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ous autobiographical motifs, including a history of the mathematical concept of pi (autobiographical because for a time Benning studied and taught mathematics), which is used, as a means for organizing passages of film time, and a set of allusions to important contributions to North American independent film that have influenced Benning: the title, in fact, comes from a comment by Brakhagem''I'm not against sound film though I rather think of it as grand opera.'
was made not long after Benning moved to New York City and is as deeply involved with Manhattan cityscapes as
is involved with the upper Midwest, and
with Oklahoma. Unlike Benning's earlier features, however,
centers on a single, carefully developed plot, though it's arranged in an unconventional way. We don't find out about the central event of the plotthe unexpected death of a man ('him') as he slept with his lover ('me': the female protagonist of the film)until the very end of the film. The actions and statements of characters are not 'justified' until
we've experienced them.
combines three simultaneous levels of development, each of which adds a narrative progression to a film that
less like a conventional narrative than any other long Benning work: the first is a front-and-back chronological presentation of items in Benning's extensive collection of Hank Aaron memorabilia (baseball cards, pins, soft-drink container tops); the second is a handwritten text that runs across the bottom of the image from right to left; the third involves the soundtrack, which alternates between brief excerpts from notable speeches made during the years Benning was growing up and brief passages from popular songs of the era. Superimposed texts regularly identify the speechmaker, the occasion, and the date; the name of the song; and the singer; and regularly provide us with the grand total of home runs Aaron had hit by the end of each year.
That
is a film for multiple viewings is obvious the moment one discovers at the conclusion of the film that the diarist is Arthur Bremer, the man who dreamed of becoming famous by killing a public figure (first Richard Nixon, then George Wallace) and finally shot Wallace in Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972. In isolation, Aaron's relentless quest of Ruth's home-run record seems natural and heroic, and symbolic of the black pursuit of full recognition by the majority society. But as wonderful as Aaron's accomplishments were, their meaning is altered by the Bremer text. While Aaron's dream may be positive and: Bremer's negativethey represent the polar opposites of American dreamingBenning's juxtaposition brings out the parallels: both men seem involved in the same set of assumptions about how men demonstrate their worth as men.
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The Aaron/Bremer parallel is further confirmed and extended by Benning's recognition of his own involvement with these assumptions: his choice of a continuous, relentlessly regular, minimal structure for
is implicitly a critique of the male-dominated structural cinema 'that was developing during the years of Aaron's and Bremer's final achievements. Of course, just as Aaron's accomplishments strengthened the position of blacks in American life, the accomplishments the structural filmmakers opened new territory for feminist filmmakers concerned with confronting Western consumer culture's imaging of women and men.
Benning's most recent features,
(1986) and
(1988), use rigorous, unconventional structures as a context for examining three people convicted of murder.
explores the ways in which the crimes of Ed Gein (the prototype for Norman Bates in
[1960], as well as a source for the butchers in
[1974] and for Buffalo Bill in
[1991]) and Bernadette Protti (a teenager who killed a classmate in a posh suburb of San Francisco) reflect the landscapes in which the crimes occurred.
is a portrait of Lawrencia Bembenek, who is currently serving time in Wisconsin for murdering her husband's ex-wife.
My interview with Benning began in March and June of 1980. I asked Bette Gordon to be present when we discussed the films she and Benning collaborated on. In November 1986, Benning and I updated the interview. I have left the update separate: so much time passed between the discussions that combining them would have resulted in distortions.
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Part 1
How did you get into filmmaking?
I was in graduate school studying mathematics, but painting and drawing a lot. I decided I didn't like school anymore, and ended up in a half-black, half-white hillbilly ghetto in Springfield, Missouri. I bought a cameraa regular 8mm Bolexnot to document the area, but to use as a kind of paintbrush. I didn't do much, though. Then I moved to a farm and started to do little shots of flowers and things like that.
Actually, what motivated me to buy a camera was
