week 7 POETRY, FILM, ARCHITECTURE

There are two items in Juhani Pallasmaa's essay on the film The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema regarding the film Nostalghia (Tarkovsky 1983) which I am drawn to and am inspired to incorporate into my own film this semester and that is his discussion of the "memory of matter" (specifically in reference to the notion of home) and "water and time".  These are both elements that when expressed poetically in film, can have a strong impact on the viewer.

I strongly agree with Pallasmaa when he says that "it is clear that architecture and cities provide the most important state of collective memory" (82) and quotes Gaston Bachelard that "the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind." Humanity happens and unfolds within shelter and communities - the image of the architecture of these places become incredibly powerful to us, especially as time passes and our memories enhance that image.  Likewise, water holds for us great nostalgic power of a more sensory nature.  Our bodies, made mostly of water and developing into humans within the water of the womb, are forever psychologically affected by its image and its touch.  Water is where we build our houses and our cities.  Being raised in a very arid, lake environment but now living out west, I have become acutely aware of the lack of water in my mew home based on my nostalgic recollection of home.

The following clip of Nostaghia shows a great combination of the two items I discussed above.  A river of water is literally flowing through this building, eroding the already ancient building, as if it were eroding canyon walls.  The protagonist feels the presence of both the architecture and the running water in combination.

Gone With the Wind is another movie for me which expresses the notion that land and home can instill in us an overwhelming sense of nostalgia; it has a certain terroir with which we identify and are forever affected by.  In the final scene of the movie, Scarlett O'Hara finally realizes she loves Rhett Butler and runs home to him.  Its early early morning - the sun has not yet come up - and the world is covered in mist, recreating the ambiguous dreams that have plagued her her whole adult life.  When she gets "home" to her extremely fancy, expensive mansion, Rhett has decided to leave her and she realizes that this really isn't home anyways.  Rhett walks off into the mist, out of her dreams and she realizes the what was behind the mist of her dreams the whole time - Tara, the plantation she was raised on and from which her entire identity is based.