Taris

Vigo's short Taris is a work of breathtaking beauty. He uses the swimmer's body and movements to portray grace and passion, transcending the pretense that this short is a documentary on a famous swimmer of the 20s/30s. His use of close ups and freeze frames along with underwater beautifully lit scene add to its richness. The Film ends with a deep perhaps ironic twist which is priceless.If you have enjoyed Vigo's features do try and see this mini masterpiece

Jean Vigo is a great example of a young filmmaker who died very young and is adored today by cinema freaks. While the body of his work is minuscule (only four films), in some circles he's considered a genius--even though only one of his films ("L'Atalante") was full-length. And, two of his other three shorts are more experimental films than anything else. I frankly don't quite get his reputation, but for fans of this writer/director, Criterion has released a DVD with all four of his films.

"Taris" is an odd little film about the French swimming champion, Jean Taris. In some ways this is an art film--with very unusual camera angles and composition. And, in other ways, it's a rather dull 'how to' film--one that shows the viewers how to swim like Taris--as he demonstrates various strokes, breathing, turns and the like. It's not at all a film the average person would enjoy or even look for in the first place. However, as I said above, film buffs who adore Vigo would be happy to see this--even if it is not the most exciting film I've ever seen (far from it, actually). Competently made, rather dull but full of exciting camera work.

Jean Vigo takes a short time of our lives to present something that impresses us for a long time with the short documentary "Taris, roi de l'eau" and he does that with a boundless simplicity. In ten minutes, he presents Taris, a famous swimmer showing the different swimming techniques and Vigo's camera gives us details on the movements of the swimmer on the water, everything very impressive.

The ordinary viewer will find nothing special about it but to me I find quite interesting the way images of a not so simple act has the ability of being translated to the screen in a enormous facility, swimming looks so easy (yeah, of course he's a trained swimmer but still) and it really makes you want to get out and swim for a while. It's that impressive, it's that beautiful. Some of the techniques Vigo used here like reversing the image backwards when the swimmer is jumping on the pool were very innovative at the time and quite funny now, but even so it's cool to see it.

Considering that today's short films have more substance and more things to present, and with all these advantage sometimes they fail to really grab our attention even for five minutes is that I look back to something like "Taris, roi de l'eau" ("Taris, King of the Water") and I think how moved and impressed I was with such a simple work of art. That's the role of art in everything: take the most ordinary thing of life and make of it something beautiful. Vigo really did it here. 10/10

A commissioned work, this wasn't only disliked by the producers who hired him, as a result possibly edited without his consent to its final form (Michael Temple on the Criterion commentary track suggests that perhaps Jean Renoir was one of the directors called in), this was reportedly disavowed by Vigo himself, who apparently said that he only liked the underwater footage.

In many respects this is an experiment on various cinematic techniques: Vigo had already utilized and mastered the use of slow-motion in "À propos de Nice" (1930); here he uses transposed images and reversed footage in addition to some exquisite slow-motion of Taris swimming in the water. (Temple points out that the underwater shot of Taris goofing around is a laboratory of sorts for "L'Atalante" (1934), which would use an almost similar underwater shot)

But this is transcendental in the sense Vigo sees both water and the human body, like a sculpture come to life. Water, one of the most cinematic things in the whole world, is a character of its own here. It's the kingdom whose king Taris is, as implied in the title. In that sense this is also a fête of the human body and its power over the element.

And, most important, it's fun.

Essentially a 'how-to-swim' piece that, in the hands of someone less talented and individualistic than Jean Vigo, would have been forgotten years ago, Taris is transformed by the director's unique and original imagination into something much more. He captures some terrific underwater shots of Taris swimming and horsing around, and manages to add a few trademark surreal touches and camera trickery to ensure that the viewer's interest never wanes. It is still essentially a film about swimming, but it manages to capture both Taris's mastery of his sport and his enthusiasm for it. Worth a watch if you have a spare ten minutes.