Page 84 - Cinematic Thinking Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema

74 Krzysztof Ziarek

hill. Though it seems that the shot will end when the car has moved past
the camera, as if disappearing into the frame of its lens, the shot continues
for a few more seconds, without any movement on the screen, but with
the surprising irruption of Luis s voice-over. Thus, the shot becomes a se-
quence composed of ruptured stillness, movement, and voice: a moment
of stillness (the "always already" nonpresent origin), the rupture of the cars
first emergence, the lacuna when the car disappears behind the closer hill,
the sound of the approaching car, the cars reemergence, the second brief
moment of stillness, and the surprise at the sound of Luis s voice.
This juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity in the composition
of the opening shot, evocative of Saura's style in general, announces the
way in which the film will unfold by characteristically giving the specta-
tors a second, or even a third, look at the "primary" scenes of the film.
Just as the opening shot has the car reemerge from behind the hill so that
we can see it closer and notice several persons inside it (a key disjunction
from the subsequent voice-over, which speaks of Elisa traveling to Madrid,
implicitly by herself), the film is punctuated by the repeated emergence of
alternative possibilities for the initial scene and for the fragment read from
Luis s / Elisas memoir. The text from the opening scene is heard again dur-
ing the film, and its slightly altered version is read once more at the end of
the film by Elisa, in a scene that suggestively restarts the film, as though
it were to begin anew, only this time from Elisas perspective. The rhythm
established through these cinematic loops is one in which scenes (can) re-
cur or (re)emerge as their own transformed possibilities. Whether a specific
scene actually recurs or not, Saura composes the film in a manner that
keeps every scene open to possible recurrence and alteration. An exemplary
instance of such implied alteration occurs in Elisas account of her dream
memory about a family meal, in which as a child she remembers a shaking
chandelier and a silver family tea set. Though the scene does not recur in
the film, its alteration is suggested in another scene, in which Isabel, Elisas
sister, shows her a photograph that proves Isabel's earlier point that the tea
set was china and not silver. Isabels comments are enough, though, to keep
the alternative version of events in play as a possibility, that is, as a possible,
and different, actuality from what we see happen on the screen. And it is
precisely this idea of keeping scenes open to a future reemergence, whether
as an alternative rendition, a corrected version, or simply as a reimagined
occurrence, that gives the film its characteristically open rhythm, a rhythm
whose force is that of "making possible."