Film Review: The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing

by "Nebby" Siits

The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing
Director: Stev Diedrich
Writer: Yana Diedrich

The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing is a series of long-shots via crude handsets depicting a scorched forest and the men who wander through it. Some are scavenging, some are hiding, some are trying to re-cultivate. It is unintentionally very black and white, it has very little in the way of professional audio-work, and it ends nearly as senselessly ominous as it begins. The site is located at the basin of the Valley Deep in light of the fires that tore through the land some 40 years ago. Perhaps the Diedrichs' desired to respond to Paolo Limboça's seminal work, Living Fire, a series of poems grappling with the country's indifference for the Valley Deep chemical fires, which tore through Jeffersonian wilds and cities within the span of a month, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced and forgotten (Limboça among the survivors). However, if this is their goal, they are intentionally vague. At times it seems nearly found footage, depicting the urban mythical; a sequence follows a man laden with wood, walking colorlessly into a field, and suddenly stopping, the track-shot halting abruptly with the man off-screen, panning quickly back to show the man motionless, featureless, for what seems an eternity. It is as though witnessing an unearthly scene, or the margins of a natural law. A haunting.
     Handsets continue to see use in the world of horror thanks to their familiar lens, practicality, and how easy they are to hide for footage potentially unwanted, though these films often release to little acclaim (see: Pale, Cinder, or the Whole Man, Snared, etc.). Their ease of access does not necessarily inform the quality of the minds behind the lens. What the Diedrichs do is not pedantic to the genre, in fact it is wholly its own in a way that dives into the subliminal previously unawoken. In order for The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing to take root, the Valley Deep had to be burned, had to be abandoned, had to become the natural anomaly that it is today. There is no widely understood reason that the land continues to rot, is void of bacterial life, or remains constant at all in an era of incredible ecological upheaval. Neither why it draws the attention that it does. Hollow shapes wandering the ashes to their own purposes, unknown. While paradoxically, the government, the country, largely unconcerned, almost percussively so. What the Diedrichs see is the land uncensored, shutters drawn.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Yana's writing, save its direction, is not featured for reasons unknown. As it is, it is a miracle that the film sees the light of day and has an audience at all, as this auteur couple keeps their interactions with the industry brief and often stilted, as though ambassadors for a larger purpose and this is merely a formality to a greater sequence. Within the flashdrive that contained their finished product, a readme.txt delineated Yana's discoveries while filming, curiously articulate and removed. "Stegner's New Cycle Principle demands the balance of any ecological community of practice to hinge upon the axis of relational zoning contingent upon consensual aggregation—these men are alone." Though, it is not without its obvious insights, "Where are women—men wander alone." Earlier in the notes, Yana states that her intention with the script for the film was for her husband, Stev, and Stev alone. There is not a shred of evidence that the script even existed outside of the conversations held between the couple. This checks out: the Diedrichs are most understood when cryptic.
     However, this film seems to embrace the anonymous fear that it records, and as such serves no lasting purpose but mystical intrigue. The Diedrich's refusal to set word or tongue to tape confirms as much. My fear is that public (though liminal) praise for its ethereal visage will drown its louder cry for an answer, but a world that could metastasize such a need for this vision is one that would just as soon abandon any message scrawled upon the walls, regardless of its bloodly ink.

6.8/9

This work is replicated in identical to its original, as per the Culture-Safe dictates (9.4114) of Our Lady Diaspora, by the Curator Proper of Catacombian Wells (1.445).

Film Review: The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens

by "Nebby" Siit

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens
Director: Deren Feck
Writer: Deren Feck, Ché (consulting)

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens is a film about loving a world that is begging to burn. This is Deren Feck's first film since The Agitates of Furor, marking some 20 cycles between the two. It runs the standard 35 minutes, but taps into something timeless. And as Feck is wont to do, ruminates on the philosophies of GYIA, regarding perpetuity (the irony is not lost here).
     The story takes place from the perspective of Menden Leavens (played by recurring character-actor and life-long friend of Feck, Servil Jen), a young man growing in a world increasingly stark; day to day the world sloughs its beauty to accommodate the fickle wishes of man. As he becomes more and more aware of the dissonance in his life, a prophetic vision comes to him on the asphalt plains of a forgotten land, giving him the direction he hungers for.
     The film follows the typical arc of any Feck film: an ingratiating world exposed through the mundane (Menden's walk), the hand that man plays in it (the asphalt plains, seeing the needlessly dead), and the call to arms (the titular "Magnificent Self-Immolation").
     One could sit to reflect on the message of this film and sum it up within a review succinctly delineating its manifold meaning (which, admittedly, would take more than a "succinct review"). However, I believe that it is a better use of my time, and one could argue my responsibility, to educate the reader through the lens of The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens. Besides, it wouldn't be a true "Feckian" review if it didn't stoke the coals of a harder conversation.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Feck's Magnificent raises questions in how we, as an audience, interact with the medium. These days, as in days in the past, there is a concern with labeling a film, or any work for that matter, as "good", or especially: a "favorite". When a film tickles a certain fancy, meets an expectation, or releases with refreshing bombast, it is easy for one to lay their laurels at its mound. "This is my favorite." "This is a good film." However, it is often the case that films such as these, what garner attention almost rabidly so, contain a rather vapid or super-condensed vision of their conceit's potential. That is to say, it would prove difficult to last the test of time because the film is scaffolded for easy, present consumption. When a work of any kind is crafted solely for an immediate response, its constitution remains weak, and its legs are blown out by the next work of its kind—"wash, rinse, repeat," to quote the ancient refrain.
     And in the end, we are none the better. For film to maintain any relevancy in our increasingly illiterate world, it must pass along the wisdom our forebears have worn their knuckles to bear to light. In an age where The Lathe of Aeschylus is misunderstood for a brand of tillage, being only some 30 cycles from its debut, what hope have we to remember recent scourges that have ravaged our weary spit of land? Before the Valley Deep and Darkest Tundra are merely names, losing their significance, and the fear that wrought those names into our tongue? A time of unencumbered relativity is upon us. Feck knows it, and shows us as much in the sequence prior to Menden's self-immolation. "I do not know this land, and it knows nothing of me," Menden says. "What left here is known? And what is best left unknown? A world no longer the world."
     Feck's film is not "good", it is not a "favorite", and you will be hard-pressed to find those who would have the mind to say so (perhaps shock-auth Phoebe Korb will have their shallow retort). What it is is foundational. A hallmark to our floundering age. I would argue a wake-up call, but it seems that Feck still struggles with communicating to the everyman; perhaps I am only preaching to my own choir, my own cultivation of a dying intelligentsia, a void. But I am not without hope, for the world's pangs often precede a birth, and should we remain vigilant and grounded in our perpetuity (with no ounce of irony) we will see the night through.
     "To live, to die, we live in cyclical wonder."

9/9

This work is replicated in identical to its original, as per the Culture-Safe dictates (9.4114) of Our Lady Diaspora, by the Curator Proper of Catacombian Wells (1.445).