Geography of the Body

[StevePulaski]

Geography of the Body (1943)
Directed by: Willard Maas


Rating: ★★½

Abstraction is one of the key attributes in many avant-garde short films; the constant subversion and altering of ritualistically accepted objects and subjects is something that finds itself present in these films to the point where sometimes the only extractable emotion for the audience when watching them is alienation and frustration. Willard Maas's Geography of the Body, a seven minute short film shot with the help of Maas's wife, filmmaker Marie Menken, who is responsible for various collage-driven abstract works, works to add that same layer of abstraction and visual confusion to one of the most commonly seen and accepted principles of our lives - our body, its features, and its perplexities.

For seven minutes, Maas lingers on extreme close-up shots of the human body; everything from armpits, legs, and even lips with evident beard stubble below them are profiled in immaculate detail. Narration exists for the entire experience, but it largely feels like it's talking in endless circles of philosophy and confusion rather than coming to a clear and discernible point. The real interesting element comes from watching Maas's camera not really define nor emphasize, but simply linger on the various textures of the human body, almost making it a foreign animal after a while, like staring at a word for too long and feeling like it's spelled wrong or doesn't make sense.

Avant-garde films, as a generalized whole, get us to question two things and those things are ideas or objects we've come to accept without question - be them physical or ideological - or what we can adequately and appropriately call a film. Maas finds middle-ground with that sentiment in Geography of the Body by superimposing and lingering on unique shots of the human exterior rather than analyzing it as it is.

Directed by: Willard Maas.