Page 78 - Cinematic Thinking Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema

5

Carlos Saura
Cinematic Poiesis

KRZYSZTOFZIAREK

Disjunctions and Doublings

The most striking feature of Carlos Sauras films from the 1970s, in
particular of Cousin Angelica, Cria cuervos, and Elisa, vida mia, as well as of
his later "dance" films such as Carmen, Tango, and Salome, is the compo-
sitional rhythm through which the complex narrative and temporal struc-
tures of these films unfold. This labyrinthine and forking organization of
the films—Saura himself mentions Borges as one of the sources for his
approach to constructing film images—is often described and analyzed,
whether by Saura himself or by film critics, in terms of the subjective ex-
periences of the main characters, for instance, Ana in Cria cuervos or the
doublet Luis / Elisa in Elisa, vida mia. In such analyses the films are taken to
reflect the characters' complex mental experiences, in which the boundar-
ies between memories, actual events, fiction, and fantasy become not only
blurred but often undecidable. Departing from this emphasis on subjective
experience, I focus my analysis of Cria cuervos and Elisa, vida mia on their
"poetic" rhythm, as Saura himself describes it, understood here in terms
of the progressively unfolding interaction between image, movement, and
sound, on the one hand, and temporal planes, both actual and possible,
on the other. This intricate interplay gives Sauras films their characteris-
tic compositional rhythm, both within shots and between them, linking
their various temporal moments, whether real, imagined, or remembered,
into an elaborate filmic architectonic. Seen this way, this cinematic-poetic
rhythm exceeds any "subjective" perspective operating in Sauras works,

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