WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...TO THE POWER OF '10'

I forgot that people learn about science.

Charles and Ray Eame's film Powers of 10 (1977) (here is just the first section of the film) literally sucked me into space (twice), threw me back down to earth (twice), pushed me deep under the surface (twice) and taught me a thing or two about the universe, film making and modernism.

I shall reflect on 10 random thoughts which materialised during my viewing:

1. QUESTIONS OF SCALE AND MISE EN SCENE: Scale and mise en scene have been a preoccupation in this course. I felt that this short film demonstrates the obvious notion, that when it comes to cinema, we can only see what is inside the frame. There is a world outside of the frame, and one deep under the camera's ability to focus. The image of the atom, and the image of the universe look the same - this ambiguity between the mind bogglingly big and the inconceivably small, gestures to the way that films can illustrate these similarities and provoke us to ponder such things.

2. CINEMA AS FORMULAIC: I began to think of notions of 'the formula' as the powers of 10 were recited as we journeyed out of the Earth's atmosphere. While the Eame's film was obviously supposed to be artistically educational, I read the powers of 10 as an extended metaphor for the ways in which we repeat and multiply filmic cliches. I squiggled on the image above of When Harry Met Sally (1989) because, the way the Eames film was repeated (see no. 7) with slight variations, reinforced the idea of cinematic repetition on a commercial scale. There is nothing particularly 'new' about calling Hollywood formulaic. What I think is interesting though, is the way in which we gravitate towards formula. I think there is something beautiful, safe and comforting about modernism and perhaps as a postmodernist society, we find solace in repetition and a knowledge that like one plus one equals two, Meg Ryan plus Tom Hanks equals love.

3. CINEMA AS EDUCATION/GRAND NARRATIVES: Modernism, rationality, repetition, hydrogen, helium, lithium and the Periodic Table. This mode of the educational video is one that is familiar to all of us. I found Powers of 10 an important edition to the study of cinematic modernism as it was a sobering reminder that film is not just about 'The Cinema'. The fact that this 'teaching' about the universe is playing out in a film, and that the 'teachings' are inherently modernist in their didactic purpose, demonstrates ways in which knowledges are created and transmitted. I've read that now the accurateness of the film is considered slightly off. But, only slightly. Obviously, there is not an educational film about how the world is flat, as cinema was not around. In saying this, I mean to draw attention to the idea that cinema and accurate scientific thought about the universe seem to emerge simultaneously in my historic understanding of things.

4. THE SIMPSONS: When this Eames piece began to play, I had the distinctly Burgin-ian feeling that I had seen this it somewhere before. I concluded, that it was highly similar to a lot of films I was made to watch in high school and that was probably where my feeling of deja vu came from. When wanting to watch the film myself at home, I typed Powers of 10 into YouTube, and surprisingly did not find the original version available, but The Simpsons version staring at me (which you can view here). It is almost a little obvious and banal to point out when The Simpsons steal from popular culture, as there are probably less books and films that have not been referenced on the show than those that have.

5. AUTHORITY: What struck me most hypnotically in The Powers of 10 was surprisingly not the images themselves or the bazaar music, but the deep, resonating male voice over. I associate this voice over with 1960s news readers, The Brady Bunch and a time when rationality, was not placed inside inverted commas aka 'rationality'.

6. MY PLACE IN SPACE: There is a book that my parents used to read to me as a child - My Place in Space (I can't remember who wrote it). Anything to do with images of stars, planets and rockets always brings me back to this book, and I always get the childhood feeling of being very, very small and non-important. This comes back to questions of scale also - child or adult, big or small, space always makes me feel tiny and stupid. Films have the ability to reach into your memory box.

7. BOREDOM:I found Charles and Ray Eame's films the most boring, tedious pieces of work I have sat through since Rocky (1976). To have to sit through two 'versions' of this film was excruciating (I never did watch any Rocky sequels). To be honest, I saw very little difference between the two so called versions. I think there is something to say for boredom and the cinematic experience. I began to reflect on the notion of walking out of a movie and wondered how often people do this? I've only walked out of the cinema once, and the film that I walked out of - What the Bleep Do We Know (2004) - was a little Eames-ish. I find the cinematic space one of entrapment. If you're in the movie theatre with somebody else, you need to whisper to each other and make a decision to walk out - it becomes a kerfuffle of an operation. Furthermore, there is the fact that you have payed for the experience and therefore you are somehow compelled to sit through it. I think cinema is coercive and often non-consensual.

8. INNER/OUTER SPACE: Interiors and exteriors have also been a reoccurring theme in the films that we've been watching. What I found interesting with this film, was that the Eame's did not seem interested with these notions at all. When it comes to interiors and exteriors, one must be interested in the surface of things to a certain extent i.e. the city scape, or inside someone's bathroom. However, in Powers of 10 there was a sense of extremes, of what lies above and beyond the surface. Instead of interior/exterior, we were presented with inner/outer space.

9. LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS: Perhaps it's my consumption of groupie and rock'n'roll biographies, but my vision of the late 1970s, when this film was produced, is clouded in a haze of hallucinogenic drugs. This film had a psychedelic element to it. I imagined drugged out film makers smoking and tripping, staring at the stars and wanting to capture it in a movie. I blocked out the daggy music, and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds became my soundtrack to the film. The Eame's seemed a bit straight and uptight through, judging by their chairs.

10. MAYBE I SHOULD STUDY SCIENCE NEXT YEAR: Modernity is about the rational, the true and the provable. I liked the way this film tickled a part of my brain that doesn't have a tendency to put inverted commas around everything ('rational', 'real', 'objective'). I decided that I'm not going to watch any more films in the unit.

Sorry Tokyo Story.