I Am Curious (Yellow) and Zusje

Mr. De Grazia: Would you state for the jury, please, some of the ways in which this film explores important issues of today?
Stanley Kauffmann: I would begin by stating its basic tone, temper, or theme is the idea of transition, that the picture has grappled basically with the idea that we are living in a time of profound change in all aspects and perspectives of modern industrial civilization; and this basic theme of change, of transition, which is affecting all our lives, willy or nilly, is explored in four or five different veins.
That is, we see change in social attitudes, change in political attitudes, change in that version of political attitudes that deals with military views, changes in sexual relations, changes in the status of women in the society ...

They fought the battle in the courts and on the screen, but does the screen remember the fight? I Am Curious (Yellow) reminds me of the possibility of absolute freedom in film narratives, of the creative potential of dramatic form in cinema. For example, for years I've carried the dream of mid-film credits, for whatever reason, and now I know what that would be like. It'd be charming.

In special features Vilgot Sjöman explains how he asked his producer for film and total creative control with no script, and because it was the 60s or Sweden or for other reasons, this happened. Sjöman shot, edited, shot, edited, and felt he didn't have a complete film, so he asked his producer for more film and ended with enough footage for two movies, Yellow and Blue, the colors on Sweden's flag.

In the book edition of Gus Van Sant's screenplays for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues/My Own Private Idaho, Van Sant talks about his screenwriting form, which he admits isn't traditional. He notes that Hollywood standards are based on a model of conformity, and he fucks conformity. He says the distinctness of his films is a direct result of the individuality present in the way he writes his screenplays.

I believe in the principles of both these anecdotes. The creative artist must allow itself limitless, unreserved potential. Cronenberg talks about this another way when he says the writer shouldn't write with a budget in mind. He insists it'd be a form of self-censorship.

Stanley Kauffmann: Psychologically, the film does its exploration in carrying forward at the same time several different strands of unassailable reality and of variations on that reality that play back and forth, that present a nicely variegated, thick texture of fact and sort of fantasies on fact, which is representative of what our society is beginning to be more and more aware of in terms of our daily perceptions of what we see, that there is a great difference between the black and white that has been formerly assumed of what is fact and what is fantasy ...

Although after all this is said, the film must be watched. What is it like to watch I Am Curious (Yellow)? It's sometimes confusing, boring, alarming, etc. It's a different type of movie, and brings with it different types of feelings.

Stanley Kauffmann: ...what this director is aiming at is exactly that slight fuzziness, slight blurring of the line between what is fact and what is fiction.
It is a part of a modern view of not just art but a lot of matters. What used to be thought of as a clear dividing line, an iron barrier between art and life, should go or can go or has gone, and we are not really aware of it yet.

I quote Kauffmann not simply as an authority, but because of the eloquence and insight in his answers, and his participation in the context of Yellow. Such compassion was shown for a quest of meaning, such tenderness for the individual. It's important to me to see that the movie, in its time, was treated seriously despite its potential lack of solutions, and despite its sometimes playful surface. Kauffmann excavated the inner questions of Yellow, so that the court could grasp the sense of a shared journey between audience and film.

I believe that while exploring the dimensions of a film, as an audience member, you should also be exploring dimensions of yourself, and as the film is more and more revealed to you, you are more revealed to yourself. This can happen in so many interesting ways, but a direct course to indirectness shouldn't be dismissed, although I think in contemporary films it perhaps has been, as a preference for elusive focal points has been relegated to the art house. Mainstream characters, potentially perfect (sometimes designed to be perfectly flawed for dramatic purposes), have replaced people, who have a history of imperfection and ambiguous virtue.

In particular it's interesting that a complex, multi-sided and ongoing battle for societal harmony is explored on a macro scale through the politics of Sweden, and on a micro scale through Lena's experiences, especially her stormy love affair and home life. Yellow's narrative is of Lena, a free thinking 20 year old who tallies the changes brought by radical external development as she participates in her life's narrative and expansion of personality identity, sometimes cordial and sometimes in conflict with the outside world.

The movie knows our greatest problems lie within as much as anywhere else, that the seeds of discord are in the hearts of people and their relationships with each other. The movie wants to truthfully depict this, but is concerned about its manipulations and short cuts, and so Sjöman includes himself and his own conflicts as a filmmaker. The documentary aspects aren't granted automatic ascendency over the fictional elements, and sometimes the two are blended so that vital questions remain more important than easy answers. I too suffer from immense confusions, not easily solved by applying dramatic devices to my life (though I sometimes try, to great disaster, because strong emotions rarely, and then hardly, follow story beats), and find the ideas of Yellow sometimes liberating, sometimes cathartic, and sometimes simply, wondrously relatable.

The question of the camera and its effect on reality is a fundamental concern in filmmaking. Zusje's technique of a protagonist in a camcorder pov raises implicit ideas about the camera's ability to record facets of a person's soul, and of a camera's ability to illuminate the emotions of a person in front of or behind the camera.

Martijn visits his estranged sister Daantje, who has started her own life in Amsterdam. What Martijn's life is like I'm less sure of, and what I know about Daantje I know from Martijn's camera. The film is the record of their relationship as witnessed by Martijn's camera, and we cannot know about the man behind the camera without knowing about the people in front of the camera, and vice versa, and the audience works to realize what they are not showing or telling.

The subjective camera brings us closer to the characters' living experiences and creates an ambiguous emotional surface. For example, why does Martijn hide behind the camera, what is he hiding, and is he hiding? Another example, do the others tolerate Martijn despite his camera, or because of his camera - are they starving for recognition, in whatever form, for attention, however it comes? Is it even about any of these things? The nexus of the film is in the relationship between brother and sister, and the film's narrative is the surface, the mask to, an inward investigation of intricate connections between the siblings.

I had long wanted to do a film that felt like a found home video, and Zusje is that film. Martijn fabricates and conjures a narrative of partial and absolute reality, aiming his camera as a way of personal emphasis, and the people around him respond in spontaneous and unprogrammed behavior sometimes, calculated and purposeful behavior other times. That is, the camera becomes a symbol of the human eye, the obtrusiveness of our lives upon each other, and the way our presence shapes the lives of others.

These two films represent courageous encounters with the substance that envelops certain mysteries of being human. If the mysteries were clearly solved, the essence of mysteries would be neutralized, and the struggle for self-identity trivialized. Answers needn't be strained from dramatic forms. In forcing clarity on complex matters there is the danger of reductionism, and also an ironic non-admission of complexity, a kind of dramatic accusation about the nature of uncertainty. Simply, irrationality itself must thrive in the heart of a film that truly wants to deal with matters of irrational humanity and eternal riddles.

In the spirit of Yellow, I'd like not to end on what appears to be a summation. I'd like to say that I like the scene in Yellow when Lena has a conversation with MLK Jr. from her bike. I like her pedaling feet, and I like Jr.'s face, which must have done so much of his work for him, as it's an incredibly sincere and naked human face, with eyes like deep portals, etc.