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The Cinema of Peter Mettler  Above: PICTURE OF LIGHT "It's okay if you get frustrated or fall asleep in parts. That's just like what happens during a real trip, and then something really interesting happens." This is a paraphrase of a statement made by director Peter Mettler, who participated in a surprise Q&A session at a recent screening of Gambling, Gods and LSD at The Bloor. It is a humble statement made by a charmingly humble man, who has nonetheless made some of this country's most individual, challenging, and even, admittedly, demanding, films in the last 20 years. His most recent film, cited above, may be his breakthrough picture- its critical and box-office success (two oxymorons for 99% of Canadian cinema) may get some people to check out his eclectic back catalogue. To some, his earlier work may be tough-going, but in truth, his previous work perfectly compliments his recent success. If the buzz surrounding this film makes one think that this original filmmaker has sold out, one would be mistaken. Gambling, Gods and LSD is fascinating, frustrating, mesmerizing, boring, enchanting and disappointing, much like all of his work. In other words, he is still making his pictures the same way... his way. Peter Mettler absolutely defies categorization. Certainly, one could call him an experimental filmmaker, yet his success would surely ostracize him from the avant-garde community, and the latter would also consider that Grimthorpe Films' has release most of his work on video would be an act of artistic rape. Sometimes, one thinks his narrative-driven films (I use that term loosely) are going to be literate and rich with meaning, only to find that they are shaggy-dog jokes. Also, just when one thinks his pictures will be ethereal trips to escape into, they suddenly stop short with some sledgehammer device. His films waver between the gulf of experimental and mainstream cinema. He is either Canada's most avant-garde storyteller, or he is the avant-garde's most mainstream Canadian director. The fact that his films get recognition at all within his own country is an accomplishment. That they get recognition in Canada while still being highly personal and uncompromising, is an epiphany. Gambling, Gods and LSD has incited comparison by some to films like Baraka. This is an understandable, yet highly inaccurate comparison. Yes, Mettler makes travelogue kind of films, and he certainly takes one to a place (or at least, a state of mind) previously unencountered. But he is not interested in making just some larger-than-life, out-of-body cinematic experience that Baraka or Koyaanisqatsi provides. Nor is he interested in creating a body of work which is so well structured, with so many layered meanings as either of those films. His latest work is a three-hour odyssey documenting the way in which people in the Western and Eastern Hemisphere seek fulfillment, be it through spiritual, chemical or sexual means. Mettler discourages people from making the obvious juxtapositions in his film. People naturally assume that the Western world seeks more superficial and hedonistic ways, whereas the Eastern world (or if you will, "the old world") seeks a traditional spiritual path. But that isn't entirely true. If anything, it is interesting for how the two cultures blur, under Mettler's non-judgmental eye.   Above: Gambling, Gods and LSD. We open in the west, and on a surprisingly low-key, underlit scene in which Mettler follows a man around with a camera as he walks down the night street talking of his experiences with drugs. This is scene is actually indicative of the rest of the picture. Mettler avoids having the visual power of film taking over the proceedings. Despite such indulgences as a time-lapse scene in the desert, this film is about the getting of sensory pleasure than trying to provide one for the audience. If anything, he just simply wants to have the viewer observe. What he has done is edit the film down in a way to make it as less manipulative as possible. This is quite a refreshing approach, considering some of his interviewees are people that most of the audience would probably not associate with offscreen. Mettler simply looks at them as people. For instance, in the Western Culture, we see some unconventional ways in which people seek enlightenment. Perhaps the strangest is the people that travel around to blow up abandoned buildings. Visually, the sex shop sequence may seem more bizarre (as a model demonstrates the use of the device, which resembles an exercise machine, but with a huge phallic object in the middle). However, this moment is actually understandable, as it is one conceivable way for a client to achieve sexual fulfillment. By contrast, the moment where an old motel crumbles to the ground is more obscure. The people who perform this task are seeking enlightenment on a far more complex level. Another interesting sequence in the western world is a long unbroken take in which the camera weaves around a Toronto religious wake at a convention hall, in which hundreds of people are praying (or just checking things out); some even go into trance-like states. This sequence is planted among all the other scenes in which people seek secular pleasure of sex or drugs. In the east, things are equally obscure. Mettler interviews one couple who talk matter-of-factly about their drug use. The woman talks of how she survived her dangerous, drug-addled path to enlightenment. Her story is not the typical "drug survivor" biography that one sees on Star TV. If anything, even while risking addiction to a dangerous substance, she ended up with an enhanced enlightenment from the drug after all (which most addicts probably do not). What is most interesting about this segment is what Mettler later told us he left out. The male is HIV-positive, however he deliberately cut out any reference to this in order for the audience to avoid reacting to a stereotype. Most pictorially beautiful of course, is the exotic footage of the Middle East, when we see some native ritual customs. Again, Mettler stills avoids turning this into some trippy visual experience. He views these paths to enlightenment in the same third-person quality as the first half of the film: non-judgmental, yet interested. Once one realizes that this three-hour film is edited down from 55 hours of useable footage, one is reminded of what Mettler has alluded to in interviews. The passing of film through the camera is his "drug", if you will. Metter shoots and shoots for the same reason some people meditate: it is a journey of fulfillment. It is a sometimes frustrating journey, however; it all becomes worth it for that special moment that does occur. Gambling Gods and LSD is a metaphor of the tribulations one goes through to satisfy that unconscious region. Similarly, all of his pictures are about a voyage to some kind of enlightenment: be it an object, wisdom or state of being. And the frustrations which are encountered along the way become equally integral to the voyage. His first feature, Scissere (1982), is the genesis of the film style and ideas which he still practices 20 years later. Certainly, Gambling and Scissere bookend each other, as Scissere also documents the chemical way to enlightenment. One can appreciate the theories that went into his maiden effort, especially in context with his later work, but Scissere is still his least satisfying film to date. It is a weird melange of mock-up documentary filmmaking, which also attempts to convey the state of mind of its chief protagonist. There are three main characters actually: a young mother, a doctor, and a former psychiatric patient who abuses drugs. The film tries to capture the various states of reality, and even does so with the filmmaking process itself (after all, what is filmmaking but altering reality?). There are some weird, mock-up moments, such as when a woman has her purse stolen on a bus. It is filmed in such a long shot, that we're not sure if this is an unscripted accident (only in the credits do you realize it is fictional). Therefore, what Mettler is doing is forcing the viewer to question the validity of whatever is happening on screen. If you will, the image is the audience's drug. But still, there is really no narrative thread in the work. It operates as a stream-of-conscious piece, however there is no A-B progression. It slips back and forth in time and states of consciousness, just like the mind does. At the same time, Mettler is attempting to explore why people behave the way they do, and always does so matter-of-factly. For instance, the footage of the young man and his rituals of tying the tourniquet around his arm and shooting up may or may not be played up for the camera, but Mettler films it with the same kind of clinical documentary approach as one of Warhol's depictions of his hapless underground actors. (This scene is so intimate that I am reminded of a line I read in a book: "Watching someone shoot up is like watching someone masturbate.") Scissere is a prize-winning feature that Mettler made during his tenure at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. And for a first work, it is incredibly ambitious. The seeds to all of his later work are here. His unique approaches to narrative, documentary, and ethereal states of mind are expanded upon to greater capacity in the future. Sadly, it is not a very satisfying movie. Incidentally, the title is named after a fellow patient that Mettler once knew in a psychiatric ward.  Scissere. His featurette, Eastern Avenue (1985), remains one of his most satisfying works. This stream-of-conscious piece is a travelogue of his visit to various European countries. Mettler shot the footage totally on a whim without any regard to cohesion, and then edited the footage with a similarly subjective frame of mind. And then the music was also subjectively added in spots. Therefore, there is no singular rhythm, or any kind of sequencing, in its collage of natural images (water is a favourite), discotheques and landmarks. Because the entire film is meant to be uneven-- shot, edited and sound mixed entirely to chance, therefore the lack of structure is the structure, and that's what is so wonderful about it. Within its hour, one is constantly surprised by the unknown directions the film takes. Different images splash about, similar ones are repeated, without any sequence, and the subconsciously added music track is therefore congruous wherever it lands, simply because the incongruity is the point.  Eastern Avenue. The one travelogue film he made the most "straight up", if you will, is Balifilm (1997), which is comprised of footage he shot in Bali, Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia in the early 1990's. This is his sole "ethereal" film, which is allowed to remain a completely escapist experience without any disruption of rhythm. Even then, the journey is somewhat compromised. You are never given a sense of what country you are in-- he treats the sepia-toned visuals as though one walked into an unknown custom in an unknown environment. Despite the strange framing of his subjects, this is his most ethereal film, as it becomes a mini movie on dance. As the natives perform their customary song and dance, the images are often shot in oblique croppings, and played out in slower motion than the music track, putting the mystery back into the whole proceedings, pushing the work to the edges of unreality. Around the same time that Mettler shot this footage, he was also doing two films which attempt to push the boundaries of the accepted norms of conventional narrative. In addition to shooting his own films, Mettler also acted as cinematographer for others, especially Family Viewing for his friend Atom Egoyan. Mettler's own The Top of His Head (1989) may actually remind one of an Egoyan film. Its fragmented structure, weaving through different moments of time, is indicative of an Egoyan film, and the look, not surprisingly, has that same pristine monochrome. However, the similarities end about there. Egoyan's pictures tie up the threads into a neat bow- if anything, The Top of His Head leaves the threads untied. Instead, this picture takes its narrative cues from Kafka, or Blowup.  The Top of His Head. The story is about Gus, a satellite dish salesman who becomes attracted to a beautiful, mysterious woman. Suddenly, he is being questioned by unknown people about her. Therefore he starts to uncover more about the mystery lady, in order to find out why these people are after her. If Mettler chose to work in fictional cinema, Top of His Head is a good indication of how unique that vocation would be. It's a thriller which has quirky comedy, and, most importantly, it builds up the narrative only to pull the rug from under it. It makes sense that the film gets even more confusing, just as Gus gets even more confused about this woman as he goes along. Someone seeing this picture without any previous knowledge of the story (which is near-impossible in this information age) would either feel ripped off, or feel somewhat emancipated, depending on one's cinematic sensibilities. Right at about the time Gus gets a car and offers a lift to a stranger, the deceptively intricate plot goes out the window. This long dialogue scene changes the movie. Similarly, later on there is a bizarre scene when Gus tracks the woman down to a warehouse to free her from some bad guys, and then the two engage in some bizarre dance number! Just like the lead character in Blowup, Gus's buttoned-down lifestyle is blown wide open. The fact that the movie ends up making no sense is the point. The look of the film, although shot in Toronto, has a strangely futuristic feel. Its unusual locations, and attention to chrome and steel give this a slightly unreal feeling, therefore complimenting how the narrative makes the audience feel. Top of His Head explodes your mind with possibilities. It is a shaggy dog of a movie, but one worth visiting again. One property in Top of His Head is the way in which Mettler injects people's subconscious thought into the story. Repeatedly, we see cut-in's of what people are casually thinking or seeing during a conversation. In one scene in an office, Gus is in the foreground, another man is in the background looking out the window while they talk. Suddenly, there is a cut to that man's POV, looking through the glass. What he sees has no relation whatsoever to the story, yet that's the point. Mettler subtly throws in subconscious thought to what is at first a conscious, objective story.  Tectonic Plates. This is something developed more fully in his next picture, Tectonic Plates (1992), adapted from Robert LePage's theatre piece. In this adaptation, Mettler marries both theatrical and filmic looks, thus adding another level to this complex story of lost loves. The film's present takes place in this classroom setting, which looks like it's on a stage. It has a deliberately artificial, PBS shot-on-video kind of look. By the same token, the scenes in the film's past (such as in Venice) are shot on film. Therefore, the contrasting looks not only break up the different pieces of time, but the stages of consciousness. Since the Venice footage is in the film's past, therefore it is only existing in the person's mind! Also interesting is the use of water right on the stage. The metaphor of the picture (and the title) is that people float in and out of each other's lives, just like continental drift (and since these characters trot the globe a lot, this metaphor makes even more sense). Picture of Light (still perhaps Mettler's most delightful film to date) is on the surface a documentary about the Northern Lights. However, the film's real story is the stodgy drama about the toils taken to film them. Mettler refuses to turn the film into an ethereal "trip" movie a la Baraka. Instead, it is a subtly self-mocking documentary about this movie. If you want to see the time-lapse footage of The Northern Lights, you'll have to patiently wait, just like the filmmakers did... like they are making you do. This film breaks down and examines not only the filmmaking process to give you those moments, but this incredibly stifling feeling, as this production operates in fits and starts. This subtle "making of..." diary in the film also depicts the bizarre ways in which people pass their time when the production grinds to a halt due to bad weather. There is also footage of the filmmakers trudging outside in the deep snow just to see what they have to do to prepare for the filming of nature's great lightshow. Mettler's sly voiceover comments on time, boredom, and even what they had to do to shoot the lights (in this case, it was one frame every three seconds so it would even register on film). As always, Peter Mettler is taking you to a place that you may not have seen before. Even his so-called narrative films take you for a trip in a strange world. This is the key to all of his pictures. His is a journey to capture on film those moments of beauty, but at the same time he wants to communicate that visceral experience he underwent to achieve those fleeting moments. Therefore, he makes the viewer work for those genuinely beautiful scenes. Gambling Gods and LSD is assuredly his breakthrough picture. True to his instincts, Mettler still hasn't yet made a movie to easily satisfy an audience. Not only will we be interested to see where his unique quests will take him next, but it will be interesting to see whether the general audiences will take the trip with him. Nothing occurs conveniently in his pictures. The audience has work to do too, just like he does. Whether he is on the quest for inner peace, a great shot, or some mental stimulation, one can be sure the voyage will be equally demanding and rewarding. (Originally published in ESR #9; Text Copyright Greg Woods (2003 -2010) |