Nothing is True. Everything is Permissible

An article for Vertigo journal on filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux investigating his use of the formal and physical qualities of moving image and how it can be used to communicate experientially, outside of notions of plot or story. Grandrieux is interested in how film can be used to communicate a primal experience. His work is analyzed against that of David Lynch, but a line is drawn differentiating Grandrieux’s real horror of being from Lynch’s surreal horror. Grandriux’s filmmaking is also related to the work of arch-realists the Dardenne Brothers whose very physical documentary camera work seems to have reached the same place as Grandrieux — a ‘being’ of the camera — but Grandrieux has approached it from an art/philosophy background.

The article then goes on to consider the constructions of Grandrieux’s sequences that deny much of film language. It is argued that his films do not fall into the usual wide/mid/close language of cinema but are more constructed records of time. Grandrieux’s ‘primal’ approach to film is questioned in relation to his interests in primal experience. The question is posed as to whether his films are akin to the unfocussed and undifferentiated experiences of a child.

My analysis of Grandrieux’s filmmaking fits closely with my work with representations of mental health and how the medium of film can be used to communicate through experience as much as information. It also relates to my interest in representations of decay, on the basis that Grandrieux pushes the images to its furthest abstractions and as such ‘decays’ meaning.