the woods part of when

[ontology]

My parents and I nearly watched Pan's Labyrinth tonight (nearly, because our cantankerous eight-year-old DVD player hated it even more than it usually hates things, although Yvaine is completely fine with it; we plan on nicking the one from church because every other DVD we try to play skips like mad, even straight out of the case), and the trailers in front of it were so disjointed in subject matter and sometimes downright weird that it got me to thinking. Trailers I remember -- the deeply weird-looking Fur with Nicole Kidman as some surrealist photographer and Robert Downey Jr. as some guy with too much hair, this neo-horror film in which there are Shenanigans in the Operating Room, and... some film about some salsa singer with J.Lo's boyfriend? (One of these things...) Okay. And the fact that these films only tangentially related to Pan's Labyrinth as a genre film led me to realise afresh that what we need in filmmaking? Is speculative fiction.

I'm not talking about Fantasy, or Science-Fiction. We've got a fair amount of good sci-fi/fantasy films lately, and I like or love a lot of them -- The Lord of the Rings, of course; Stardust; Serenity. I'm talking about the subtle stuff, the stuff that blurs the lines. The stuff that mightn't end up in the sci-fi section of your local video store (funny how we say that when they are neither exactly stores nor do they carry many videos anymore -- and doesn't everyone just Netflix or download these days?), but would probably be in the fantasy section of the bookstore. Like Pan's Labyrinth. Like the multi-layered Wings of Desire, or the is-it-or-isn't-it of The Illusionist and The Prestige. Films that ask questions, that explore worlds, that explore our world, illuminate it, or wonder how it might be different -- which is why I like the term speculative fiction over sci-fi or fantasy. It can be both. It can be either. It can be something that doesn't fall neatly into either category (a book like Einstein's Dreams, or my apocalypse short story). Most importantly, it speculates. It imagines. It blooms with possibility, with wondering. It tries, often, to understand our world through a lens of imagination.

Film is wonderfully suited to this sort of storytelling, too, because it's so visual -- you don't have to tell us what your alternate London looks like: you let the camera swoop around and we take it all in, delightedly. (Side note: one of my favourite things about the Harry Potter films, though they tend to fluctuate wildly in quality, sometimes over the course of just one film -- anyway, I really, really love the visual representation of the wizarding world, the stuff that just goes on in the background, like in Half-Blood Prince, when we go into Fred and George's shop, and it's just... I wanted to clap and laugh. Perfect.) Sometimes that's more powerful. You can have half-insect humanoids wander past the screen, or buildings made of old rubbish, or streetlamps lit with magic. You can use the camera inventively, show dreamworlds, magic, strange beings, trains of thought, alternate universes... You don't even necessarily need a large budget for this sort of film; the otherness of a world can be communicated through camera movement, colours, music, dialogue. (Side note mark two: we watched Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast the other night, and oh the special effects. Sure, it's 1946, they're primitive by today's standards -- but they're magical. There's a real tactile, imaginative, clever brilliance about them that digital effects just do not and cannot have.)

In conclusion, because this isn't really an essay exactly... I want more. Maybe I've got to make it, though that seems sort of daunting and terrifying. (Not half so much in writing, because the path's a little more well-trod, and also because books cost nothing to write except sleep and sanity and the cost of researchy books and chocolates and baguettes and cheese and coffee, and you don't need a whole load of other people just to get the bones of it.) 

Next time on Not-Quite-Essays With Banui: the much-debated dynamics of Urban Fantasy, because this is a subject close to my writerly heart.

Comments

[everydayjoy.livejournal.com]

The Prestige was mind-boggling.

Do you think Edward Scissorhands would fit into your not-quite-fantasy-but-definitely-speculative category?

[bonny-kathryn.livejournal.com]

I *adore* Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and so of course bought the fancy restored version. Also up there in terms of fairy tales is Jim Henson's The Storyteller series.

[aliseadae]

Ooh, ooh! I'd really like to know what you think of Pan's Labyrinth when you do watch it.

Also, <3 to the bits at the bottom of your second paragraph especially.

And ooh! The visuals of Half Blood Prince! I loved the medieval tint to Hogwarts. I loved Dumbledore's chair. I loved the images of Diagon Alley and of London. Mmm...

And oh, yes! Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is splendid.

I agree - I want more, more, more.

[goddessreason.livejournal.com]

Gah, if I wasn't craving film school enough already, you just made it worse. I know what you mean by wanting more, and I simply can't wait to make that possible, whether in collaboration with other past works or creating things all myself. One can have endless fun acting on inspiration, I think, while inspiring others to do the same.

Huzzah for Urban Fantasy! (I think I randomly wrote a paper to do with that subject a few months ago)

[jellybonessss.livejournal.com]

Have you seen The Fall? It's a brilliant film and visually stunning. I think it might fit into your spec. description.

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean. ♥ I could go dig out a list of books & movies which achieve this, and probably will at some point. What makes speculative fiction so engaging for me is the fact that, since it isn't quite scifi or fantasy or reality, each work can create its own inherent logic and set its universe in individual clockwork-motion from there. And that completely new perspective can be so surprising, and so magical.

I shall be waiting for your speculative fiction film, dear. It'll become an indie-circuit cult thing, I just know it. :)