Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 14:27:13 -0700
From: biomorph-AT-ix.netcom.com (Wm. Dubin)
Subject: Re:  Brothers Quay


You wrote: 
>
>> Contrast this, to the Brothers Quay, whose camera lingers with 
>> delight over antiques, spider webs, and mysterious objects.
>
>> The fantastic, opens doors to unknown places in one's being... the 
>> surrealiste throws hand grenades through those doors. And, no, I 
don't 
>> mean to relate Surrealism to violence. Joseph Cornell throws very 
soft 
>> hand grenades, but the shrapnel slices the mind, never-the-less.
>
>I neither mean to nor can argue about the surrealism or non-surrealism 
of
>the Brothers Quay, but I have to register an objection to this 
>characterization.  I don't think their camera lingers with delight 
over 
>anything.


Hi Malgosia,

Its been years since I saw the film, so a part of my rememberance maybe 
rusty. What I meant by lingering with delight, sounds, upon re-reading, 
as though the camera remains, locked on to spider webs, etc. So, let me 
try and re-write this. The effect I remember, might be better expressed 
as a "catalouging" of these elements (which I think is what you are 
saying when you use the terms obsessive, and mechanicity), however I 
also meant to bring up the awareness of the directors in constructing 
the elements of the mise-en-scene. In this, I would add the example 
>from the Bela Lugosi DRACULA in which Harker walks up the steps of the 
castle, and the camera seeks out the spider webs, etc. and somehow you 
KNOW that the prop-people went wild in putting the whole thing 
together. Does this "round-out" my description better?

  Neither, in fact, would I agree that the BQ films belong in 
>the realm of the "phantastic".  To me, their films posit an obsessive, 

>endlessly precise yet purposeless, mechanicity of the soul.    I find
>these films beautiful and painful, and part of the pain is exactly the 

>way the meanings of the objects are _exhausted_, in some sense -- they 
all
>function as indispensible parts of the meaningless, but condemned to
>perpetual functioning, machinery.

If I remember correctly, the sound-track utilized a ratchet-ing sound, 
much like the gears of a huge clock marking time.


>superficial promiscuity of lingering that William suggests. 
>
 I hope I didn't give the impression that I found the lingering to be 
superficial... far from it, I am personaly attracted to the 
presentation of detail upon detail (and in fact it was one of the areas 
of the film I remember best). Nor do I think that I would use the word 
promiscuity in this case, although I like it, and the idea of lingering 
as a promiscuis action is very appealing, it just isn't a word I would 
have thought of.

This was the  only film I've seen by BQ... do you, or might anyone else 
have any more titles, etc.?
>