NFR Reviews #18: Losing Ground
Released 1982 / Inducted 2020
This movie was almost lost to obscurity, initially lacking a wide US theatrical release and only achieving wider recognition decades later. Arthouse theaters and distributors at the time didn’t believe it could find an audience, and director/writer/producer Kathleen Collins often faced barriers over her race and gender. Collins’ daughter Nina returned to her mother’s work (described by magazine writer Abigail Bereola as “creating in a way that doesn’t allow for looking away from oneself”) for insight on their often-complicated relationship and fought to preserve her legacy, using the imagined stories to better know the real woman.
The final shots of Losing Ground were a surprise on first watch–lead character Sara Rogers experiences a major emotional realization, but the fallout is never shown. While acting in a student film which coincidentally mirrors her own life, she cries after knowing her marriage is likely too far gone. This is followed by an abrupt cut to credits. The major choices she makes afterward are left to the audience’s imagination. Sara’s an analytical philosophy professor who's currently studying ecstasy but has no idea how to personally experience it. The definition of ecstasy relevant here is that of escaping from the mundane environment to seemingly experience the supernatural or divine. The methods to achieve this altered state of consciousness vary: hallucinogens, mental illness, prayer and meditation from a variety of religions, even music and art.
Religious ecstasy may be one discussion point in Sara’s paper, but the movie is most concerned with ecstasy in relation to art (she argues a solely religion-based definition is too narrow). Her husband Victor is entranced with inspiration for his paintings in the world around him. It’s not about connecting with a religious presence greater than oneself, but it does create distance between him and everyone else. If one of the draws of ecstatic experience is going outside the familiar, being around an unfamiliar culture (Puerto Ricans specifically) provides that same sense of excitement for him. He loves the idea of having an affair with one of the women at their summer home neighborhood, but constantly gets annoyed over small things like her getting tired during a painting session or dancing with someone else at a gathering–whenever he’s reminded that she has a regular life outside of him. The story cautions against this type of constant detachment, of getting an abstract idea of what you want and thoughtlessly chasing it down. If what Victor wants was a person, he can get bothered by their complexities or outright ignore their own wants and feelings. This escalated to the point of him sexually assaulting his mistress–her feelings about this are largely left unexplored, but the event is what makes Sara unable to deny reality on how bad their marriage has gotten. Before that, Sara also claimed her husband loves her lack of chaos. She doesn’t say why her orderliness appeals to him, but my guess is that it’s a contrast to his own personality. When she goes away to act in a student film, he’s confused and irritated because that doesn’t match his idea of her.
There’s a scene towards the end where Sara remarks that she hates the water after the other characters all jumped in the pool. Normally, that wouldn’t say much about a person, but in a narrative it was included to show she lacks the spontaneity to fully take the plunge. The drawbacks and insecurities surrounding her analytical personality never fully subside. Even in a world where psychics are implied to have real powers of premonition, she fails to achieve the altered state of consciousness–at least not in the same way it appeared in her studies. The visuals and editing remain firmly tied to reality, unlike religious ecstasy in which people experience visions of their God, their perception of time slows down or stops, and they enter a state of trance or possession. However, even when Sara is at her most unfulfilled, the environments around her don’t reflect the same dull feeling. The colors tend towards bold saturation, from the red in the windows of Sara’s study to the purples and blues of her dress. Even the shots of greenery make the leaves look practically fluorescent. This communicates that these settings are worth experiencing and not something to need constant escape from.
Collins disliked mythologizing people, whether it be herself, her characters, or the black racial identity as a whole. This shows in the script: despite Sara’s fascination with supernatural or religious phenomena, they’re always out of reach for her. She does change as a character anyway: finding independence from her husband through the acting job and standing up to him in a more serious way instead of playing it off as a joke while nothing truly changes. While both studying in books and acting in the film are an escape into fiction, the film offers her more direct tactile experience with the outside world (and the costar she’s attracted to). Sara will always think too much to experience a total break from reality. Instead, the narrative offers a different approach: fiction only partially removed from typical life which allows people to look at their worst problems from a different angle. She never totally transcended reality like the subjects of her research, nor did she overindulge in a type of ecstatic trance that cuts her off from understanding others like Victor does. As her real-life husband watches the filming, Sara’s character shoots her onscreen cheating husband and feels devastated about it. She doesn’t really kill anyone, but the scene still aids her in processing very real emotions of anger and betrayal. Her marriage as she knew it will never be the same, even as she’s discovered more of her own capabilities and ways to be fulfilled without him.
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/live/J-GwNd6xeOQ
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/religious-ecstasy
https://www.npr.org/2015/02/05/383564277/losing-ground-steps-forward-at-lincoln-center
http://web.archive.org/web/20250325003815/https://www.bkmag.com/2017/06/20/whatever-happened-to-kathleen-collins-book-film-more/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kathleen-collins-losing-ground-film/
https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2020/08/07/kathleen-collins-losing-ground/
https://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2016/4/14/kathleen-collinss-losing-ground
https://www.anothergaze.com/expansive-territories-remembering-kathleen-collins-losing-ground-feminism-race/
https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/losing-ground-is-one-of-the-major-cinematic-rediscoveries-of-the-year/
https://www.vogue.com/article/kathleen-collins-filmmaker-career-daughter-nina-lorez-collins












