Film is dead. So, what better way to give it a proper send off than to watch Bill Morrison’s haunting Light Is Calling, in which the filmmaker manipulates and elevates the 1926 silent film The Bells into a dreamlike meditation on random romantic encounters.
Although the film has a hazy, ruminative pace, Morrison creates a heightened sense of dramatic tension simply by slowing down the simple action of a soldier happening upon a pretty girl in a field to a near unbearable level. The viewer is forced to first figure out the movie’s “plot,” as it were, by latching onto the brief snippets of clearly defined imagery of the original film. Then, when the storyline becomes obvious, the waiting of the two parallel actions — of the girl and the solider — to inevitably intersect is drawn out to an extreme degree most likely not intended by the original filmmaker, James Young.
Although the film has a hazy, ruminative pace, Morrison creates a heightened sense of dramatic tension simply by slowing down the simple action of a soldier happening upon a pretty girl in a field to a near unbearable level. The viewer is forced to first figure out the movie’s “plot,” as it were, by latching onto the brief snippets of clearly defined imagery of the original film. Then, when the storyline becomes obvious, the waiting of the two parallel actions — of the girl and the solider — to inevitably intersect is drawn out to an extreme degree most likely not intended by the original filmmaker, James Young.
- 7/10/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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