18 December 2007
Jogo de Cena
)Published on December 18th, 2007 @ 11:19:20 am, using 1317 words, 175 views
Not being much for documentaries, I was pleasantly surprised by my on-the-spot decision to see Jogo de Cena - right at my first viewing of the trailer. The very second I felt that simple idea take charge of my head and branch out into multiple possible directions. One of those things you just have to see as a final product. When snippets here and there are simply not enough to quench your curiosity.
For some reason it’s as exciting when the idea is under your care as it is when it comes from someone else. There’s just something about ideas that evolve easily and open up a number of paths for your mind to wander on, that makes them truly cherishable.
Four main ingredients to this one:
- An empty theater
- A director
- A handful of ordinary women
- A handful of actresses (both famous and up-and-coming)
One-on-one interviews tying everything together. The director who put an ad in the newspaper looking for women to tell their life stories. The women who answered those ads and were willing to make public their private (often harrowing, sometimes ineffably funny) stories, which include the loss of a newborn son, the loss of an adult son by violence, the start of a new life in a big city, wanted and unwanted pregnancies, broken relationships, idiosyncrasies either revealed or kept in check throughout. And finally the actresses called in to reenact those interviews, struggling to be true to the lines they were given to memorize, striving to convey the emotions those lines stemmed from while still keeping mimicry at bay.
That exercise quickly developed into an investigation for me. A study of the contrast between reality and the attempt to duplicate reality, between an actor and a non-fictional character, between fame and anonymity, between the emotion that comes from history and background and the emotion that’s grasped at in the dark loneliness of someone’s imagination, free from parameters, cracked with ‘if’s and plastered with assumptions. Free from the solidity or fluidity of reality.
Acting is a way towards being. It is a striving for being - that’s a well-known fact. But what of being? How much of being goes into acting and how much of acting into being? Where does a particular quality that doesn’t come naturally to you, whether patience or politeness (or one of a thousand others) spring from? Perhaps from ‘preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet’?
People hide themselves and look to enhance themselves according to random necessity or desire and sometimes a little of both. Desire out of necessity and necessity out of desire. Dictated by countless factors, people’s own points of view and those experienced vicariously… in fact merely guessed at.
Several years ago the following thought made its way into my head, or was conceived there (who’s to know the origin of thoughts?): ‘I have this theory that a person in front of a camera, any kind of camera, is not really a person. It’s a person on hold. Trying to be someone else or something else - whatever is in demand or something more specific. Better, perhaps. To achieve, for the amount of time contained in an hourglass, their notion of better. Trying to be the someone they’ve secretly always wanted to be or the someone they think someone else wants them to be (…) I don’t see why improvement should be restricted to taking place only when subject to documentation. Do you?’
A camera is a frightening object in that it promises perpetuity. Perpetuity, in turn, requires something better than we’re willing to give to our every day lives. The difference between sitting on a bar stool (which forces you to mind your posture, for one) as opposed to an easy chair. A camera is enduringly aimed at the bar stool. It invariably brings right and wrong to the forefront. It makes appearances a reason for greater concern (which actually reminds me of a book I’ve read on Kieslowski, specifically his take on the power of cameras in a Communist Regime - even turned off ones - to nudge people into doing the right thing, either out of vanity or true conscience.)
From the standpoint of truth, you’re made to second guess your own ability to tell truth from the likeness of truth, while watching the interviews. I came out with the clear impression that there is a fine line between being and acting, one that can only be distinguished in hindsight. And only once you’re allowed to compare performances. At times real grief comes back with full force when recounted. Everything you try to cover it with becomes transparent. Just like everything Midas touched turned to gold. Other times, grief is manageable, distant, more restrained. Reactions vary according to people. No pre-established norm can clear the way towards correct assumptions and therefore anything can be either real or performed to the naked eye, making us essentially and ineluctably gullible.
Something else I wrote a while ago that is suddenly relevant again: ‘The purpose of lying is to deceive. No one ever says the sky is green or the sun is cold. But they tell you they love you and whatever else that comes to mind that can’t be proven or disbelieved beyond a doubt.’
Real tears can be uncontrollable once they well up and for some unclear reason, also shameful. As though they warranted hiding. But to complicate matters, real tears don’t just well up in the context of reality. And there’s nothing to guarantee that tears will well up. They can be shed by those who’ve lived as well as by those who are able to funnel their own experiences into a world described in words on a page. They can be shed through technique.
In press releases, the director, Eduardo Coutinho, described the women as professional and natural actors which makes us ponder whether or not we are. Aren’t we all capable of producing tears just by reading a book, watching a movie or even a commercial that pulls at the heart strings? Doesn’t that ability make us to some extent, actors? Or at least people familiar with the paths that lead to ‘manufactured’ emotion?
Acting is the art of convincing. And in order to convince to the best of one’s ability, anonymity is essential. Anonymity and ignorance. Any renowned actress would have her work cut out for her in joining such a project. She would have to surmount the disadvantage of not disappearing quite as fully behind the part as someone who’s not a household name or face. These actresses agreed to take on the challenge of facing this ‘un’-evadable disadvantage and run the risk of coming across as lacking truth. They did for me, by the way. But not for anything they lacked themselves or failed to do or did badly but quite simply for their recognizable faces, proving the point that fame couldn’t be further from an asset to an actor.
The moment a camera is turned on - or the moment we ascertain the presence of one and believe it to be on - we’re no longer comfortable on our easy chair. We’re magically transported onto a bar stool. Made self-aware - aware that whatever is captured by it will outlive us, will outweigh everything we believe to be most important about ourselves. We all deal with that ‘responsibility’ in different ways, conscious of different ramifications, and sometimes carry that overbearing awareness of our own image into the interpersonal relationships we find ourselves in, getting a taste (even if unconsciously) of what it is to act.
Click here to read more on Jogo de Cena (blog in Portuguese)
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Documentary, Brazilian, women, life, harrowing, funny, acting, being, reality, fiction, theater, director, actress, fame, anonymity, lying, truth, camera, Kieslowski, Eliot, Eduardo Coutinho, newspaper ad, improvement, documentation, restraint, grief
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