Mask thy self, Mask thy Daughter

 Killer of Sheep is a heavy film, one rich in the stories of the post Watts' riots of 1965. Complex and engaging, it follows the story of a slaughterhouse worker named Stan and his attempts of how to be an African-American man in this time while dealing with his inability to engage with his wife and two children and how he must care for them at the same time.

A scene relatively early is one where Stan's daughter, Angela, is wearing a rather disturbing dog mask. We see her brother pull at it and engage with it, but the key moment is when she leaves the house and looks almost right into the camera, hand in mouth as if nothing blocks her view from yours.

In many ways we, as viewers, can stand in for Stan. This is the first time in the film we have seen Angela but yet we do not see her face. We are seeing a distortion, a mask on her being. In reflects not only back on us but back onto the character of Stan.

Masks do not only physically distort a face, that is hide it or hide a distortion much like the Phantom does in Phantom of the Opera, but it also distorts psychologically. The euphemism “putting on a mask” usually refers to when someone wants to hide something or their feelings.

In many ways this is what Stan is doing. He can't relate to his family well. He is wearing a mask. Now Angela is to. But she is playing in some sense. She is masking her face from her father but mirroring it at the same time. She is mirroring his inability to relate and his own masking of his desires.

The next thing she does is go over to a little boy with her mask in. It is outright creepy. She approaches him without speaking as if it is play. He looks on like this is all a joke. This play juxtaposes against Stan's struggles with the kitchen and the crumbling house.

And for his own part Stan struggles to see past the mask as much as Angela does. He can not relate to his kids out of the fear of raising them into the violence family system his own father did. This mirrors the scene when his father yells at him; he puts on the mask of strength and blinds himself to his relationship in this world. Stan distorts and masks his own pain as Angela masks her childish play.

Its a disturbing and grotesque mask just as the mask of the dog is, so is Stan's own pain in the face of his father. This begins to put a mask on him, how he sees the world from that point on. He was a child, all be it much older than Angela is, but proceeded to affect the way he sees the world.

What will this do to Angela? She is beginning to mask or come to an age where she can put on a psychological mask. Maybe the mask that she wears, the old worn and twisted dog, is just the mask of her father; an old, warn dog run down by the unseeable mask he wears.

Burning Up

The 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman presents itself as almost the antithesis of the traditional road film. Lacking a true narrative and have a more meandering pace, the story follows The Drive, the Mechanic, GTO and the Girl, among others, as they drive around the United States under the guise of drag racing. By reducing the characters and acting down to the bare-bones, the film gives off an off-putting vibe with no true ending and at the same time gives something greater.

As the film ends, we see The Driver beginning a race after the girl leaves. He begins the race set up and gets into his car, closing the window which gives a echoing slam. The music and engine noise around him fades as he focuses forward. As he begins to drive the film moves to freeze frame and burns up.

To discuss this more clearly let me reference two things. The first the the movies own internal characterization of the Driver. Like many other characters he comes off as flat, almost masking by emotion. Around the 32:20 mark he makes a speech about how bugs come from the grounds to mate and then die much like his own relationship to the girl. And yet the film, through acting, music, mise-on-scene , seems to actively suppress this emotion for the characters.

This brings me back to the films ending, how the film burns. Driver has slammed his window shut, almost like closing a coffin, and has insulated himself from the outside world's affect on him. In many ways hes not only blocking the outside but preventing the inner world of emotions and desires out. He has trapped himself in a coffin, that is his car, and begins to stall and burn up as symbolized by the films burning.

Now my second point. As this films was created during the Hollywood Renaissance it can say it drew influence from the art cinemas of Europe. This burning reminds me of Inmar Bergman's 1967 film Persona, which predates this film by almost four years. In Persona, towards the middle of the film, the stock burns after an emotion crux and gives way to a non-narrative set of images that do not truly relate to the plot. This film shares many elements with Two-Lane Blacktop; both feature the lack of a true narrative and contain a “flat” character dealing with the world.

A layout of the burning film stock from Persona (Bergman 1967), which is a "home film"

Where they differ is that Persona begins to show its two characters, Alma and Elisabeth, can not exist fully where one is masking their emotions and feelings, like the Driver is, and thus the relationship becomes one of the parts they bring and the film can revel in that. Two-Lane Blacktop refuses to engage into this, it breaks this with the more emotional and free Girl leaving and Drive shutting himself in his car.

And thus we are left with burnt film. Film burns, back when we used celluloid film stock, when it becomes trapped in a projector. The Driver is no different except that his projector is the car he races.

Bloody Stuck on Morvern

In the 2002 film Morvern Callar by Lynn Ramasy escape is the key and yet it has become an unachievable goal for the titular character. Throughout the film the character tries to travel and yet connects back to her actions over and over again until her ultimate break from the reality of her circumstances.

The key scene to discuss starts at around 34:30. Here we see Morvern from her doorway, topless and sliding goggles down on her face. She is located in the bathroom of her dead boyfriend's, James, house with his body wrapped in shower curtain as the song “I'm sticking with you” by the Velvet Underground plays behind her. Though there is no clear space where the music comes from we know it is one of the songs on the caset tape Morvern's boyfriend has left her along with the money for his funeral and his novel.

The music ties into a key moment of this scene where the blood of Morvern's boyfriend spays back onto her shoulders which lay bare and thus touch her skin. Shes open here, exposed while he lies wrapped in plastic. The song's lyrics refer to being “made of glue” and thus will have anything stick to them. It reflects Morvern in this moment as it begins to describe the deceased James.

In the following scene Morvern will bury the dismembered body in the moorish hills of Scotland and gaze at the bugs in the dirt. As she travels to Spain with Lana, the motif symbol of the bugs follow her like they are attracted to her glue; guilt. She knows his body is rotting under the surface and thus she reflects on it. They stick to her as a reminder as much as his blood on her did.

This does not end the glue. As much as Morvern has become free by his suicide it hangs onto her. He sticks to her like glue. Her future is founded on the objects he gave her. He keeps a hold of her. His blood was split, by his own choice though left ambiguous, for her freedom could only come by his death. We are never given any hints towards his treatment of her but one can infer it was something that made her unhappy if she was willing to dismember him.

It is why I find the song so important. Not only may Morvern's now dead boyfriend stick to her in his death but may have smothered her in his life. In the scene, though inferred that she is drugged up, she is happy and gleeful. Yet he still has his mark all over Morvern, he's always going to be sticking to her like sticky glue for the rest of her days.

 No matter how much Morven runs, lies, leaves she always has a sense of guilt sticking to her. It is why she sees the bugs crawling around, she is thinking about her one act of freedom from him as a guilty act now as the bugs are easting away at his corpse. That dismembered body and blood are sticking like glue.

Two Horses

In the 1969 film Easy Rider, directed by Dennis Hopper, we come across the ideas of the past and present twisting ideas of the past, present and future and how it relates to the America dream. Within this film the ideas that the past nostalgia is prevented by the move towards the future are explored as Captain America and Billy the Kid travel from west to east.

At 12:30 in the film Billy and Captain America stop at a rancher's house to fix one of their motorcycles. Upon approaching, though they are welcomed, they scare the rancher's horse with the noise. Yet the two objects share more in common than a first glance would have on realize.

Within the narrative structure of this film lies a nostalgic yearning and grasp for the frontier dream; that is a movement from the clutter of city life to a more open space of opportunity and free range. While Captain America and Billy the Kid's movements take them from this freedom in the west to the more urban and social constricted east, they carry with them the symbols of this frontier movement in their motorcycles.

Not only is the vehicle shaped like a horse, as compared to the more compact car, its maintenance is very similar. As mirrored in the shot at 13:26 where the two objects share a frame, it takes a collective to hold and maintain the object. The horses show, much like a tire, must be removed and repaired as it is held. Its ranchers hold the objects still.

Both the horse and the motorcycles are the vehicles that propel one towards the west. Yet they represent the tension within the film. The horse is scared of the motorcycle; flesh scared by machine. In many ways it foreshadows much of the film's later moments upon entering the urban south. For as much as the motorcycle represents the idea of freedom and the frontier wildness and openness it is still a being of metal and urban origins. Its a piece of the future that finds itself wrapped up within the idea of looking to the past much like Captain America is.

It is of utmost importance we remember the line “can you turn it off, the noise is scaring my horse” uttered by the rancher. Captain America favors his lifestyle; one of being a free commune in the open west without the interference of society. While he does not critique his religion he can not stay here. Billy and Captain America, whether they know it or not, is the noise on a new horse. They can not achieve this lifestyle or dream not because they have already blown it with the pusher drug money but because they are using a metal, eastern made horse. They have become implicated by the very objects they ride.

The parallels represent much of the film's themes of a frontier aspect and freedom. While mirroring they become a twisted sense. Yes Billy and Captain America are yearning for a frontier, or at least Captain America is, but they can not achieve it. The pusher money as much as the metal horse has corrupted them in a way they must only propel backwards into the twisted, urban pull that will lead them only to ruin.