A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness
Director : Ben Rivers, Ben Russell
France, 2013
Our main character here is scarcely a character at all. He speaks no words, and though he is often seen in contemplation, we are never privy to his thoughts, or even a suggestion of them. He remains an outsider in communities of outsiders. He haunts the periphery at a Scandinavian commune, never much a part of anything, barely even there. We could scarcely imagine that this film is about him having gone through the commune section; only when we see him aboard the boat linking back to the long ponderous opening are we able to form the link. We see him in a building with some clothing, some postcards, some hint of a root perhaps? Does he inhabit this world or is he just passing through it? We are comprehensively denied an answer moments later when he stands passively watching the building burn to the ground. Finally we see him in a black metal band on stage, again an outsider among outsiders, back from the main glare of the wandering camera, seeming barely to contribute, barely to exist. When he does take the microphone and the camera we wonder, is this then at last his identity? It would seem not so either, as the show's end sees him immediately removing his corpse paint and disappearing without word or connection through a back door into a nondescript modern car park, unhurried, destination unknown.
The band are pretty good, although often shown to be lip and instrument syncing. Their audience consists surprisingly mostly of short-haired, albeit bearded, men and a long pan around them leaves us also to wonder at their thoughts and motivations. This is a film that offers no answers, and you must come up with the questions yourself. It is not quite a documentary; we presume the commune and its characters are real, we know the band are not, we know our main character is an actor. It's also very strongly not a drama, there is little 'acting' in the common sense and there is certainly no scripting. But there is direction and there is, just, editing.
Our sole plot device would seem to be the burning. Those of us already attuned to black metal will immediately recognise the visual link to church burnings. For many of us the house, the home, the possessions within it and the links that they give us are sacred, they become our spirituality and our strength, and perhaps therefore also our weakness. Our character knows no home, no identity, no ties, he wishes (we assume) to be and remain rootless in the world. All of life to him is but a passing transitional phase. He is on some level attracted, as I myself am, to two seemingly opposite scenes; the idealism and togetherness of the finger-up-the-asshole hippy commune and the bleak misanthropic individualism of black metal. He participates in both but belongs to neither.
If that is it by way of 'plot', we must look next to direction and editing for a message. We always assume there must be a message, an agenda, a purpose. We assume it of films and we assume it of ourselves and others, but it may not always be there, and it shouldn't always need to be.
Our directors break apart our main sections with shots of the dark lake of the opening, which was almost pushed to breaking point. Our character is seen on the water with a gun propped in his boat, a powerful symbol of violence and control among the tranquil silence. It and the burning speak of some desire to control at least a portion of his world while passing through it, indeed the withdrawal from mainstream society could be seen as a desire for total control, total independence. Our hippies yabber on philosophy, our character is a living philosophy that is not in need of words to explain itself. The other has only words, yet still cannot.
Where they come closest is in the amusing analogy of the finger in the asshole. Perhaps someone was left out, it is suggested. Perhaps so, it is conceded, but I feel sorry for that person. The breaking down of mental barriers with the shared atmosphere and nudity of the sauna finds its logical conclusion in the breaking down of all physical barriers. What could be more invasive yet more uniting than a finger in the asshole?
There is one person missing out, both then and now; our character is nowhere to be seen.