Film-Philosophy 16.1 (2012) Review: Felicity Colman (2011) Deleuze & Cinema: The Film Concepts.
Oxford, New York: Berg. 280pp. Iris Chui Ping Kam1 The purpose of Deleuze & Cinema: The Film Concepts is to examine Deleuzes cinema system and presents his approach as a methodology that is useful for all types of practices concerning the history, theory and production of screen media forms and philosophy (1). Deleuzes investigation of cinema is undertaken as a philosopher involved in an ontological enquiry which is distinctive from a technical approach focused on historical or production knowledge about cinema (2). Colman delineates some key film concepts based on Deleuzes two cinema books The Movement-image and The Time-Image in which Deleuze views cinema as a very specific media that engages in a political commentary and determination of culture as a political aesthetic (4). The thirteen concepts and themes explained in her book include (a) the cinsystem (a classification system that describes what these elements of cinema are and how they systemically work to produce a film, and how those elements are then capable of becoming autonomous producers of other systems [11]); (b) movement (which forms, guides and affects human perception and non-human perception); (c) frame, shot and cut (a closed system or set); (d) montage (or an edit which is movementor movement within perceptual processes, and this movement is what will create a cinematic whole: the film itself [58]); (e) perception (a double regime of reference of images, which refers to a complementary movement that takes place in the movement-image [69]); (f) affect (which is an intensity that will produce a dynamic expression in a body causing it to alter its composition and its potential trajectories [82]); (g) action (which comes after perception is part of movement, a reactive motion around a perception [92]); (h) transsemiotics (an account of a becoming-image: that is an account of the image as always in process, as always being reconfigured [104]); (i) signs (vector) (the term Deleuze uses to describe the transformation of form in cinema [117]); (j) time (which appears in the image not as past, present, future but as direct and indirect time. The direct image of time refers to the aesthetics of political ideas and the indirect image of time comes from affective fields of cognition, perception and events [134-135]); (k) politics (Deleuze sees cinema not as something that turns towards politics, rather it is cinema itself that politicizes events, things or the narration (communication) of the value of things [151-152]); (l) topology (as a concept, as an adjective, and as a way of accounting for the complex spaces that cinema creates [163]); and (m) thought (which is
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Hong Kong Baptist University: iriskamcp@hotmail.com
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Film-Philosophy 16.1 (2012) created by moving image. The terms Deleuze uses to describe different types of thought-images are automatic movement and spiritual automation [179, 182-183]). Although these concepts are discussed separately in each chapter, Colman is able to show readers the interrelatedness of these concepts for the functioning of Deleuzes cinematographic consciousness by referring relevant concepts in other chapters to supplement the discussion. Through the description of these key film concepts, Colman develops her interpretation of Deleuzes work in cinema that is, how Deleuzes cinsystem as an open-system is able to extend film studies and contribute significant changes to film practice throughout the book but it is particularly stated in her discussions of action (99), transsemiotics (110), time (121), and politics (158 and 161). Unlike many scholarly works which focus on the application of Deleuzes work to screen studies (such as Anna Powells Deleuze and Horror Film (2005) and Laura Markss The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (2000)), the focus of the book is descriptive and explanatory, even though readers can read plenty of brief analyses of films as examples in the book. For example, when Colman discusses montage as a technique for change, she simply asks readers to consider the range of intensive forms of community created in scenes in 4 (Ilya Khzhanovsky, 2005); Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003); 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, 2004); Er shi si cheng ji (24 city; Zhange Ke-Jia, 2008) (63). Another example is when she argues that experimental films often tend to push the perceptual boundaries of an image, forcing the viewer to question a number of different planes (and thus forms) of existence, she mentions Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943); Free Radicals (Len Lye, 1958-79); Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962); Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson, 1970); Je tu il elle (I you he she; Akerman, 1974); Chunguag Zhaxie (Happy Together; Wong Kai-Wei, 1997); Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006) and makes a summative note that there are points in these films where perception becomes a time-image, not just a motor-image of the material world (77). Although Colman has already suggested that readers watch the key film/s discussed and then consider the Deleuzian concepts presented (5) in the introduction of the book (this may explain why she mentions the name of the films but without further discussion or analysis of the films), it is not self-explanatory how the films mentioned by Colman should be understood in terms of Deleuzes concepts. Readers may not be able to easily associate the films with the Deleuzian terms and their interpretations of the films may be different from that of Colman. It would have been more useful for Colman to elaborate the association of the films and her interpretation of the Deleuzian concepts to readers.
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Film-Philosophy 16.1 (2012) Each chapter consists of three sections what x concept is, how Deleuze uses x concept, and the function of x concept (5). However, the main discussion of the book lies in broad coverage. Besides mapping the film concepts from the two cinema books onto other work of Deleuze and his work with Guattari, Colman also tries to explain the use of these concepts in terms of the work of other scholars. While this approach may help readers to link concepts among all the various works, her style of writing is not very accessible to newcomers (compared to other tool books such as Ian Buchanans Dictionary of Critical Theory (2010) or monographs such as Patricia Pisterss The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory (2003)). This is partly because she uses many direct quotes from Deleuzes two cinema books. Although Colman deliberately supplements lots of film examples to support her description of these key film concepts, they are indicative instead of illustrative of the compressed ideas of Deleuze. As a result, it may not achieve its intention of making Deleuzes concepts in the two cinema books more accessible to a wider readership.
Bibliography Buchanan, Ian (2010) Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marks, Laura U (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. Pisters, Patricia (2003) The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Powell, Anna (2005) Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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