Desistfilm
A Pilgrimage, ft. <PERSON> (1/63)
To try and categorize <PERSON> requires placing him within the umbrella of labels reserved for those in which categorization otherwise fails, <PERSON> is the outsider artist, the avant-garde maestro, the lyrical poet who often didn't need a story to express insights on the world and instead let his acrylic paints and scratched-on film canisters do the speaking for him, and as such it makes for a great challenge for saps like me to try and talk at length about him but DAMMIT I'm gonna do my hardest to make it through this pilgrimage as a being more experienced with the boundary-breaching world of the avant-garde that <PERSON> has been oft cited as the champion of. 464
The journey begins, however, atypically from the form that <PERSON> would associate himself with, as Desistfilm has elements like actors, post-synch sound, even a plot of sorts simply because <PERSON> looked at other traditional movies as inspiration while trying to find firm footing for his voice, and while not his first film it does represent the first baby steps for the man ready and willing to break and protest narrative and social norms all at once.
A social gathering is our basis for <PERSON>'s camera, following teenagers and young adults engaging in debaucherous and risky behavior, seeking to desist from the norms and rigid structure of the world outside in an expression of desire, frustration, and a fleeting sense of escape. <PERSON>'s eyes sees teenage rebellion as not a form of freedom for the youth, but rather claustrophobia, as the room these youths trap themselves in merely isolate themselves into their own activities, burning matches, collapsing towers of books, playing the strings of a mandolin, and though <PERSON> has claimed a more neutral conscious awareness of the usual activities partaken by beatniks at the time during the making of the film (with the characters within suggested to be smoking tobacco rather than pot), it's hard not to make connections towards the negative anti-social consequences that subjects like drugs, violence, and sex (or in this case voyeurism) tend to cause and what <PERSON> is showing on-screen, taking account that too much indulgence can lead to frayed senses and frightful behavior, such as the more innocent couple's rightfully shocked expressions in seeing the grotesque display of humanity staring out at them in the form of their close peers.
<PERSON> is essentially making a horror film about the plights of the youth through Desistfilm, expressing how desisting too much from reality can turn existence into a waking nightmare, and this is embellished through the speakers-blown, alien sounds of a torch song, atonal as it covers up any and all dialogue in favor of letting the unknown and the unrecognizable inform tension, heightening our vision of a world somewhat unclear due to its fragmentations and flusters about in a similar drunk manner, perhaps in order to give us further insight and a greater grip into bringing us into the party, only with just one or two shots in our system to recognize with clarity the terror that teenagers bored with life can cause and why they rightfully scare the shit out of some. An interesting, if unindicative, introduction to a man that will further his glance at subjectivity as his career goes on. 285