Light is Calling (2004)

A recent tribute at REDCAT and FilmForum provided Angelinos with a unique opportunity to see the work of Bill Morrison, renowned director of The Film of Her (1997) and Decasia (2002). Bill Morrison functions as a sort of archivist-opportunist, forever searching through decaying nitrate film of all subjects and re-editing it into his own pieces of film art, which in and of itself is an act of guerrilla photochemical preservation. Morrison's love of film includes a love of its physical attributes, especially the unique aesthetics of film-decay. In Decasia, Morrison explored his usual themes of memory, time, and human attempts at permanence by adeptly editing endless loops of deteriorating nitrate film to Michael Gordon's hypnotic score. The result is nothing short of a truly psychedelic experience. The image whirls, flickers, and melts, as human civilization is reduced to the faintest shadow play while attempting to battle time.

The Mesmerist (2003) was a re-edit of The Bells (1926), a Lionel Barrymore film with an ending that Morrison thought could use a moral revision. He edited together a narrative to give Mr. Barrymore a needed comeuppance, and was able to elegantly descend and ascend between levels of reality by having two versions of the film at his disposal: a pristine copy and a heavily damaged copy. Light is Calling (2004), uses the same source footage as The Mesmerist, but never comes up for air to the clean image. Instead Morrison is at his most wistful and formally beautiful. The tinted nitrate image swirls and disintegrates in a wash of golden light. Bill Frisell's score, which came first according to Morrison, is truly in the spirit of the heavily psychedelic enterprise, repetitive, opulent, and progressive in its structure. While this film contains all of Morrison's familiar and complicated themes, it also contains a simple love story: a man and a woman meet on the road, and ride off together. However, in place of a sunset is a surge of molten, ecstatic, golden emulsion. To get personal for a moment, my jaw was on the floor for the entire 8 minutes it took the film to wind from reel to bulb to take-up reel. Before the lights came up, a brief survey of the crowd revealed that I was not the only one.

The great thing about Morrison is, despite the incredible beauty of the images he discovers and exhibits, he never quite lets the viewer forget that what they are viewing is, essentially, the rotting process. The sinister thread that runs unspoken beneath all of his films is that old "dust to dust" business. I, for one, think it's a good for the soul. Especially because, for a short time at least, Light is Calling is able to effortlessly elevate it.