Eniaios, July 2016

Day 1 Order IX

My first day watching any of Eniaios at the Temenos site. I am most lucidly aware of an architectural sense of rhythm to the film – a pattern of white frames black frames and images that occurs in the same sequence enough times to bring the discerning spectator into a physical relationship with the pattern before it changes. What sort of physical relationship? How can it be explained – chemically, biologically, perhaps? I think of the nature of thoughts – not just thoughts… all mental processes – as themselves patterns of the brain. I think of the way jealousy or sadness or fear has its own rhythm, penetrating our consciousness with certain pulses; specific thoughts seem to arise from the tempo of connections occurring in the brain. The rhythms of Eniaios effect a recursion in the brain such that the patterns of the brain begin to meld with the patterns of Eniaios. Perhaps we could describe this as the nature of poetic movement in general – the melding of patterns between the work and the spectator. But the rhythmic repetition in Eniaios is unique – it doesn’t trace patterns of images but rather becomes the patterns, as if the beauty of the film is only perceivable to the spectator through the mind’s becoming the film, as if the rhythm doesn’t participate in creation of an impression but rather itself has a sacred property that must be impressed upon the mind.
This is the heart of the Asclepian force of the film so far as I am concerned. The union of the mind with the film’s rhythm is a cleansing force. Here we are, having traveled from who knows where to Greece, having traveled down to the Peloponnese and into the mountains, having walked past the sun on its own diurnal pattern, and we have offered our attention to this challenging film. And the film, summoning Asclepius, says come, I offer you an architecture for your mind, take this instead of muddled thoughts from earlier, and become something pure. Yes, perhaps it is purity that differentiates the film so much from other powerfully rhythmic cinema. For it is the total absence of ulterior motive that allows the rhythm to approach something sacred. Sawaki Kodo Zenji insisted that zazen (sitting meditation) had no point, and that was precisely what made it true spirituality. It seems to me that purity leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths, as though purity implies puritanism. But in watching a film like Eniaios we can see that purity transcends dogma, perhaps exists insofar as it transcends dogma. More than that though – because the film does something that other films pure in this sense do not (such as Sharits’ TOUCHING): it offers a supreme freedom of the mind; it does not use its rhythmic power to overwhelm the mind. It is too slow, too repetitive, too small (by which I mean, with respect to the entire world of beauty around it – the stars, the distant trees and mountains, the sounds of crickets and people passing by) to manipulate. If anything, the spectator is more likely to experience boredom. The sort of purity in Eniaios is thus one that requires not the overwhelming of the mind but the union of mind and work. To me, of all the unities he could have been thinking of in the name, this is the most important. It means a sacredness that comes both from individuation and union, which does not admit for only one or the other – and I, who have a very different religious tradition, feel as though I am watching Eniaios unfolding like an old friend.
There is also the purity of the white frames/light, which can blind you in the Lyssarean night. What’s important, however, is that not all the white frames are blinding – many function as a rhythmic beat against the black or against a filmed image. There are therefore a multitude of ways in which the purity of the white frame works. Thus far I have noticed a few of them. Most obviously it functions to establish the rhythmic pattern with the black frames. When used in quick succession, however, the white frames sometimes seem to burst into black – or, in reverse: the black seems to burst into white. This is another sort of unity (of light and dark) that is constantly evoked. Then there is the white frame cut against the image. In these cases, it often feels as though the image is materializing or dematerializing out of pure light – which of course it is doing. Yet here we can see the essence of the film image before our eyes: the purity of a single bright beam. From this, all images are cast onto that screen. Finally, there is the white light that bursts from long periods of black where the rhythm has faded into nothingness. These moments are truly blinding and can appear like explosions in the night. As an aesthetic experience it is glorious – the film seems to appear at the heart of the night, like one of the stars being plucked from the sky and bursting in front of us. But there is more to this grammatical move that I can’t seem to express at the moment…
The purity of the white frame should not be overemphasized, because just as important are the occasional moments of movement within the film image. These moments are often astonishing and can make you gasp, but cannot be considered as climactic motifs. While it might seem like certain reels are building from static image to the wonder of movement, I can’t detect any progression of this sort. Rather, the movement feels like a luxury. Maybe Markopoulos thinks that to experience film entirely as sequences of movement is itself gratuitous. Maybe movement, like a precious work of art (or like Eniaios itself), ought to be experienced in the right conditions and at the right time.
There is climax in the film though. Reel 1 built to a rhythmic climax through increasing tempo. The reel ended on an extended period of white light, the first moment in this reel in which white seemed more dominant than black. Then reel 2 picks up with the same suspension of white, which subsequently dominates the reel over the black frames, in this way inverting the previous reel. Even so, Markopoulos incorporates huge pauses in black. These moments do not feel anachronistic or ill-conceived in anyway; instead it feels precisely as though he were resisting the possibility of coercion, were considering the spectator’s retention of his wits. The black, here, stopped being a counterpoint to the images and instead became a period of visual relief – of relinquishing itself. His vision was unflagging.
I’ll wait for Day 2 to form more thoughts on the structure of the film. There are a variety of smaller structural points similar to the inversion of white and black in the first two reels, but I currently can’t tell how these will relate to the rest of the film. Here’s a sample rhythm to look at though:

WHITE (2 frames)
BLACK (2 frames)
WHITE (~100 frames)
BLACK (2 frames)
WHITE (2 frames)
BLACK (~20 frames)

REPEAT
Following the repeat, an image would appear for 2-5 frames with occasional bursts of 1-2 white frames before and/or after the image. The evolution of this rhythm may occur through the changing of the film image or through the changing of the number of white frames bursting between the image, but does not occur through the quickening of the pattern’s speed.

Notes from August/September 2016

In reflection, I have some sense of what power there is in at least the quick bursts of white after periods of darkness. These blinding moments seem to be the few moments when Markopoulos “calls out” to the spectator. They are meant to explode the mind for an instant perhaps, so that the spectator is suddenly clear to reach out to the section of the film he will present next. They are overwhelming, but not in the coercive sense. They are like a shout in the dark, a bird cry that wakes you from a reverie, and in Zen such moments are used to point to your original nature.

I can’t recall in which reel the example rhythm I provided comes from, though my suspicion is that it is from the third reel. I also can’t recall the approximate length of the pattern though it was certainly longer than 5 or 10 minutes. What made this particularly pattern distinct in my memory was the heavy emphasis of the white frame. In this case, the white frame didn’t blind you but became the pivot point. All the images and darkness were understood in relationship to the force of the white frame. All of Markopoulos’ patterns seem to contain something of this sort that make them unique, though this one resonated particularly strongly in my consciousness.


Day 2 Order X

The last reel of the day – so sublime – one of the most magnificent works of cinema I’ve seen. It is in experience reminiscent of certain forms of classical Greek art because of its cool splendor.
It brings us back to that shot from the Iliac Passion of a man in a field by a tree (very green and white) and then introduces a second motif that takes over: the extreme contrast and otherwise very dark image of bodies (2 – one on left side of screen, one on center-right); this develops without ANY white frames for probably 10-15 minutes – then… BAM – very long white frame explodes the night. The sense of eternal recurrence… and yet – it is the utter disruption of the movements and rhythms that were being presented; the necessity for change despite being nothing new. Perhaps it is more an affirmative re-announcement of the white frame, as though the film were trying to show us just how incredible this light is, through loss and return. And the white frame becomes a guiding force. Images of a woman on the street and a man begin to blow into these white frames until the status of the night becomes light (not dark). Once the images have completely blown up into pure light the reel ends.
This reel follows a STUNNING second reel, which prefaces the use of the white frame in reel 3 by leading many shots into a succession of very fast, fluttery white frames (as though bursting into white). This entire reel takes place in a (sacred?) building with a mural that bookends the reel. The rest of the reel consists of shots within the building that are often dominated by windows. Jumping from these images to the white frames is like watching the light from the window propel us into the white frame. The architectural presence of the building/window shots is overwhelmingly beautiful… that second window shot with the light streaking out in different directions… there are moments of indescribable magnificence in these images. Nearly every shot of this reel and the first reel are blue (a further set up for the third reel, which starts by contrast in green + white).
Also notable about reel 2 is how its rhythms of white frames fluctuate between rapid, butterfly-like flickers of frames (perhaps of 1-2 frames of white followed by 1-2 frames of black) and longer white frames that are not preceded or succeeded by the flickering of even a single white frame (as opposed to the frequently employed technique of flickering a number of white frames to bookend a longer period of white). This single assertion of the white frame is powerfully stark, and it anticipates the spectacular use of it in reel 3 that I mentioned. But in reel 2 they are very sensitively employed, for they are often used at points where the film’s rhythmic vocabulary (that is, the patterned sequence of white frames, black frames, and photographed images) is about to reinvent itself. Markopoulos must have deeply understood the sort of unity this maneuver would bring – for reel 2’s introduction involves almost no juxtaposition of photographic images. Almost every image is its own architectural space and is treated as such, meaning that they are given their own space rhythmically/temporally in the film. But they develop beautifully through his careful employment of the white frame. The patterns all seem interrelated (for a long time I recall it being two distinct bursts of the image followed quickly after the second by a burst of white, followed by a flickering of white frames… repeat). As the variation of all these patterns becomes increasingly encyclopedic, the film begins to evoke more and more Bach’s Art of Fugue. Meanwhile, for reel 2 the related rhythms help unify these transitions between images into a form of space that transcends the illusion of space and operates as space-in-mind – something that I had trouble perceiving in reel 1 (of this day), which went from collection of image to collection of image without similarities in rhythm throughout.
At the end of reel 2 the rhythm changes, signifying the beginning of the end – the image flashes (5?) times at a faster (though still slow) pace, and finally images begin to appear within the clusters of white flashes, which anticipates reel 3’s end. The first reel was very quiet and heavy. The second was growing – almost literally leading from one space to another – and the third seemed to lift skywards. Back up to the stars, which are shooting along above.

Notes from August/September 2016

In reflection, it is too simple to describe the images of reel 2 as being beautiful, for it is perhaps more accurate to speak of them not as images but as bursts. To speak of the beauty of an image is often to speak of the hiddenness of an image. But there is no time to consider the hiddenness of these images. Here, we witness the spontaneous creation and disappearance of an image. The image itself exists largely as an imprint in our mind, which is to say that it is not exactly an image but a ghost of an image. But the ghost of the image is constantly overwhelmed – either by the recurrence of its antecedent, or by the growth of a new image altogether, or by the pure dissolution into white or black. To see the film ought to be to remember the film, yet always we are moving on, to the next moment, and so it is difficult to even say what it is to see the film… and how it is to see the film…

Day 3 Order XI

As an event, the most spectacular day – the length of the cycle (4 hours?) was perfect such that I wish each day had been so long. The first 2.5 hours of each day are beautiful, yes, but something happens around hour 3 that is special – a sort of calming of the mind, a relaxing of critical intention. It is a beautiful silencing of the critical mind – not the same as the coercion of the critical mind, no; it is a silencing. The critical mind knows it has no work to do, or perhaps stops caring, and the sense of this film just being AS FILM materializes.
It is not simply a psychological effect for me, although that may be part of it. Here, we reached the end of the first half of the entire film and one can therefore sense SOMETHING about the structure. What I discovered in the final two reels was a form of development that I had not expected, that I perhaps wasn’t prepared to seriously accept. The first three reels were quite static and almost entirely blue. This is a reversion from the end of the previous day, perhaps strengthening the idea of these sections as cycles. These too were beautiful – reel 1 and reel 2 had stunning portraits. Reel 1 of an old woman whose face felt like an old tree, its every movement signifying hundreds of years passing. The reel ended with no sense of climax. Reel 2 contained the portrait of an old man – filming just hands and feet for 20-some minutes. The sudden introduction of his face is breathtaking.
Reel 3 – most erotic of the reels. Here, like the other cycles in this group, the portraits give way to other sorts of images. We see the glimmering naked body of a man, different shots of a young man in more banal rooms, etc. The images are completely devoid of white frames, so that it becomes its own sort of void in the middle of this cycle. There is little I have to say here other than that the slight movements and deep black spaces were powerful. We are being brought into later areas of the night…
Reel 4 reintroduces the blue palette alongside white flashes with images of Delphi. They are somewhat minimalist in spirit, avoiding a real view of the Temple of Apollo, and they sort of seem to revert us back to reel 1-2. Yet it evolves here, as first a dead bird and then red flowers are introduced (dead bird is blue) and we begin to conceive of a new direction, of a lusher world, alongside the white frames. Indeed, towards the end of the reel the images from Swain appear, of a young man at one point on a bridge and at another point below a strange and bewildering yellow sky (I still have not seen this film). These images nearly conflict with the white frames because of its yellow color (perhaps why yellow has been sparsely used?) But it still works because there is something explosive to these images, thus maintaining the feeling of the images exploding into white. These images are so rich that the experience feels heightened aesthetically.
And then reel 5, the truest period of seeing for me. Here, the imagery of reel 4 is brought together with some of reel 3’s imagery (the naked man’s body), and combined through the use of the white frame. The experience here was at this time of great silence and I didn’t at all always perceive the structure, so much was I simply existing with the images. But at times I followed the structure and development before me and I noticed something that was very important, perhaps absolutely critical, to my viewing of the film. I noticed that at times when it would have been natural to repeat an image, speed up, or juxtapose one thing against another, the film did not do it. Indeed, it almost avoided what my instinct was to the point that I should have wondered whether Markopoulos wanted to bother me. But I wasn’t bothered. Whatever option he chose was beautiful in itself, as though unconcerned with everything else. And then it occurred to me that the rhythmic assumptions or expectations I had in my head were built upon certain conceptions of aesthetic development that demanded a stronger sense of climax, perhaps even of revelation. Yet what Markopoulos does is not revelatory. It is existing as is, with NOWHERE TO GO. I see in him a sort of rhythm that doesn’t have to aim at anything. And it may be that he is simply saving his real “revelation” for the end; but, if he has, he may be mistaken. What he is doing here at least begins to approach a work of art before the need for revelation. What is progress? What is an end? Which cardinal direction takes me to the horizon? Looking at the obscure path ahead, I know – to see this film is to see with equanimity.


Notes from September 2016

In thinking more about my note to the previous day, the burst itself is equanimity. If that does not make sense, it is because only the film can convey what that might mean.