WIM & PINA: a review

As I've noted before PINA, Wim Wenders' newest film, played at The Toronto International Film Festival this September and I couldn't be there. I did have the fortune of seeing a few scenes projected in 3-D and hearing Wenders discuss the film and the 3-D process at the Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference in June.I couldn't be there but that doesn't mean I couldn't get a review. Many thanks to Trevor Ball a long time TIFF attendee and my guest blogger:

Wim Wenders encountered the choreography of Pina Bausch in mid-1980s, and immediately knew he wanted to work with her. She took some time to warm to the idea, but before long the two were discussing a collaboration. Wenders's problem, though, was that he couldn't figure out how to make a film of her Tanztheater Wuppertal company's dancing; he said there seemed to be an "invisible wall" keeping a satisfactory film from being made. The two would cross paths repeatedly over the decades, with her asking him how it was coming, and him answering that he hadn't figured out how yet, until the exchange became so routine that they just exchanged gestures to convey the status quo.

That finally changed in 2007, when Wenders saw U2 3D, the 3D presentation of the band's Vertigo tour. He called up Bausch and told her he had finally figured out how to make the movie. Unfortunately, due in part to the lengthy lead time required to coordinate schedules and mount the four specific programmes they wanted to film, it would still be years before they would be ready to shoot, and in the interim, Bausch died of cancer before shooting could begin. Wenders expected that this meant the project was off, but thankfully the dancers in the company encouraged him to still make it.

The film is therefore structured around individual dancers and their reminiscences of Bausch, with no narration or dialogue aside from the dancers themselves. Wenders presents portraits of individual dancers coupled with signature or favourite solos or duets of theirs, set in the environs of the city of Wuppertal (including its unusual suspended train line) which provide some striking and whimsical juxtapositions. Cut together with the four live dance presentations and old footage of Bausch herself, the overall effect is a tribute to Bausch, but also an intimate experience of the dance itself, and an insight into the company and how it functioned.

Wenders does get playful with the film at times, such as inlaying footage of part of one live dance inside a scale model two dancers are looking at, while recalling how Bausch conceived of the choreography for the piece. For the most part though, he tries to be faithful to the dance, out of reverence for Bausch, who he was always conscious of not wanting to disappoint. The 3D seems only to be used to give a more true-to-life and intimate experience of the dance, with very few gimmicky shots (the scale model shot being the only such exception I can recall). The effect of the 3D is subtle but successful in conveying a more authentic theatre-like experience.

Ultimately the (albeit understandably) melancholic tone undermines and distracts from the impressive and imaginative choreography that should be the focus, and in particular I found the old footage of Bausch somewhat jarring, while adding very little value. However, overall the film serves as a fantastic introduction to modern dance and an entertaining and inspiring experience in its own right. I would recommend it for anyone with the slightest interest in dance or performance art, or really even for anyone who can keep an open mind to such artforms.

Incidentally, Tanztheater Wuppertal will be performing at the NAC in Ottawa in late November, in case you would like to see them in person. Wenders also announced at the screening that Pina has been selected as the German entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and it has recently been short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I'll go on record as predicting it won't win either award, but it does deserve that degree of consideration.

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.

PINA at TIFF

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is in full swing and like last year the festival is presenting a new 3-D feature, the third in three years.

In 2009 TIFF presented Joe Dante's family horror film The Hole. It the first 3-D film ever to play the festival. At its premiere screening the fire alarm went off and audiences missed the last 20 minutes (myself among them). It did take quite a bit of effort to clear the theatre as many audience members continued to watch the film as they were ushered out of the auditorium.

Last year TIFF screened Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary and meditation on the oldest cave known to feature drawings and artwork on its walls. Again a screening mishap occurred as the newly inaugurated Bell Lightbox suffered a power failure mid screening and the theatre went black. The staff quickly fixed the problem and the audience was able to enjoy the entire film.

This year another German cinema master, Wim Wenders, is screening his flirtation with 3-D technology, a documentary/performance dance film entitled Pina, featuring the choreography of the late Pina Bausch. I'm unaware of any mishaps yet. The film opened on the 8th of September and will screen again on the 17th.

Wenders was in Toronto in mid June of this year, the keynote at the Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Convention, to discuss the production of the film at length and show a few featured clips. The 3-D was spectacular, and like Herzog, Wenders managed to utilize the technology not simply as an exploitive gimmick but to further explore the film's subject, dance. By capturing Bausch's choreography in three dimensions, Wenders is better able to recreate a live performance venue and emulate the immediacy of the art form. A key discussion point during the TIS3DC came directly from Wenders talk and his belief that the stereoscopic 3D camera captured a sense of the “embodiment” of his subjects, the dancers in his film. This discovery came to Wenders late in the shooting of Pina during the filming of his “portraits” material (individual shots of the dancers looking directly into camera, which in the film are accompanied by voice-over interviews). Wenders asked the dancer on camera to turn to look into the lens as if it were their best friend. During the shooting Wenders would look down at his hand-held 3-D monitor and was struck by a sense of holding the individual in his hand. It was this sense of the 3-D image capturing the essence of a person (perhaps an element of their soul) that created a magical moment for Wenders, one that had not occurred before in the shooting of Pina.

Unfortunately I'm not in Toronto this year to see the film in its entirety, but I have a writer in the wings who has promised me a review and I plan to be posting that as soon as I can. However if anyone out there has seen the film I'd love to hear your impressions of it. Please leave a comment.