Artists and Models

Comments (0) By J. Hoberman Tuesday, Feb 9 1999

...continued from page 1

Van Redin

All the world's his stage: Schwartzman (center) as Max Fischer in Rushmore.

Details

Rushmore
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson
A Touchstone Release

( . . . ) Parts I, II, and III
Films by Stan Brakhage
At Anthology Film Archives
February 12 and 13

More About

A second 20-minute reel is more staccato— mad chicken-scratch calligraphy fluttering out of a yellow void, sketchy lightning bolts or fireworks interrupted by a sudden field of turquoise. The third and shortest section reintroduces camera-derived imagery and, minimal as it may be (sunlight shimmering on water, seagull wheeling in the sky), it's still a shock to see "something." Brakhage continues to play with surfaces, layering the image with scratch bursts and soft-focus superimpositions; sentiment arrives with representation.

For the most part, though, ( . . . )is predicated on a strategy Brakhage introduced as long ago as his cut-and-paste collage Mothlight(1962). The camera may be abandoned, but the projector-technology remains. Like the "impossible" presentations of his peer Ken Jacobs, Brakhage is reveling in the considerable power of the individual frame as it collides with other disparate frames. The simple 16mm projector that shows ( . . . )is a hallucination machine, producing flickers and afterimages where none objectively exist.