Here is an experiment. Take the
name of six colours, write them in random order several
times using a coloured pen that does not match the name
of the colour. Time yourself reading this list of colours. Write
the same list of colours using only black ink and time yourself reading
the list. The mind works is strange ways, and
has trouble if preconceived associations to familiar things or objects
get too close to one another. Daniel Cockburn, a Toronto video artist has just made a wild and crazy jump into features with a film-slash-brain-experiment that wants to perform a witty and colourful brain massage. He wants to play with
your cerebellum in the same way that the perception of film works: 'Persistence of
Vision' as shutters push single frames to form the illusion of movement. We will ignore the contradiction that he mainly shoots on video, but contradictions is what the film is about anyway. . He wants to expand your consciousness or
provide the illusion of expanding your consciousness or expand your
consciousness while providing the illusion that he has not. You Are
Here. The statement is both a location as well as a confirmation of
existence. Different things, really. The red dot that defines your
location on the map can be just
as much of a misleader as a guide. The meaning of the film goes beyond
the dual-natured title, into something that is both
profound and a profoundly funny. It is science. It is art. It is
absurd and hilarious sleight-of-hand. It is an ultra lo-fi version
of Inception in which the filmmakers might as well be Leonardo Di
Caprio and company (in shabbier clothing mind-you) and the audience
are simultaneously the beneficiary of planted ideas and the mark of a
baffling grift. The TIFF catalogue labels the film as Dr. Seuss
meets Samuel Beckett, and I cannot really argue with that. It is an apt
a
description as you are going to get without telling you much. When it
ended after an all too
brief 75 minutes, I was upset. I wanted to see how many more times
the filmmakers could fold their narrative in upon itself while keeping
me in its spell. Riding the wave, before it
collapsed. Like any good performer, Cockburn knows to keep the audience
wanting more. Or they ran out of money, drugs or the ability to keep a
hold of the reigns. I am sure the director will never tell.
There is no way to spoil You Are Here, because I am not even sure what I have seen. The film keeps the big picture just out of reach by playing out using the rhythms of a hypnotist. A hypnotist that somnambulizes with the quiet and disarming chant of 'wake-up, do not get hypnotized.' An experimental film with no plot per se, it does feature Tracey Wright (in one of her final performances) as some sort of information archivist that collects lost documents around the city and explicitly files them in her room full of shelves. In another nondescript room, a man fills out paperwork in the surrogate act of language comprehension. He admits that he *literally* has no idea what he is talking about. He continues because it is possible if rather unwieldy to follow the dozen or so 10cm thick gold-embossed red volumes of step-by-step and cross-referenced instructions. More anonymous sheets will surely be slipped under the door to provide continued purpose. In yet another room, cluster of desk clerks direct people all over town in cabs. The attempt ensure that the passengers remain in motion without meeting with one another. The movement is recorded with precision. There are other mini-narratives including a man with a cyborg-eye and an instructor who really, really loves his laser pointer. The image of a red spot or dot makes more appearances than the all the hat imagery in the Coen's Miller's Crossing, both films feature a love of language and a delight in double-crossing machination. I want to believe that the film is telling me something about perception, but it also may encompass propaganda and political theory, perhaps a little string theory in there for good measure. It is a heck of a lot more fun than Scientific American or NPR though.
It is easier to describe the state-of-mind the viewer is in while watching the movie, rather than the movie itself. The experience of watching You Are Here is felt for me like trying to simultaneously read open books by Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Malcolm Gladwell, and Noam Chomsky while watching a bank of TVs showing Marx Brothers and Roy Andersson films on loop. The film may not look like much, bit it is a mind altering work of staggering genius. If you have gotten this far into this rambling and repetitive review, you have been given the palest of the pale imitations of what the film is like. Oh, and You Are Here. Welcome. Alas, the number of people that will take joy in this sort of grotty yet earnest intellectual pranksterism is small enough that you might have to find this video in the same passed along by hand fashion as the evil video tape in Ringu was passed around. Maybe with equally dire consequences.