novembfif 16. 2001 • J h a t oart 49
FILM
.... v........
Itoo treats (or clnephiles
he River, the latest from acclaimed Taiwan
ese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, at first
seems to reflect an almost unbridgeable
cultural gap between East and West—or at
least between Eastern and Western storytelling.
by C hristopher M c Q uain
It is meditative, meticulously paced and often
nearly as slow and uneventful as real time.
Those of us more accus
both. He clearly doesn’t believe in the
tomed to the cinema of the
all-resolving epiphany, which would be
United States, Europe or
out of place here.
even Asia (films from Hong
Because of a print delay, The River
Kong often are shot and
was screened on video, a disaster for a
edited so energetically as to
Ming-Liang film. The beautifully framed
make Die Hard look like My
and carefully lit scenes (fortunately
Dinner with Andre) might be
familiar to this reviewer from having
tempted to give up on The
seen the director’s remarkable previous
River, with its open-ended
release, The Hole) were washed-out and
narrative, crawling pace
sometimes barely visible. Still, the prob
and refusal to provide any
lem served as a reminder of how crucial
sort of emotional map to
Ming-Liang’s austere visuals are to his
guide the viewers response.
films—and as an enticement to see The
That would be a shame,
River on glorious celluloid, where his
though, because the film
composed but never complacent vision
does have a story to tell, and
can be truly appreciated.
although it requires pa-
un*versal story in The River unfolds slowly
tience and effort from the audience, it is as uni man comes down with an inexplicable neck
. arbara Hammer, a legend of underground
versal as any traditional three-act structure we’re pain that becomes increasingly unbearable but
lesbian cinema, has been making films for
used to seeing in the movies.
cannot be cured by doctors or healers. Further
decades. History lessons is her 75th work,
W hat we’re witnessing in The River is simi
odd occurrences— he is picked at random by a
but there’s no musty venerability or overly rar
lar to what Ang Lee, by far the most famous
film director to play a dead body floating in a
efied air of “art” about her collage of footage
depicting or documenting lesbian behavior from
polluted river, the father notices a leak in his
Taiwanese director, showed us in the excellent
The Ice Storm: a detached family living sepa
bedroom ceiling from the apartment upstairs
1896 right up to pre-Stonewall 1969. Rather, it’s
rately under the same roof like strangers. The
an exhaustively researched, fascinating antho-
and merely takes the stopgap measure of plac
ing a bucket underneath it— seem to portend
particular manifestations of dysfunction in this
logical subversion of how lesbians have been
household: The father escapes to gay bath
impending disaster, or perhaps breakthrough.
portrayed in mass culture since the cinema’s
houses, the mother diverts herself through a
The discomfiting conclusion (made even
inception at the end of the 19th century.
halfhearted affair with a pornography smuggler,
more shocking by Ming-Liang’s decision to
History Lessons opens with footage of Eleanor
and their 20-something son drifts aimlessly.
Roosevelt addressing a symposium of women,
unfold it at the same deliberate, natural pace as
Near the beginning of The River, the young
the rest of The River) could be seen as either or
ostensibly about equal rights. But the clip’s sound
T
New releases are worth the patience they require
and reaction shots have been altered to suggest
the first lady is inciting the audience to something
akin to Sapphic revolution, a bit of jaunty irrever
ence that sets the tone for the rest of the film.
History Lessons is foremost a work of juxtaposi
tion. Footage of early, primly earnest feminist polit
ical rhetoric is followed with banal, male-narrated
newsreel footage of “modem” women who can fly
military aircraft but nonetheless retain their femi
ninity by worrying about getting their hair wet.
Interspersed throughout are randy clips of
silent lesbian erotica, cheesy ’60s stag films, shots
of cartoonish lesbian-themed pulp paperback cov
ers and artistically intriguing Roaring '20s footage
of lesbian flappers. These range from naughty to
nasty to pornographic and feature women of many
ages, sizes and backgrounds from throughout the
first half of the 20th century vigorously enjoying
what seems to be a wide gamut of sexual practices.
Hammer doesn’t shy away from the horrify
ing, either. The film contains footage, shot by
Thomas Edison, of a lesbian being lynched.
Some of Hammer’s more self-conscious, “post
modern” montages are more strident than clever,
ringing comparatively hollow and disrupting the
already sufficiently significant flow of found
images. Still, most of History Lessons comes off.
As a whole, Hammer’s project has an innate
historical value. It’s a uniquely thorough, eye-
op»ening document of lesbianism as a motif in a
typically unfriendly, unenlightened culture. J H
C linton S treet T heater , 2522 S.E. Clinton
St., screens The River Nov. 16 to 21 and
History Lessons Nov. 23 to 28. For more
information call 503-238-8899.
C hristopher M c Q u ain is a Portland writer and
filmmaker.
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