Glass Lips

This Polish film is a weird, confronting series of impress/express-ionistic tableaux depicting the past and present (and maybe future) times of a poet, whose adulthood is spent in a mental institution and whose childhood at the hands of forbidding parents was cruelled. At least this is the synopsis I venture. I don't know that a group of people would ever agree entirely because it's a symbol-ridden film with no regular narrative.

Glass Lips polarised the audience. I say this with authority because I watched the film with them, handed out ballots at the end and counted the votes. The people who hated it staggered out as soon as the credits started. One lady was cursing as well as staggering, and wrote curse words on her ballot. Someone else swore on their ballot, but only one of the two swearers had the presence of mind to remember to tear their ballot as well as swear, and thus register their perturbment officially.

If you really don't like this kind of film, there's a possibility that you never will grow to like it. The only moderately accurate comparison which comes to my mind is with Matt Barney's Cremaster Cycle. I loved Cremaster, but I was cool overall on Glass Lips. It's gentle on trajectory, long on repetition (especially where the character of the father is concerned) and in the area of sound design, irritating as often as it is beautiful. Knowing that the film was constructed from thirty-three shorts which originally worked as gallery installations might help to explain these factors. There is less to worry about re: repetition when an audience doesn't have to experience all the parts back to back.

The film is also long on symbolism. It's hard for me personally to be much interested in Christian symbology (crucifictions and Jesus Christ poses are huge in Glass Lips), and when symbolism is the main mode overall, of course it's going to be hard for an audience. The director himself described the film after the screening as being a narrative of inner life, which is an idea I love, but my engagement levels were all over the place at different times.

Glass Lips is certainly pretentious, but it has the chops to be that way. If you attribute validity to pretension, is it not actually pretension anyway? If a poet falls in a forest of ice, is there any accompanying dialogue? (NB - there is no dialogue in Glass Lips.) I might try watching this again someday. I didn't really like it, but I am still thinking about it, so that's probably good, but... AUGH!