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wonderboy
Frank could have done a better job, imo.
The footage is primitively shot (yes, on purpose, but it's distracting) and I'm not sure that Frank knew what he was trying to say or how he wanted to say it.
He focused on the sheer weirdness of the scene (to him, as the outsider) and I am not quite sure he was able to make an artistic comment on what was happening.
I agree with you. Maybe if I could see a clearer copy of CS Blues I'd have a different take on it, but (aside from the subject matter) its intentions seem muddled. He's said it's a statement on boredom, the irony or contrast between the dynamism and excitement on stage and everything and everyone surrounding those moments, with the reality off-stage. Is that an artistic comment? Perhaps, though not of any depth. The impact is visceral and largely unpleasant...watching a voyeur, seeing what a voyeur sees.
I haven't seen his other films, but figure that might provide context for CS Blues. As such, I located this one, and watched close to 30 minutes. My reaction is much like with CS Blues, but without the music and a band I love.
Me and My Brother by Robert FrankAs far as I can tell, and I didn't read up on yet, but might later this weekend, it seems to be about Allen Ginsberg and his long-time boyfriend, Peter Orlovsky in around 1965 or '66--as well as (and sort of focusing on) Peter's brother Julius Orlovsky--who is schizophrenic and has recently been sprung, after 11 years, from Bellevue mental hospital in NY. My boyfriend told me about Allen and Peter, having known them in San Francisco, and Peter's brother Julius who my boyfriend met when then stayed in town for several months--my boyfriend told me Allen was very kind to Julius, and gentle (Allen, he said, being a gentle soul in general).
However, not that I see Allen of Peter being unkind, per se, to Julius Orlovsky, but, to me, behaving in a way that's very 1960s, belief that mental illness is not really an illness. And so, in this film they are sort of treating Julius like a chracter or an object--somewhat revered, but also patronizingly toward him, making him sit on stage with them as they perform their, let's just say, avant garde poetry, and try to make him say things into the microphone, and watch while Robert Frank is filming Peter Orlovsky and another man have sex in a room somewhere in Manhattan. Later, in their squalid apartment, Julius is filmed in his underwear in the morning, with his hair pointing in 15 directions sort of hovering, not knowing what to do, and in other scenes he is sort of clenching and unclenching his hands and walking back and forth, while people try to get him to perform or say things, or appear on camera.
There are certain aspects of the '60s I despise. I understand breaking from tradition--of smashing tradition, and not being bound by "your petty morals." Growing up on the fringes of that time I found it, even as a child, to be liberating. But something like this feels grossly exploitative. Julius Orlovsky is in no frame of consciousness to give consent to be filmed and treated in that manner. In on scene, the movie is being shown in an art house theatre--Peter Orlovsky is railing and telling people what is in the newspaper he is holding up is real and the film is fiction. Two semi-straight Manhattanites are pleased at themselves attending the screening and say how much they are enjoying the film. The man proclaims twice, in a square sort of voice, something to the effect of: "YES! This is a very GREAT film. I enjoy it a lot." And there is more narative at that level (apparently written by Sam Sheppard and Robert Frank, and narrated by Christopher Walken). In that segment a woman in the audience complains that they don't need an actor to play Julius, because they have Julius himself. But then we hear Peter Orlovsky reading, as he says, "a hilarious letter from your clinic, Julius!" in which a psychologist chronicles Julius' psychotic break some years earlier when he was a NY City Dept of Sanitation worker--and indicates, in the letter, that apparently while Ginsberg and Orlovsky were traveling around touring doing the aforementioned avant garde reading/performance thing around the country, Julius broke free and disappeared somewhere in the U.S. and they weren't able to locate him.
etc etc etc...
I don't believe I'll watch the remaining hour.
Not sure what Frank's thing is. But it feels "dated" to me. If I had a different kind of sensibility, maybe, I could see it abstractly, as art--but I see it more as an exercise of its mid-60s time when boundaries were being pushed and pulverized, for the sake of doing that. And that the "freedom" granted by Ginsberg and his notoriously crazy lover (sorry, it's true--not casting aspersions at the poor thing--but Peter Orlovsky was at least bipolar, and their relationship was fraught and mad, violent, and tumultuous, with Peter Orlovsky in and out of mental hospitals himself his whole life, and Orlovsky and Ginsberg staying connected most if not all of their lives, certainly succesding in being the antithesis of boring nuclear family/couple relationships they sought freedom from) definitely was a double-edged sword for them, and seems to have been for Julius, who is nearly catatonic and often looks frightened and ghostly in this film.
Ugh. I find it perverse as hell. Perhaps it's the ballsiness to be so unsparingly unconventional and perverse that attracted Mick to Robert Frank. In the end, apparently being the subject to this tawdry hold-up-the-mirror Frank treatment was too much for even Mick. Hence an all-but moratorium on the film.
Still, maybe if I were to see a clean cut of CS Blues I'd pick up something less nihilistic than what I've seen so far.
-swiss
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-02-14 12:41 by swiss.