When Stephanie calls Ramin Bahrani's films depressing, I know what she means. He knows what you mean. On the commentary track of Man Push Cart, Bahrani speaks of MPC as a filmic justification for suicide in the face of horrible, unchanging circumstance. He refers to the following inspirations: Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Boys from Fengkuei; in a magazine article he also mentions Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran, Steinbeck, and Dostoyevsky. On his commentaries (both Man Push Cart and Chop Shop have great ones) he dissects his characters, their origins, the films' themes, provides true-life parallels, and mentions more and more movies. He's kind of like an art house QT, I think, and what it would mean to be an art house QT has been on my mind lately.
How genuine are his films, specifically, is my question. Bahrani isn't just dramatizing intense and stark landscapes, he's also attempting social realism and some kind of didacticism. He's attempting to portray real pain, real people, and real situations. These qualities generally throw up red flags for me. I find that often times artists and filmmakers will use the pain of others as a way of soothing or assuaging their own guilt, or as a way of self-criticism, or as a way of self-dramatizing, or for vanity, or...etc examples of selfish reasons for exploring the true grit of humanity.
I don't believe that politics, governmental or social, in film work like they do in real life. In the physical world the initiator of the change will fade away but the products of his/her efforts will remain regardless of initial intention. All the King's Men stuff. In film, what you produce has to be a result of what you believe, to be totally effective and important. It has to be. You can believe whatever you want, and your beliefs can be outrageous and totally different from mine - I actually love that - just make a film out of what you really believe.
That's why I listen to Bahrani's commentary tracks. I don't have to, because the films are great themselves, but when I do I can begin to understand why and how they are important. Because that's really what the question of sincerity is meant to probe. If Bahrani's films are socially aware, as they are, and I am watching them, what is Bahrani attempting to make me aware of, and why?
I didn't know right away. Not after seeing all three, not after two commentary tracks and a handful of magazine articles. I was eating pizza when the answer came to me. I have seen these people (his film characters) now, and I know them. And that is all. Bahrani has introduced me to struggles outside of my own, made me feel them, experience them, guided me through them, and that is all he has done. What happened afterward was up to me, and that's what makes his films really great.
This is what makes his films really great: Bahrani doesn't offer you the significance of his character's existence. He shows you their lives; you learn about them only by how you respond. As if you were really just meeting them (to meet some of these people, how great that would be, how great is Bahrani's eye for character). It's the imposition of structure and moral codes that delimits the worldview of most films, and Bahrani intelligently offers as little of himself as he can. There are dramatic points in his films. Certainly there's rising tension and character development. I just love that these are movies where we don't really have to discuss all that. Each minor particular doesn't matter as much as the total sum of the experience of seeing these movies.
He speaks of erasing himself from Chop Shop, erasing the presence of the camera and the filmmakers behind the camera. And he does it masterfully. An expert at stylized absence (master of non-style style?), Bahrani is Ozu in the gutters and streets. During a tracking shot in Chop Shop, the d.p. Michael Simmonds refers to the Dardennes' Rosetta, about how he had rewatched Rosetta recently and the tracking shots were wider than he remembered, and Bahrani replies that his intention was to keep the camera as unobtrusive as possible. Where the Dardennes add emphasis, Bahrani does not. That's why you can approach a Bahrani film from any direction, and why you can approach the films as anybody.
I leave myself with a reminder of a stick being tossed off a cliff with a rising wind, and does it rise back? I don't know. That's great.
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