Naqoyqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, USA, 2002)

Autumnal monochrome: a long, slow zoom-in upon a three-dimensional rendering of Pieter Bruegel’s painting The (Little) Tower of Babel (c. 1563). Corkscrewing upwards from the ground the expansive

base of the edifice supports a conical structure, still far from complete – and apparently already in the process of disintegration. In every way, an impossible project. Everything appears unstable, askew; the construction sinking into the ground upon which it has been built; the non-perpendicular arches (supporting the gentle incline of the spiral concourse) a threat, the spectre of collapse. A male choir chants ‘na-qoy-qat-si.’ The drumming of a heartbeat. Cut to an image of the disused and decaying Michigan Central Railway Depot: first the murky, dank interior; then the exterior in glorious sunlight. The camera explores this neo-classical architecture cutting between vertiginous crane-shots, extended tracking shots and almost imperceptible pans. Pulsating cello repeats phrasing, orchestral strings gather and shimmer. A raging sea – heavily digitalised. Mountain tops, the stars slash the dark firmament with light. A river, the still surface reflecting the clouds of the sky above – insubstantial forms that race and churn in fast-mo doubled as mirror images. A purely digital environment: black space mapped with a flat grid of white contour lines; the animation erupting to create a complex, flourishing conical structure – a structure reminiscent of and echoing Bruegel’s tower.

So begins Godfrey Reggio’s Naqoyqatsi, a film composed of hundreds, thousands of disparate visual-images, accompanying and accompanied by the music-images of Philip Glass. This is gaseous perception.

To read the full exploration of Naqoyqatsi through the Deleuze's sign of 'gaseous perception,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images

Timecode (Mike Figgis, USA, 2000)

In an elegant white business suit, Lauren skips down the stone steps leading away from the mansion. Parked in the driveway are two cars, a sleek black limousine with attendant uniformed chauffeur and

an old, slightly battered, run-around. Carefully kneeling at the rear of the second car, Lauren releases the air from the tyre, before being offered the passenger door of her limo by her driver. Rose, arriving just moments later, immediately perceives her car has a flat. This scene is a moment in a long take filmed with a handheld mobile camera. Such mobility allows the characters to be followed, relinquished, and recaptured at varying distance (from long shot to medium shot to close-up) – all without montage (without editing between framings). In this way, while the presence of camera can be felt through its movements, through its anticipations of character trajectories, in the moments when nothing happens, in its aberrations; it appears as if without the set as an existential non-presence in the film-world.

Yet, when Rose spies the tyre, the camera tilts and pans, following the direction of her gaze, simultaneously reorienting its position, a movement allowing it to become her vision. The camera has aligned with the point-of-view of a character, it has become the perception of that character, the camera is – for a moment – the character. Camera eye becomes human eye; and then the human eye relinquishes the camera eye as the action within the event continues. Rose is pissed off, and suspicious; must now accept a ride with Lauren. That this exchange has happened with no montage (cutting from a perception of the character to the character’s perception) makes it a visceral encounter with shifting modes of cinematic image through the visibility of the flow of a transformation. This is a moment of liquid perception, an instant in Timecode capturing the cinematic philosophy of the movie. For the entire film is composed of such flows, of liquid perception...

To read the full exploration of Timecode through the Deleuze's sign of 'liquid perception,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, France | USA, 2007)

‘Mr Bauby, keep your eyes open.’ The voice, which belongs to Dr. Cocheton, is coming through in waves. ‘You’re going to be fine, I promise.’ It soon becomes apparent – to Jean-Dominique Bauby – that he is not going to be fine, at least not by any definition of ‘fine’ he would have had prior to awaking in a bed in the Naval Hospital in Berck-sur-Mer. He has had a stroke and has been in a coma for three weeks. Visited by neurologist Dr. Lepage, he is diagnosed as having suffered a cerebrovascular accident which has ‘put his brain stem out of action.’ The link between Bauby’s brain and spinal column no longer fires, is broken, he is paralyzed. His mind is unaffected, and he can see and hear (sense functions that do not depend upon the brain stem), but Jean-Do can neither move nor speak. He has ‘locked-in syndrome.’ So begins The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

These awakenings (from the coma; to his situation) are filmed from Jean-Do’s point-of-view. The camera is his perception. Circumscribed by flesh, eyelids frame the visual field which mimics, using a blurred image, his early attempts at focusing. Blinking performs jump-cuts, the closing of his weary eyes fade the image to black and ends a sequence. Framing, shot and montage are organically linked to Jean-Do’s body. Filmed from a prone, bed-bound position, the mise-en-scène is restricted to a wall and ceiling, all events must enter and exit this visual field – the camera is a fixed point. Doctors, nurses, carers, friends and family are either partially out of view, too close or too far away. One of his eyes fails him, the upper and lower lids are stitched together – we see the needle and thread sowing shut the frame. The spectator thus experiences the film as Jean-Do experiences the world; director Julian Schnabel’s cinematic process is one that attempts the most extreme identification...

To read the full exploration of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly through the Deleuze's sign of 'solid perception,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images