GOING TO THE MOVIES
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implied or otherwise. What Kluge has done is make a state of mind
palpable, open to perception and analysis. He has translated his own
dilemma, the dilemma of a generation, into visual images and accoustic
forms that go off like explosions in the mind. Neither are the themes
all new: but their presentation, the shocking juxtapositions, wrench the
viewer out of his mental apathy and force him to see things in new
perspectives.
Circus is art, and - says Kluge - art is circus. He doesn't say this
in words, but "quotes" film material from last year's meeting of the
Gruppe
47 and underlays it with brash circus music. Circus and art are
in their very essence further related to flying and death. Death in the
circus is common, whether as a result of falling from great heights,
(dizzying film sequences on the trapeze are interrupted by photo stills of
airplane crashes) or as a result of animal attacks, particularly by tamed
animals who go suddenly berserk. Death is the natural expression of
human expectations - and whether it comes in the circus arena or in
war, it is generally the result of a meaningless confrontation. At the
same time death is liberating, it is like sex, like a trapeze act. Again,
there is nothing new in these ideas, it is their visual presentation, at once
subtle and shocking, that makes the film.
To cite just one instance: some of the most poignant scenes involve
animals, elephants in particular, as Kluge ascribes to the thick-skinned
beasts all the failings and miseries of human beings. There is a scene
recalling a historic fire in the elephant house of a Chicago circus, a
scene of appalling chaos, in which the trapped animals stand passive
till the fire consumes them. The whole tragic inadequacy of the human
response to disaster is implicit here, but instead of being viewed senti–
mentally, it is informed by the bitter realization that passivity is
"avenged" by delayed, and often misplaced, future aggression. Two
\"oices in the background chant a text in canon, so that the words are at
first unin telligible, and only after many repetitions does the meaning
emerge. "Our memory of the pains of fire ... wounds of the spirit ...
wounds of the flesh ... the thick-skinned ones never forget. They take
their memories, pack them in wooden crates and deposit them at the
bottom of the sea. The elephants never forget. Rather shoot than forget."
Throughout there is a terseness about the texts that is at once
comical and poignant. When Manfred Peickert fails to grip his partner's
hand and falls from the trapeze to his death, the film comments, "Da
packt Peickert die Melancholie; er fasst die hand nicht." (Melancholia
takes hold of Peickert; he does not grasp the hand.) The whole tragi–
comic situation of man is suddenly there.
