*Corpus Calossum (2002)

*Corpus Calossum (Canada, 2002) 92 min color DIR-SCR: Michael Snow. DOP: Harald Bachmann, Robbi Hinds.

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In the latter part of 2002, after having sat through revival screenings of Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967) and Side Seat Paintings Slides Sound Film (1970), while often muttering “Please God, make it stop” to the screen, I hatched an idea to start marketing T-shirts with the slogan: “I Survived A Michael Snow Film”. And even though I think his latest, *Corpus Callosum, is great, I’m still thinking of pursuing this venture. (I’ve already got three orders.) It isn’t every day that an experimental feature plays for a week-long engagement in beautiful downtown Toronto. And perhaps this unprecedented scheduling may have introduced the films of Michael Snow to those who only know his work in other media (for instance, his goose sculptures which still adorn The Eaton Centre). Although I am not holding my breath for Anchor Bay to release a slew of experimental films on DVD, perhaps the surprising fanfare surrounding the new Snow film may signify a mainstream interest in this subculture of filmmaking. (And why not? Commercial cinema has been stealing from the underground for the last 40 years.)

Alas, those aspirations will have to be realized in dreams. *Corpus Callosum is a dense, multi-faceted work which is a good entry point into Snow’s work. It is also quite accessible (where his previous work is not). However, based on the dour reception that *Corpus Callosum received at The Royal (at least on the night I attended), I sincerely doubt a new interest in experimental cinema is going to happen soon. Twelve thirty-fifths of the audience had left well before the end (hmmm… maybe I could have sold some more shirts).

Like any of Snow’s previous films, *Corpus Callosum is a Structuralist piece which does a thorough examination of one property of cinema. For example, Wavelength was all about time being condensed into seemingly continuous dolly shot; La Region Centrale was about cinematic space; Back and Forth was all about the pan. For *Corpus Callosum Michael Snow found a new level of filmmaking to explore: digital effects. This new film is all about the art of manipulation. Like any of his previous films, this too can prove to be quite demanding (as evidenced by the walk-outs). And therein lies the dichotomy: as obviously intelligent and forward-thinking Snow is as an artist, and as much as I admire his body of work in other disciplines (sculpture, painting, music), quite often his films trail on long after the audience gets the point. (Hence, T-shirts sales above.) In Snow, it is the means, not the end, which interests him. However, this film works beautifully because there are always new ideas to discover.

The Corpus Calossum is the region in the brain where messages are transferred between two hemispheres. The two hemispheres most plainly explored here are the polar opposites of fantasy and reality, and to a lesser extent, subconscious thought and realist action. We are constantly questioning what precisely is real on the screen. After filming his actors in the “real world” (largely comprised of settings in a living room and an office), Snow then digitally morphed images in post-production via an animation program called Houdini. To say that this film is all about manipulation is meant to be said literally as well as figuratively.

For the past 100 years, what has cinema been but manipulation? Scenes have been acted, directed and shot in certain ways over the past century to elicit programmed responses from the viewers. In a sense, the audience is always controlled by the unspooling image onscreen. In most cases, we laugh or cry because we are set up to do so. That is the magic of the movies. However, if one thinks about it, one is enslaved by what the entertainment medium dictates.

As the camera tracks through the grey office spaces, or gazes unintrusively at the family in front of the TV in a plush living room, we often hear Snow’s director’s track, instructing the onscreen actors where to move next. (At times he even “directs” the special effects as though they are working on the set!) This is a sly move in a film that is actually very humourous. This device may seem like a Brechtian notion to consistently remind us we are watching a movie, so as not to lose ourselves in its reality, yet that is rather silly because there is no reality in this movie! Instead, the addition of Snow on the soundtrack is metaphorical of the act of manipulation. We are constantly reminded of how cinema is nothing if not the product of a vision which is being shaped (manipulated, controlled, governed, whatever word you like) for a desired effect. Plus, is the living room segment also not a metaphor for how the medium controls us, as Snow’s actors sit and blankly gaze at the screen?

Another funny anecdote occurs halfway through the picture, when the final credits show up about forty-five minutes too early! Not only is the imagery of the film being imploded, but so is its continuity! On one humourous aside, perhaps Snow knew the reaction his film would get from the uninitiated, and stuck the credits halfway through in case people walked out before the end!

Because the film is named after a place where two hemispheres meet, *Corpus Callosum is purely a harmonium of reality and illusion. The digital effects blend flawlessly with the natural world on-screen. Flesh-and-blood actors get squeezed together into a synaptic-like graphic, become morphed into larger or smaller sizes, or sometimes even “deleted” from the screen like one would remove a typo from their word processing document. Is that not control over an actor? (I’m reminded of Alfred Hitchcock’s quote about Walt Disney, in that he never had to fire an actor, just tear him up.) Sometimes a huge phallus appears onscreen when someone sees an attractive member of the opposite sex. The digital imagery is also used to illustrate people’s fantasies which are not acted out.

This collusion of real-life and animation forms a third, Zen-like tableau where there are really no incongruous images. Snow fills his human cast with people all shapes and sizes: even a hermaphrodite appears in the living room sequence (a perfect Yin-Yang -a blending of opposites- realized in human flesh).

Finally, the film ends with a track shot entering a theatre. Then onscreen, we see Snow’s first film from 1956, a comparatively cruder animated short, in which a humanoid figure is able to bend and stretch its limbs into inhuman proportions. The circle is complete. Snow has alluded to the possibility that *Corpus Callosum was 45 years in the making. Technology has allowed him to do the feats he began to explore with his first film project.

At the age of 74, Michael Snow has seemingly breathed new life into the cinematic aspect of his multidisciplinary career. In the digital age, Snow made a film that is not only a summation of his career, but with his usual persistence, he has once again shown how young the medium can still be.

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Edited from its original publication in Vol. #1, Issue #8.