“The camera will make you God”

Marilyn Manson, Lamb of God

There are several themes at play in this film, all of which are represented in a very intrincate
network of meaning, sustained by constant cross-references between these themes and an
almost endless succession of layers added to all this references. We’ll try to explore some of
the twisted convolutions of this web.

I see the first theme in the film as being an indictment of the modern world’s obsession with
image and with “cool”. Most of the people moving in the main character’s world are all
superficial and hollow, and obssessed with the way they look and with “fitting”. An exception
of this is Vanessa Redgrave’s character, who we could say is genuine. The film even stands the
theory that Thomas imagines her, or at least her visit, which would render her in a way an
embodiment of something he craves for: somebody who is genuine. Although, of course, it
also stands the interpretation that she’s faking her genuineness, speaking of a world where
even those who are genuine are a fake.

All of this is directly related to the second theme and indictment, that of the voyeuristic
obsession of the photographer and, yes, the filmmaker, who’ll use people as models, who will
dehumanize them, and for whom there’s not that much difference between a person and a
photograph-worthy building. He will objectify reality to the extreme, but there is a twist here,
we’ll soon see. “Obsession with image” here means both obsession with the way a person
looks as obsession with pictures, be it still or in motion. The main character realizes things by
taking pictures at them; otherwise for him they have no reality. It is all about the image he
creates of them. Basically, what’s going on here is that in the first place the indictment goes
further, making picture taking a symbol for superficiality and obsession with looks. But there’s
more, all this picture taking and this objetifying works as a metaphor for the true, and very
different, nature of reality: just like that is real which exists only in Thomas’ pictures, so the
only reality we can say to be aware of is the images, or the pictures, that we form in our mind
based on sensory stimuli.

But more on that in a second, because I would like to explore how at least at first there would
seem to be a sense, a logic to this idea of reality existing only in the records of it. After all,
picture taking sort of renders a moment “concrete”. It “immortalizes” it, they usually say
(although immortality is not necessarily positive: some things, some people and some
moments are better off dead). What the camera hasn’t captured vanishes among the back-
rushing currents of time, while that which is captured seems at first to be more lasting. But
there is another, again very different and truer side to it: if it is only the records that will
remain, we can only have a very narrow version of any occurrence, and there’s also the fact
that recording something means adding limits to it. A memory is flimsier, yes, but precisely
because of that it is wider, deeper, more meaningful. An idea is eternal and limitless while in a
person’s mind, while when it becomes “immortalized” it also becomes stiff, determined and,
ironically, more perishable, since it can exist only as long as the medium in which it is
immortalized exists. Besides, the records themselves exist in the same reality as the events
they are recording, and therefore are also perceived through the same filters and bias through
which we perceive everything else, which again makes them very unreliable (are the different
screens framing several scenes a symbol for these filters? And regardless of that, don’t they
just look amazing?). Basically, only the images that we form in our minds from perceiving those
records exist. This is what’s being said in the scene where Thomas’ neighbour’s girlfriend picks
up the picture of the supposed dead body and says that it looks like one of her boyfriend’s
paintings, which are very open to interpretation: you can really make anything you want out of
something recording the past (it is also a commentary on the “open” nature of the film and on
how each person will see something different on it; after all the movie itself and art as a whole
could be argued to be a form of recording, and it is also subject to all the filters we apply to
reality, so that this multiplicity of meanings is also part of the general theme of the film; it is
also a reference on how the images we form in our mind based on the stimuli reality sends to
our senses are subject to a large amount of bias). The past has no existence of its own, no
substance, and all we have of it are these records that we know to be unreliable. Knowledge of
the actual past is therefore impossible. And this can be extended to all of reality, since how do
we define reality if not on terms of accumulated past, of experiences that are now in the past?
Even what we name the “present instant” is already a part of the past, and even this present
instant is also perceived through a succession of filters. The obstacles are endless, goddammit.

To summarize: using a set of imagery based on objects and utmost objetifying, Antonioni
manages to symbolize perfectly the subjective nature of reality. Wonderful talent. But let us go
deeper.

It is funny how in the scene where Thomas takes the pictures of the woman and the man that
will soon be killed (or not, who knows really), he approaches them while taking cover, looking
almost as if he were to actually take a gun shot at them. Snapping and sniping are rather
similar words, and if we consider that the man might indeed have been shot dead, and might
have appeared dead in one of the pictures Thomas takes, there seems to be an intentionality
in the pairing of both images, besides the obvious pun on the meanings of “to shoot”. And in a
way, following the reasoning presented above, if he actually took a picture of the killing, he
realized the killing, he made it happen, again a symbol for the potentially dangerous nature of
picture-taking. And what’s even funnier is how he doesn’t take a picture of the dead body
when he finds it in the park, and his place gets rifled and all evidence of the supposed murder
vanishes except a picture that has so many possible meanings that it really has none, so that it
positively is as if the murder never happened: since all that remains of the past are the records
of it, if these records disappear then nothing remains at all; the past never happened. So that
basically the question of whether the murder really took place or not does not go unanswered:
it didn’t, because even if it did, it didn’t. The outcome is nullity either way. And we could take
these reasoning even further and claim that if the past never had a substance in the first place,
things in the past didn’t happen at all, even in the cases where the records of it, things of the
fleeting present, do remain. Occassionality over causality. It can’t be proved that the world we
know in this present instant hasn’t also started this present instant, has now been created
including the records of a supposed pasts.
It is interesting also how that whole thing about the picture having so many possible meanings,
it has none, could apply to the film itself, a film that means so much that it is almost as if it
didn’t mean anything.

The mimes represent, among other things, the people in the hispter spheres: they all go
through the motions of being really loud, while in reality they are making no sound at all, they
have no substance. Of course they also represent the world in general, people going about
pretending to live their lives, secretly cognizant of the terrible secret of existence, its futility,
but making as if they just didn’t know the score. The mimes also symbolize the subjective
nature of reality, pretty much established by the time the last scene of the film arrives.
Although probably quite difficult for someone so used to objectify everything and everyone
around him, Thomas finally decides to accept this world of make-belief and submerge himself
into it, and that’s why he hears the tennis ball and the rackets where there really isn’t any and
throws the imaginary ball back (he is “playing-ball”). Then again, in a world so obsessed with
images, in a reality that is subjective, appearance is all there is, therefore if it looks like they
are playing tennis, well, they are playing tennis. Substance is meaningless, it is all about making
it seem like there is a substance. It’s not about whether there was a murder, is about whether
you can make it seem there was one or not. We are told not to judge by appearances, but
appearances is all there is. There is no difference between what you show and what you are.
We are what others make of us. Individuality is a myth. We are all collective entities. And there
probably isn’t one “version” of us that is any truer than the others, not even the one we have
of ourselves. Since objective reality is unreachable it is as good as if it didn’t exist at all, so
there isn’t a way by which to gauge the level of veracity of all the different versions of
ourselves.

In the mimes scene there is also a further reference of the power of realization of the camera.
From the very beginning of the game, the mimes that act as the audience follow, almost
mindlessly, like all audiences would, at a tennis game or elsewhere (a rock show maybe), the
illusory ball. But for us, the film audience (and an audience nevertheless), the ball only seems
to be there when the camera starts following it through its supposed path. We see what the
camera wants us to see.

[recipe for cool: against the beat. Everything frantic, but you act as if you were remaining cool]