Anyway, in
'dream of story' and 'story of dream' are closely interwoven as themes. It is also a ghost story in a sense. It was calculated in a way to be a posthumous work, a tale told from the grave, and of course, in time it will become exactly that. That's another narrative element in the film, an elaborate memento mori. This isn't unduly morbid. The best possible mental state to be in is one in which you are clearly conscious of your personal mortality. Clear and constant recognition of this will energize you in a way that nothing else can. At the very least, it keeps you alert. A friend of mine once calculated that since the speed of the revolution of the earth around its own axis is some 877 miles per hour, that is the exact speed at which your grave approaches.
In general,
is a reworking of what has to be the world's oldest story, 'the fool's progress,' how the fool became wise. There are hundreds of versions and variations, but the story is always essentially the same: the young fool leaves home to set off down the road of the world, hoping to find the great treasure that is hidden behind the veil of the world's illusions, behind the screen of the movie of the world, as it were. After many dangers and hardships, and by the exercise of strength and cunning, the fool tears away the veil and discovers that what is behind it is 'nothing.' This is valuable knowledge: it is the treasure, the 'Pearl of Great Price,' and in recognizing this, the fool becomes wise, a wise fool, and can see the world for what it is. That is the larger framework of
the individual parts function as lesser wheels that move within the larger wheel of the whole.
Another narrative aspect of the film is about the famous journey to the 'other world.' In my program notes when I released the film, I identified the 'other world' as being 'this world,' which I hope is self-explanatory. And yet another narrative level is that of the entire film as after-death hallucination, in the tradition of
[1950] and a great novel by Flann O'Brien,
.
Unlike
is not arranged seasonally; at times you play with winter and summer views out your window; each time we track past the window, the view outside has
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changed dramaticallysometimes jumping through months. The visual extravaganza of this film makes it difficult to be thinking of overall structural devices, though I have a sense that in general we move from what I'd call camera performances of one kind or another into a period of domestic portraits (of your wife, the kids, the cats, the wash, the garden . . .) then back to camera performancesall of which is framed by the found footage material. Could you talk a bit about what you had in mind for the film's overall structure.
It is carefully constructed and works on many levels simultaneously. There's a straightforward 'documentary' level on which it's 'about' being at home, going to work, and being at home again. That is the basic rhythm of my life, after all, so that's the 'ground.' I described it best in the original program notes: 'the Ghost in love, at work, at play with bright companions in the Lighted Field.'' It's a tale of a dreamer, who dreams what you, viewer and also dreamer, 'see,' and
what he sees and what you see. It's a film about dreaming and is literally, physically a dream. This is a dream of sleep and waking, death and resurrection, which is the central theme of the film, and is of course the central theme of anyone's life, manifest on a daily basis, the 'dream-film' of consciousness, of which we are solitary spectators in the theaters of our own skulls. I have little interest in psychoanalytical dream-interpretation by the way, which I've always found to be incredibly cynical. My interest is more in the mechanics of the process.
Having just recoveredat forty-six yearsfrom turning forty, I feel very close to
; it feels to me, the way
life feels to me: 'Hey! being middle aged is OK, it's better in many ways than being young!'
Measuring your life in terms of time will make you old. Time as we speak of it here is a dubious hallucination of sequence and cause and effect. In many ways I feel younger now than I did at twenty. Personal force is what matters. Most people do their best work as they get older. It takes a long time to be good. There aren't many Mozarts around.
This is from Hokusai, who was wise: 'I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy-three I have at last caught every aspect of nature . . . birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I will have developed still further, and I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line I draw will be imbued with life.'
There's always been an element of performance in your filmsalways, at least, in the films I'm aware of.
was very
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much about performance, as
films have been. But in
this performance dimension seems more overt, more frank. I'm thinking of those sequences when you put your feet, or your shadow into a spin, or into high-speed motion along the street. We can see how you do it; but we're astonished at the results. It's like juggling: you pick up the camera, the way a juggler picks up bowling pins.
