Almereyda, a filmmaker who has trudged through the woes of financing and distribution, to come out with an eclectic, often elusive, and sensual catalog of docs and fiction features (HAMLET, HAPPY HERE AND NOW, THIS SO CALLED DISASTER), once again does something very different, and astonishingly simple. PARADISE is home video footage.
NYC's Museum of Modern Art began this evening a week long theatrical run of these home movies, with Almereyda in attendance for an intro and Q&A. And before anyone thinks this is special treatment, pretentious brouhaha, try not to take it that way, it really isn't.
At the top of the evening, the modest and enthusiastic Almereyda stated that what he did essentially anyone could do and encouraged the audience to do it.
Though Almereyda extensively travels around the world throughout the 10 years of collected footage (1999-2009) PARADISE is not a travelogue. There are no title cards telling the audience where we are, and unless you are intimately familiar with the place, it can be hard to discern locale.
What occurs is a sense of focus on the material, we are there seeing that moment for what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Those people, that rainstorm, those fireworks. Sometimes we may not always be sure what we're seeing, at other time it is all too clear.
A sense of direct wonder and awe, a definite optimism runs through the material. Though there is no proper narrative or themes, there is a flow, and returning motifs... Children seem to be an endless fascination for Almereyda, whether he is filming strangers - a group of Indian boys trying to catch fish in a pool - or when his lens is turned to friends - parents putting their children to bed with a countdown and blastoff bedtime ritual.
The film is equally made of these strangers and people Almereyda knows well. Though the ambiguity is rather gaping it lends another layer of wonder and mystery to what is unfolding before us.
A young woman catches fireflies, a group of college kids smoke weed and chat about Napoleon, a little girl in a red raincoat commands a flock of pigeons with breadcrumbs, a moment on the set of Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD with the always mysterious director staying well out of frame minus a red sleeve; a man stumbles comically through the snow to get a picture of some buffalo.
These moments are many things, but all are profound because you see how fleeting they are, as sequences, shots, scenes, glide by, wrap around each other, melt, fade and fly off into memory, but still there they are, somewhere. The stuff collected is more like a sketchbook, a set of photographs, an album of music... these are the ones that stood out for Almereyda over the years - ones where he was excited, fascinated by an image, emotionally atatched to something, just a special moment. The ideas of seeing, of watching, reacting from all spaces and angles begin to emerge as fixtures.
Because there is no narrative other than these ideas around time and seeing, the sense of not knowing what is going to come next is so immediate and refreshing, one must stay alert. There is an absolute delight in this not knowing.
Then again, the film isn't for everyone. Some people will be bored with this organic way of making a movie, but for those who value the small miraculous moments, the everyday silliness, the unique tenacity of children, and the striking way in which the camera is not a tool for that of a voyeur but a tool to help bring reality into more of a clearer, dynamic and enlightening focus, there is absolutely something here.
Yet as it is with many of Almereyda's films, they are quite difficult to see. If you're in the New York area, MoMA will be playing PARADISE until September 30th. Outside of that, keep an eye out for this to still play at some festivals, though it made rounds earlier this year. If anything Almereyda has given us a lovely reminder of the great world we live in.