Art That Moves: Movies Beyond Belief

Art has continued from prehistory to be a powerful way of knowing, feeling, touching, expressing, and effectively communicating something important, something special.  -- Janet Strayer (previous blog)

                                                                                                                                                                  

I’ve been hooked on movies ever since I can remember, and then some. Even as a kid, old black and white movies on TV especially captivated me. For some magical reason, I thought they were more “real” than those in full-color.

There isn’t even a particular movie genre I like best, that’s how indiscriminate I am. Give me westerns, chick-flics, action-movies,, sci-fi, documentaries, thrillers, romance, comedy, Hollywood, Bollywood, foreign, domestic, you name it. 

Maybe this marks a strain of promiscuity that needs restraining.  But I rather like having it.  So I’ll name it something more positive, like a “generous or wide-band receptivity”.  It’s not a bad quality. But it does leave one open to others thinking that you have little taste or discernment.  I’ll risk being branded a cinema slut, though, just to keep the pleasure of my open options!

Not much of a critic in my early days, I was a glutton at a visual-narrative feast.  I’m more of a gourmand now (and I see fewer films, alas).  Still, I like many more movies than a cultivated person probably should. But then, I guess, for good or ill, I have a high quotient for suspension of disbelief -- that radical imaginative facility Keats and others speak of. I did and do respond to material from any direction that engages my mind and feelings and encourages imaginative participation.

Today’s Thought: Imaginative Participation

 Actually, imaginative participation may be a rarer quality in art now than in years past. This isn’t the same as knee-jerk interactive participation in a video game, or the scripted and conditioned responses we may be unable to resist in “tear-jerkers”.

Imaginative participation is more elusive, taking some time to experience and enduring, usually somewhat transformed, in the viewer’s mind . I think it requires some empathic engagement, an intersubjective bridge built from the artwork into the viewers' own esthetic and empathic imaginings. (I've written a chapter draft on empathy in the arts; write if you want to read it.)

I still love going to the movies But, like eating junk food, I don’t always come away satisfied.  Recently, though, I saw two movies whose imagery was enthralling, sending me on a visual- imaginative-esthetic journey that pushed my critical boundaries out and away. They left me full of images rebounding in my mind, full also of enduring feelings and sensations, many of them hard to describe, and a sense of wonder.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams 

Werner Herzog did us all a great favor by filming inside the prehistoric, but only relatively recently discovered, Chauvet Cave in France. Seeing the film was almost better than being there because of the intimate camera work (not special effects). The hand-held cameras provided shifts of perspective and changing contextual viewpoints on the marvelous animal images drawn upon the cave walls.

Human life is present in the Cave without itself being depicted.  The human is present and suggested in the selective ways the animals are seen to move, and in how they affect us as we view them. It’s interesting to me that the humans we focus on in the film aren’t the film crew or scientists (stand-ins for our present-day selves). Instead, we focus on the mysterious originating artist/s -- our human ancestor/s who walked here, envisioning and inscribing images of animal life in which they , too, must have participated.

These images are alive forever in the way only art can be. The human artists are long extinct, their own presence depicted only in handprints, and in one rather amazing blend of human female iconography with an animal head. Yet they, too, continue to live through the art and through us.

This film hardly needed narrative, yet Herzog insisted on providing it, much of it  (beyond the facts provided) seeming superfluous to me.  For me, it’s enough to say:

Look, see, marvel in any way you like at this life that breathes in art  35,000 years after our ancestors breathed the air in this cave. How like them are we?  How like the making of art then is the making of art now? What became of them and what will become of us?

Tree of Life

This film really surprised me. I had not read anything about it when I went to see it. Good thing, given I don’t typically enjoy anything with such a strong religious bent to it. Yet the imagery in this film, its lyrical and moving soundtrack, and the complex, elegiacally restrained emotional pull of it was, despite my admitted reluctance to follow any evangelical line, profoundly beautiful and moving.

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Ronda and La Pileta Cave

Here we are in Ronda, a place like no other in Spain… or elsewhere. It’s only a day-trip from the Costa del Sol but is  nothing like it. Ronda is built on top of a sheer and spectacular gorge (El Tajo canyon). The setting alone is beyond belief, with the city connected by a stone bridge spanning the drop (called the New Bridge, it’s over 250 years old). The height and angle are so dramatic that, standing atop the bridge, you can watch kites (the birds) dive and swoop in a flash.

all photos by JS

Why would folks so many centuries past have thought it worth the enormous effort to build such places (I’m recalling Minerve in France as well): defense? Yes, but they also built some places so well that they not only resist and endure but, in the case of Ronda, retain a civilized life. One can easily explore much of hilltop Ronda on foot, and there are good paths and steps down to the cliff-face, requiring some stamina and good joints.

Ronda is considered the birthplace of modern bullfighting and its bullring was famous even before Madonna made a music video there. It’s also been an equestrian training centre since the 16^th C when no less than king Philip II established the Real Maestranza de Caballeria, a training facility for developing horsemanship.

The air seems rare and rather refined. And then the city, with its ancient bull-ring (a favorite of Hemingway) and elegant Parador, parks, and antique shops is a welcome find somewhat off the well worn tourist track.  It’s had its bevy of famous visitors throughout history, including Orson Wells, who said he was happiest in Ronda and wanted his remains left there (the gorge would have big enough to accommodate even his considerable bulk).

By the way, paradors are among the very best hotels to stay in throughout Spain. One of Franco’s limited good ideas, they are nationally subsidized beautiful hotels (in former ducal palaces and similar grand squats), so are usually reasonable for what one gets. The large rooms and services (like restaurants) are exceptional and the views are usually the best that can be. Our room in Ronda had a lovely stone balcony (photo below) and other hotel windows looked vertiginously down upon the gorge.

Ronda is billed as one of the most ancient and refined cities in Spain, with its equestrian tradition and sedate squares, in addition to one of Europe’s oldest bullrings. Walking around the city, one finds that it was headquarters to the Spanish Inquisition and later, for a time, to Franco’s regime, rather marring my stellar memories of it. The high terrain was once also home to bandoleros, seen recreated, in dress at least, in this photo. Bandoleros and majas, their colorful dress, music, and festivals were for a long time the subject of romantic paintings set in Spain. The new Sofia Thyssen museum in Malaga has a good collection of these.

I was enchanted in Ronda by a princess I met in an antique shop I visited. Looking into a back room of this rather stuffy place, hoping I could find some inexpensive picture frames, was a lovely little girl of about five, wrapped in a blanket and twirling around. She stopped and smiled at me, asking in Spanish why I walked with a cane. I told her and she shook her head sadly, then resumed smiling. In response to my asking her name, she told me it was Princess Ariel. So I bowed to her and told her I enjoyed my audience with her. Sometime, I will paint this golden little girl, or perhaps, in some form, I already have.  

Today's Painting

painting with gold leaf by Janet Strayer see also www.wix.com/janetstrayer/paintings

Not far  from Ronda (about 22 kilometres)  is something strange and magical. It’s the Cueva de la Pileta (Pileta Cave, near Benaojan). I tried to visit it the first time we went to Ronda, but I couldn’t make the steep rocky walk up to it. Jim went on his own at a later date, noting that even if I had been able to climb up, I could not have managed the trek into the cave. So, it is not for the physically challenged. Below is the bottom of the hill to the cave entrance.

From all I hear (and the book from the cave), La Pileta is well worth a visit. It’s in as near its “natural” state as any such treasure can remain, once open to visitors. The little book bought on site is a marvel of detail about the Pileta Cave and its history. It tells the unique story of the tough and resilient Lobato family whose grandfather (Jose Bullon Lobato) discovered the cave in the early 20th C. The family became La Pileta’s guardians, endured travesties on its behalf, and still serve as its caretakers. The current guide is the still-nimble grandson of the man who first discovered the cave .Though it’s now recognized as a national historic site, the family still tends the cave personally, arranging limited tours.

I’m told, first-hand, that the decent is steep and slippery, with no light but for the lantern held by Sr. Lobato and a flashlight he uses to point out formations during the 90 minute tour of the extensive cave system so far unearthed. If you’ve ever been in any cave, you know how truly dark the utter dark can be. Sr. Lobato’s lantern is reminiscent of his Paleolithic predecessor, who carried a fired pitch torch into the cave. Then, as now, one must rely on only a little light and one’s own footsteps to guide one ever further on.  Not everyone chooses to explore the dark.

The paintings in an inner chamber of the cave system include a fish as well as other animals and some stick-figure humans. Human remains have been found dating back at least 30,000 years. Researchers believe this cave is part of an extensive system of caves at the crossroads of human migration during Paleolithic times. There’s an excellent site (in Spanish) for viewing some of the Pileta’s mystery: the videos need no translation (click here).

So here we are, still in wonder at it all. We’ve been to the heights of a city balanced atop a precipitous gorge.  And then we’ve been to the depths of a steeply descending cave to glimpse a civilization almost lost to historic record. Civilization and nature, bound together, however they endure.

Today's Thought

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

  -Lao-Tzu

We modern men are not 'modern' at all. On the contrary we still belong to the last generation of cave dwellers.

 - Hendrik Van Loon