*Corpus Callosum (2002)

Director: Michael Snow

Screenplay: Michael Snow

Cast: Jacqueline Anderson, Berj Bannayan, Greg Hermanovic, John Massey, John Penner, Kim Plate, Tom Sherman, Joanne Tod

An Abstract List Candidate

What is the Corpus Callosum before we continue? It exists in the centre of the brain, connecting the left side of the brain to the right (hemisphere), and allowing information to pass through both. Both hemispheres of the brain, processing information such as language and movement, require physical coordination and to be able to take in complex information, thus requiring the Corpus Callosum to connect both. This is simplified, and any specialists in human brain biology who also like experimental Canadian cinema are free to educate me on the subject with greater accuracy, please feel free to comment below, but it helps to begin with this as an initial thought.

In terms of the film, it fits in how the point of the film is legendary director Michael Snow distorting reality, the Callosum as a film about the bridge between reality and illusion, made poignant as the Callosum in the human brain was said to be the centre of the soul¹. All heady material, when Snow's film on the surface is a series of absurdist vignettes, all stemming at first in front of an office. In fact, the most intriguing thing is that, after this prologue, this work for him is as much crude and deliberately exaggerated fare, the kind where reality literally knots and turns upside down, even if the structure has long tracking shots in the office scenes and a droning soundtrack which show as much its intellectual origins in breaking from mainstream cinema.

From there, a troupe of actors are literally distorted onscreen, as prominently Snow and the animators he worked with use digital effects he probably realised would be cartoonish and dated only a few years after making the film, let alone in time after. He is fascinating in the little I know of him as both a man practices a very avant-garde creativity - famously Wavelength (1967) is a forty minute work which is just a close-up zoom from one side of a room to a picture, events taking place beforehand - but he is known as much for his humour². Snow is, notoriously, against his films being shown beyond theatrical screenings, which I understand but unfortunately creates an accidentally elitism. As with other creators who feel this strongly in terms of seeing their work as theatrical or installation productions, it restricts his work being available and for word of mouth to spread on his talent, as films like *Corpus Callosum sadly are not screened in the English countryside³. This is a shame as in its profane and even crude sense of humour, and that juxtaposition to the structure, is a melding of both sides of Snow as a creator as much as be a look at his own career in itself which might intrigue the open minded.

If one accepts this as a plot less production, Corpus is intentionally comedic, crass and playful. Structurally simple with one or two tangents to mention, a lot of it is of office scenes with one or two exceptions, the cast including among them some dancers, one Snow family member and likely one erotic/exotic performer for a female part, the one figure common throughout and played by multiple women (and men) a figure created with a fake blonde wig, pink top and black skirt. It is comedic in even the digital effects being absurd (a man and woman forming into one rubber rectangle trying to both go through a door). It is crass (a giant growing penis and a ready female colleagues hunched over on all fours, or male-on-male erotic arm movements followed by whipping one with a belt to their pleasure), and it is playful, the end credits playing halfway through before we have yet to see everything.

There are other scenarios too - the most repeated is a nuclear family in a Simpsons-like living room  if Stephen "Rinse Dream" Sayadian designed a nineties children's show, with bold (borderline kitsch) shapes and ornaments, as the family changes between shape, size, clothing and even gender without forgetting the ornaments breaking or even exploding by themselves. As with the office, if more so, the cast play archetypes, and pertinently for the nuclear family, multiple people can play the same characters, such as the "wife", being obscured by the fake blonde wig and pink top, being played both a pregnant woman and men at times among others. Also of mention are two one-offs: a sweet scene, shot from a camera hung over a classroom, in which children at desks coordinate to reach it to turn the camera off; the other is, if accurate, Snow reflecting on his career, as the final moments of the film are a cinema within this world screening a short animation created by Snow from the 1950s.

As a result, *Corpus Callosum is gleefully obsessed with turning an entire ensemble into mouldable, elastic figures. Expanding in mass, shrinking, turning into rubber, giving birth to fellow cast members, regressing into babies, and much more. Even the structure, as mentioned, is played between realities literally twisting, existing within screens within previous locations, or near the end fast rewinding back through scenes already seen to the original corridor location at the beginning. The result, even if you do not wish to ascribe any greater intellectual weight, is cinema allowing for reality to literally be sculpted in any form. And Snow uses it for shock - the sight of nudity (even a male cast member wearing a female blonde wig, a pregnant cast member slowly pulling clothes back on) to the general mocking of an office environment, even moments which might be more shocking nowadays like a black and Caucasian pair of colleagues switching skin pigments in a handshake, if not as pronounced as the more playfully enjoyable "gags".

It is a shame a work like this is not easily available. Yes it means this review only exists due to a less than good copy, but anyway to encourage even more theatrical screenings or for Michael Snow to relent would be helpful in contributing to wider knowledge of *Corpus Callosum, particularly as unlike Wavelength, Corpus is a more accessible piece of experimental cinema in its bold (even brash) colours, and moments that are purely humorous, even silly and deliberately like a game with the image.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Grotesque/Playful

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): High

=========

1) Certain Italian anatomist Giovanni Maria Lancis suggested this.

2) And for originally being a jazz musician before becoming a filmmaker, which is its entirely own unique thing to consider one day and does make a film like *Corpus Callosum more intriguing if considered through that attitude to craft he had.

3) One exception was a modified DVD release of Wavelength, 15 minutes long and WVLNT ("Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time") (2003), a production I have seen as my old university kept a legitimate copy in their library I saw it one. It also, very clearly, displays Michael Snow's humour and grievances with non-theatrical screenings in one release.