Morphologies of our barren happy days

Abstract

“Morphologies of our barren happy days” constitutes an interpretative (de)construction of a series of audiovisual texts that make use of scenery to anchor the filmic enunciation and put into operation. The visual architectures of the pro-filmic can be silent witnesses to uncertain stories (Tren de sombras or Last Year at Marienbad); in other cases, they are established as accomplices with the spectator to whom they tell the story, completely covering the meganarrator (L’Apollonide, House of Tolerance, Downton Abbey, Titanic); and, finally, they might also limit the scenic space physically and forcefully in order to evoke all the stories off screen (In Treatment). There are also other visual architectures, less solid and more volatile, which appear to have been drawn a few moments before the characters entered the filmic field. However, the materiality of the pro-filmic is not always at the service of discourse. Texts such as Holy Motors highlight the fact that while the cinema touches the world (as it models itself on it, and reinterprets it in each text), the world also touches the cinema, which need only listen and make its ghosts talk.