My favorite two movies in the last half of this year have been playing at the Milwaukee Art Museum, in the little basement theaters as part of a photography exhibit. It’s my favorite part of the museum, and they take it all down and reinstall a new show a couple times a year or so, it seems. These two movies make a nice double feature, as different as they are. The way they show them, though, is in the art instillation way, not the movie way, which is okay with me, generally—they are each on a loop, so there’s no real start and end time. You just drop in and watch—I suspect most people don’t stay for more than a few minutes. I don’t either, but over the months I’ve seen all of both films multiple times—a few minutes here and a few minutes there. It’s not unlike the way I watch things that are streaming, or on TV, too. I have to say, I’ve probably gotten a lot more out of these two pieces by watching them that way than if I’d watched each from end to end, once each.
The shorter of the two is called Lunch Break—it’s from 2008, by Sharon Lockhart—and as I recall reading, it was shot on film in a huge ship building factory in Maine. It looks like the camera traveled from one end of the place to the other, during breaktime, as the workers are sitting, resting, eating, reading. The film was then manipulated, by reprinting frames, to slow everything down to where the movement is barely detected—so that it takes 83 minutes for the camera’s journey—which is the optimum length for a feature film, if you want to look at it that way. There is sound—I’m not sure how it was manipulated—that roughly corresponds with the visuals. One thing that’s fun to imagine is how different the viewing experience would be if you dropped in a song now and then, so you’d have a series of odd but connected music videos. If I can find this movie streaming, I might try it as an experiment. Anyway, the whole thing is endlessly fascinating, visually—the details of the manmade environment—both beautiful and horrifying, but also mundane and ugly. All of those, at once. And really, really, slowly. I wonder if there is a drug that makes things look like this, and I wonder if anyone who was filmed in the space has seen the movie—and I wonder if it made them feel like they were on drugs.
The longer of the films is called BNSF and it’s from 2013, by James Benning. That stands for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, and this long video is a single shot of a length of train track in the desert, with mountains and sky in the background. The placement of the camera feels both random and deliberate—it is a pleasing composition. The manmade elements, besides the train tracks, are a line of telephone poles, and a barely discernable gravel road—both running along the side of the tracks. The length of this piece is also movie length—but a long movie. It’s 195 minutes, which is three hours and 15 minutes—exactly the length of the hit movie, Titanic (1997). Whether or not this is intentional, it’s hilarious. There is a lot of scraggly vegetation in the foreground—I think it’s sagebrush—you feel like you can almost touch it, blowing in the wind. The series of mountain ranges in the background are beautiful. The video takes place over a time of day (maybe late afternoon) where the light is steadily changing. Clouds are on the move, and the sun is to our back, left—shadows appear, disappear, lengthen. The telephone pole in the foreground is very defined, but the line of poles quickly becomes invisible with distance.
The sound in this movie is a major element—it’s, as they used to say, made loud to be played loud. Most of the time it’s nearly silent, but you hear the wind against the microphone—not how wind sounds in nature, of course, but it’s recognizable as a thing. Then a train comes, and it’s the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. Periodic, monstrous, really long, freight trains. Most of this movie is nothing much happening besides drifting clouds and changing light, but there are lot of trains out there, too, coming from either direction. A funny thing about trains is, if you’re out walking and a train goes by, there’s nothing more fascinating—I’ll stop and watch the whole thing. But if you’re driving somewhere and get stopped by a train, there’s nothing more frustrating. Which seems, to me, to be a problem with cars, not trains. A few times, for some reason, I felt like I could see something glinting in the sun, way far off, around the middle of the composition. It made me think of Montgomery Clift, in The Misfits (1961) (much of which takes place in a landscape that looks like this one), where he says, “I saw something glinting… in the sun.”
Because these two theaters, showing these movies, are in close proximity and are not exactly soundproof (no doors), you might be sitting in Lunch Break, aware of the lowkey, industrial hum, and then be aware of an increasing, low rumbling and realize it’s a train coming, in the next theater. You can run over if you want to see the train. The train sound is so thunderously loud, at some points, you can hear it from anywhere in the basement—and can be drawn to the theater—that is, if you know what the sound is and where it’s coming from.
One criticism I have, not of the movies, but of the venues, is that each has only a single, hard, wooden bench to sit on—like something that would be nailed down in a park by the sea—built to withstand the weather. Not exactly comfortable. Imagine a movie theater with, instead of comfy reclining seats, a single hard bench. It’s like they’re telling you you’re not supposed to spend any longer than a few seconds in either theater, but instead, quick check-in, then read the art-talk description that tells you what the movies are “about” so you can notch your culture scorecard like you’re collecting sports memorabilia. What they should have is actual movie theater seats—so you can, if you choose, watch each film in its entirety, aided by posted start and finish times. It might also be nice if they sold popcorn.
