Film review by Kevin Patterson
WAVELENGTH Rating: ** (out of four) Directed by Michael Snow. Runtime: 45 minutes.
Michael Snow's WAVELENGTH is definitely one of the stranger things I have seen projected on a silver screen over the years. It begins with a wide shot of two people leaving a largely empty room which appears to be on the second or third floor of a building. Later, someone comes in, listens to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio, then leaves. The camera slowly starts to zoom in on the far wall as a high-pitched whirring sound begins in the background. There are occasionally bright flashes of light and changes in the color scheme: the shot changes from brownish floorboards and walls and daytime showing through the windows to white walls, grey floorboards, and the lights of nighttime traffic visible from the outside. A man enters the room, lies down on the floor, and apparently does. A woman enters, picks up the telephone, calls someone to report the death, then also leaves. In an interesting effect, we see her "ghost image" shortly after this, entering and moving in the exact same places in the frame, only she is slightly out of sync with the room, since the camera has continued zooming in since she left. The whirring grows louder and higher-pitched as the zoom continues, until finally we see what the camera has been approaching: a painting of the ocean on the far side of the wall.
The problem is that this takes forty-five minutes. I have literally described everything that "happens" in this film: most of the time, the audience is left staring at an empty room. Yes, the empty room changes colors once in a while, but it's still the same empty room. Those who admire WAVELENGTH (including my film professor, who recently screened it--that's how I managed to see this in the first place, in case you're wondering) have described it as a meditation on the subjective nature of cinema and on the ways in which new zooming and lense technology that had recently been invented could add to this subjectivity.
This claim seems to be partially backed up by comments from Snow himself, who said he wanted to explore "aesthetic ideas," among other things, in this film. What I don't understand is why it had to take forty-five minutes, or why Snow wanted to explore these largely academic and technical subjects in the medium of avant-garde film. This sort of thing is best suited for instructional film (I know that I myself got a lot more out of watching clips of the film in lecture the next day, with the professor explaining the technology behind the various shots, than I did out of seeing the film itself) or for the written word. Snow may have hoped for an emotional response as well, as his comments on the film indicate that he hoped to explore religious experience and the nature of sight itself in addition to the more technical issues. Unfortunately, the slow pacing and lack of variety in the images renders the film inaccessible at most levels other than the most esoteric and drastically reduces the possibility of the sort of intuitive, expressionistic sensations which are generated by the best abstract films. Even those who recognize the issues of human consciousness present in the film are, in my opinion, probably appreciating them intellectually rather than sensing any connection or parallel to their own experiences in consciousness.
I don't deny that there is a certain intelligence and craft behind WAVELENGTH (and in fact, many film experts consider it a masterpiece, so my opinion should probably be taken with a grain of salt anyway). If it had only been ten or fifteen minutes long, it might have been a nice little piece of scratch-your-head abstraction that might also have provoked the sort of deeply intuitive sensations that are evoked by the best avant-garde films and thus would have demonstrated the artistic power of the new technology with which Snow was experimenting. The slow pacing, however, emphasizes the technical and downplays the human: WAVELENGTH becomes a film about film and little else.
I can't really call it a failure, since it succeeds at being a film about film, as much as an idea ill-suited to the medium. WAVELENGTH is not available on video and, needless to say, doesn't play in the theaters very often, so it may be hard to find even if you do want to see it. If you're highly interested in an exploration of the technical aspects of filmmaking in and of themselves, you might want to see it if you get the chance. Otherwise, don't waste your time trying to track it down.
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