Most of the comments, whether critical or not, regarding In Water (2023), are divided into highlighting the blur, either as a visual transposition of the blindness that has affected the director in recent years, or as a symbolic manifestation of the confusion its protagonist is going through. To a lesser extent, there is talk of pictorial inspiration, namely by Paul Cézanne and his figurations, of landscapes or still lifes, which often tend towards what can be considered an abstract representation.
Hong’s comparison with Cézanne is more interesting, because it sticks to an aesthetic effect and does not look for symbolic justifications. The mention of the painter, among other possible artists, is not by chance: he is, after all, the artist Hong always talks about, when citing his inspirations, but it is necessary to define how this influence occurs. It is worth mentioning here one of Hong’s phrases that justify the filmmaker’s rapprochement with the painter, about admiring the work routine of this other art: “If I could, I would film every day. I envy painters who can exercise their discipline in everyday life.” [1][2]
To a large extent, what Hong admires is, more than any individual painting, Cézanne’s perseverance and insistence in painting the same motifs, in composing variations, in experiencing daily work and “pure” painting, uninfluenced by great themes, without seeking to commercialize his work. Cézanne is an ideal model of artistic discipline, who made the search for a new way of representing nature one of the objectives of all his work. His brushstrokes did not seek the faithful and coherent representation of the Saint-Victoire Mountain or the forests surrounding it, but the expression of a pictorial mass, the exposure of a materiality and a latent energy in these landscapes, in which the forms seem to move, tending to overlap. His objective was not abstraction, but the most coherent representation possible, as faithful as possible to the perception of the motifs that served as its basis, aiming at a “permanent” representation of them, not just a superficial impression of their appearance.
This aspect is evident in most of the films in which Hong works under complex structures, which undo and reconstruct the order of the narrated events, where layers of dreams and reality sometimes become inseparable. An influence, therefore, that goes much more through the level of intellectual interpretation of how to represent the elements of reality than through a pictorial manifestation on the screen, necessarily. It is above all about finding another way to represent reality, not through a direct and realistic route, but a deviation that captures at the same time its immediate materiality and what may lie behind it, a subtle balance between the concrete and the abstract. [3]
However, the comparison between the two weakens a possible relationship when based strictly on visual terms, as has been done, with a great disadvantage for Hong, who seems to have his films summarized in very unintriguing images. Not only because a frame is one fragment among thousands of his film, while Cézanne’s frame presents the work already finished, fully structured, but also because composition was never among Hong’s best qualities or interests. In all his films, to this day, Hong seeks a clear, frontal framing, free from obstacles in front of the central elements of the scene. The blur in In Water, it is true, breaks with this clarity, but it does not alter the other elements of the shot, nor the configuration of the film as a whole, which relies on the actors’ interpretation of the text and the sequentiality of the filmed scenes.
Hong does not work with the camera’s focus in relation to movement and depth of field, but as a flat and stable surface. The characters or objects do not come in or out of focus, nor does the degree of this blur appear varied, changing only according to the distance of the object from the camera. In the end, what Hong does remains a figurative record, illustrating a realistic narrative. Both in the content expressed throughout the duration of each shot, and in the articulation of shots throughout the film, what it does is nothing more than restore a continuity of events, which present this reality through a more prominent filter, which modifies the its appearance, but retains its general terms. In other words, Hong’s blur is not enough to make his conception of the image completely different, only because of a change in the value he attributes to it in the film. In Cézanne, the brushstroke is the painting; Hong’s film has not yet gone far enough for the shot to have this primordial aspect, as plastic expression: it still mainly serves to record the scene.
When making a film, positioning the camera and starting to record is a simple and mechanical operation, while the painter has to carry out all the brushstrokes, visually interpreting the space and translating this into a pictorial technique. One must start from the blank canvas and achieve this figuration in their own way, while for the other the figuration is already given a priori – even though their gesture may constitute a refusal of objectivity, as is the blurring of In Water. The differences are not restricted only to the means, but also to each person’s objectives: Cézanne wants to see the mountain, make it pulse, make the perception of its materiality more intense. The blur in Hong’s film, on the contrary, tries to dissolve the appearances of each thing, making its concreteness more rarefied. Hong also tries to work quickly, finishing a feature film in less than a week, without doing any reshoots; the opposite of Cézanne, an obsessive painter, capable of taking years to finish certain paintings, unsatisfied until he resolved the smallest details.
To immediately associate an inspiration with an influence and, consequently, the appearance of the painting and the frame, without questioning the particularities of each one, is to miss the opportunity to understand what really matters in the perception that one artist may have about another. It is important to highlight this issue when today, in any debate, prestigious names superficially known by the commenting public are freely evoked as figures of authority, regardless of the context of their work. The comparison serves as a compliment to the new object, not yet defined, but it not only reduces the understanding of the reference work but also prevents the search for a proper definition of this new work, still untouched.
Matheus Zenom
Notes:
[1] “L’artiste que j’admire le plus est Cézanne. Quand j’ai découvert ses peintures, alors que j’étais à l’université, j’ai cru en mourir. J’ai ressenti une intimité qui me touchait presque. Cela me semblait d’une perfection telle que j’avais le sentiment de n’avoir besoin de rien d’autre. Partout où je vais, je me rends dans les musées et je demande s’ils ont du Cézanne, auquel cas je m’arrête devant pour ne contempler que ça, tandis que les gens passent”. In an interview with Julien Gester, published at: https://www.liberation.fr/cinema/2016/02/16/hong-sang-soo-cela-pourrait-me-ressembler-mais-c-est-une-illusion_1433772/
[2] “Si je pouvais, je tournerais tous les jours. J’envie les peintres qui peuvent exercer leur discipline au quotidien”. In an interview with Samuel Douhaire, published in Télérama, on June 8, 2017. Available at: https://www.telerama.fr/cinema/la-methode-de-tournage-de-hong-sang-soo-je-m-adapte-a-la-meteo-et-je-laisse-les-idees-venir,159229.php
[3] “I saw this apple painting [The Plate of Apples] for the first time in an art museum. I was a student, so I had a free pass. I was standing there talking to myself, like, ‘This is enough. I don’t need anything more. It is still the greatest.’ I didn’t analyze it, but, naturally, I asked myself: why? Maybe his way of proportionalizing the abstract and the concrete is just right for me. I think that’s why, when I see his paintings, I never get bored. I can keep looking at them. They’re very fresh all the time.” In an interview with Dennis Lim, published in The New Yorker, on May 15, 2022. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/hong-sangsoo-knows-if-youre-faking-it
LIMITE 