May. 08, 2007 - Issue #603: Grow-a-Row
After seeing his shorts, this director will Cross your mind a lot
Of all of the abstract nouns out there, memory has to be one of the most elusive, always shifting shape, always molting and morphing even as it holds itself in focus. And because memory tends to be intensely personal, it is a near-endless fount of intrigue.
This truth floats through The Short films of Roy Cross, like a sheet that has freed itself from a clothesline on a windy day, alighting every once in a while to shroud an unsuspecting concrete noun—a person, a window, a mirror. On screen, his exploration into the phenomenon of memory plays out both fluidly and jarringly, but always with melancholy. There is always a yearning for what is no longer there, for what is remembered and for what will never be. Even the most sensual short, I Like to Kiss, seems to be tinged with longing, if only for the emotion it elicits from its watcher. As we spy in on the lustful couple, we bear witness to the beginnings of a potential rift between them. And the only laughter in any of the seven shorts (Breeze) is inspired by the play of a child. That isn’t to say, however, that there are no beautiful surprises—for even his most meditative pieces offer multiple meanings.
Not surprisingly, much of the melancholy grows out of longing for a lost love—either the one that got away or the one that would have never worked anyway. Through the Looking takes us on a disjointed trip, and the film emits both an overwhelming sadness and the topsy-turvy mind-fuck of broken hearts. She sits in her window seat, day after day drinking pots of tea, seemingly waiting for that familiar voice to come out of the photograph she props up in front of her, the voice uttering those three words of lovers. He stands in the streets, unmoving. The camera captures him in sweeping vertical circles, first going down his body and then up, and our ears recoil at the industrial soundtrack, the lack of connection in communication. Cross also shows us that this emotion might be personal, but it isn’t unique. A Portrait in a Letter: Somewhere in England is a beautiful little piece culled from archived letters of Second World War soldiers who’d been injured and were in a military hospital in 1942. As Cross’s camera plays among letters, focusing in on handwriting and postmarks, we hear the narrator read a letter written by Ken Liddell on John Broughton’s behalf. The letter is to Johnny’s doctor, the doctor who’d reformed Johnny’s face after it was terribly burned. But then the images change to poppy buds and flowers, the narration moves to subtitles and the letter we’re in on is to Johnny’s girlfriend Lucy. While the form of Portrait is quite similar to the other shorts, it seems something of a departure in its lucidity. Most of the other pieces are much more contemplative.
One that seems to marry introspection with more linear narrative is deeply personal Runnymede to New York. Broken into chapters, a series of memories form a portrait of the film’s narrator. From playing ball as an 11-year-old to a follow-your-heart trip to the Big Apple, we get trapped in his propensity to look backwards, to look into the past. Some telling footage plays out as the camera focuses on the car’s side-view mirror. He is constantly aware of where he has come from, to the point of letting the mirror take up most of the frame. And we’re reminded that like the warning on many side-view mirrors, the objects of memory may be closer than they appear. V
Fri, May 11 (7 pm); Sat, May 12 (9 pm)
Better Memory Through Chemistry: The Short Films of Roy Cross
Written & directed by Roy Cross
Metro Cinema, $10
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