Dimensions of The Mask

This is where previous posts on this blog and the world of The Mask conjoin in an analytical look into the use 3-D in cinema. I am of the belief that stereoscopic cinema (3-D) is like a circus coming to town. It’s a novelty. If the circus is always in town the excitement it generates goes away. So I’m always looking to find films that utilize 3-D, not just as an ad-on but as something integral to their being.

Today Hollywood treats 3-D (as they have in the previous 3-D eras of the 50‘s and 80‘s) as a value added effect. In an attempt to combat illegal downloading and VOD (in the 50’s it was television and by the 80’s home video and cable were the threat), Hollywood is hoping that digital 3-D will bring people back to the theatre and their old model of doing business will continue as it did before. But things change, as they did in the previous eras.

It’s the art-house masters that are turning to 3-D as an artistic extension of their work. It’s not an accident that these once great film makers have almost abandoned narrative film for documentary. Directors like Warner Herzog and Wim Wenders have used 3-D to simulate the real world in place of the reel world. In The Cave of Forgotten Dreams Hetzog used the stereoscopic technique to add volume to the curvature of the rocks on which the oldest know human artwork exists. Wenders, in turn in Pina, uses 3-D to simulate the experience of Pina Bausch’s unique dance choreography in a way that no other form of visual documentation can.

But these cinema artists are turning to 3-D to simulate reality while director Julian Roffman does something quite different in The Mask. Sure, his movie uses 3-D as a gimmick to get audiences out to the theatre, but within the context of the film the 3-D serves a different purpose. The effect is not used to represent reality but to represent the subconscious, the protagonist’s, Dr.Barnes, darkest nightmares. Roffman understood that 3-D is an illusion, that while it cannot truly represent reality, it can pull the viewer into something immersive that both represents reality but is very much removed from the real world. Much like dreams and hallucinations, the fodder of the 3-D sequences used in The Mask.

I’m just scratching the surface here. But these thoughts do lead me to the hope that this 3-D era continues so that artists and filmmakers can begin to explore the artistic potential of stereo cinema and that it can evolve. The previous eras have been to short for real exploration of 3-D’s potential to be realized beyond the “circus effect”.

NOTES: I’d like to credit Dan Symmes for the circus analogy. He was the first I’d heard to use it and it rings true to me.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: A Review

As promised here is my review, scribed in haste, from the second screening of Cave of Forgotten Dreams at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.

Warner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is less of a documentary that a meditation of the filmmaker’s thoughts and impressions of the Paleolithic paintings found in the darkness of the Chauvet Caves. But, should we expect anything else from Herzog?

Located in Southern France, the caves of Chauvet contain the oldest cave paintings known to man, painted over 30,000 years ago. Due to the age and fragility of the artwork and artifacts found in the cave, Herzog and his small crew were limited to six days of shooting in the caves and only allowed 4 hours per day.

The result is much introspective narration, delivered by Herzog, over long meditative shots of the cave walls’ rudimentary artwork photographed in three dimensions. As a result Cave of Forgotten Dreams is not a landmark moment for the 3-D documentary film, (after all IMAX 3-D has been showcasing stereoscopic cinema for decades), but it’s one of the first 3-D films that feels like cinema verite in 3-D. For fans of Herzog’s documentary films, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a real treat, but more information about the Chauvet caves can be found on its wikipedia entry then in the film.

Firstly what’s wrong with the film, from a stereoscopic point-of-view. A large number of scenes are presented in converted 3-D, pseudo 3-D or just plan technically poor 3-D. Many of these, such as Herzog and his crew’s first walk through of the cave (a scouting of the cave done before the 3-D cameras were ever involved), could have and should have been left alone and played flat. Much of the converted 3-D featuring humans in the cave is done with very loose matte lines creating a cut-out collage quality to it. In one dizzying scene, as the crew climb to the mouth of the caves, the camera man lets the run as he climbs the steep path. The resulting shot is sky and treetops. The resulting stereoscopic image is a tunnel built in flat layers, with as little dimensional realism to it as a magic eye image. (This section is so abstract and artificial that I chalk it up to Herzog having some optical fun with 3-D).

An often used painting of horses within the film.

However, when the true 3-D is used it’s a thing of beauty. After seeing the Paleolithic paintings on the curves and folds of the cave rock in 3 dimensions one can hardly imagine the images in flat.  Nor would a 2 dimensional image of the cave art represent it in anyway as powerful as presented in 3 dimensions. Herzog’s vision to shoot these images in 3-D was definately the right decision.

This is a rare flat image that represents the depth of the cave paintings in Chauvet.

There are indeed other moments that showcase the 3-D process. A scientist who demonstrates spear throwing feels like it may have been included in the film for it’s 3-D imagery (with a backdrop of vineyards) and one wishes Herzog had been more whimsical with the staging, encouraging the man to point the arrow point further into the camera.

I hoped for something stronger in the 3-D imagery of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, however Herzog is no real fan of 3-D films so it’s not that surprising that his one time venture into the process would come up a little short. It’s film-makers like Arch Obler or (shutter) James Cameron who had a lifetime investment in stereoscopic cinema who are the filmmakers to look to expanding the techniques of stereoscopic filmmaking.

Postscript.  
Nuclear albino alligator offspring.  
Herzog: “perhaps they are splitting off into their own doppelgangers”.
The 3-d cinematography as well as Herzog’s narration gets a little trippy here, shooting swimming albino alligators so that we can see them simultaneously under and above the water.  The water’s refraction creates a M.C. Esher type of optical illusion in 3-d, reflecting (so to speak) the doppelganger nature of the alligators. In real life our brain simply doesn’t interpret the hyperstereo image the way it is presented in this scene and we are presented with a visual puzzle that is close to the heart of Herzog’s work.

MORE FROM HERZOG

Apparently Monday's inaugural screening of Werner Herzog's 3-D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams ran with a small hiccup. The air conditioners were turned on in the new TIFF Bell Lightbox screening facilities and shutdown the power. Luckily the power was quickly restored and the audience was able to enjoy the rest of the film.


Coincidently last year's TIFF premiere screening of Joe Dante's 3-D film The Hole experienced a similar setback. The fire alarm sounded as the film entered it's 3rd act. But that audience was not as lucky as Monday's as the entire auditorium was shortly evacuated. As a testament to either the power of Dante's story telling or the loyalty of a Festival patron, many of the audience had to be herded out of the theatre, watching the film from the isles while the alarm blared over the soundtrack. I have to admit, I was one of those patrons.


I promise reviews of both films. The review for Cave of Forgotten Dreams will come shortly after I see it on Saturday. I'd like to try a view The Hole in it's entirety before I review it. Still hoping to get to it this week. After all what is a Cave really but a big Hole?


If you're interested in Herzog and his film, here's a link to a CBC interview with the man about Monday screening.


HERZOG IN TORONTO

HERZOG IN 3-D

It’s September and in Toronto that means it’s time for the Toronto International Film Festival. In eleven days TIFF will present around 300 films from around the world. Last year marked the first time a 3 dimensional film screened at the festival, Joe Dante’s The Hole. I was there last year and I’ll give you my biased first person review of the screening later this week.


This year TIFF is presenting another 3-D feature documentary, this time by the enigma that is Werner Herzog. In The Cave of Forgotten Dreams takes us to the Chauvet caves of southern France, which contain the oldest known cave paintings to modern man, over 30,000 years.

I sure hope we won't be watching Herzog's new film through glasses red and blue. Though I did hear that I'll be treated to a mostly french language Goddard Filme Socialism with minimal english subtitles.

Long time 3-D detractor and film critic Roger Ebert (who until recently continued to insist that Hollywood’s 50’s films were viewed through red and blue anaglyph glasses –they weren’t, the glasses had polarized glasses, much like many of our current 3-D spectacles do) had this to say about the film in his otherwise 3-D damning article in Newsweek.


“And my hero, Werner Herzog, is using 3-D to film prehistoric cave paintings in France, to better show off the concavities of the ancient caves. He told me that nothing will “approach” the audience, and his film will stay behind the plane of the screen. In other words, nothing will hurtle at the audience, and 3-D will allow us the illusion of being able to occupy the space with the paintings and look into them, experiencing them as a prehistoric artist standing in the cavern might have.”

-“Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too)”

Roger Ebert

Newsweek May 10, 2010

While I think there is a place for hurling objects into the audience, I’m looking forward to the film. Although the use of stereoscopic space in a film is often utilized to show the audience depth and space, it’s ability to also recreate the effect of the confinement in small spaces is equally as compelling and often overlooked by 3-D filmmakers. Here’s hoping that The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams makes ample use its subject’s lack of space in three dimensions.


I’ll give you a report next week sometime after I’ve seen the film, but in the mean time I’ll leave you with this interview clip of Herzog explaining his intention for the film.