CinemaGrotesque and Everyday Body

One of the most unfortunate events in cinema history is that Gilles Deleuze never had the chance to see Lloyd Newson's recent projects, since the former passed away on 1995... The role of body in cinema and theatre has been the center of an important debate especially after the emergence of modern approaches towards acting and dance for a long time. Physical theatre constitutes a key turning point for these discussions. Although some scholars argue that this form of theatre was a product of the influence of Brecht theatre on traditional theatre, it has nevertheless, evolved in such a way that it is now possible to categorize it as a completely new genre. Starting with Constantin Stanislavsky , directors and actors like Antonin Artaud, Jacques Lecoq, Jerzy Grotowski and Pina Bausch, started to ask questions on human body and the use of it in a modern context that could break the chains of the old, traditional, mostly text-oriented, epic form of acting. The emergence of mime, the re-interpretation of movement and the mixing of theatre with sound and cinema are among many reasons why we can now talk about gracious and grotesque at the same time.

Lloyd Newson, the founder of an independent collective of dancers called DV8, managed to bring the above mentioned postmodern approaches of acting and choreography into cinema in a very successful way with his film Cost of Living (2005). Although this film was preceded by three other important films by Newson, ( Strange Fish, Enter Achilles and Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men), Cost of Living was the most successful project to bring in almost all vital elements of cinema and theatre together.

The very first characteristic of Cost of Living is that the whole concept relies on actors and their bodies. The actor's role is his presence as himself on the screen: performers do not have proper character names, their names are their real names. Therefore from the start, an actor is not pretending to be someone else. Costumes do not force them to be members of a specific social group or class; they seem to be regular people we see walking on the streets. Real people from real life... On one hand, the reason why they are being filmed is closely linked with their abilities to ways they make use of their bodies but on the other, they are everyday bodies. If they get tired when performing, they really get tired: The drops of sweat we see are real...

An important character in the film, David (David Toole) is handicapped and has no legs. It is not the perfect body that we're after, but the body itself. Choreography written by Newson for Cost of Living presents this perspective in very creative ways: There are some parts of the film where the choreography is based solely on possible movements of a handicapped body, or some parts of it , where the same handicapped body is impersonated with perfect dancers having flawless bodies. Newson questions our notions of aesthetics and norms by giving us alternative examples to how things would be, in a parallel universe.

Bringing in everyday body to cinema offers us a new understanding on acting and body. Although Cost of Living is mostly seen as an example for experimental cinema, 16 international awards clearly indicate that there is something more beyond simply experimenting. Other than transmitting important social messages, this film should be considered as a figure de proue for interdisciplinary arts where there are no longer solid boundaries between ways we expose ourselves...

Links:

http://www.dv8.co.uk/projects/costoflivingfilm

http://www.disthis.org/CostOfLiving.htm

http://www.body-pixel.com/2008/05/13/what-dance-could-be…-in-dv8-and-david-toole’s-vision…/

http://www.article19.co.uk/06/interview/lloyd_newson.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EayAmhSsBZI