"Both ways are daughters of God, do not forget that. But fire was born first and Love afterward. Let us begin first with Fire." John the Baptist (Kazantazakis 243)
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In the book also, woman represents a hindrance to attaining the fullness of experience and dedication to Yahweh, an extreme asceticism only subliminal in the standard gospels and epistles but forefront and directly expressed in the writing of the Gnostics.
The woman in the hovel prognosticates the end temptation Jesus faces, the impulse to domesticity and a life of accepting pleasures in a holy way, a more moderate stance closer to that of traditional Christianity.
In the end, the only redemption for women is through Satan. Woman is a large part of the final temptation Jesus must reject in his quest to crucify the flesh. Mary Magdaline, xxxx, the little girl who turns out to be Satan, all play an intricate in duping Jesus off the cross and into a life of contentment and marital bliss. In an eerie way, Satan's statement of "All women are one" remains true even to the end: women are a distraction, a sexual and domestic pull dangerous to any true seeker of experience of God, and must ultimately be rejected.
Staley and Walsh reject a gnostic worldview present in The Last Temptation of Christ. However, their rejection of this influence is based on two fallacies: one, that Gnosticism can be reduced to its rejection of flesh in light of the spirit and, two, that the world Jesus inhabits is actually Ed In Temptation, as Jesus walks away from the cross, the crowd are left blithe fully ignorant and still cheering at a Jesus they think, or so it seems, is still left on the cross. In the Gnostic Scriptures, many gospels have the crowds also duped, standing watching while the real Christ, the aeon son of man, stands by laughing at their ignorance. And while in Scorsese's film, no one replaces Jesuus on the cross, the basic element remains the same: in the end, Jesus was not crucified, but rather taken away, an simukacrum left in order to trick the crowds, leading to today's overwhelming belief (and that of the synoptic gospels') that Jesus was, in fact, killed.
BAzin saw the long shot, the continual representation of a theme or motif, more effective and powerful than short, juxtaposed shots, the expression of abstracts through the juxtapositions of particulars. To show the event and emotion itself, he though, was more powerful.
Bazin sees cinema as documentary; cinema's standard of quality is how well it recreates bare reality, how well it effectively shows exactly what is there and allows that reality to speak for itself. How on earth can this man look past the blaring subjectivity of cinema, though? The monstrous perspective blaring my obvious by the presence of a beginning and end and not to mention a frame? No perspective is objective, and that's what a shot is, a perspective.
To Bazin, the subject of cinema isn't man, it's Nature. Man can take a central position in this subject; however, he is not its only constituent element. And because Nature is the primary subject, fidelity to it is essential for quality cinema. The subject must be portrayed in its actuality, not fragmented and in conflict with itself in order to give rise to abstract emotions and ideas.
Hah! It looks like even Bazin, though, came--in his later essays--to acknowledge the impossibility of art to capture purely objective reality. It is an impossibility.
One of Bazin's central concepts of Neorealism is this "law of amalgam". It's essentially staying the idea of typecast: as an actor takes roles, he amalgamates rules to his person so every role he takes is necessarily informed by those of his past. Never can he purely play a role, his past is always with him.
Bazin's "image fact" seems remarkably similar to eisenstein's concept of "attractions", elements of the scene which, in Eisenstein's world, relate to create meaning. It seems Bazin agrees; however, his conception of the proper relationship between the facts is closer to epic rather than conflicting.
It seems the only legitimate documetary and exposition film, to Bazin, is one in which the filmmakers are intricately involved in the expedition. No remakes, post-expedition narratives or other non-involved film can ever take the place of a found film, or, at least, will invisibly be inferior to it. I disagree wholeheartedly. To compare the two is comparing apples and oranges. One is a fiction, a controlled attempt to boil down the essence of an event and recreate it. The other is a recording during the event. One tries to recreate, one does not try to do anything but be present, an act which can only occur once. To compare the former or subvert it to the latter is simply ignorant and infairly comparative. Bazin sees the advancement of each art as releasing other art forms from tying to fulfill purposes more appropriate to other forms. the advance of photography freed painting from representation, allowing it to return to expression and abstract form. Cinema released photography from "likeness and anecdote". (Bazin 119) Cinema releases theater from realism in decor and story. As each form advances, the others are freed from filling in the gap they're lesser equipped to fill and this more able to focus on those they are.
Bazin sees deep focus as superior as it gives back the viewer the responsibility to find meaning and effect in the scene rather than force feeding it to him with montage. Montage stems from the need to manipulate the viewer. Deep focus, rafter, stems from a desire to present to the same viewer in hopes he or she will interpret for themselves. |
AuthorWill's Brainstorming Blog for his 2014-15 Essay Collection on World Religions in Film Archives
March 2015
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