This has been a bit of a funny week. It's involved me diving headfirst into a couple of notoriously mind-bending works of art, and being surprised by their accessibility. The first was Infinite Jest, which is a book I'm currently reading and loving. A lot of critics online had made it out to be impenetrable without a dictionary on hand, and yet aside from a lot of obscure words related to academia, the book itself is hilarious, gripping and easy to follow.
Basically, I feel the same way about Wavelength. I knew what I was getting into from the start, because I had read a little bit about it online, and knew that it would involve a 'screeching' sound and one, long 45 minute zoom in. I thought it was going to be almost unbearably minimal, and so planned to watch it with another film on standby. But surprisingly that wasn't the case at all. People constantly walk in and out of the room, sound plays a very important role and lulls the viewer into some kind of hypnotic trance, and the screen flashes with the same kind of vibrant colours that you'd expect at a rave.
I would be a liar if I said I completely understood what I saw, so here is a bit of background information. Basically, this film is considered a landmark in avant-garde cinema. It was one of the earliest 'structural films' that employed a minimalistic approach over the more densely packed films of other 50s and 60s experimental directors. According to Michael Snow, the director here, it is about 'religion, space and aesthetics'. I definitely understand the 'space' aspect. The film often transitions seamlessly between multiple times of the day, and obviously there are fairly lengthy gaps where nothing tends to happen thanks to it's minimalist approach. But the main thing I got from this film was that it was more of an exercise in sound and confusion than anything else. The soundtrack is incredible, first of all from the grainy radio playing Strawberry Fields Forever to the sine wave culminating in a the whirling sound of an ambulance siren. Then there are the frequent blinding colour filters that wash over the visuals. It's seemingly an attempt at creating a sensory overload. Makes sense when you consider the year it came from; 1967. I feel like these things combined with the film's focusing on the 'non-film', ie. the deliberate avoidance of the events that happen on screen such as a person being shot and an ambulance arriving, make it the oddity that it's known for today. At least from my interpretation, it's a call to appreciate the aspects of a film that wouldn't ordinarily be looked at. The room for example, is such an ordinary setting, and yet the edits between lighting and the ghostly effects towards the end make it almost ethereal. I'm not sure I'll be watching this again anytime soon, as I would rather get a little bit more 'into' film before revisiting, but for what it's worth I'm very glad I checked it out, and it certainly made me think of film in a different way.