At first this appears to be simply another of the rather boring actualities of the last decade of the 19th Century, one of those very short films in which the real interest is seeing something that happened far away in a theater, the mere illusion of immediacy, perhaps, enough for a 19th century rube, but surely a sophisticated inhabitant of the 21st Century would not be affected by these images.
Think again! This shot of horse troopers on practice -- in this case, moving through an obstacle course a good deal like a steeplechase -- seems to be just a series of flowing images, everything perfect. Until someone misses his jump, falls --- and you know he can be killed.
A couple of weeks ago I saw this year's MAX PAYNE and yawned through the gun battles, as dozens of highly-trained snipers with machine guns were taken out by a guy with a pistol. This is far more believable -- and not, I fear, just because it is real. Have we become so caught up in the web of our cultural and storytelling assumptions that we cannot tell reality from illusion? Who, then is the bumpkin and who the sophisticate?
Think again! This shot of horse troopers on practice -- in this case, moving through an obstacle course a good deal like a steeplechase -- seems to be just a series of flowing images, everything perfect. Until someone misses his jump, falls --- and you know he can be killed.
A couple of weeks ago I saw this year's MAX PAYNE and yawned through the gun battles, as dozens of highly-trained snipers with machine guns were taken out by a guy with a pistol. This is far more believable -- and not, I fear, just because it is real. Have we become so caught up in the web of our cultural and storytelling assumptions that we cannot tell reality from illusion? Who, then is the bumpkin and who the sophisticate?
