36: A.K. (1985, Chris Marker)

Owned version: This is included as an extra on the 2005 Criterion DVD of Ran, of which this is a chronicle of that film's making. Of sorts.

Acquired: Probably in April or May of 2009, shortly after Criterion announced that the disc was going out of print, from my then-local Borders.

Seen before?: No.

"We will try to show what we see the way we see it."

I really should have written about this back when I saw it at the end of January. But I waited too long, and now most of what I thought I could say is lost in the fog of my brain, much as the horses that fade into the fog in a striking shot captured by Marker in this, a stirring and unique portrait of one great artist observing another great artist and creating art from what he sees. All I have are my notes, which are as always a rough sketch of things that caught my interest, meant to provide a path forward for the piece I intend to write. Try as I might, I cannot grasp the shape of that piece as of now. So, I'll put in pin in this. I'll note that Marker's resolutely observational approach here, an inspired choice, reveals this sort of epic, expansive filmmaking to be as arduous as stop-motion animation and not too far removed besides - both involve laborious, time-consuming setups meant to capture mere minutes of footage at best. I will refer to a few images that caught my eye - a series of extras being made up and armored for a battle scene, with one man stretching his jaw in a way I found worth comment; the film's composer strolling through the mist like a purposeful phantom; a period-appropriate army marching past a small cadre of parked cars, two time periods smashing together at an odd angle; a man carrying a sheaf of grass painted an absurd and eye-catching shade of gold; lighting rigs framed and shot so that they appear to be closeups of suns hanging in a fading blue sky; Kurosawa himself in the midst of all this chaos, exuding an extraordinary calm.

If the typical making-of featurette is a demonstration of how something came to be, it stands to reason that they exist as testaments of activity - memory aids for things that happened, films made to help us remember. In that, Marker exploits this, draws it out, makes it text - tape recorders, VCRs, these "imperfect inventions" are devices of remembrance. And, as befits this project, they are then objects of creation. As Marker says at the outset, "Memory is what you create from." His creation stands interlinked with Kurosawa's creation. And my writing about his film about Kurosawa's film would then be a further responsive act of creation. Yet I fall down at this task. My memory, in this instance, fails me. But I must move forward or stagnate. I will come back to this another time. It deserves better.