Liga family - shadows
Intro
As I was not able to explain why I chose this particular scene of ‘play of cards’, I tried to write down some instinctive mental associations related to these elements: curious faces, shadow, fast pace, repetition, amusing, exaggerated gestures. Maybe the only element not associated to a more obvious interpretation of the storyline (play of cards) is the shadow. In the following I will try to expand more on the shadow on the wall, which captured my attention, a shadow that operates a vertical cut in the frame and seems almost to isolate the white-bearded man (the centre of the scene). The following is a loose/instinctive/metaphorical reflection on the shadow.
‘Where shadows run upright’
What is the logic of a shadow that runs always parallel, cutting into the coarseness of walls and not leaving any space or consolation for retreat? Youth does not understand the shadow, as it perceives it through its function as a shelter from the sun. Seniority instead looks at an example of evading time, always running parallel and never being able to catch up with. Its uprightness is an elusive gesture an example of running always side-by-side, like life and death. As the backs of the elderly sit upright, their attempt becomes a gesture to elude time, to escape the inexorable passage of life.
Exploring the logic of uprightness
Then maybe there isa meaning in the uprightness of the shadow. Could it be possibly grounded in its capacity to shape matter not according to perceptual senses but according to perceiving sensitivities? What does the eye record for which the mind seeks no explanation? An upright elderly body shadowed by youthful bodies, fervid and hasty hand gestures that are all partner in crime of the same deceitful act, faces into which shadows carve an identical pattern of time past are all deceitful perceptual acts. All becomes an endless game: what the eye sees, the mind cannot understand; what the eye understands the mind cannot see. Their real nature lies in the cracks between perception, logic and sensation, a nature that pushes the sensible domain of the image at its margins. Then how are we able to break into these deceitful acts? Maybe by rearranging our own position in relation to matter, by changing perspective, are we able to reach another sensitivity through which cracks we can begin to grab the notion of uprightness.
Notes on uprightness
This attempt is not that of revealing what lies behind the gesture of the filmmaker, his intentionality but to explore the sense of uprightness that the scene suggested to me from the start through the concept of shadow. Uprightness is only a word, void of its meaning, a vital metaphor that comes to represent something beyond, that cannot be defined but only seen. The ‘architecture’ of the term develops through a mix of casualty (seeing the vertical shadow running down on the left-hand side of the screen) and introspection (mind starts to ask questions why this shadow attracted my attention), a process that I tried to explore through an artistic/post-editing re-elaboration of the scene.