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A Man and a Camera (Guido Hendrikx, 2021)
🕑 Added 2021-06-06 01:20:00 +0000 UTC
As stunts go, A Man and a Camera is fairly clever, and certainly provides the viewer with an extended cinematic Rorschach blot, as Hendrikx's fundamental ideas about human nature gradually come into focus over the film's 63 minutes. In a suburban Dutch neighborhood, the director begins by silently filming those he finds walking or working outdoors. Before long, he is walking right up to people's front doors and confronting them with his disconcerting, machine-wielding silence.
Although this sometimes plays like a more conceptual version of Jackass, there's a seriousness of intent which is amplified (if that's the right word) by Hendrikx's insistence on remaining mute. In the beginning, A Man and a Camera eerily echoes Yoko Ono's seldom-screened 1969 film Rape, which doggedly pursues a woman on the street while she tries to get away. In time, Hendrikx receives the overt hostility his stunt is obviously courting on some level. (This took my mind back to a rumored Harmony Korine project, long since abandoned, in which the filmmaker annoyed people on the street until they beat him up.)
There is something so simple about A Man and a Camera that at times I found myself wanting a bit more from it, some kind of modulation or a hint of self-reflexivity. But that's completely off the table; Hendrikx has a procedure and he follows it to the letter. If there is development in the work, it comes through in the editing, as Hendrikx articulates a trajectory from confusion, to annoyance, to violence, and then eventually to cheerful surprise and, finally, inexplicable accommodation. A few elderly residents welcome the man and the camera into their homes, as if this alien presence allows them to temporarily avert loneliness and boredom.
In this regard, Hendrikx has produced an odd kind of ethnographic film about a particular class and race of contemporary Dutch citizens. Some are easily riled, demanding an explanation immediately. (The most frequently uttered phrase in the film is "what's the meaning of this?") But most of them take a different tack, meeting the filmmaker's strange aggression with bemused laughter or an attempt to communicate. It suggests that this pocket of the Netherlands is keen on preserving normalcy, and will therefore produce whatever interior gymnastics are necessary to explain this intrusion, to patch it into some kind of narrative. ("Is this an art project? Are you at university?"
Eventually, Hendrikx's purview shifts a bit, from open confrontation to a muted commentary on visual technology and how it has permeated our lives. Granted, very few of the film's subjects fall into that millennial / Gen Z zone that has come of age with the understanding that self-display is a key aspect of existence. But it's of note that A Man and a Camera's most willing participant is a man who claims to have been famous at one time. I'm not sure if he'd be immediately recognizable to the Dutch, and the credits list him as "Ab Wisse," a name that turns up nothing on Google. (As a helpful Letterboxd commenter Blake Griggs pointed out, "abwissen" is German for "do not know," so Hendrikx could be making a joke.)
Anyway, I could easily see this guy being some sort of celebrity. He's perfectly natural on camera, and sort of resembles UK TV presenter Noel Edmonds. But in his first encounter with Hendrikx, he warns him that he's being discussed on a neighborhood group-chat, and so he might need to watch out for the police. In their final meeting, Ab Wisse has to take his grandson to school, and leaves Hendrikx alone in his house. "I'll be back in ten minutes. Make yourself at home."
It hardly requires saying that A Man and a Camera isn't a "provocation" that could ever happen in the U.S. Hendrikx would be lucky to make it to three houses before getting shot point-blank in the face. But the Netherlands is a nation and a culture famous for its exaggerated openness. Most people leave their curtains open so their activities can be seen from the street, and that's if they have curtains at all. Cultural historians have often characterized this tendency as a sort of friendly Foucaultianism. The transparency is a form of mutually-assured vigilance, with everyone openly displaying that they have no antisocial behaviors to hide.
Hendrikx's film takes this benevolent surveillance to the streets, to the front door, and inside various homes, to reflect the fact that the Netherlands is so homogenized, so utterly liberal and secure in its position in the world, that there's no reason to be afraid of a well-dressed white man showing up at your place. (Granted, I don't know what Hendrikx was wearing, since we only ever see his shadow.) This exercise might have been more instructive, and more entertaining, if the filmmaker had ventured into some of Amsterdam's shadier districts. In fact, someone might very well have stolen his camera, finishing the film for him in an even more unpredictable manner. It would be amusing to see Hendrikx try to get his equipment back from a pawn shop without saying a word.
Comments
Emilio
This project reminded me of a similar theatre project in Norway. It was called «Ways of Seeing» (yes, after John Berger), but it was about surveillance and the European far-right. However, what happened next is one of the most bonkers news stories in Norwegian modern history… https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/08/norway-former-ministers-partner-laila-anita-bertheussen-on-trial-fake-threats
