644 Pina

[colinr0380]

I've finally watched this (in 2D) and would generally agree with the sentiments here. Its a lovely tribute film but the cutaways felt rather jarring, especially those occurring within the Rite of Spring piece that kicks off the film (and to which nothing else can really live up to! Although I guess the film is structured by the "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter" procession so it thematically has to come first!). That and the other long piece of Café Muller feel slightly damaged by cutting away and then returning to a further point in the dance. The other pieces work better as tiny trailers for respective performances that we see once and move on from.

In some ways it reminds me of Wenders' slightly wasteful use of soundtracks in Until The End of the World and The End of Violence. I'm not too sure that Wenders is at his best dealing with an piece of art as its own thing (you could add the rather muted commentary on writing in Hammett too), or the production process, but that feels like it is because he has much more of an interest in the people who do the producing rather than so much in the end result of their efforts. The end result feels kind of dead in a Wenders film, suitable only for background mood music (or at its worst a hedonistic distraction, as with the dream machine in Until The End of the World, in which it feels wrong to capture a dream and re-dream it again and again). It feels as if it is the ephemeral act of creation (or even just movement, motivated by an end goal or not, as in his road films or this dance one) that feels where the energy lies.

Perhaps the ephemerality of the water throwing section emphasises that sense of beauty only in the moment, so you have to keep moving whatever happens! (Though I was most amused in this sequence of thinking about that moment in the Simpsons during the school pageant in which Principal Skinner says: "And a warning for the first two rows, you will get wet!")

So as very much a modern dance novice I initially approached this for a chance to see performances, as much as to find out about Pina Bausch herself, which might have been a slightly wrong mindset to approach it with. You get excerpts of performances, stunningly re-staged for the camera, but rather out of context of their deeper meaning. I could be impressed by the dancers throwing themselves around (including the most jawdropping version of the trust fall exercise you could ever see!) but I couldn't really follow any particular 'story' of a performance. Is Rite of Spring really all about threatening men and timid women, as the excerpts shown from it appear to be? (It also made me think of the scene in Persona describing the beach encounter! There also does seem a motif throughout of women really throwing themselves around and roughly slamming against objects, other people and the floor in general, that seems as if it could be really rough on someone's body! Maybe its just the intended effect to have the audience wince at the women recklessly slamming against objects whilst in flimsier clothes with little to cushion the blows) What character relationship do the dancers have with each other in each performance? Is the yapping dog a central character in the dance or just a complication from staging a frantic dance scene outdoors?

It felt slightly as if I was left out of the loop somewhat on the wider meaning, though in some ways that worked to get my mind filling in the blanks about the purposefully backgrounded character motivations. I suppose that only highlights something that the audience does in any dance performance - project onto someone only able to convey information using their body movements and interactions. In many of the pieces in the film that works, though we always run into the problem of where the film has chosen to edit or end a scene, even in those segments that we do not return to. Has the editing, fading out of or ending of a performance fundamentally changed the meaning? Even in 'pure dance' terms on which I think we are supposed to be approaching the film - being impressed by the physicality, the use of props and interaction between the dancers - some of the wonder of watching an unbroken performance and the endurance shown by the dancers in being able to keep focused and performing under extreme circumstances feels slightly lost by time constraints. Perhaps the one area where that wonder of endurance and perseverance comes through most strongly is in the tip toes en pointe dance scene where, even lasting just a couple of minutes, the act is still mindbogglingly impressive!

As very much a modern dance novice it very much feels like a film for people intimately familiar with the actual works themselves who wouldn't have minded any 'message' of a particular dance being backgrounded for the film's primary focus on physicality and choreography of this particular dance company under this particular leadership. In some ways the piecemeal approach works in that each of the members of the company get their moment in the spotlight, performing some of their most spectacular and accomplished moments of dance for the camera, isolated from the wider context and embellished with the outdoor setting and 3D as a compensation. They are the moments where the individual dancers shine under Pina's choreography, but also moments that occurred spread out throughout a large number of different performances and disparate works.

I wonder if perhaps it would have been better to have one unbroken staging of a couple of the performances than lots of individual moments, even if that did allow for key fragments to get staged in stunning outdoor locations. In some ways its less a dance film than a eulogy of evocative moments from the journey of a career but, watching the company process off down the beach Seventh Seal-like after having been individually introduced to them with their reminiscences about what Pina Bausch meant to them, its difficult to be too harsh on the film for having that approach.