Connection

Shirley Clarke, a trained dancer and leading light of the New American Cinema group, closes us off in a single room for nearly two hours with a bunch of jazz addicts, whom she attempts (on the basis of Jack Gelber’s play) to observe without prejudice. Whereas the critics at Cannes appreciated her directorial debut, shot in the cinema verité style, the New York censors had trouble accepting the film’s openness (they were bothered especially by the word “shit” as it is used here in reference to drugs). It’s true that, in comparison with documentary filmmakers who preferred the same style, Clarke doesn’t just observe her subjects. She makes the camera, and thus also us, one of the participants in the story. I consider making the presence of the otherwise unseen camera known, and thus making it impossible to hide behind it, to be an excellent way to draw the viewer into the unpleasant setting. The spaces in front of and behind the camera blend into one, so the illusion that we are sitting somewhere safe on the other side is shattered. Her drawing of attention to a world whose existence we would rather ignore could have been even grittier without the obvious attempt to outrage the puritans. For example, the homosexual motif rings hollow, and the old lady, the only one among the room fool of nihilists who believes in something, is rather forcibly grafted onto the loosely constructed narrative. The film is also hindered by its uneven cast, as the natural Warren Finnerty (who slightly resembles Steve Buscemi in both appearance and speech) acts alongside, for example, the wooden William Redfield, whose character of an indecisive director I began to believe only after he found himself on the other side, questioning whether we can understand people like Leach without becoming one of them. 75% (05/10/2011)