i saw this film the first, and only previous, time more than a decade ago at an unknown date and known location. i have reconstructed a memory of what it must have been like: i am alone in my bedroom with a 19" color television, DVD player, and VCR. my roommate may or may not be next door. the film was either rented at a hip video store in Carrboro or a defunct video store in Chapel Hill. the cost was either three dollars (in the former) or 1/5 of five dollars (in the latter). i am either dating an opera singer in Durham or a Japanese girl at work. photographs may or may not resolve the issue.
one of these men is a killer:
one of these men is a killer:
David Harris, date unknown
Randall Adams, 1976the answer to that question, if knowable, relies upon memory:
the memories of the men above,
the memories of the people who saw them,
the memories of the people who think they saw them.
how does one resolve the inevitable gaps between them?
the solution, if extant, presents itself in the forms of artifacts:
a stolen blue car,
a license plate,
a .22 revolver.
what meaning do these objects hold except in the memory?
the commas in the first sentence of the second paragraph serve as metaphors for breaking points in time; they are evidence of my own memory protruding into that of the men above. it is the job of the filmmaker to reconcile these discrepancies. Errol Morris does so with a long take of a tape recorder, containing nothing more than the first man illustrating the distance between memory and artifact. this distance suffices for truth in the mind of the spectator.
and yet, there is no reason to believe this tape recorder is in any way related to the sound of the man's confession; the image is linked to the sound by nothing more than the semiotics of cinematographic causality. facing this crisis of indexicality, we search for comfort in meaning...
no photographs exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment