Tregenza on THE ARC

THOUGHTS ON THE ARC 3/22/91

(from a letter to a Canadian friend)

"I am realizing my understanding of film as art is increasingly at odds with the dominant critical understanding of cinema.

The metaphor most frequently used to interpret a film is that of a text. (We can thank both the semiotic/linguistic theorists, the genre folks and the pop critics for that.) All start off with a notion that to understand/"read" a film, it must first somehow be "text"... It must be a linguistic code...rational...logical etc. Their job is a task of interpretation, a hermeneutic function based on personal taste which then becomes an act of criticism.

But what if the film under discussion was constructed as "event"? What if the filmmakers reject a single authorized reading/interpretation of a film as the "truth" What if the film is not about the intentions of a single author? What if the filmmaker's understanding of how film operates in a social context is informed by a different metaphor than that of text and hence the interpretation of the intentions of an auteur are not relevant?

I use "event" as a model for the organization of meaning within the filmic experience. That does not render the film itself as meaningless... but rather, the film itself is designed to allow different paths of interpretation within the event. This allows an audience member to experience and understand/choose from a set of possible interpretations their own meanings. The viewer not the critic or the director becomes central in the creation of meaning within the event. No longer are my narrative "intentions" as director the locus for the "true" interpretation of the event. As such the film-event can then work under another rule... another metaphor other than "text" one that better contours the thing in itself which is cinema.

To a priori demand that a film like THE ARC be a singular "text" with one authorized interpretation in order for it to be understandable/"good" is to limit what cinema can be... and become. When intellectuals of the rational variety get confused they get angry because they then feel "stupid". To attempt to read an event as saturated as THE ARC only as a single voiced text will mean you will be beaten up by the film. It will do violence to your understanding of film... maybe even your notion of self. THE ARC and TALKING TO STRANGERS both ask to be experienced before they are "read" not the other way around.

...in THE ARC one sees editing style but unless it is simultaneously experienced at the historical, narrative and mythic levels it is confusing "meaningless" to critics, however understandable to audiences who are willing to take the film as they see it. I was told that some of the New Yorkers(New Directors) hated the opening because it reminded them of a television commercial.

Fine. But why not feel... then think... ask about why this feeling is there before rejecting that moment as "bad" or "television". Could it be because the editing style is an appropriation of Russian Formalist style... a form that is only practiced in commercials, because both are propaganda... because the character is a machine... because the historical period is the 60's...because it is the beginning of an arc which takes a fictional character to a different consciousness?"