The Ister
(2004/Icarus Films DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Feature: C+
Trying to
capture words and ideas in images is not easy and is one of the greatest
challenges all serious filmmakers face, no matter what they make, from serious narrative
fiction, to documentaries, to personal statements. You can say and intend one thing, then the
final result backfires and communicates ideas (et al) unintended, leaving at
least a few things unsaid.
Misinterpretation can vary widely, even in the best of works. The goal of the David Barison/Daniel Ross
project The Ister (2004) is to show
Martin Heidegger’s 1949 take on Romantic thinker Friedrich Holderlin’s 1803
work on the Danube
River.
As you
may know, Heidegger and fellow great-thinking philosophist Friedrich Nietzsche
both came from a school of philosophy based in the overrated Aristotle and to a
lesser extent, Plato, so it is no surprise that their work became affiliated
with the rise of Fascism in the early 20th Century and particularly
Nazism. Of course, they were accurate in
some of their ideas, but up to a point and only when they tried to out it into
action (via Hitler) was is a disaster instead of staying a scientific model and
ideology versus a way of life or replacement for reality.
The
results is that the best aspects of their work have been permanently tainted
forever and braded with genocide, much like Marxism turning into Stalinism;
some ideas work in theory, but attempts at practice or particularly making some
ideas literally so cause catastrophe.
Barison and Ross spent five years going to the locations Heidegger lived
in and ones his work was about. This
attempt to match the words with visuals is ambitious and interesting, including
some footage and interviews we would not otherwise see, but at 189 minutes is
like taking the wrong road the long way and not being able to leave. How ironic.
Beside
the modern catastrophes noted, we get latter-day philosophers going in circles
as if talking about the works will improve them. Then there is this highly false theory that
man is a technological being, reminiscent of angry Republicans calling people
“political animals” as if either were parts of being when they are artificial
extensions. This kind of false baiting
extends to legitimizing arguments here that man and machine are always one and
the same, even in destiny and connection.
This actually flies in the face of the better ideas of Existentialist
philosophy, of which both Heidegger and Nietzsche were among a handful of
founders in as the Enlightenment collapsed in the face of WWI and other
disasters, plus the ones they would cause.
Bernard
Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacue-Labarthe and Hans-Jurgen Syberberg are
the name people interviewed, but after hearing them out, I can see why they
have been narrowly restricted to their fields.
I also enjoy how the references to myth, Rome
and Greece
act as if that were the only places civilization started. Absences in this realization of history
include many cultures, from the Chinese, to general Eastern philosophy to the
Jews who built civilization. No wonder
Hitler liked and promoted this rogue branch of thinking gone fatally wrong.
Of
course, as it has happened before, some so-called intellectuals will say that
any argument against the man/machine connection made here is pure stupidity, an
emotional argument without basis or an insufficient moral argument, but the
proof is in the results and the thinking that becomes the theory of the theory
of the theory is as distancing as any thinker who thinks they are above their
mortality or mortality itself. This
evasion of death only causes death and the filmmakers totally missed that in
their zeal to capture visuals for another’s work.
This is
not the first time by a longshot that philosophy has been captured with images
and the trap (outside of flawed philosophies and ideas covered) is that the
makers think presenting the work in a book-like manner beings it to life. That is very wrong. The best films on philosophy have been the
writerly works out of the French New Wave and not the propaganda of Triumph Of The Will or Battleship Potemkin. Alain Resnais has been particularly effective
in dealing with philosopher works, as has Godard, though his Maoist period
eventually died and he too turned to video to continue such pursuits. Fellini and Truffaut are further examples of
a personal philosophy expressed. Another
problem Barison and Ross cannot escape is that they are not the authors of this
work, Heidegger is and by way of Holderlin, so they are a few centuries and
generations away from the authors.
They
admit in one of the essays that a feature the length of one of Andy Warhol’s
experimental films would be the only way to do justice to the text, but 3+
Hours is too much form them and they are not Warhol either. Being co-directors is another issue, causing
further authorship conflict, so you can imagine I am being kind to call this
work uneven. When they surrendered the
editing to others, that furthered the problem still.
As for
the best book-like film to covert the territory here, all they had to do was
see Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968), but The Ister
still has enough interesting moments to make it a special interest work that
wants to fall between documentary and narrative, but it tries too much and that
ultimately is why it does not work too often.
The 1.33
X 1 image was shot on a low-definition digital Mini-DV camera, but this looks
good considering the source, yet expect softness and detail limits
throughout. I was impressed by some
shots, but others were rougher and some of the editing is not as good as other
points. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo had
production problems with its recording by the admission of the director’s, in
part because of they did not know how to record the audio to best effect and
location audio has issues they were not aware of. With that said, the sound is still good and
non-English is permanently subtitled with yellow characters. Extras include an exceptional booklet inside
the DVD case, while the DVD has five more interview pieces and in the smartest
idea on this disc, offering subchapters to the chapters of the Heidegger work
itself. Too bad the main work was not as
clever.
- Nicholas Sheffo
