Alan Clarke's Christine (1987)

I think, to begin with, Christine seems like a "realist" film. That description isn't necessarily wrong, but I think it's maybe incomplete. To me it seems that Clarke derives the strange effect of the film by how he plays off realism, and our expectations about realism, against subtly surreal effects.

The markers of it's realism are in it's subject matter, setting, and form. Christine takes drug addiction as it's subject matter, but doesn't assume any of the pretensions of a social issue film. It doesn't moralise, or make melodramatic. It's low-key depiction of what is traditionally dramatised, and even sensationalised, causes us to assume that this is a "realistic" treatment of the subject. Rather perversely, drama is sort of accepted as an impediment to "reality". Secondly, I think it has something to do with the milieu the film exists in. That is to say that the banality of suburban Britain seems distinctly uncinematic, and so is realist. Thirdly, Clarke's formal treatment of the material seems to accord with these other features of the film. It consists mainly of two different types of long takes.

(1) There are the shots within the suburban households, which are long takes, but really consist of many different 'micro-shots' as the camera reframes again and again. These shots have a documentary sense, as you can feel the presence of the filmmaker in the room with the subjects. They treat the more conventional material, scenes juxtaposing banal conversation with drug use.

(2) There are the steadicam long takes that follow Christine as she walks around the neighbourhood. Again, we might feel that these shots give a "realist" feel to the film because they describe non-dramatic material.

And yet, Clarke's film remains defiantly strange, hallucinatory, and impenetrable. I think if we re-examine all these surface markers of realism it is clear that, as deployed in Christine they have a rather twisted effect. It's low key, drama-less approach is inherently stressful for the viewer, because it elides any sense of explainable psychology, and cause and effect that traditional drama displays. Clarke suggests, by stripping away the drama, that what he is showing is not explicable in any meaningful way. By the same token, there's a sort of subjective immediacy to the perspective guiding the film, something soporific, like the filmmaker too is in a drug-induced stupor. It brings us closer to the characters, while confirming something unnerving and inexplicable.*

The setting and form, which seem to gesture towards realism, both undergo a transformation in effect by the intensity with which Clarke deploys them, and the rhythmic force of the film. The film moves in small circles. With some variation, it majorly follows a pattern of (A) Christine walking to a house, (B) idle chit chat as everyone shoots up. Even over fifty minutes, such circularity has a feeling of entrapment. Furthermore, the flow of the long tracking shots is profoundly disturbing, in particular the long shots of Christine simply walking through suburbia. The banal evil of suburbia, while not so groundbreaking a theme, is peculiarly realised by the endless procession of houses she passes by. The content of the shot, which is supposedly uninflected reality, by the emphasis Clarke gives it, becomes intense and unnerving. The shots inside the houses, by scarcely cutting and constantly reframing, make us feel entrapped and claustrophobic both temporally and spatially. They give form to the banally evil world that exists inside those suburban houses that go on and on and on as Christine walks from house to house. The form is itself not realistic, but instead reality solidified, thickened, made strange.

Along with this there's a wealth of strange effects. In a film so spare as this, the recurring cartoons on the TV becomes so very odd and affecting. Vague mentions of a party, which no one seems to have the energy to organise, and which Christine continues to forget the planned date of, recur with all the force of Bunuel's cancelled dinner dates in The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

In some senses, what I'm trying to say here is very simple. That a director with a strong vision makes the world strange and distinct. There's something more to Clarke's signature in Christine through, because the surface appearance and the visceral effect are not so intuitive. This dissonance, this rift between reality and essence, speaks to Christine's discombobulated subjectivity. The final shot, a simple close up, is an expression of exhaustion, a sigh of relief after existing in such a violent liminal space for the prior 50 minutes.

*One of the most fascinating things about Gus Van Sant's Elephant is how it deploys a similar strategy, specifically in the treatment of the school shooters. There's an interesting key distinction between the two films though, in that Clarke's version of drama-less is to cycle through banalities, whereas Van Sant cycles through cliche's. Van Sant's film is still good, but it's weakened by the distance it has from reality.

Personal Images

I recently came across this quote from Christian Petzold, explaining his inspiration in becoming a filmmaker:

“The book Mr. Hitchcock, How did You do that? (Truffaut/Hitchcock 1966/1982) and the horrible suburban sprawl devoid of cinema, markets and ideas – the idea was to create images of those things.”
(From https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/flm/20367776.html?forceDesktop=1)

Apart from the rather delightful German title of "Truffaut/Hitchcock", I was struck by the idea that his impetus for filmmaking was so simple as to 'create images' of his immediate environment. Simple, but also deeply personal and unmistakably political in implication. Petzold's depiction of place in his first three TV films (PILOTINNEN [1995], CUBA LIBRE [1996], DIE BEISCHLAFDIEBEN [1998]) is certainly stirring. The idea of spaces 'devoid' of anything is particularly potent, with images of vast public spaces emptied of people recurring again and again. 

I began to think of other filmmakers that might have been moved by a similar inclination, and honestly, the first and most powerful comparison to me seemed to be Steven Spielberg. Thinking especially of E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, Spielberg's representation of suburbia, and the family unit within a suburban landscape seems his most powerful inclination. Another interesting comparison, is that both filmmakers were eventually moved from representing their immediate, personal milieu to embodying historical images. It seems to me then, that the urge to create personal images is deeply political as well, suggesting something of a national chronicler. 

Personal images are strongly tied to ideas about auteurism as well. Many of the French New Wave filmmakers embody this idea. Godard's BREATHLESS, and particularly his A WOMAN IS A WOMAN are notable for placing genre cinema into spaces familiar to Godard himself. 

A question which I think can continue to be explored is what makes personal images distinct from an outsider's view of a certain milieu. I don't think it could be claimed that one creating personal images necessarily has a deeper insight. Indeed, often the depth of insight of an outsider is such that people assume the images are personal, such as with Satyajit Ray and PATHER PANCHALI, though he was adapting another's novel and did not live in similar circumstances. Perhaps there's also something incidental about personal images, as if the filmmakers want to relocate the world of cinema into their personal space, rather than necessarily make films about their personal space. Of course, even in this idea we find exceptions (for instance, Debra Granik's exploration of Missouri in WINTER'S BONE), but I think it's maybe closer to the truth. It speaks to quite an organic split in some filmmakers, between the cinema and reality, which is as excited by the possibilities of both. 

From PILOTINNEN (1995)