself grounded on. I expect together they contain metaphorical lessons that can be extended to any aesthetic endeavor, including writing of course, as each book is itself a literary-aesthetic accomplishment.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow I do love Ruiz even though I can't understand him.

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charmante partie deux.

[Gianni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb analysis and narrative of his views and approach to cinema