Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway The Movies: Speed and Space

The Movies: Speed and Space

I grew up wanting motion, speed and space. As a child, I played tag in my wheelchair. I hit potholes and jumped small ramps, getting a concussion. In my own way, i was trying to imitate Evel Knievel , the first movie star in my naïve eyes, although his films were mediocre and “Viva Knievel” now notoriously bad.

Movies for me became that expression of space, both outer and inner and by extension, speed. The rectangular frame of the screen became something I could play in and feel giddy.

When I was a youngster, I liked Saturday morning cartoons and the 1970s version of “King Kong” though it paled in comparison to the original with Fay Wray.

I sought out anything that looked bright and hallucinogenic with eye-popping color. I caught flashes of “Barbarella” and “2001” not really understanding their flat psychological tone.

To my senses, the score of “Star Wars” thrilled. The blaze of the orchestra combined with the cowboy imagery defined the world in clear boundaries for my brain in its spastic body. Good versus evil, dark versus light.

The second theater in Key West at that time had a curtain that  was silver and shining like lame, reflecting different colors like the eye of an insect. It represented a voluptuous world to me that was perhaps even sexual.

At 18, my feet were in pain, groggy and blunt, held in plaster casts as doctors vainly attempted to straighten my ankles. I was on valium. A brief respite had been “Rocky III.” Once again, the most potent element for me was the music leaping in my chest taking me away from pain and worry.

After being released from the clinic, I returned to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” I was engrossed in Steven Spielberg’s cliffhanger world.

A short time later, I became friends with Paul, a Surrealist collaborator of my dad, who exposed me to the work of David Lynch, “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet”. Here was something more complex, intimate and blurred. The shadowy qualities held me. Lynch’s imagery seemed like charged riddles, stifled screams not requiring explanation. I liked the work for this reason and instinctively sought out more films in this tone.

When I went to the University of Miami, I became acquainted with film noir and musicals. It proved an isolating time. I still wanted speed and space, but I also pined for romantic experiences of any kind. I discovered the carbonated colors of the Bollywood film. What possible genre of film could be the anodyne or panacea. I saw Pedro Almodovar’s “Tie Me Up / Tie Me Down”. Vibrating contasting, colors hit me: purple and yellow, hair and lips. During the screening, I won a pair of handcuffs. The crowd applauded wildly.

The only category of movies I resist is horror. The visceral nature of the genre often feels like a bodily invasion to me. “The Exorcist” in particular hits me like a shock, painful and violent. I turn rigid with fear at the sight of Regan and start to hyperventilate. The imagery is too jarring gross and intense, reminding me of sickness without warning, of disease propulsive and wrenching. Images from the film arrive to me in dreams when I am stressed. To this day, it remains the only movie that I cannot watch again, as masterful as it is.

I still crave speed and space just as much as I did as a kid.  But the work of Michael Haneke, Agnes Varda and Ruben Östlund have now taken the place of George Lucas and Spielberg. I gravitate to films that provoke and confront in much the same way that my body does. I resist formula and comfortable resolutions.

If a feature film solely described the interior of a building with its multiple rooms, holes, tunnels, crevices including all of the objects and the sounds within, that would be enough for me. Each and every film has a spirit or a flavor with its own stream of vocabulary and color. The most anemic has a vibration of some kind.

I encounter movies like waking dreams, without expectation or prejudice and my body and mind are fused together in watching, engaged as one sensory being, seeking and restless.