Films and Dreams Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick,
and Wong Kar Wai
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Films and Dreams
Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick,
and Wong Kar- Wai
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Copyright O 2007 by Lexington Books
First paperback edition 2008
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The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as
follows:
Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten.
Films and dreams : Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-wai 1
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dreams in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures-Psychological aspects. I. Title.
PN1995.9.D67B68 2008
791.43'6536~22 2007028648
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2187-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-2187-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2188-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7391-2188-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
eISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3143-5
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Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Dreamtense and the Art of Film ix
From Formalist Ostranenie to Tarkovsky's 1
"Logic of Dreams"
Space and Dream: Heidegger's, Tarkovsky's,
and Caspar David Friedrich's Landscapes
On the Blurring of Lines: Alexandr Sokurov
Ingmar Bergman and Dream after Freud
A Short Note on Nordic Culture and Dreams
From "Ethno-Dream" to Hollywood: Schnitzler's
Traumnovelle,Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and
the Problem of "Deterritorialization"
Wong Kar-wai and the Culture of the Kawaii
Aesthetics and Mysticism: Plotinus, Tarkovsky,
and the Question of "Grace"
Image and Allegory: Tarkovsky and Benjamin
Ten Keywords Concerning Filmdream
Bibliography
vi Contents
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following journals for having granted the permission to
reprint revised versions of their articles: Cinetext which published "On the Blur-
ring of Lines: Some Thoughts on Alexander Sokurov" (now Chapter 3) in its
September 2002 issue; the Journal of Symbolism which published "Ingmar
Bergman and Dream after Freud" (now Chapter 4) in its 8, 2006 issue;
Transcendent Philosophy which published "Aesthetics and Mysticism: Plotinus,
Tarkovsky, and the Question of 'Grace"' (now Chapter 8) in its 5:4, December
2004 issue; Applied Semiotics which published "Andrei Tarkovskij: Towards a
Semiotics of the Strange" (now Chapter 1) in its May 2005 issue; Film-Philoso-
phy which published a very short version of the same article in its 8:38,
November 2004 issue as "Realism, Dream, and 'Strangeness' in Andrei
Tarkovsky"; Consciousness, Literature and the Arts which published "From
'Ethno-Dream' to Hollywood: Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, Kubrick's Eyes Wide
Shut and the Problem of 'Deterritorialisation"' (now Chapter 6) in its August
2007 issue; Substance which published "Wong Kar-wai and the Culture of the
Kuwait" (now Chapter 7) in its 114,2007 issue; and Film and Philosophy which
published "Tarkovsky and Benjamin: Image, Allegory, and Einfuhlung" (now
Chapter 9 ) in its 11,2006 issue.
vii
Introduction
Dreamtense and the Art of Film
In his book Visual Thinking, Rudolf Amheim points to the interest represented
by a fundamental link between film and dream which becomes evident as soon
as it is seen in relation with Freud's dreamwork:
Freud raises the question of how the important logical links of reasoning can be
represented in images. An analogous problem, he says, exists for the visual arts.
There are indeed parallels between dream images and those created in art on the
one hand, and the mental images serving as the vehicle of thought on the other;
but by noting the resemblance one also becomes aware of the differences, and
these can help to characterize thought imagery more precisely.'
To discuss dream theory in the context of film studies means moving from the
original, clinical context within which dream theory was initially developed, to
an environment established by primarily aesthetic concerns. For Freud, dream
research was to be used as a technical means of discovering essential facts
concerning the development of neuroses, mental diseases, and other phenomena
diverging from "normal" mental life. In his General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis, Freud presents the study of dreams as an explicit introduction to
the Neurosenlehre. Aesthetic considerations have never been at the center of
these elaborations just as they have never been central to psychoanalysis. Freud
was aware of this but considered it rather as a general tendency linked to the
psychoanalytical idea, and not as a methodological problem: "The psychoanalyst
is only rarely motivated to undertake aesthetic examinations, not even when
aesthetics is not restricted to the doctrine of beauty but defined as the doctrine of
sentimental qualities."2
In film studies it has been demonstrated that dreams can be (aesthetically)
fascinating not only because their linguistic or structural elements can be traced
back to elements which exist in reality. On the contrary, in films, the language
of dream is an object of interest as just "another language," in the same way as
one can be fascinated by language from another culture without having a
particularly linguistic interest in it. Robert Cuny writes that ". . . [dreams] show
a vividness, originality, and insightfulness that quite escapes us in our waking
life. If we compare our dreams to the fantasies of waking life, the latter reveal at
a glance their stereotyped features and lowly origins in our desires and fears."'
If we use dream theory in film studies, we are interested in dreams as
aesthetic expressions and in the ways these particular expressions can be
obtained. In the chapters contained in this book, dreams will be dealt with as
such "self-sufficient" phenomena that are interesting not because of their
contents but because of a certain "dreamtense" through which they deploy their
being.
Andrei Tarkovsky, whose work is repeatedly analyzed in various chapters of this
book, elaborates the aesthetic phenomenon of dreams into a consistent version
of anti-realism. For him, cinematic truth must be looked for in a new concept of
cinematic time. Dreams take place in an intermediary domain of abstractness
and concreteness, and dreamlike expressions neither represent the "real" nor do
they symbolize the "unreal" but remain in the domain of the "improbable"
between symbolization, representation and verfemdete expressions.
Tarkovsky's way of overcoming cinematic metaphorism and symbolism is
kindred to Walter Benjamin's thoughts on empathy (Einfuhlung) as I explain in
Chapter 9. Benjamin is convinced that we need empathy, but it should be a kind
of empathy that experiences those images which just "flash." The world, at the
moment it appears before our eyes in the form of dreamlike images, comes to us
by surprise, without involving any curiosity on our part.
Tarkovsky requires that all expressiveness of the image be eliminated and
that only "life itself' remain expressive. In Chapter 3, I show that the highly
aestheticized images of Alexandr Sokurov's films also retain more than only a
purely "aesthetic" status. Sokurov launches a subversive attack on the modern
image ideology by elaborating an aesthetics of dreams.
In Chapter 2, which deals with Caspar David Friedrich and Tarkovsky,
dreams in films become a matter of space. The dreamer's perception of space
surpasses the "all too human" way of seeing the world, be it the objective or the
subjective one, and perceives space like a Heideggerian thing. Space becomes
here aesthetic through a dreamlike perception.
This accords well with what is said in the comparative study of Plotinus and
Tarkovsky (Chapter 8). Both Plotinus and Tarkovsky overcome intellect not in
order to reach a level of mysticism that creates blurred images and hazy ideas.
Rather intellect itself becomes the origin of wisdom.
In the chapter on Ingmar Bergman (Chapter 4) as well as in the more techni-
cal Chapter 10, I explore the psychoanalytic dimension of filmdreams by taking
up the discussion of the "mindscreen effect" that was current in the 1980s. A
"dreaming mind" is present behind each screen and it invents an aesthetic
structure which does not provide a narrative in the conventional sense of the
word. In Bergman's Persona, for example, the film's self-consciousness appears
to originate from within. In the same way, dreams are not produced by a process
Introduction xi
that attempts to stylize the reality of waking life into a reality of dreams but
what really "makes" the dream is the fact that reality and non-reality seem
indistinguishable.
In Chapter 6, I examine these points with regard to the Austrian writer
Arthur Schnitzler and show how the adoption of his Dreamnovella by Stanley
Kubrick employs several important parameters of the production of film-dreams.
Schnitzler employs complex strategies to show that dream and reality can never
be clearly distinguished. The structural model valid for many of his works is that
of estrangement, of the shifting of the familiar to the uncanny, and of the
replacement of certitude by possibility, models widely neglected by Kubrick.
In Chapter 7, I show how Wong Kar-wai produces a dreamsphere of a simi-
lar kind. Wong's films represent a panorama of parodied capitalism in which
reality gets absorbed in a dreamsphere cushioned in a kind of immature
subjectivism. The dreamlike mode of existence that is shown in Wong's films is
linked to a capitalist dreamworld of consumption.
All chapters point to the intrinsic affinity that films have with dreams.
Dreams can deploy a "dreamtense" in various ways, some of which clearly
transcend the typically psychoanalytical interest.
Notes
1. Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969),
241.
2. Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke (London: Imago), Vol. XII, 292.
3. Robert Curry, "Films and Dreams" in Journal for Aesthetics and Art Criticism
333:1, 1974,85.
Chapter One
From Formalist Ostranenie to
Tarkovsky's "Logic of Dreams"
In this chapter I intend to reflect upon the ways in which Andrei Tarkovsky has
decided to represent "facts." I believe that for Tarkovsky this project involves
questions about time and history in a way it does in few other contemporary
artists. For Tarkovsky the approach of transforming facts into what is most
commonly called "fiction" is based on sophisticated reflections upon the
relationship between history and the present, and these reflections transcend, so
I think, the playfulness of many classical and even '~ostmodern"approaches.
Tarkovsky developed his ideas on time in cinema by overcoming the most
important cinematic principle of modernity: the Formalist method of montage.
Tarkovsky is opposed to modernism if we perceive the Formalist avant-gardism
that has brought forward classical modem devices like montage, juxtaposition
and alienation as typical manifestations of modern aesthetics. However,
Tarkovsky's expressions are at the same time incompatible with those of
"postmodern" attempts of overcoming modernity; and this is due to Tarkovsky's
particular view on history, memory and time.
Empathy against Estrangement
The aesthetic phenomenon of "dream" is elaborated by Tarkovsky into a much
more consistent version of anti-realism. In regard to dream become important
the considerations of the formalists and of Tarkovsky concerning another notion
that has also often crossed the field of the modem and postmodern problematics:
the concept of empathy (~infuhlun~).' In the middle of all Formalist film theory
there is the idea that the montage of different scenes produces cinematic time.
Montage creates a conflict between different shots and time, as a purely
2 Chapter One
functional relationship between shots, arises out of montage as an abstract
element. The central figure in Formalist film theory is Sergei Eisenstein whose
aim was to overcome "intuitive creativity" through "rational constructive
composition of effective elements."' In a Futurist manner, Eisenstein designs
artistic activity as the process of organizing raw material. A large part of this
cinematic theory is based on the principle that represents the main theoretical
notion for the philosophy of Russian Formalism, the notion of ostranenie (alien-
ation, estrangement, German: Ver-emdung).Within every shot there is, so says
Eisenstein, a conflict between, for example, an object and its spatial nature or
between an event and its temporal nature. To combat, as Eisenstein says, "intui-
tive creativity" by basing one's aesthetic strategy on the combination of raw
cinematic material (for example, shots) is also in agreement with another main
Futurist-Formalist project: to overcome an aesthetic theory of Einfuhlung. We
are here provided with a further aspect of the concept of time in Formalism.
Cinematic time is no longer seen as an element that can be perceived through
Einfuhlung but time exists "as such" not as "real time" but as a quality that can
only be experienced as an artistic-technical device. Accordingly, Eisenstein
insists that the result of montage will never be represented by a certain
"rhythm," by a certain regular pattern of series of shots. The reason for this is
that such a cinematic "rhythm" as a temporal quality of film still relies too much
on, in Eisenstein's expression, "artistic feeling." In "The Montage of Film
Attraction" (1924) he writes:
A rhythmic schema is arbitrary; it is established according to the whim or the
"feeling" of the director and not according to mechanical periods dictated by
mechanical conditions of the course of a particular motor process. . . . The
audience of this kind of presentation is deprived of the emotional effect of
perception, which is replaced by guesswork as to what is happening (48).
Eisenstein quotes even the German philosopher and psychologist Theodor Lipps,
the foremost theoretician concerning the philosophy of empathy, to make clear
the absurdity of one of Lipps's point, if we apply it to theory of cinema. Lipps's
theory, so Eisenstein thinks, would rely only on the "emotional understanding of
the alter ego through the imitation of the other" (49). Finally, this would lead to
the "tendency to experience one's own emotion of the same kind" (ibid.). This
means that the rhythm that we "feel" in cinematic time is an illusion insofar as it
is the rhythm that we transfer from our own being into the films that we see.
Eisenstein has moved away from Meyerhold's idea that film "is all a matter of
the rhythm of movements and actions. This rhythm with a capital R is precisely
what imposes responsibilities on the cameraman, on the director, on the artist,
and on the actor^."^ However, for Eisenstein as for Formalist film theory in
general, time is a matter of montage which creates not even rhythm. The images
that are linked through montage provide no subject for Einfuhlung. For Formal-
ists, montage, like poetry, is not equivalent with "thinking in images." This
Formalist idea of montage is inspired by Shklovsky who criticizes in his mani-
festo "Art as a Device" Potebnja's conception of poetry as a "thinking in
images." Potebnja's conception, so Shklovsky finds, leads to the creation of
Tarkovsky S "Logicof Dreams" 3
symbols as the main aesthetic occupation. For Formalism, however, artistic
activity does not consist in the creation of symbols but in the reorganization of
their constellations:
The more you understand an age, the more convinced you become that the
images a given poet used and which you thought his own were taken almost
unchanged from another poet. The works of poets are classified or grouped
according to the new techniques that poets discover and share, and according to
their arrangement and development of the resources of language, poets are much
more concerned with arranging images than with creating them. Images are
given to poets; the ability to remember them is far more important than the
ability to create them.4
An art, which consists only of symbols, will be artistically expressionless like
algebra; the task of formalist artists is to "de-automatize" the fixed schemes of
automatization. In the first place this means to retransform symbols into
"things," into "material," and to capture then, by means of the artistic camera
shot, original constellations of this material. The different shots will then be
assembled through montage out of which time flows as a dynamic cinematic
notion. This means that cinematic time is not "staged" like in theater, but
grasped through unusual combinations of diverse material. It is worthwhile to
show that, through this particular concept of time in cinema, formalist film
theory undertakes the task to combat (exactly like formalist literary theory)
naturalism and impressionism simultaneously. Formalist film theory finds that
the "image" is always the photographic image, which is nothing other than a
simple reproduction of reality. In this way it corresponds to both naturalism and
impressionism because both of these artistic tendencies had their particular ways
of seeing things as, generally speaking, "they really are." Formalist
cinematography believes it has discovered a means to overcome the concept
"image" of both schools. In this sense the theoretician B. Kazansky writes in
"The Nature of Cinema":
The naturalists severely limited the problem of art to the reproduction of reality.
Impressionism was a definite, almost technical way of seeing things "as they
are," eliminating the attraction toward any kind of personal feeling, evaluation or
fantasy. And since for them the genuinely visible was the genuinely paintable
"planar" phenomenon of the world, in drawing mere "naked reproduction" did
not constitute an significant problem, since skillful hand motion did not enter
into their aesthetic method. Thus, their artistic method was theoretically
"photographic."s
The strong point of cinema is that it does not need to rely on "the mechanical
copying of nature, [and on] the purely technical reproduction on the screen of
some real object" (1 10) as does, in a Formalist view, photography. Cinema has
the capacity to "transform nature" by relying on the verfemdende effect of
montage. Here, for the first time in Formalist film theory, the motto "ostranenie
against (impressionist or naturalist) Einfuhlung" has become a matter of time.
Eisenstein's and the Formalists' visions of an "intellectual film" developed into
