James Benning is one of the most outstanding proponents of avant-garde film and independent cinema. His filmography includes over thirty films, ranging from the one-minute-long »Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound« from 1971 to the four-and-a-half-hour-long »California Trilogy«, which comprises »El Valley Centro« (1999), »Los« (2000) and »Sogobi« (2002). The premiere screening of his latest film, »13 Lakes«, took place during this year's Viennale festival in Vienna.
»13 Lakes« is a simple film: it is 135 minutes long, made on 16 mm, with sound but no dialogue. The film shows thirteen takes, each lasting ten minutes. In each of them, a different lake is to be seen. Between each take there is 8 1/3 seconds of black leader. The opening credits show the title of the film in white capitals in Omega font on a black background. The closing credits, in the same typographic style, give the names of the thirteen lakes one after the other in exactly the same order in which they occur in the film:
JACKSON LAKE
MOOSEHEAD LAKE
SALTON SEA
LAKE SUPERIOR
LAKE WINNEBAGO
LAKE OKEECHOBEE
LOWER RED LAKE
LAKE PONCHARTRAIN
GREAT SALT LAKE
LAKE ILIAMNA
LAKE POWELL
CRATER LAKE
ONEIDA LAKE
The closing credits end with Benning's name, »JAMES BENNING«, without assigning it any function as is usual in conventional film credits. Benning alone is responsible for the script, camera, production, editing and distribution.
Each of the thirteen takes provides a view of a lake filmed from the shore, but without showing the shore itself. The takes have enormous depth and are dominated by a horizon that bisects the image more or less exactly in the middle. The lower half of the frame is taken up by the surface of the water, while the upper half shows the sky and, in several of the takes, the landscape bordering the lake in the distance. A stationary camera is used to film all the takes. Any movement appears as an event in the landscape; what moves is the surface of the water, clouds in the sky, and in some takes boats or ships that cross the picture. The filmic apparatus itself remains static: no pan shots, no zooms. On the soundtrack, one can hear the movements of the waves, the weather, the noise of boats and, in two of the takes, sounds from off-screen (a train and gunshots).
In the first take, the waters of Jackson Lake are slightly choppy, but without any waves. Beyond the lake can be seen a mountain range, above it a cloudless sky. In the course of the ten minutes the light on the mountains changes from a cold blue to a warm orange with the rising of the sun. The atmosphere at the end of the take is completely different from that at the beginning. Moosehead Lake, which follows, is covered by clouds, and in the almost uniform greyness of the scene one can see the small, circular waves that raindrops create when they hit the surface of the water. In the third take, the sun is shining once more, but the loneliness that dominates the first two scenes is broken on the Salton Sea by the noise of the motorboats that cross the picture from the left and the right, marking the lake as they do so. In Lake Superior there are ice floes, and a large ship crosses the picture on its way to the harbour, whose vicinity can be discerned. Lake Winnebago is shown as an abstract composition structured only by a horizon in the middle dividing the lake from the sky – no clouds, no waves, only the clear sky and a glassy lake. The sixth take shows the marsh-green Lake Okeechobee, where all sorts of plants rise up out of the water like crocodiles. The lake is calm, every movement is halted. About a minute into the take, the viewer hears an approaching train but, contrary to expectations, does not get to see it. The train goes past behind the camera, but still dominates the image: the knowledge of the camera's presence has become part of the picture. About one minute before the end, the clatter of the train ends. The calm that prevailed at the start of the take returns, but both Lake Okeechobee and the view of it are no longer the same. The remaining takes are comparable in structure, but still fundamentally different from each other. They are also remarkable for their enormous precision with regard to image structure, action, light and the relationship between image and sound. This precision dominates all aspects of »13 Lakes«, from the basic structure of the film and the order of the takes to the compositional details.
»13 Lakes« is a formal film of astounding beauty. It is a structural film that tells a story. This story is however a fleeting one, and any attempt to grasp it immediately multiplies it. In this way »13 Lakes« tells a story about landscape, its unspoiltness and its culturalization. It tells us how landscape is a function of time. It tells of locality and its relationship to difference; of (Benning's) trips through the United States, from west to east, from south to north and back again. Journeys produce difference and are an instrument for placing things, views, in a social perspective. Thus, slowly, there develops a history of seeing and the gaze, that of Benning as well as that of the audience. »13 Lakes« also tells how a camera was placed at a particular place at a particular point in time and switched on. It is a film of witness, not a film of observation, not a documentary. A documentary film presents a subject, argues a case, attempts to persuade. »13 Lakes«, on the other hand, is a reflexive film that is its own subject. If it does present any arguments, then they consist of a strictly kept set of rules of an arithmetical character.
»13 Lakes« is the story of a method at its purest and most rigorous. This method produces, with optimal efficiency and maximal effect, a new cinematic form in which structure and narrative do not exclude each other, but overlie or even produce one another. Benning succeeds in articulating the relationship between a method, a medium, an idea of nature, and his own person as a necessary relationship. The result is a cinematic aesthetic that, in this radicalized form, activates a political element that is based on method. »13 Lakes« is therefore also a political film whose politics are called method.
»13 Lakes« was shown on October 20 and 22, 2004, at the Viennale festival and on November 21 2004 in the Austrian Film Museum together with James Benning's »Ten Skies« (2004)
Translated by Timothy Jones