Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Avi Mograbi_ At the Back

On Avi Mograbi's At the Back a camera is fouowing a worrian, or perhaps being led by her. A Japanese temple or a house of worship, the camera is placed on the floor. The carpeted floor looks like an enormous cornfield. Suddenly the camera rises andstarts moving around. The following/being led camera is a pure eye, a point of view that converges with our gaze. lt says, "this is you" Le, you are him, you should identify with him. With whom exactly 1 am supposed to identify? Is it with a detective on surveiliance job? A pervert? A traveling partner? At a certain moment, the camera abruptly glances down to the floor (as the worrian turns her eyes towards it), like embarrassed kid caught giancing steaithily at a forbidden object. Anyhow, the camera signifies the person behind it, moving forward to the rhythm of his footsteps, vibrating in the rhythm of his breath (Mether it is the breathing of a drooling pervert with his tongue sticking out or of a tax officer - we dont know as yet). The film is edited strangely, mostly in smail leaps, or smail skips in time. Unconventional editing that produces unclear shortcuts or dramatic effects. Over what do we skip here? The editing tempo produces a mesmerizing music, but it is obvious that the cuts do not derive from a musical/rhythmic consideration. This is merely a side effect. I watch the worrian going down the stairs. Suddenly she sits down on one of the stairs, and then, immediately after the cut, she gets up and goes on waiking. How long did she actually sit there? What was taken away from me? In this enchanted moment, in which I realize that I have been robbed of something aithough I dont know of what, only that a piece of reality was torn off and concealed from me (that a burgiar visited my house but apart from the disorder and confusion I dont know what was taken), the desire for deciphering is born. Marcel Proust tells us how his mother used to skip over ali the love scenes when she read to him as a child from "François le champi" (ali the changes in the relationship of the miller's wife and the boy, that could be understood only as resulting from their budding love, aiways seemed to him as wrapped in great mystery borne of that unfamiliar and ever so sweet name "champi" or foundling). lt takes a little time before the external logic which operates the editing is deciphrered, before the strange tempo of the film is províded with a reason: Menever the face of the worrian is about to be revealed, there is a cut which denies us fuil view of her face. The bouncy, incomprehensibie aesthetic is given thus a logical explanation: ali that we are allowed to see is the woman's back,any identifying mark, let alone an eye contact with her, is denied from us. The male figure (at one point we see his hand, hear his laughter, and understand that this is a man) is a caricature. In other words, we have very littie clues to decipher it. lt is invisibie and yet it is the subject matter, the unknown that is conceived as such, ali it is are eyes and oniy eyes, a face and only a face, and in any case somevíhat ridiculous. The man behind the camera is a typecast (1 hesitate a littie whether to designate him as a husband, a criminal, a detective or a horny sod) we have to make do with this, and it is not much. The worrian is complex, and very specific. Unique (and anyway, by no means a typecast). The relation between them corresponds to Henri Bergson's distinction between comedy and tragedy: every comical character is a type. Comedy is a description of types, an art aiming at the general, related to categories. Tragedy is associated with persons, with individuais. (Thus, as Bergson informs us,forenames serve as titles of great tragedies: Hamiet, Oedipus, Mereas comedies are given characteristic titles: Le Mísantrope, LAvare.) The ferriale figure, the foilowed, is a forename. The follower is a name of a type, a category. According to Roland Barthes, one can read it also as a love story, in which the loved one is perceived by the loving subject as Igatopos, 31 namely, as defying classification (unique). Thus, Barthes telis us, confronted VVrith the glowing originality of the Other, he never feeis like an atopos, but rather as if he is classified (like a too familiar office file). In other words, also as a love story, we are confronted with the same distinction - a classified type (the lover), and the glowing individual (the beloved). Another reason for the discrepancy between the portrayals of the two figures is the passion that motivates them. The man's passion is obvious - it is the worrian. He is subjugated to it, and only it. The woman's passion is ambiguous - the camera does not focus on the objects of her gaze, since it's tied to the man s glance. The landscape, the architecture is relegated to the margins. I realize that we are concerned here with tourism, albeit a somewhat bizarre and unconventional tourism. It doesn't look like a regular journey in a foreign country. There is something not entirely deciphered. In any case, the too obvious, as obvious as a too familiar office file, readability of the passion of the man behind the camera clashes with the unreadable, the ambiguity of the foilowed woman's objects of desire. (And again, as Barthes observes, to know someone means to know This is the same old siliy feeling that arises in each and every person in love in front of his/her object of love, the silliness of an open secret in front of a secret that doesn't lend itself to deciphering. Otherwise it is quite clear that, ali in ali, we are dealing here with Mr. Avi Mograbi who follows his wife (and there is an inversion: the follower is a forename and a surname, the followed is a generic name - "the artist's wifé"). In any case, the fim offers a wavering between both options, the reflexive one: the artist walking after his wife with a camera, and certain fantasies that might be woven in my mind. lt should be mentioned that the camera operates here as a natural agent of arousal. When he coined the phrase "the subject's desire is the desire of the Other" Jacques Lacan meant that, among other things, this worrian is desired because someone has shown to the subject that she desirable. Namely, there is nothing like a primary desire, desire is always, and a priori, mediated. In this case, my intermediaries are the camera and the man behind it (and once again Barthes informs us, that the would be loved body is located in advance, dominated by the camera's lens, subordinated to a sort of zoom which brings it closer, magnifies it and forces the subject to press his nose against the lens; Mass culture, for example, is such a machine that is meant to point out passion: this one should ínterest you, it says, as if guessing that human beings are incapable of finding on their own whom to desire). In a sítuation such as this, I find myself in the middle: although I am behind the woman's back, there ís in my back a man holding a camera, leading me, paraliel to me, but from behind, directing me, as if my volume merely occupies the lens' place, like a sandwich man between two "siices of bread." The last segment of the film buiids up a dramatic turn. We enter, behind the woman, to a strange-looking building (a building designed by the architect Peter Eisenman); the strange architectural environment marks a change. For the fírst time in the course of the fim, the environment becomes a focal point(Le., for the first time, the woman's curiosity and interest are revealed in their particularity [she is 91 working"], and also for the first time, there is some overlapping between the desire of the photographer and that of the photographed), something ín the limited and focused point of view opens up. A mental zoorri out. (1 am thrown back into a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger-Profession - Reporter: Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider inside Gaudi's house in Barcelona.) The architecture (the environment, the context) becomes an equal rival in the contest on our attention. For the first time, the female back turns around, the womam reveals her face to the camera and speaks up. A subtle conflict of spousehood uncovers what was clear from the outset: Avi Mograbi is filming his wife(Tamar). Avi Mograbi spent an entire journey in Japan behind his wife's back and drove her bonkers. And then, one goes out again, and the camera ends its role as it lands softly on the sidewalk. Guy Ben Ner

BEN NER, Guy. "On Avi Mograbi's 'At the Back'".