I was genuinely excited to see Self (Less) Portrait. Despite
all the negative reviews and criticisms the film was subjected to, I was
interested by the idea of public confessions; I always have been, even working
with the concept myself. That's why it was so disappointing to see this film.
The film attempts to create a world of total honesty, confessions made by a
segment of society, without any semblance of fear or shame. People, situated
against a white background, admit their pains, pleasures, joys and sorrows,
while a camera films. This would have probably been a brilliant film in anyone
else's hands; in this case, its failure falls entirely on the director.
To begin with, the film had no structure or focus. The
purpose of confessing is to create pathos, to cause the audience to feel
empathy for the object of their gaze. This audience was robbed of that
possibility because the editing of the pieces was so randomized, there were no
segments. This lack of segmentation, important in such a film, became an
annoyance at best and entirely offensive at worst. When a confession of a
suicide attempt is followed by a study of one's tattoos or three stories of
physical and sexual abuse are followed by a man's confession that he loves his
friends and partying, there is something entirely wrong with the director's
choices.
That is not, however, the film's only ethical dilemma. The
filmmaker uses this structure to place himself in a position of power over his
subjects: while the subjects are exposed and vulnerable, the filmmaker is
comfortably absent and anonymous, when only his voice is occasionally present. There
is nothing in the film to suggest that the confessions need to be made to a
figure of power, meaning that this was a conscious choice (even if a figure of
power was to be the one hearing confessions, who is more powerful than a
camera?) made by the director. In such a situation, where two equal humans come
face to face, the power must be equally-divided between the two. Anonymity must
exist for both or the director must also be exposed (these are two rules that I
truly believe in and have followed in the past).
Finally, the film, with its white backgrounds, attempts to
create a sense of nakedness; these confessions are not elaborate Catholic
confessions, but rather friendly exchanges of ideas (already proven false).
However, even in the aesthetic sense, the director manages to undermine his own
idea by adding excessive visual and aural effects, in an attempt to create a
mood, along the way destroying any hint of authenticity that may have remained
in his film by that point.
I guess the reason that I am so mad is that getting people
to be honest is extremely difficult. I made a series of video studies of people
several years ago, people who were my friends, and, on several occasions, I was
convinced they were not being honest. They gave me safe answers, despite my
promise of their anonymity. To this day, no one but me has seen those videos.
So, when a filmmaker manages to get entirely honest individuals who are
entirely willing to share and still manages to destroy the project, I just
cannot sit back and watch. I lasted thirty minutes, but I had to leave when
rapes were followed by friendship. I missed an hour of the film, but I
sincerely doubt I missed anything worthwhile.
