Vincent Dieutre

by Jean-Charles Masséra

Non-reconciled reality levels
(Indifference and History)

Onscreen missiles are fired in the Baghdad sky… We’re in the year 1991. The Desert Storm operation has just been launched… Then a man appears… maybe a father, on a street in Rome, a man sitting on the ground, hopelessly reaching his hand to the passersby to get a few lira. In his arms, a teenage boy – his son? – has lost control over his own body. Mouth gaping, he keeps slumping on the man’s shoulder, his eyes engrossed in another world we cannot access: a teenager having lost his mind, if he ever had one. The camera is at ground level. Still shot. Indifferent, nonchalant or busy, the passersby walk across the frame… Only their legs can be seen… Their minds are probably elsewhere – out of frame. The camera’s low position and the still shot intensify the point of view of the stranded man… A camera that refuses to blend into the community’s commotion (traveling), a camera that decides to offer a frontal viewpoint without comments. A point of view that lasts and carves itself into the surface of our spectator’s conscience. An admission that our passerby’s conscience cannot take anymore and which our televiewer’s conscience downplays by putting it into perspective with the growing amount of information about poverty. A point of view that we do not know. In the Western mindset the gaze cast at poverty is one from above, bent over the poor (condescension). When it does not turn away, the passerby or the cameraman’s gaze is always bending down (high angle shot), displacing our gaze, and then shifting from the swift glance cast in passing (downward look) to the frontal gaze (ground level camera) – a frontal point of view that puts our eye on the same level as the man and his son, at ground level, on the sidewalk. In this movie, two planes of reality are staged (the stranded man’s and the passerby’s) that only come into contact through condescension, sympathy, or pity (the alms). The end of the film is growing near… Here is what the voiceover says: “Denis is still singing in his warm and beautiful voice… he appears to me as such an embodiment of what my life could have been that I feel like holding him in my arms, here, amidst the tourists and slackers glutting the stairs […] The city grows more real… Churches and palaces seem to be at our height now, Rome’s pandemonium bursts up all over the place and the unbelievable violence of the underworld starts to awaken my weakening clear-mindedness, bewildered for a split second by the twilight’s magnificence and the fleeting certainty of actually being here. The cityscape, Rome, art, and history gradually fade away into the sight of ugly souvenirs placed on the stairs for the tourists to buy and into the vile petty trades dear to Piazza di Spagna. Then I think about the years lost here, about those who met them on their path, about those who died, about those who are about to. I take a look around us and wonder if what I see was worth all the pain and the efforts made to resurface and live on. Denis seems entirely unaware of all this, protected by his innocence, his vast knowledge, his lightheadedness. Only his carefree singing keeps me from giving in to lassitude. He protects me with his arm and his beautiful grey eyes.” Violin… “We keep walking side by side. I know it for a fact now: we have never done anything wrong. Things are going to have to change, there is no other way.” The voiceover goes quiet. The man’s hand is still reaching out… The waiting for a few liras continues, becoming endless (the time of indifference)… He holds his child tight in his arms and then decides to leave. Only a part of the decayed wall and a few pedestrians’ casual steps linger, but the image of the two stray souls remains with us. Archangelo Corelli’s Concerto da chiesa n° 4 in B major can now blend in with the feelings welling up within us until the end credits… We will carry away with us this ultimate image and those last words: “I know it now: we have never done anything wrong.”

For sixty-eight minutes, the voiceover has traced the path of a man hopping from love story to love story and from fix to fix, a path along which the need to be loved and to get a fix gradually takes hold of his entire schedule “I only show up at work symbolically, to let people see I am here. I collect my paycheck and that’s it.” The sixty-eight minute long monologue refers to a subconscious framed by these two types of experiments. It begins with a sixty year-old man in a uniform - “assez rond, plutôt petit” (“quite chubby, rather short”) - clumsily penetrated without saliva nor lubricant in the vicinity of a railway track, and moves on to nightclubs and to the “ice-cold comfort” and “sharp-edged functionalism” of “apartments typical of that international gay good taste tremendously popular from Rome to New York.” It ends up with a stroll in the area of Piazza di Spagna with Denis, who “appears to me as such an embodiment of what my life could have been that I feel like holding him in my arms, here, amidst the tourists and slackers glutting the stairs…” The image provides neither a translation nor an echo of the monologue. Vincent Dieutre explains this bias as follows: “One often speaks about background sound effect. I wanted to produce a background visual effect.” Background visual effects show shots of Rome following one another, mixed with images extracted from the audiovisual landscape (news, advertisement, fiction) or from video games. The visual background has no specific link with the monologue; it lies here, like a familiar landscape, a geographical landscape (Rome) and an audiovisual landscape (television) in which we live but with which our life does not fuse. That is to say it comprises a series of true-to-life shots slowly marching past our spectator or passerby’s conscience – just long enough for us to be exposed to or impressed by a wall fragment, a few raindrops, a deserted crossroad, and so on – without ever having the slightest interaction with the experience related to us by the narrator. When the latter speaks about a situation, the place we picture in our mind is never the one where the scene takes place – or rather took place, I should say. Does the lack of images specifically linked with the narrative mean that the life-path evoked by the narrator is devoid of representation? Should we see this aesthetic choice as a way to point out the invisibility of non-heterosexual lifestyles in the public arena? If the law prohibits heroin use, shouldn’t the very same use be disallowed representation? Does the voiceover trying to render the “powder tracks” experience act as a surrogate junkie, a surrogate who reports what we have not been able to see? Instead of this lack of representation, Rome désolée seems to favor putting experience into words that would try to make a narrative out of a life that cannot be put into a narrative “[…] Heroin, which has provided me so far – way beyond pleasure, way beyond the beauty of Rome – with the only matter that has ever made sense to my life). As it happens, the visual background effect frames his speech. The series of long still shots (the visual background) allows him to shape his inability to express his own subjective perception of the world (Rome) as it appears (desolated), thus forming a discontinued relationship between oneself and the world. The lack of a linking thread bonding the images – images that refer to no other gaze than the one looking passively at the surroundings – stands for the inability to put things into a narrative, or rather for a life that is being led not as a succession of events but a succession of numb moments.

In parallel with this narrative made of adventures and shoots (the story of oneself), we see TV images shot directly on the screen… TV commercials and fragments of fiction acting as group projections or clips of evening news supposedly relating current affairs (the collective story). These muted images (the products supply and the handling of the facts) convey the idea that our televiewer’s minds have quit storing up the rumors of the world, a subdued world within which manufactured goods (the brand new Ragu spaghetti sauce) and fury (bombings aimed at strategic targets in Iraq during the Gulf War) noiselessly reach the surface of our consciousness (through cut-ins). By muting the sound, Dieutre gives shape to a state of absent-mindedness, a conscience drifting away from the world. If the images drawn from TV commercials revolve around the use of products (supply) that do not meet my needs (withdrawal symptoms), then those images no longer mean anything to me (lack of sound). If hearing that one of my occasional partners died of AIDS does not affect me (“For a while I searched my heart for a hint of an emotion, of any kind of sorrow, but I found nothing”) then the air raids on Baghdad and the political leaders’ phony comments on it to the microphones of the Rai channel can no longer matter to me. The lack of specific links between the visual background effect and the monologue reveals a break-up – the parting of the subject and the history he does not manage to become part of. The lack of sound gives shape to the discontinuity between surroundings and a self-awareness that expresses itself through an inward-looking mien. The monologue is a way to refocus upon oneself (soliloquy) at the expense of all relationships with the other (dialogue). The story of a conscience severed from everything occurring outside of its schedule…

So far (History and the shoot)

Still shot. A hotel’s blue neon sign glows in the Roman night. The voiceover, about his life: “A great part of it – lived in that interstice between life and death where I spend my darkest hours -– slips away from me. Too many deviances, too many bodies barely known and forgotten, too many aborted decisions wallowing in cheap powder tracks […] Countless minutes wasted in feverish expectation in the Trastevere cafés. Though I don’t regret a single one of them, I can’t pretend not to see them massing up behind me, reminding me that all of this is bound to end and this will be my own end. The logical outcome of those pointless, tearless desires arousing nothing but the histrionic weeping of an indifferent drug addict. Too many dead people are piling up behind me, but I have never missed the least one of them like - everyday around five - I miss heroin, which has provided me so far – way beyond pleasure, way beyond the beauty of Rome – with the only matter that has ever made sense to my life.”)

Towards the middle of the narrative, after stating that Johnny must be waiting for him “his pockets full of everything that makes me happy,” the narrator’s voice goes quiet. There follows a long silence against night visuals… The long silence stands for the key moment when the subject no longer manages to distance himself from his experience and gets entirely absorbed into its intensity. The voiceover had a mediating presence and its disappearance reduces distance to naught, thus prohibiting any kind of representation- a conscience getting soaked into the shoot and removing itself from the world. Cut. The host of the evening news appears onscreen. In the blink of an eye, the narrator’s voiceover is replaced by that of a Rai special correspondent reporting alleged fears of a chemical weapon attack on Israel. Then the rumors of the world – its images and comments made upon them – unwind in a continuous flow, just like the images of American TV channel CNN. Zapping. Images from a TV commercial featuring a happy couple, cheerfully cycling along a country road, waving at an acquaintance overtaking them with his car… taking a shortcut through a field to arrive before everybody else and be the first to taste the new Ragu spaghetti sauce… Airtime replaces historical time… During this airtime, manufactured goods side with current affairs in a ceaseless flow of now-indifferent images. Cut. In front of a household appliances store, passersby stop in front of a wall of TV sets (the world being multi-broadcast)… A wall of contradictory images of the world, an overabundance of screens standing between the world and the consciences of passersby, who feel concerned for a few seconds and then leave. Zoom-in on a human kind as indifferent to history as the narrator’s hopeless crew who know they are doomed to an early and untimely death. End of the shoot. The narrator’s voiceover is heard again, still preoccupied with his fix-centered daily schedule and still indifferent to the images of Rome (the still shots) and the images of the world broadcast by the media (the continuous flow).

Close shot of the rear window of a trailer: “Senza casa”. Claim to housing rights or a curse stuck on an unwanted dump? Shelter for the homeless or love shacks? On another shot, another trailer bearing another written reclamation: “I am a human being. I am not a beast.” There is no comment upon, no spoken connection between these images. The voiceover simply dwells on the private dimension of his life, a dimension within which there is no room for others. The voiceover (outside the world) gives shape to a narrative about the self severed from collective history and from the public sphere. The voiceover is outside the world and its series of images (loss of meaning). Rome and the world lie outside the frame of the narrator’s conscience, which is locked up within a soliloquy (solitude) and a story woven out of meaningless encounters that only make sense through the sequence they create (one-night stands). The voice (self-awareness) cannot project itself onto the images of Rome because the city is totally alien to the events of the strict timetable running his conscience, one that has grown unable to address its relationship with others through any way but indifference “there, next to me, Marina is getting beaten up, but if not for the fact that the daily shoot depends on the way things go, I have to admit I wouldn’t care at all.”) Still shot on a few used syringes, left outside : “I go to the bathroom to get a fix […] I hear the phone ringing. It hasn’t stopped since I arrived. But the subsequent silence at the very moment when the ecstasy of the flash seizes me seems like an ill omen. At that second, all this is so remote from me, I am so focused on my arm and my own pleasure. When I come back into the living-room, I notice the sudden paleness of the faces. Luigi has just been found dead in the bathroom of a Trastevere café. I don’t feel anything.”

Down with ideological editing
(Life lies in the rushes)

During an encounter…: “I want him to take his time before coming. I want him to take the time to love me a little bit. […] Gianmaria came without waiting for me and has already stood up. Lying here like a stain on the over-thick carpet, I don’t dare to speak. He tells me it is time for me to go. I feel downcast, vexed, and ripped off.” Onscreen one sees a neighborhood totally devastated by air raids. How are we to understand such a juxtaposition? How are we to link up this image of collective humiliation and tragedy with the story of a private, anecdotal humiliation relatively insignificant compared with what the inhabitants - deprived of their possessions and maybe their dear ones - must be undergoing? What rejection are we dealing with? Is it really possible to correlate the ephemeral and intimate tragedy of a frustrating and humiliating experience to the death striking a whole population? Have we truly reached a step in history where self-adoration and the culture of the private sphere have deleted all awareness of the Other? Have we reached the ultimate step of supreme indifference?

If those images fail to make our conscience aware of the wide-ranging dimensions reached by a military conflict in an area remote from where and how we live, it may be due to the fact that these very images – how they are selected, treated, cleaned, edited, mixed – are not designed out of a specific bond with the object they are supposed to render. Beyond the fact that the images of the conflict between the allied forces and Iraq in 1991 were chosen by the Pentagon – a selection from which soldiers warring, wounded bodies, or any other image likely to induce a hostile response to the Desert Storm operation in the Western world were automatically censored – information expressed through images does not usually bother with any research as to a specific form in sync with the object. Whatever the information, the components of the report method are immutable (from the pace in which images follow one another to the voiceover’s flow of speech, the idioms used, the framing, and the type of shots). It’s as if the same form and same language could recount any kind of situation without taking specifics into account. With this report method, the image is always considered as a form designed to provide a frame for the commentary, from the frame/setting against which our correspondent informs us about the latest events that occurred “here” (a pedestrian street, an official building, etc.) to the frame/atmosphere in which – as you can see on those images – the actual situation remains vague (an establishing shot on trucks conveying civilians, a distant shot of a cloud of smoke rising up above the horizon or, in the film we’re discussing, people putting on gas masks for fear of a chemical weapon attack). Meanwhile, there are still the tight frames focused on a de-contextualized detail, sometimes even severed from the conditions in which it existed (a child staring at the camera, a burnt down vehicle, a person crossing a street at a quick pace holding a pail of water, etc.). Images broadcast on western TV channels are designed to rest our eyes while we focus on the commentary. The indifference of images – whether advertising or informational material – often furthers their submission to the text. As for the editorial departments of leading TV channels, they have learned – since the Vietnam War – to get along without images.

In Rome désolée, the monologue, its form, tries to become one with the object: “The place is typical of that international ‘gay’ good taste tremendously popular from Rome to New York. Same ‘ice-cold comfort,’ same ‘sharp-edged functionalism’ […] Loneliness and selfishness weigh on the objects with a stilted heaviness. Nobody can fully live here. Yet Gianmaria moves about his space with great casualness. It resembles him: hard, posh, and practical.”) The specific lexical fields, the laconic adjectives or the flow of speech seem to be shaped by the situations and persons they describe. There is a slow flow of speech and images (the show window of a store, the façade of a house, a lane, etc.). As it happens, words and images are granted enough time to expose themselves to our conscience. The incessant flow of speech in the media (comments, advertising, slogans, etc.), provides no time for our consciences; forced to ingest information without having the time to ponder over what has just been learned, we also have no time to distance ourselves from it (the critical dimension).

Instead of relaying the world we are shown on TV, Rome désolée offers an example of experience being passed on: experience of a place or a situation, setting the camera in front of a landscape and letting the world pass by, just long enough for the image to take shape, just long enough for the image to reveal itself to us. It is the experience of an individual life-path often deprived of a representation, experience transcribed by elaborating a text that has no bond with the image.