relighting on flor

ive laughed but no one on the screen has laughed  really laughed  until about halfway through this enthusiastically monstrous epic and halfway through the equally mad episode three when casterman  who never laughs  laughs uproariously  alone  in his office of death  over a sleeping brussels  and a bit later our four assassins  who never laugh  after being told to stop the iron jokes by their maybe commander  begin laughing when she herself joins the joke  and then immediately of course the denouement  which of course isnt a denouement  a pseudoconsummation of over five hours of beautiful ridiculousness  as the killers confront their doom

thinking back over the films a little like thinking back over ones life  you cant hold it all at once  not even close  i try to go sequential but this quickly collapses into digressions and questions and capers and i realize the film has done its work  endlessly duplicating lifes endless distractions  as the film does this to life and in itself it also does in us  happily collapsing our solid safeties

it shouldnt work  i keep thinking the first time i watch it  theres no reason for me to be so consistently enthralled  and yet i am   the thing is hokey interminable anarchic  the actresses as assassins are absurd  their killings are painless silent bloodless  their individual stories impossible  beliefs never suspended  the b movie schlockiness of the first episode stretched through the first four in their mammothian twelve hours

if arts supposed to hide artifice la flor fails completely   its artifice is apparent and pervasive  finally bursting exuberantly in the fourth episode as the film itself experiences a mental breakdown just about the time we are and we all enter the asylum together and flap like chickens and take on pantheonic names and conquer like the shadow casanova through collapse

what doesnt la flor explore? it travels prodigiously  not only in time and space but theme and antitheme   it goes into the darkness of the heart and out to the darkness of the night and  as in extraordinary stories  threads of divine comedy and melancholy are always in the weave   so distant  in the screen  here  so close  in our attention

its perfect in its perfect imperfections  in its calm and joyful refusal to provide answers or closure  to even ask questions or tell stories   and yet it tells stories and asks questions and answers and closure are ubiquitous  tumbling over themselves like kittens

its a dance and painting  a song and poem  not a movie   critics cite borges as an obvious inspiration but its more the museum of eternas novel with its infinite prologuings that becomes a novel by not becoming one

llinás says he hates storytelling experts and psychologists  presumably in part because of their need  like so many professionals  to drag art into their domains and thereby possess it  to explain and commoditize and psychologize and clinicize and biographize and formulaicize   but fiction is the very grenade that explodes the oppositions   when 301 and angel are killing across europe and pretending to be in love and in love and not in love and pretending not to be in love  their pretendings more real than many realities  a pretense of course thats already in a pretense  and this nestedness of simulations  already innately a function of film  in la flor becomes an ouroboros of strange and infinite loops  it becomes ourselves

if we set aside the party of the credits  but who could?  the final two episodes seem to slow down  and not just because episode six cant be over that quickly  taking us directly into dreamspace and the rebelswitchesmountiescoquettesmodels transform through their absence in episode five into oneiric meditations of continual gestation and muted freedoms from inexplicable enslavements

what do we say about the four? who are everywhere and nowhere like good gods   havent their manifold identities silenced us through excess? havent their ungraspabilities gifted us with our own facelessness?

episode four is meta? the entire thing is meta

the director disappears  the actresses disappear  time disappears  we disappear

some speak of finding ones voice but whats voice here? who is who? who speaks what? nothings authentic other than the authenticity of play

from vertov and buñuel and deren through schneemann and brakhage and sharits and hundreds of others  actors cinematographers viewers characters  have questioned the usurpation of film by conventional forces  the expected story  and through these questions extended natures most necessary diversities

but here we have la flor  which doesnt technically fall into the experimentalfilm camp  buts more experimental than most experimental films  questioning through forms so entirely new  but entirely old  but entirely new  that its hard to grasp the radicality of whats not being done   of the smirking challenge to the very foundations of art philosophy politics love