Back in school, I was always one semester away from taking a class in the Com department. IХve always had a weakness for intellectual masturbation and a predilection for long, plotless movies that imbue the viewer with the sense that something incomprehensible and profound is happening.
I graduated before that semester ever came, for reasons best left unexplored. The Com cult never indoctrinated me. But, IХm moving too quickly…
I should explain to my non-native-speaking readers that Com departments in the States have little to do with communication. Rather, they are more about inducting their movie-watching members into a narrow world of post-modernity that remains utterly inaccessible to lay folk and even distant members of their cult. These departments thrive on obscurity and protect themselves from intruders by developing a cipherotic language known only to themselves, consisting of such words as referent, systematization and discourse (which, I might add, have nothing to do with what one finds in WebsterХs).
Why does any of this matter? Well, last weekХs German Expressionist Film Festival awakened my former aspirations to join this elitist intellectual couch-potato cult that lay dormant while I pursued the life of a degenerate these last several months. Silent, black and white, an alternative to Hollywood, a movement name that most unenlightened folk would associate with MonetХs divorce Р expressionist films are the salt po-mo film critics love to lick.
I had to go, to crack the philistine shell settling over me. I would reawaken my latent intellect, sitting in a sparse theater with a handful of like-minded eggheads in tweed. The F.W. Murnau double feature, Nosferatu (which, I believe, was the first Dracula flick ever) and Faust, was exactly what I needed.
Unfortunately, things didnХt work out exactly as I had planned. First of all, when I arrived, there were masses loitering outside the theater. True, they were almost exclusively the turtleneck type, but who wouldХve expected such crowds? What would become of my longing to feel elitist? To complicate matters, there was no apparent cashier selling tickets. How was I going to get in?
Standing ticketless at the door, I noticed several people getting through by waving random cards with purpose. It didnХt take me long to rise to the challenge, whip out my business card and march resolutely through the door without paying a kopek. Even this formality soon proved pointless, when a short time later they threw open the doors to everybody, tacitly admitting that crowd control was not Dom KinoХs forte.
Still not entirely comfortable with the ease of my entry, I checked my coat and ventured up to the main hall. Surely the charade would end soon, and I would not gain admission.
But the hall was packed to easily twice capacity, with people sitting in every available crevice, and standing everywhere else. It was a fire marshalХs nightmare. I had a tough time buying that the Germans had organized such a rowdy event.
Being among the last wave in, I found myself in conditions resembling a mosh pit. During the introduction by some German cultural attache, the crowd surged and swayed, everyone trying to angle to minimize the number of heads blocking their view of the screen.
For the first several minutes of Nosferatu, I pondered whether the potbellied man behind me really couldnХt see well, or just liked rubbing against young men. No doubt the chick in front of me wondered the same about me.
In spite of these slight discomforts, virtually everyone stayed to watch the wild montages, low camera angles, looming shadows and to listen to the excellent live music. It was more than just a sense of camaraderie with the bloodsucking hero from Carpathia; the masses were clearly seeking an alternative to the drek usually offered up as entertainment. Most people, after standing for almost two hours, decided to stay on their feet for the second feature.
It was a level of commitment and discomfort completely unknown to American Com departments.
So what if most of the audience probably didnХt try to deconstruct NosferatuХs rewriting of DraculaХs stake-wielding hero into a heroine driven to an act of redemptive sexual sacrifice. ItХs a trade off.
After all, it doesnХt occur to most two-bit progressive film critics in the States to actually enjoy a wickedly original and fun flick.
