Director: Jonas Mekas
Canon Fodder
Berries, always berries.
Reminiscences... was the first Jonas Mekas film I ever saw, and I did not appreciate it. His films today, having come to appreciate them, belay what cinema can be. I do not consider this an insult, but this huge figure in American avant-garde cinema in his own work compiled what would effectively be lifelong home movies to most viewers, becoming diaries that spanned decades which he would eventually compile into short and long form features based on the subjects per work. You see this in the first pieces of Reminiscences..., scored to solemn piano music, of the streets of Brooklyn from his perspective as a Lithuanian migrant. This is real homemade footage focused on fragments of the most innocuous of images, like kids playing on the street, turned into something profound by time and his focus on them. The time capsule nature is profound - Mekas' own narration is personal and introspective, contrasting that the footage is archival and meaningful even without his compelling words over them.
Mekas' own accounts build together a life for those around him, a world where even an anecdote never seen onscreen is meaningful, such as his brother when drafted into the army being shipped back because he started eating leaves and was presumed to be mentally unstable. Mekas' own life is complex as, documented in this film specifically, he was a migrant who had to flee his homeland from invading Nazi Germany, including being imprisoned by them before he got to the United States with his brother finally. Reminiscences... follows him finally returning to his homeland in 1971.
Intermingling colour and monochrome footage, Mekas' work immediately evokes a time in my life of volunteering in a film archive, devoted to sorting through home movies on a variety of formats to discern historical importance, working on the types of film materials Mekas may have considered or even use like 8mm film reels, discerning the images on hand cranked projectors you had to squint to scan the images of. Here there is a greater existential nature, of a man from World War II in exile finally returning home. An additional factor at the time is that his home of Lithuania then was also a Soviet nation which is touched upon.
It is difficult to describe this, as it has to be experienced viewing the footage, seeing through his camera eye and thoughts of the world within them, of music, of drinking and sleeping on hay in a profound moment in his life he calmly, gracefully, recounts as a storyteller. Baring some rapid editing, this is only "avant-garde" in how sadly people do not want to watch something this sincere on mass to fictional reality. This is sad as, finally understanding this after the first viewing, returning to these reminiscences is incredibly gentle. Entirely in the countryside in the Lithuania section, there is not even a spectre of communism really here, where it feels less different from the land of Mekas' relatives when they were younger, baring that now collective farming groups exist. A running gag is how the native Lithuanians joke they will probably look backwards to the United States, all in an amused attitude, such as having to use hand ploughs.
It is a beautiful piece, structured in chapters, part 1 almost a prologue, the Lithuanian section part 2 with 91 shots makings it up, whilst part 2 examines how, fleeing the country, he did end up in a Nazi prison camp, going to Germany, before finally escaping to the United States. Far from a bleak affair, it comes with curiosity as, able to go to the factory he as a prisoner had to work in, now a heritage site, he can reflect on this history and even meet one of the staff, now an older man, with no grievances and now empathy for each other. It is a soothing reminder of how, even with the horrors of World War II and Nazi Germany, human beings are still human beings capable of empathy.
More so as Mekas, the man he became, ends the film, where with the colour of the film stock used adding such a striking look, the colour red so unique to this footage, Mekas goes to Vienna. The man who returned home, to be able to see family he left in his country, was also able to become a hugely profound figure for growing avant-garde cinema. His films soften and remind us viewers in the modern day even these seminal avant-garde filmmakers are us, where Peter Kubelka, the legendary filmmaker who turned a commissioned beer commercial into an elliptical short Schwechater (1958), is seen as a jovial man feeing pigeons, or how Ken Jacobs, of Star Spangled to Death (2004), was dubbed "the Child" by Mekas. Even tragedy, when Vienna burning at night due to the final is the final images of the film, as Kubelka is recounted lamenting a market he was fond of burning down, is felt with a greater worth than just mere sadness. That at least the market existed and is remembered, and that, yes, even destruction can be beautiful as it is here, the sight of crimson reds, oranges and flickers of yellow on black stunning to behold. If this review feels whimsical, more than usual, it is because trying to speak of Mekas beyond this would be absurd. Sadly, his films are difficult to see, a tragedy as never was there a man in avant-garde filmmaking who championed humility.
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