μεταμορφώσεις

[Jeff Bernstein]

The different geometries

(circles, lines) : the building blocks of vision

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

(creative) energy radiating outward. . . . and gathering power . . .

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Blue tint : memory of silent film.

Example : Hell’s Angels, 58:30

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Fragile glass : It takes a billion years for the nebulous patches of gases to resolve into individual stars, tight concentrations of hydrogen, fireballs fueled by the residual release of energy when four nuclei of hydrogen fuse to make helium. Stars, the multitude of them, rush headlong in all directions, power plants suspended in elegant synthesis between outward-bursting pressure and inward-dragging gravity, spreading in their wakes waves like long red ribbons. Colonies of stars, interlocking into equilibratory fields, organize into galaxies, stippled agglomerates like stromatolites in desert rock, spreading out into immense ellipticals and spirals, and exponentially multiplying into superclusters of billions of galaxies, into superclusters of superclusters, a heap of irregularities in space, excess material like excelsior in a box, the complete mass of which filling less than a tenth of the whole—the rest is Nothing. Like a house of cards or an atom, galaxies cohere through the interactive attractions of their parts;—fundamentally they are tenuous.

 

Sheer shift in geometry between shots : from the horizontal to the vertical.

 

The window has a prominent handle : the audience must participate in meaning production : the audience must “operate” the handle (the audience is Eraserhead’s “Man in the Planet”).

 

The stained glass recalls the greathearted spirituality deployed by the Artist of Dunkirk. It is a memory of the beauty that humanity can create. It is a nostalgia. And also a reminder—of the goodness inside us. (And, even now, as Art, an emblem of hope?)

 

Someone passes by—recalling an anonymous passer-by of the Argosy Book Shop. . . . ?

 

Color palette recalls futural A.I. (2001), for example, 1:47:05 :

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

Are we moving ever closer into a heart of darkness?

[Jeff Bernstein]

The uncanny valley?

A suggestion of convexity here? A mind gravid with Vision? Someone out of the ordinary.

Eraserhead, 1:08:10

[Jeff Bernstein]

The Elephant Man (1980), 1:46:17

[Jeff Bernstein]

Straight lines

Thinking of the Foundation.

[Jeff Bernstein]

Thoughts reaching out to the origin (of rain).

[Jeff Bernstein]

Let's say for a moment that the first image captures a small town (regardless if we suspect it's a mock-up for government testing of total Destruction). Now we see Oppenheimer. He looks apart—he's looking down. He looks troubled. (Recall the early escape from suburbia in Dunkirk.) He is not at home in what looks like a home environment.

 

Does this character have a glow emanating from him? A person apart. Any proper metaphor will suffice : let us choose : "The authentic Artist is always ahead of their time."

 

The glow emanating outward from the special figure : a Renaissance pictorial technique.

 

The brown suit grounds Oppenheimer in the color of the soil of the earth. Thus, in this character a contradiction has begun to grow. . . . nature vs. the thoughts in his head. . . .

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

A can't-put-my-finger-on-it visual strangeness of this character conveys his Otherness. This character is out of place. He is well beyond the ordinary. This character is superlative difference.

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

In the Oppenheimer image (which recalls the "atomic moment" in 2001 (audio is crucial there)), the edges of the sky are curved dark, as if the rosy sky is a detonation expanding outward. The outward, upward glow recalls early advertising of Close Encounters (1977) :

Through this subtle technique, Nolan invests the sky with movement. Also, we now suspect what may be on Oppenheimer's mind : blinding obliteration.

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

Meanwhile, stars burn stormy and explosive, in a constant turmoil of helioseismic flux, white, yellow, red or blue, continuously manufacturing deep in their dense cores, which are upwards of 15 million degrees centigrade, such atomic inventions as carbon and oxygen, nitrogen and iron. They resonate like gongs, these fireballs, these stars, ensconced in ethereal haloes. Over time a star exhausts its hydrogen fuel and erupts in a supernova explosion, an extensive outpouring of energy matching for an instant the brightness of an entire galaxy of stars. The dying orb sends a supersonic outflow of matter far out into the void, stardust comprised of an ‘alphabet’ of 92 different kinds of atoms. Supernovae are the taps out of which life-creating properties are sprayed into the dark tracts, laying beds as it were for future fertility.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

This thoughtful character is not meant to look like the person in the street. This person has the Vision and Power to bring to Creation a once-in-a-lifetime Breakthrough, a Marvel—The authentic creator is no ordinary person, though they might look like one. // It is not what they create that makes them out-of-the-ordinary so much as how they are in themselves. A creator has to be a certain way, has to live a certain way, has to think a certain way, all 24/7, before anything can be created. This character is different because he creates, and he creates because he is different. In Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan is giving us a glimpse into the special : a person of the mind, whose mind leads them into a labyrinth of thought with no easy answer.

[Jeff Bernstein]

The authentic artist channels their energy in a specific way so that creation takes place. And does this for a lifetime.

[Jeff Bernstein]

The Creator looks from their creation (a human-wrought manipulation), and into the light of the "Real" : What does anything mean? And the light leads to the broad earth, our home : and to a signal tower. Are there secret messages on the air? Unconscious messages transacted between Artwork and audience? A Creator creates in order to hear these messages hidden in the light. A thought, an idea, an understanding, a vision, a whatever—Oppenheimer is creating in order to hear this call. Creation allows for the call to be heard : and then good luck to all.

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

Guiding others, having gained their trust—for a time at least. Note the ambivalence of the Thinker even as he continues his Creation : first looking down (the Thoughtful One), then up, as if arriving at a judgment. We the audience do not yet know of this judgment, this revelation. These troubles.

[Jeff Bernstein]

The eyes and the doorway.

[Jeff Bernstein]

"Bloody instructions return to plague the inventor."

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

In the void between stars where it is almost absolute zero drift granular materials : organic grains, anaerobes blown about by solar winds; photons, antiparticles, ghostly neutrinos, viruses, each and all wafting through the spectra spanning the depths of extension, passing through x-rays and gamma rays and the pulses of radio waves; also individual molecules of ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide; also prokaryotes, potential ancestors of metazoans, embedded in floating chunks of ice and rock;—each mote bringing its own time. / / Granules, stars, galaxies, superclusters spin round each other, shining like constellated neural activity in a live cerebrum. Nothing rests, everything moves astronomically fast, according to an internal logic. / / All the while, a hum, a background radiation, microwaves three centimeters long, the echo of a Big Bang, uniformly underscores the Everything.

[Jeff Bernstein]

Scanners (1981), 40:32 : and inside the head, 40:54 :

[Jeff Bernstein]

Mulholland Drive (2001), 1:54:57

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

memories