A style of meditation which permits one to say, “Questo è tutto.” The poetics at play in this film are so minute and so expansive, it offers up the key to the infinite, visible in small observations. There is an underlying link between questions I so often ask myself about what constitutes hypnosis, where the kind of patience that says a shot can go on forever if it so chooses enters into the equation. It is only in the viewer’s…
Max Ophüls was to have adapted this, but it did not come to . Jacques Demy’s Lola is dedicated to Ophüls, and in that film, Marc Michel gets in trouble with his boss for being late, so tells him, “Punctuality is the politeness of kings.” In Ne touchez pas la hache, Jeanne Balibar quotes the same saying, which I have also received in a fortune cookie.
In March 2003, I saw my first movie (Arsenic and Old Lace). This makes ten thousand. Around the age of six, my best friend was Oscar Dolan & he frequently would tell me that my name, reversed, spelled "Selim." I had forgotten that fact until seeing Viens je t'emmène, in which a character's name is Sélim. Movies preserve memory, & therefore invoke it -- whether that be personal, national, or cosmic memory. I do not all ten thousand movies I've seen…
