The Wandering Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, France | Taiwan, 2005)

It was only a matter of time – of course – before a film such as The Wandering Cloud. The pornographic musical. Or, musical-porno. Take your pick. Yet such descriptions – which no doubt director Tsai Ming-liang would appreciate, as provocation – belie the subversive nature of the movie, and the power of Tsai’s images of sex and music. The setting is Kaohsiung, an affluent port city in southern Taiwan. The long hot summer rolls on, people move slowly through the wide, beautiful parks and along the boulevards shadowed beneath sky-scrappers. Kaohsiung is in the midst of a drought – the reservoirs are depleted, the rivers running dry and household water services intermittent. Here we find Hsiao-Kang and Shiang-chyi, a man and a woman aimlessly drifting through life. Hsiao-Kang sleeps wherever he finds himself when needing a nap: children’s playgrounds, stairwell suicide nets, roofs of tall buildings. Shiang-chyi wanders the streets collecting empty water bottles to stockpile tap water, amusing herself with diverting conundrums, or lazing in her apartment watching television. Inevitably, they meet – vaguely recognising one another (Hsiao-Kang sold Shiang-chyi a timepiece in a previous film by Tsai, who tends to reuse characters without any real deference to continuity). They begin an affair – although their interactions, even when close, are disconnected. When they eat, one will sit on a chair at the table, the other underneath. When they share a room, both will be occupied in separate tasks. This distance between the lovers is further evoked by a radical lack of dialogue. The Wandering Cloud – in these sections – is essentially silent, only a word or phrase occasionally spoken. Shiang-chyi has misplaced the key to a locked suitcase. She finds it set into the tarmac of the road beneath her high-rise. Yet when Hsiao-Kang retrieves the key, still the case cannot be opened. Is it the right key? Or is the lock no longer functioning? Tsai is a master of the cinematic metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche: images echo one another, scenes evoke associations, inconsequential actions point to the real, implied situation, which remains an ellipsis.

Shiang-chyi is addicted to watermelons... Hsiao-Kang is working as a porno actor... The musical-episodes do not emerge through a natural flow from an event in the day-to-day film-world, but appear as a break, a rupture. They cleft the screen, for a moment. Nevertheless – they extend from and through the everyday-moments and pornographic-sequences, combining the figure-elements of the characters: watermelons and sex. In this way, these musical-episodes echo moments and sequences from the rest of the film, evoke associations and refer to the real, implied situation, which remains an ellipsis. They are the expressions of joy and disappointment neither Hsiao-Kang nor Shiang-chyi are able to actualise. The Wandering Cloud creates images of thought – what Deleuze calls plastic figures: where ‘the action does not immediately disclose the situation which it envelops, but is itself developed in grandiose situations which encompass the implied situation’ (C1:182)…

To read the full exploration of The Wandering Cloud through the Deleuze's sign of the 'plastic figure,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Metro Manila (Sean Ellis, UK | Philippines, 2013)

The transformation in form and twist in the tale of Metro Manila – no matter how effective – may tempt us to believe we have encountered betrayal and excess. Oscar, Mai and their children escape the toil of the rice terraces in Benguet province for the big city – and things go from bad to worse. Their exodus is a consequence of a rural mafia controlling, at the sharp-end, the economics of the farmers’ market. Obliged to sell the grown, harvested and husked rice at a reduced rate (now two centavos a pound down from ten the year before) it becomes clear the Ramirez family will not be able to afford seed for the next season. In Manila, the family witness their remaining savings plundered by con-artists, lose their accommodation, and must walk dangerous streets, tipping up in the slum. Oscar is ripped off and abandoned after a day’s work shifting rubble; Mai lands a job as a dancer and hostess at Charlie’s, the children hanging out backstage while mummy grinds down on Euro-detritus with Yankee dollars for G-strings (…‘smile’). Such narration, filmed hand-held in close-up down on the streets, has a social-realist feel. The milieu, revealed through the trials of the family, is proven time and time again as corrupt, as exploitative, as fundamentally uncaring. Yet, as Steve Rose identifies, ‘the tide starts to turn when husband Oscar lands a job with a security-van company, a development that slowly, stealthily leads the story out of social drama territory and into a crime-thriller realm’ (Rose, The Guardian, 19/09/13). We move, in this way, from eternal misery and social-realism to classical-realism and overcoming, toward a narration with gangsters, guns, and a heist, where Oscar’s heroic sacrifice allows Mai and their children to flee Manila with a tasty amount of pesos. And it is such a transformation in form that tempts us to see a betrayal, a turning away from the social-realist political stance which first engendered the story.

Samantha Lay has outlined some of the essential features of social-realism, which always depend upon – it seems – an oppositional relationship with classical-realist structures. For example, while in mainstream cinema ‘the monster is killed, the criminal is caught or gets his or her comeuppance, mistaken identities are unravelled, the romantic couple are united, and so on,’ social realism has ‘something to say about “things as they really are”’ (Lay, 2002:20). Mainstream cinema ‘merely entertain[s]’ creating ‘more or less stable resolutions.’ Social-realism, cannot discover such triumphs in the real world, it ‘resists resolutions and the future is rarely bright’ (Lay, 2002:21). For Sophie Monks Kaufman the transformation in forms in Metro Manila is thus a betrayal, Ellis ‘doesn’t give Mai's plight the screen time to emerge as she (and the social realism her presence represents) is sidelined by the emerging thriller driven by Oscar's job as an armoured truck driver’ (Monks Kaufman, Little White Lies, 2013). Yet perhaps there is another way to look at Metro Manila. The movie begins in social-realist mode, with the family leaving the country for the city, and this mode extends well into the urban environment. Eventually, however, there is a divergence. Oscar’s narration increasing moves into heist movie territory, as Mai and her children continue the social-realist line. Oscar’s sacrifice terminates his trajectory along the classical-realist line. But through his sacrifice, Mai can abandon social-realist suffering, and move toward a classical-realist resolution. Now rich, no longer having to return to Charlie’s, she and the children can escape the city. Metro Manila, in other words, does not simply transform from social-realism into classical-realism, but rather – in the middle section of the film – sets up a discourse between the two forms. It is such a dialogue that we can explore through the Deleuzian cinematic concept of ... the limit of all action-images.

To read the full exploration of Metro Manila through the Deleuze's sign of the 'limit of the action-image ,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

A Screaming Man (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, France | Belgium | Chad, 2010)

Sunlight disperses upon the surface of the brilliant white net curtains that cover the large window,
shielding the room from the worst of the heat. Adam Ousmane sits across the wooden desk from Mme Wang, who is attended by her secretary. Silence, except for the faint sound of a pen scratching on paper. The office belongs to the new manager of the hotel in which Adam is employed as head pool attendant. ‘How old are you Adam?’ … ‘I often see you sitting in your chair?’ … ‘Do you really think we need two employees?’ Mme Wang makes further notes as Adam responds. Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s camera lingers within these silences. Camera movement is discreet, reduced to a bare minimum, medium shots predominate and editing only occurs when absolutely necessary for a reframing. Colour is natural, the mise-en-scène sparse and diegetic sound prevails. The actors are restrained, sotto voce, gesture minimalised. Such procedures accentuate the everydayness of the film, but also inspire a subtle beauty in the image. At night, a long take of Adam on his motorbike, its lights illuminating the white walls of an alleyway, is breath-taking. Adam stands at a window of his house, sunshine plays upon his naked torso, the curtains are slowly allowed to fall back into place and enshadow him as he distances himself from what is happening outside. This cinematic asceticism has an immediate correlate with another procedure, one which transforms the simple into something far more complex. Missing moments: critical instants are effaced from the narration and do not appear on-screen. Such ellipses are an essential function of the story, of the narrative. Not in the sense that they are hidden so as to create mystery, and thus be recuperated, ultimately revealed, reclaimed in order to explain. Rather, these omissions are withheld to echo what another character could not know. These missing moments may be obvious (a cut in the middle of an important scene) or obscure (we may only realise later that something has been withheld). More significantly – such moments mirror what the character wishes to hide: their deceptions, disloyalties, dishonesty. Their shame, what they would not want others to know, the full import of their actions, words, silences. Character motivations are ambiguous, for others, for themselves and for the spectator. And Haroun ensures such ellipses are never revealed, ever sustained.

In this way – through the directness of the image and the complexity of ellipses – A Screaming Man creates a powerful image of everydayness, of the quotidian...

To read the full exploration of A Screaming Man through the Deleuze's sign of the 'quotidian,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Source Code (Duncan Jones, Canada | France | USA, 2011)

Time is frozen. Locked in an eternal kiss, Fentress and Christina will forever be in this moment, for all eternity. The camera tracks back through the train carriage, a liquid, flowing trajectory, weaving through the other passengers who are caught in unending silent laughter. A comedian (cajoled by Fentress into an impromptu, celebratory gig) stands in the centre of the aisle – a punchline delivered in perpetuity. On the second tier of the carriage, a woman in amongst the audience has allowed her coffee to spill, and the liquid has become a solid, remains mid-air in suspended animation. Shafts of sunlight catching dust are rendered for infinity.

The perfect ending.

However, such an ending has a correlate genesis. The environment of the train carriage – and indeed the world and universe through which the train cuts its path – are an ambiguous and perplexing construct. In the real world, Colleen Goodwin – a member of a shadowy scientific programme operating at the fringes of the military complex – has switched off the life-support system that sustained the meat and mind of soldier Colter Stevens. Stevens was a half-life: what remained of his body merely a bagged and tagged trunk, mutilated arm and shattered skull; comatose and unconscious, his mind endured only through the software developed by maverick scientist Dr. Rutledge. Stevens can rest in peace, finally. The death of Stevens, accordingly, is the source of the freeze-frame and the true ending of Source Code; the condition for the perfect denouement on the train. For Fentress was Stevens. Or rather, the mind of Stevens was projected back across and through spacetime into the body of Fentress, who – along with Christina and the other passengers – died some hours before in a horrific terrorist bombing. Stevens has – through a series of repetitions lasting some eight minutes, the eight minutes prior to the bombing – inhabited Fentress time and time again in order to investigate the incident and identify the bomber. For if the terrorist can be identified in the past, they can be detained in the present and prevented from committing further atrocities.

Impossibly, however – beyond all reason – everything starts up again. On the train the event is reanimated, stasis returns to flux. Somehow this moment in the past continues beyond the death of Stevens in the present (just as it passed beyond the moment of the bombing, which has been averted by the actions of Fentress) and this (re)invented universe is preserved. The perfect climax and the true denouement are both a ruse. And continuing past these fake endings derails the filmic line, diverts the cinematic trajectory into a series of ambiguities from which Source Code will not – and will not wish to – escape. Time travel dovetails with many worlds. Is this universe in which Stevens now lives as Fentress the same world? Another world? A parallel reality? A simulation? Was quantum parabolic calculus time travel an access to the past of the present, an alternate real or some kind of computer encoded space as remnant or echo event? These ambiguities become active only by going beyond the moment of dual-closure. Crucially, and in this way, Source Code goes on to foreground an ethical impasse. Furthermore, in so doing, the narrative is extended into the contemporary political environment. To explore such productive elements, we can do no better than turn to the cinematic semiotics of Deleuze.

Source Code is an action movie, and Deleuze describes such films as action-images. In the first place, action-images are of two types. There is the large form, where a given situation engenders behaviour, actions which attempt to rectify the situation (played out through duels between characters). This aspect of the action-image can be seen in Source Code: the train has been destroyed in a terrorist attack, and Colter will be embodied in Fentress to enter into a duel with the bomber. The film tracks a character in their becoming equal to the milieu, and in so doing, going on to rectify the situation. However, the film also has elements of the other type of action-image. This is the small form, where character actions explore an elliptical situation. Colter must continually re-enter the milieu to attempt to reveal its coordinates. Who is the bomber? What do they want? What will they do next? In parallel, the large form and small forms in the construct inspire further interactions between on-going repetitions of the immediate past and the real world of the present. Colter must discover what is happening to him: who he is, where he is. And this can only be done through a duel with Rutledge, the military scientist who has sustained his life and is using Colter as a weapon. In other words, small form action-images and large form action images interweave, and describe a very special type of action-image: the reflection-image where large and small transform one another as figures of attraction. Thus, in the second place, Deleuze describes two compositional forms of such attraction-images: the plastic figure and the theatrical figure. When a film of the action-image small form (action → situation) is affected by the large form we encounter the plastic figure. When a film of the action-image large form (situation → action) is affected by the small form, we encounter the theatrical figure. Either way, writes Deleuze ‘there is no longer a direct relation between a situation and an action, an action and a situation: between the two images, or between the two elements of the image, a third intervenes to ensure the conversion of the forms’ (C1:182). This third is a mental-image: the figure. With plastic figures the situation revealed on-screen is an encompasser of the true situation; the real situation remains an ellipsis. With the theatrical figure the real situation is expressed in ongoing fictional actions. Source Code appears to capture a moment of indeterminacy between these two mental-images... The movie – in other words – enacts a recurrence of attraction-images: mise-en-abyme.

To read the full exploration of Source Code through the cineotic sign of the 'mise-en-abyme,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Monsters (Gareth Edwards, UK, 2010)

Who are the monsters? This is the question for director Gareth Edwards: the aliens, or humanity? NASA once sent a probe to investigate the possibility of extra-terrestrial life in the far reaches of the solar system. Six years ago, upon its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the probe crash landed in the jungles of northern Mexico. In so doing, an alien species was let loose upon the planet. Growing from wee fungus pods into massive squid-like beasts, a vast area of the border between the USA and Mexico is now known as the Infected Zone. At the South American end, a soaring metal fence cuts across the continent; while a reinforced concrete dam divides the zone from humanity at the US border. Inside, the area has been abandoned by humanity. Cities, towns, villages have been reclaimed by jungle, now the home of the alien horde. And with each passing year – as the beasts breed and their population surges – the threat of a breaching of the boundaries becomes an ever more likely event. Accordingly, US and Mexican planes traverse the skies above the zone, laying down poison into the jungles below, in what is increasingly being seen as a futile attempt to corral the animals. Enter Scoot and Whitney: he a photojournalist who will do just about anything to hit the front page; she the daughter of the owner of Scoot’s US based newspaper. Caught up in the evacuation of Mexico where the containment barrier is first breeched, their journey takes them into the heart of darkness and out the other side: from San Jose through the Infected Zone and – after a number of close encounters with the alien beings – into the heartland of Texas. Holed up at a deserted service station awaiting transport home, they now believe themselves safe. However – just as in Mexico – the aliens overwhelm the defences. Scoot and Whitney are the first to witness aliens on US soil. Edwards plays out this scene perfectly – riffing off Jurassic Park (1993) and War of the Worlds (2005), Whitney hides beneath the counter of the shop as alien tentacles weave through the environment, searching out the nooks and crannies of the room. However – this attack is a ruse – the alien is seeking contact with its mate. Edwards creates a scene of incredible beauty as two of the aliens entwine, their tentacles enfolding tenderly, their bodies aflame with electricity, inner luminescence creating astonishing patterns in the night sky. Scoot looks on with wonder – then he and Whitney kiss for the first time.

Such a mirroring of humanity and the aliens has – in truth – been unfolding from the very beginning of the film. In the first instance, our heroes and the aliens are both adrift in the zone, in an unfamiliar environment they are not naturally disposed to. Each are attempting to survive the world which has been given to them. In the second instance, the aliens are under constant attack from the humans with their bombs and chemical weapons; while the humans are essentially prey to the alien predators. The environment describes a situation which devolves into a duel: aliens versus humanity. This mirroring – accordingly – creates a certain reciprocity. Thus the question at the heart of the film: who are the monsters in Monsters? Such a question is made possible through a cinematic process Deleuze will describe as the extreme limit of the large form action-image...

To read the full exploration of Monsters through the Deleuze's sign of 'the limit of the large form action-image,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Slackistan (Hammad Khan, Pakistan, 2009)

Three young guys chill outside a café on a public square. A beautiful, warm sunny day. Behind them, a fountain propels jets of water into the air, creating spiralling parabolas. The circular glass table in front of them is clear, except for cigarettes and lighters. They sit in silence. Hasan, from time to time, checks out his blackberry, but no one has contacted him. Saad – wearing a white hoody emblazoned with ‘Horny Devil’ – twirls a dead leaf backwards, then forwards, between his fingers. Sherry has been watching people passing by. He glances at Hasan, then at Saad, sitting either side of him. Leaning back in his chair, he sighs, yawns, stretches. This is Slackistan – an indy slacker flick set in Islamabad, a few days in the limbo-lives of five middleclass friends a year after of graduating college. There is Sherry: he is skating on thin ice, clocking up debts, borrowing cash from a money lender to sustain a lifestyle above and beyond his means – out-and-about, a flash car, the latest mobile. There is Saad: he has little aspiration, and is seemingly happy to be drifting through life, although there is always some girls to be checking out. There is Aisha: she is looking for marriage, a wealthy man, so she can continue doing nothing but with more style. There is Xara / Zara: she is mixed up, confused, melancholic, rebellious. And at the centre and describing the circumference of the film, Hasan. Slackistan is Hasan’s story – or rather, the lives of the five friends as seen from Hasan’s perspective. Director Hammad Khan will create a mosaic of images: short scenes of conversations which go nowhere; a character wandering the streets on their own; trying on different clothes in the mirror before being able to step out; staring absentmindedly over the cityscape from the hills or tall buildings. In voice-over, Hasan will comment upon these images, even if he is not present, not only providing a narrative cohesion to the film but also interrogating their slacker lifestyle. In this way, Hasan’s reflections are an immediate evaluation of the narration. Such reflection is the foundation and inspires the constitution of Slackistan...

Sherry glances at Hasan, then at Saad, sitting either side of him. Leaning back in his chair, he sighs, yawns, stretches: ‘I am so bored.’...

Slackistan is a film – as Deleuze would comment – populated by ‘weaklings and idiots’ (C1:184). Where ‘landscapes are dwarfed or flattened, they turn sad and dismal, even tend to disappear’ (C1:184-5). Where ‘[t]he beings who frequent’ such spaces ‘no longer have Visions’ (C1:185). Slackistan  is a figure of enfeeblement, the characters are reduced to 'tiny point[s] fleeing towards the horizon' (C1:185)...

To read the full exploration of Slackistan through the Deleuze's sign of the 'figure of enfeeblement,' see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, USA, 2010)

‘We are Sex Bob-omb’ screams Kim the drummer ‘and we are here to watch Scott Pilgrim kick your teeth in. One. Two. Three. Four’. Thrash indy-metal buzzsaws as Scott – now armed with a flaming samurai sword – lays waste to the minions fronting pretentious nightclub owner and music industry guru, Gideon Gordon Graves. The revellers in the vast warehouse retreat as the henchmen cartwheel across the floor, each scattering into a shower of coins as the sword slashes through their bodies. Points are awarded for each win, the value spiralling up from the fatal contact, slowly fading, leaving only a lingering trace of digital dust. Gideon watches aghast from the top of his vast pyramidic throne. Unsheathing a sword from his walking cane, the leader of the League of Evil Exes leaps down as Scott bounds up the steps. Cut to a horizontal split screen: the faces of each twisted in anger and determination. The two figures are captured in slow-mo as they meet mid-air, their swords clash, emitting an intense white light, which halos behind them, the sound rendered in graphics encompassing then surpassing the mise-en-scène. Gideon crashes to the floor, falls unconscious and a glowing chunky numerical of 7000 floats up from his strewn body. With poise, Scott lands upon the high plateau of the throne, alongside the frozen, electronically enchanted form of Ramona Flowers. But the fight aint over, it’s only just begun! Knives is after Ramona, and Gideon will arise and re-enter the fray.

Director Edgar Wright’s images in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are inspired by the visuals of comic books and computer games (the film itself an adaptation of a comic book utilising gaming graphics – as Scott enters the nightclub, a voice on the edge of hearing comments: the film aint as good as the comic book). These comic book and computer game visuals permeate the movie, from beginning to end, creating what Deleuze names a theatrical presentation where it is ‘the sequences of images which [have] a figural role’ (C1:183). This is the cinematic allegory, mythology, parable where the theatrical figure provides the sinuous thread that weaves the weft and warp of the narration.

To read the full exploration of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World through the Deleuze's sign of the 'theatrical figure' of the attraction-image, see Deleuze's Cinema Books: Three Introductions to the Taxonomy of Images...

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (Werner Herzog, USA, 2009)

‘Herzog is a metaphysician,’ according to Gilles Deleuze. ‘He is the most metaphysical of film directors…’ (C1:185). How, if true, is The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans a metaphysical film? Mark Kermode recently echoed Deleuze’s claim, yet went on to say that this particular film lacked a metaphysical dimension (though is, as I write, rethinking the film). On the face of it, both the assertion in general and Kermode’s exception seem accurate. Metaphysics, in essence, is a consideration of being beyond the realm of the physical world. In both his fictions and documentaries (which to a great extent blur the boundaries between fiction and documentary) Herzog digs beneath the perceptions, affections and actions of characters to explore how they understand and think about the world. Yet in The Bad Lieutenant Herzog appears content to focus upon the surface of Terence McDonagh, appears to make a black comedy out of the pain, drug addiction and corruption of the main character.

The film is a riot, and the humour is dark. For instance, McDonagh is promoted twice, once at the beginning of the film, once at the end. His first promotion to lieutenant comes from what is described, by a senior officer, as a heroic act. Yet, this is no heroic act, rather it was a bungled rescue, easily avoided. During the onset of hurricane Katrina, a drug addict looter is locked in a cell in the depths of a police station. McDonagh – after attempting to bet on the time he will drown –jumps carelessly into the rising water to unlock him. In the process he sustains an injury to his back that will take six months to heal and cause him pain for the rest of his life. This physical (not metaphysical) pain is to be offset by vicodin. But McDonagh self-medicates with coke, heroine, crack and a little weed now and then. This self-medication becomes drug addiction, which causes him to break the law himself in order to ensure a steady supply (wonderfully played by Cage, who moves around the screen like a broken dancer, a counterpoint to Kinski’s movements on the raft in Aguirre). At the end of the film, McDonagh is promoted once again, this time to captain. This promotion, like the first, is presented as a result of heroic acts. However, we know different.

A film then of cause and effects, though one that skews the effects: we expect tragedy, but get comedy. For instance, this is seen most clearly towards the end of the film when McDonagh returns to his office to find out the murder of three Italian gangsters he engineered has not only solved that immediate problem, but also caused the crime family to back off as well as have an internal investigation against him been dropped (‘phew’). Next, he finds out his gambling debts are sorted, despite his blackmailing of a baseball player not panning out. Finally, evidence he planted at the scene of the murder wraps up the case. The dovetailing of all these events that seemed to be moving inexorably towards tragedy are resolved in bathos – brilliantly so.

However, isn’t this just more proof of a lack of metaphysics in the film (which of course translates to The Bad Lieutenant being a lesser work of an aging director in the grip of the Hollywood studio system etc, etc)? Criticisms levelled at the film say this is no Aguirre, no Fitzcarraldo. Correct. However, this is not because it is a lesser film. Rather, Herzog continually veers between two types of film, the grandiose and the enfeebled. This distinction comes from Deleuze, who sees Herzog’s films as taking one of two paths. The first is that of the visionary ‘a man who is larger than life frequents a milieu which is itself larger than life, and dreams up an action as great as the milieu’ (C1:184). The second is that of ‘weaklings and idiots’ who are ‘reduced to an elementary sense of touch…and walk close to the earth, following an uncertain line’ (C1:184-5). The Bad Lieutenant has more in common with Nosferatu, Kasper Hauser…

The crucial point comes in a conversation McDonagh has with the gangsta at the heart of the murder investigation. McDonagh tells Big Fate he will take bribes to protect him. Big Fate asks so you don’t care about the killings anymore? McDonagh replies look at your face, now look at mine… I never did.

We later discover that McDonagh was setting up Big Fate. The impulse here would be to understand McDonagh’s words as a lie, as a way in to his gang and the entrapment. However, what if we resist this impulse? What if we stay on the surface and believe that McDonagh is telling the truth to Big Fate. He never cared about the killings. The metaphysics in The Bad Lieutenant turn on this idea. Getting Big Fate is not his fate. Rather, it simply requires ingenuity. His ingenuity is simply the ingenuity of the drug addict after the next fix.


Solving the case is no transcendent event. It is meaningless. As meaningless as hurricane Katrina, as meaningless as all the barbarity set in the post-apocalyptic landscape of New Orleans. As meaningless as the murders. It is a lizard-like metaphysics. It is the logic of Herzog’s Nosferatu ‘caught in uterine regression, a foetus reduced to its feeble body and to what it touches and sucks’ (C1:185). The logic of Herzog’s Woyseck ‘reduced to his own Passion’ (C1:185).

What lies beyond, beneath the physical world? Sometime Herzog explores this as a grandiose, ecstatic, crazy vision. Sometimes Herzog explores this as the feebleness of a body in a world at the edge of a cosmos where there is nothing approaching meaning. Herzog’s metaphysics is not simply the playing out of the grandiose, but rather, it is the way humanity is caught between something and nothing. Between the grandiose and the feeble... As Deleuze puts it ‘the albatross’ big feet and its great white wings are the same thing’ (C1:186). This is the metaphysics of the quotidian...