kagablog

opposites attract/the quiet that storms within

a response to jesus and the giant

jesus - Mandisa Bardill
giant - Sonni Chidiebere Ochuba
mary - Lesego Mabilo
director of photography - eran tahor
sound design - Warrick Sony
make up - Jade Snell
Produced and directed by Akin Omotoso
written and edited by Aryan Kaganof.

Inspired by Kaganof’s tale, Omotoso’s cinematic reading becomes a visionary plea for sanity/retribution/justice/compassion. I say visionary, because the solution flies in the face of conventional morality while tapping into the very real need in the collective unconscious for effective retribution. Like Jesus in the Bible, this Jesus invokes a justice where the punishment fits the crime. In manifesting this larger than life snippet of despicable reality, Omotoso has created the cinematic equivalent of a Damien Hirst ‘Golden Calf’ set in formaldehyde, yet goes beyond it. The formaldehyde is the plasticity of the cinematic medium (the celluloid) and the living ingredient frozen eternally in time yet moving with time, are the players who converge on this tragedy of violence to embody it with a mythological (if not divine) splendour.

This encounter therefore becomes (dare I say it?) a manifestation of ‘fifth dimensional art’ where the artwork, frozen in time yet simultaneously moving through time, is framed by and manifests the self same concept: the collision of opposites. Violence begets violence is turned inside out: violence demands violence - it is the only lesson that can be (terminally) understood.

This concept, so tragic a reality, has no practical application in reality.

It is far too controversial.

And yet it is no more controversial than the Bible itself.

Visually, Jesus doesn’t look as if she could hurt a fly, Mary’s beauty seems beyond deformation, and the Giant looks sufficiently virile not to have to resort to violence.

As such the drama is projected through an idealised reality extracted from a visceral actuality, where the only solution is the only solution.

It is in this realisation that all opposites converge towards a single coherent focus.

The application of the sum effect of this collision of opposites, distilled through Omotoso’s many years of contemplation/discernment before shooting began, heightens and informs every aspect of this film. This is the essential and existential ingredient - the distillation - that elevates Jesus and the Giant into the artistic phenomenon that it is.

Each frame has been perfectly captured by Eran Tahor (using a stills camera) in crisp clear sharpness and tone that seduces the viewer before he/she realises the import of the revolutionary message. Tahor is intuitively attuned to exactly the correct distance between subject and object creating a volume in the characters that seems to explode outwards. Each character thus becomes larger than life, enhancing the archetypical depth of the players. The images are pristine, without being sanitised thus underlining the ugliness of bullying. As much as the slaughter and dissemination of every part of the cow/bulls done by the street butchers appears gruesome and shocking, it is executed with deftness and precision where no part of the animal goes to waste. This is corroborated with the ‘exactitude’ of the Giants frame of mind with regard to women: he carries no doubt about his inherent misappropriation of values. The Giant’s disassociation is his deformity. His victim, whom he fails to see as a living pulsing human being, is but a thing to be controlled, kept in order: disseminated as a matter of course. Bullying is the tool he uses as a means to this end.

So when Jesus exercises her right to treat the Giant as he treats others, there is no blame to be found. To implement this ‘scale of justice’ Jesus has to find immense internal strength and as such she is able to meet the demand of her archetypal/mythological role: a female warrior who is not imbued with vengeance. No doubt this will have many women cheering in the audience.

In fact the solution becomes the epiphany for transformation and as such the protagonist finds redemption. In the closing sequence where we had previously seen still frame create movement, we now have film creating stillness. Once again ‘opposites melt into summation’ to drive a powerful point home.

The fact that Kaganof has edited the material to such perfection, (the inter slicing of the violence against the victim so intricately interwoven where the perpetrator is receiving his ‘come-uppance”, gives attention to an all too forgotten focus) bares testimony to the completion of a cyclic orchestration that was picked up from the written page by Omotoso’s visionary intellect and transformed back to him.

ps…. and for those who do not know, the fifth dimension is…..

BREATH!!

and whether by accident or design, whether by intention or intuitive connectivity, breath in “Jesus and the Giant’ has become an added dimension:

the technique of presenting the action of this film in animation i.e. through single frame, has meant that the film was recorded without sound, without voice, in silence.

The sheer logistics of getting the actors to voice-over must have proved quite daunting….

- not least of all the synchronisation with sound effect and action -

the female voices are not the voices of the characters themselves…

(Jesus - Moshidi Motshegwa and Helen Asrat

Mary - Bubu Mazibuko)

The sound technician and aural architect, Warrick Sony,

has thus discovered

(through direction from Akin Omotoso/liaison with Kaganof?)

an extremely unusual vocal dynamic in presenting the sound -

breathing life into the animation….

…is at once disassociated, and distanced

below normal audible levels, at times muffled, understated….

…drawing the viewer INTO the drama…..

…yet matching the visuals in tone and crispness….

magnifying its import and intensity

its closeness….proximity….

the collision of opposites…

one feels the sound/breath/life more intently

in the way in which it has been

enveloped by silence….

BREATH forming through silence into shape…..

this review first appeared on helgé janssen’s website