There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things, lacy things, things with curly hair.
Jon Jost’s essay film is patently self-indulgent, but that’s really the point. In an obsessive, almost cartesian manner, the film attempts to interrogate every aspect of Jost’s local and global viewpoint, beginning with the particularity of the Montana cabin in which he has made a home for himself and then proceeding to the state of America at large, particularly its dealings in Southeast Asia. Jost shifts from intimate, sometimes amusingly confrontational interviews with his friends to a more conventional TV-documentary voiceover with stock footage of Vietnam, Kissinger, and Coca-Cola. What results is a fascinating account of the disjunctions between perception and reality, and between our individual perspectives and what we imagine to be the perspectives of others.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm print
04 Oct 2005 3:01 PM | Submit Comment