A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.
Mosè e Aronne, 摩西与亚伦, Mojžíš a Áron, Moïse et Aaron, Moisés y Aaron, Moisés e Arão
"A film without a hero" - JMS
A masterpiece, a film about the disparity between form and idea, and the inability for one to exist without the other. Furthermore, that if one does exist without the other, it can only lead to illusion. Applying that to the content used in this film, the Straubs show us that Moses' freeing the slaves from the Pharoah, rather than becoming independent, we simply exchanged one master for another. And again, the disparity between form and idea: Moses is totalitarianism, Aron is gold, consumerism, both of which, still separate, would come to define the 20th century.
As now Moses saw that the people were naked, for Aaron when he raised them up had made them naked to their shame, he stood at the gate of the camp and spoke: 'Here to me who belongs to the Lord'. Then all the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him, and he spoke to them: "Thus speaks the Lord God of Israel, bind each one his sword at his side and go back and forth through the camp from one gate to the other and slay each other one of his brother, friend and neighbour". The sons of Levi did as Moses had said to them, and there fell that day of the people three thousand men.
There’s a…
'With Moses und Aron, i have tried to destroy Stravinsky's quote saying that music was powerless to express the most abstract, the most ordinary, the most concrete things.' (Jean-Marie Straub)
Further proof that 1975 was possibly
the single greatest year for cinema, ever.
This image attests that in everything that is, a god lives!
Demystifying (historical?) myth frame by frame. Cinema can never show us God. After all, we wouldn't recognize them. A stick (a snake?), blood on the ground, two men, a crowd, the ground, the sky.
Do you put your faith in the divine vacancy or the golden calf?
The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second. Every edit is a lie.
Dialectical materialism relayed through a study of absence. Towering legends, major events and suffocating systems of oppression, invisible but on screen at all times. We only have to look...
Who do you think this is there?
Recently I complained about the literalization of action in cinema, but I failed to consider…
New Slaves
Straub and Huillet were obsessed with music in a similar way their spiritual predecessor Bresson was obsessed with literature. This adaptation of Schoenberg's opera could be their quintessential work in the sense that conflict between Moses and Aaron, which is more ideological than religious, precisely represents key opposing idioms that will mark the history of twentieth-century social turbulence. Also this is their most playful film. An ideal entry point for those intimidated by their reputation of being "difficult".
IDEAS: 1
IMAGES: 0
If you're going to make a movie about the dialectics of these two things - especially if you want to question the way cinema itself represents and/or destroys the truth of an idea - it's in everyone's best interest to make the images engaging. Here the images don't represent or destroy anything, they don't obscure, they don't seduce, they don't enlighten, they just stagnate. A couple of formal decisions aside (ironically, concerning the lack of an image), there's nothing really done to reckon with the ideas being put forward.
I wanna see more S-H before writing them off but this is the exact kind of metaphysical hand-wringing that removes all the humanity from art and pushes…
the only good film
did somebody say....... Dialectics? 😳
“Here the images already rule over the idea, instead of expressing it.”
A tale of cinema
Spielberg in 2011 recounting his meeting with John Ford:
FORD: When you're able to distinguish and appreciate why the horizon is at the top in an image and why it's at the bottom in another image, you might make a pretty good picture maker, now get the fuck out of my office!
Spielberg reenacting the same meeting in his filmmaking autobiography in 2022:
FORD: When the horizon's at the bottom, it's interesting; when the horizon's at the top, it's interesting; when the horizon's in the middle, it's boring as shit! Now good luck to you, and get the fuck out of my office!
