Editor’s note: Part II of “Is This About You,” written by Eric Francis, is part of the Planet Waves archives, only available to subscribers ofВ Planet Waves Astrology News. It contains thousands of articles and horoscopes written by Eric and the Planet Waves team. –RA
Film normally has a way of disempowering its subjects: I think it does this by making them separate from us, in the process of presenting them to us. Somehow, director Michael Winterbottom has brought us into their space. Many of the shots are close-up; there is never the sense of artificial lighting or any other artifice that creates the plastic feeling that most commercial cinema has. (There was in fact no lighting tech present on the set.) The effect is to involve you in a way that is unusual for film; 9 Songs is an unusually tactile experience.
Somehow the fact that this couple is in the room with the director, camera operator, and a sound tech, is completely transparent. They seem perfectly alone, in a world of their own. By the director’s account, and from what I could see, the sex they have is authentic. They are not acting; they are relating in front of the camera. They must have shared a deep, untouchable bond.
You can hear their encounters as well, in honest detail. There is no false emotionality created by a background musical soundtrack to distract you. Music occurs only in the magnificent, highly charged but relatively short rock concert scenes (set in medium-sized venues with about 5,000 people present), or when they happen to play a CD once or twice. So the experience of their sex is a focal point of the film; and it’s a focal point of their relationship. Their conversation is not intellectually stimulating, but who cares — and whose is? Like many young people, they relate mainly through sex, but unlike many, they do so deeply.
The grainy effect and somewhat disjointed presentation of the story convey the feeling of a memory, which the film actually is: a memory told from the man’s perspective, some time later, when he’s back in Antarctica. Visually, the shots seem to suggest that they are suggestive, but actually are rather openly depicting of what they share; obviously he remembers. Among many other things, you see clear images of both their genitals. American men who get to see this film may observe their first specimen of an uncircumcised penis; male genital mutilation is still a common practice and big business in the U.S.