Page 140 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
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from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
terminé constitution of ethnic agency. On the other hand, there is different
machinery: the film camera itself.
Furthermore, it should be added that what the author could not achieve
at the level of images, he did with montage. Thus, as stated above, he inserts
all kinds of absurd as well as meaningful shots between (or actually into)
the sequences of narratives. For instance, a shot of Huso smoking is inter-
rupted by the insertion of images of roller-skating girls to make a transi-
tion to a documentary scene of a mass party. A scene of two Slovenian mu-
sicians in a lively conversation is preceded by a quote from Andrić‘s essay
on “narrowness of the minds of people that are nationalists” while the Bos-
nian vocational school student looks at his image in the mirror. In their di-
alogue, the two musicians parody the narcissistic construction of Slovenian
identity in vulgar vernacular, full of stereotypes. This is supported by the
symbolic mythical items of Slovenian self-identification (mountains, an ac-
cordion, and figures of speech).
The effective final scene makes the entire point of the film transparent
because it gives its literal cinematic vision of the metaphor of the close and
passionate love relationship between the two Slovenians and their native
soil. As they walk, cursing Bosnians as “non-human,” the musicians come
to a freshly ploughed field and suddenly they see a virgin dressed in white.
They reach for her, pulling her to the ground and, after a cut and a back-
ward move of the camera, we can see them having sex with the soil. This
sequence of frames, which was shot especially carefully, clearly functions
as a determining scene for the entire movie. It is understood that it signals
a multitude of meanings that could be linked to the Central European cul-
tural space, with the notion of Blut und Boden5 at its centre. Thus, in the
film Rams and Mammoths a shift was carried out from a prevailing “tragic”
interpretation of problems of identity in other Slovenian films to cinemat-
ic thematization of the split in real/ideological (imaginary) space. The sat-
uration of the montage space in the parallel narrative structure, with some
simple contrasts of text and image, produces an “ideological noise,” which
makes the effect of the movie complete.
5 This refers more or less metaphorically to the “Blood and Soil” ideology based on
ethnicity, which is defined through descent (Blood) and homeland (Soil). As de-
scribed in many encyclopaedias and other such resources, the phrase itself appeared
first in the late nineteenth century in Germany. It praised the people’s connection
to the land and stressed the virtues of rural living. As is well known, the concept of
blood and soil preceded Nazi ideology.
138
terminé constitution of ethnic agency. On the other hand, there is different
machinery: the film camera itself.
Furthermore, it should be added that what the author could not achieve
at the level of images, he did with montage. Thus, as stated above, he inserts
all kinds of absurd as well as meaningful shots between (or actually into)
the sequences of narratives. For instance, a shot of Huso smoking is inter-
rupted by the insertion of images of roller-skating girls to make a transi-
tion to a documentary scene of a mass party. A scene of two Slovenian mu-
sicians in a lively conversation is preceded by a quote from Andrić‘s essay
on “narrowness of the minds of people that are nationalists” while the Bos-
nian vocational school student looks at his image in the mirror. In their di-
alogue, the two musicians parody the narcissistic construction of Slovenian
identity in vulgar vernacular, full of stereotypes. This is supported by the
symbolic mythical items of Slovenian self-identification (mountains, an ac-
cordion, and figures of speech).
The effective final scene makes the entire point of the film transparent
because it gives its literal cinematic vision of the metaphor of the close and
passionate love relationship between the two Slovenians and their native
soil. As they walk, cursing Bosnians as “non-human,” the musicians come
to a freshly ploughed field and suddenly they see a virgin dressed in white.
They reach for her, pulling her to the ground and, after a cut and a back-
ward move of the camera, we can see them having sex with the soil. This
sequence of frames, which was shot especially carefully, clearly functions
as a determining scene for the entire movie. It is understood that it signals
a multitude of meanings that could be linked to the Central European cul-
tural space, with the notion of Blut und Boden5 at its centre. Thus, in the
film Rams and Mammoths a shift was carried out from a prevailing “tragic”
interpretation of problems of identity in other Slovenian films to cinemat-
ic thematization of the split in real/ideological (imaginary) space. The sat-
uration of the montage space in the parallel narrative structure, with some
simple contrasts of text and image, produces an “ideological noise,” which
makes the effect of the movie complete.
5 This refers more or less metaphorically to the “Blood and Soil” ideology based on
ethnicity, which is defined through descent (Blood) and homeland (Soil). As de-
scribed in many encyclopaedias and other such resources, the phrase itself appeared
first in the late nineteenth century in Germany. It praised the people’s connection
to the land and stressed the virtues of rural living. As is well known, the concept of
blood and soil preceded Nazi ideology.
138
