Duncan
02-13-2008, 04:21 AM
The Silence Before Bach (Pere Portabella, 2007)
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Pere Portabella is somewhat of an unknown in the film scene. He was heavily involved with the Spanish film industry under Franco’s rule, producing a number of Bunuel’s films. Since then he has quietly been making films exclusively for theatre screenings. Aside from bootlegs - I’m sure they exist somewhere - his films are unavailable for home viewing. I regretted missing a retrospective of his work at the MoMA a few months ago, so I was glad to see that his new film was playing here.
The Silence Before Bach is a non-narrative film concerned mainly with how one experiences music, and therefore with how one experiences life. It begins with a long tracking shot through an empty, white washed space. The quietude of this scene is interrupted by an automated piano that not only plays without a pianist, but travels over the floor following the now retreating camera. It twirls and dances and casts Portabella’s spell like a pretty girl in an opium parlour. Portabella himself is a 78 year old man. Anyway, this spell will not be effective against some level 17 Mages of Mainstream, but if you’ve got the patience for a unique and experimental film experience (or just happen to be a fan of Bach) then I predict you will enjoy The Silence Before Bach.
The film is structured as a layering of anecdotes and vignettes. Some of them may be true, some of them lay claims to veracity but are clearly apocryphal, and some of them are purely fictional. What they all have in common, however, is a different way of representing musical form. In one scene a truck driver listens to his partner play Bach on a mouth organ as they travel across Germany. You can’t even see the instrument under the man’s hands. In the next scene Bach himself plays the same music on a magnificent organ at the St. Thomas Church. Here, hundreds of pipes roughly six inches in diameter shudder with the force of air rushing through them.
This begins to get truly interesting when Portabella starts representing the music in visual form such as in the roughly five minute shot of a perforated scroll making its way through the automated piano. Or, if this does not sound to your liking, the scene in which a horse dances to Bach’s music. As I watched this steed so precisely mark up the ground with his hooves, I suddenly realized that I had lost my own footing. For some brief moments I was disturbed by thought that I did not know the source of the music. Was it the hands nimbly manipulating the piano keys? Was it the piano itself? Was it the horse (I’m not kidding)? Was it the speakers in the theatre? Was it Bach? Was it the glory of God as Bach himself might have suggested? I’ve been thinking about it ever since then. I have tried applying Baudrillard’s simulacrum, but I find it inevitably leads me in the wrong direction. That is, to a place further removed from the reality of the experience. All these images may be part of the hyperreal, the music as I listen to it may be part of the hyperreal, but at the very least the idea of the music is real. Its conception, its beauty and its expression – all these are real. I am certain of it. And if that is the case then the horse is not some dastardly illusion, but a practical prosthetic. It is an extension of myself, and a bridge to the consciousness and inspiration of a great composer long dead.
http://mailer.e-flux.com/mail_images/1189632600image_web.jpg
Pere Portabella is somewhat of an unknown in the film scene. He was heavily involved with the Spanish film industry under Franco’s rule, producing a number of Bunuel’s films. Since then he has quietly been making films exclusively for theatre screenings. Aside from bootlegs - I’m sure they exist somewhere - his films are unavailable for home viewing. I regretted missing a retrospective of his work at the MoMA a few months ago, so I was glad to see that his new film was playing here.
The Silence Before Bach is a non-narrative film concerned mainly with how one experiences music, and therefore with how one experiences life. It begins with a long tracking shot through an empty, white washed space. The quietude of this scene is interrupted by an automated piano that not only plays without a pianist, but travels over the floor following the now retreating camera. It twirls and dances and casts Portabella’s spell like a pretty girl in an opium parlour. Portabella himself is a 78 year old man. Anyway, this spell will not be effective against some level 17 Mages of Mainstream, but if you’ve got the patience for a unique and experimental film experience (or just happen to be a fan of Bach) then I predict you will enjoy The Silence Before Bach.
The film is structured as a layering of anecdotes and vignettes. Some of them may be true, some of them lay claims to veracity but are clearly apocryphal, and some of them are purely fictional. What they all have in common, however, is a different way of representing musical form. In one scene a truck driver listens to his partner play Bach on a mouth organ as they travel across Germany. You can’t even see the instrument under the man’s hands. In the next scene Bach himself plays the same music on a magnificent organ at the St. Thomas Church. Here, hundreds of pipes roughly six inches in diameter shudder with the force of air rushing through them.
This begins to get truly interesting when Portabella starts representing the music in visual form such as in the roughly five minute shot of a perforated scroll making its way through the automated piano. Or, if this does not sound to your liking, the scene in which a horse dances to Bach’s music. As I watched this steed so precisely mark up the ground with his hooves, I suddenly realized that I had lost my own footing. For some brief moments I was disturbed by thought that I did not know the source of the music. Was it the hands nimbly manipulating the piano keys? Was it the piano itself? Was it the horse (I’m not kidding)? Was it the speakers in the theatre? Was it Bach? Was it the glory of God as Bach himself might have suggested? I’ve been thinking about it ever since then. I have tried applying Baudrillard’s simulacrum, but I find it inevitably leads me in the wrong direction. That is, to a place further removed from the reality of the experience. All these images may be part of the hyperreal, the music as I listen to it may be part of the hyperreal, but at the very least the idea of the music is real. Its conception, its beauty and its expression – all these are real. I am certain of it. And if that is the case then the horse is not some dastardly illusion, but a practical prosthetic. It is an extension of myself, and a bridge to the consciousness and inspiration of a great composer long dead.