Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I'm sure I've talked about this before.

There is a scene that ends the documentary The Cruise, where Speed Levitch is standing in front of a door, pontificating. The door is labeled "Emergency Exit Only- Alarm Will Sound." It leads to the roof, or some kind of overlook. Speed is explaining how this sort of sign, this sort of wiring, is the opposite of "the cruise" as he defines it- being able to go wherever, being free. Sometimes these doors aren't alarmed at all, it's an intimidation tactic. You open it, and nothing happens. Although sometimes it's a silent alarm, and the police accost you within minutes.

He opens the door. No alarm goes off. He opens it wider, and because of the f-stop on the camera being for indoors, the frame fills with light and overexposure, and that's how the film ends.

It is an amazing moment of film-poetry, and it seems to capture an obscure feeling perfectly, through metaphor.

There are so many films being made, so much of everything being made. Sometimes it is worth it for when something like that happens, this weird metaphor added to the language, like the Gupta Empire coming up with the idea of zero. You know, that's why we have empires, or cameras and film stock.

1 comment:

laura said...

i like this.