Une Histoire de vent
Joris Ivens was a very influential filmmaker, especially of
documentaries, from the late twenties to his death in 1989. His work was in
long periods very political with frequent visits to the Soviet Union, China and
North Vietnam and he was based in Eastern Europe for an extended period. While
his socialist position is well known, he was also something of a rebel, even to
the socialist regimes, and in his later years his projects became more personal.
His final movie “Une Histoire de vent” (“A Tale of the Wind”) falls very much
into that category and it is likely selected as representative of Joris Ivens’
work.
The mission of Ivens with this movie is to film something as
illusive as the wind. It features himself as an old man (he was 90 years old at
the time) searching for the wind and a way to film it. This search is as much a
metaphysical journey as a technical project and it takes some surrealist turns
as he explores wind.
There is the wind we breathe. A martial arts master controls
his breathing as opposed to the asthmatic Ivens who needs an inhalator. In the
desert, the locals are hunkering down in expectation of a storm and Ivens sits
on a chair on top of a dune waiting for it to come. In a dream sequence, Ivens
travel in Méliès rocket to the moon and meets Chang’e, the moon goddess, but on
the moon, there is no wind. There is a strange setup with a stylized village in
a studio with political speeches and various activities and in a cave, Ivens is
presented with a mask of a wind god. Throughout, a man dressed as the Chinese Monkey
King is playing havoc with the going-ons.
I cannot claim I understand everything going on here. The
only part that feels real is Ivens failed attempt at getting to film the terracotta
army in Xian and his (strange) alternative recreation of the army that turns into
a musical act. There is that common theme of the wind and Ivens at the centre
of it. In some sequences I understand how this is a way to describe wind, in
others I strain to understand it and it becomes very much a personal thing for
Ivens. To call it accessible has mostly do to with it not being political but “merely”
poetic.
There is something exciting for me in watching a movie about
wind. Wind is very much a part of my professional life. In my story there would
be big wind turbines calmly rotating, powering our lives. There would be sand
blowing by (check, it is in the movie) and weather forecasts. There would all
the pioneers who developed an industry and hippies who dreamt of a better
future. That is altogether a far more prosaic story than Ivens’ and probably
less interesting for most people, yet I cannot help feeling that I would have
loved this movie to be a little more tangible and less poetic. I get the
overall point, but I feel there is so much more to say about the subject.
However, this is Joris Iven’s story and not mine. Ivens is
looking for something illusive he has been trying to catch throughout his professional
career, and this is his slightly self-ironic comment on that chase. It may not
actually be the wind as such but something that wind represents.
As a movie it is easy enough to watch, especially if you do
not expect to understand it. It feels cozy and comforting and so I am okay with
it.
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