Hotel Monterey (part of the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus)
prompts a lot of questions and requires some stamina to get through.
What is the purpose of cinema? Is it to force the viewer to
see or even find the perspective of the filmmaker? Andy Warhol experimented in
the 1960s with various silent “anti-films”, such as his 1963 Sleep (where the
viewer can watch a man sleep for five hours and 20 minutes) or 1964 Empire
which ran eight hours (an existent extract is only 60 minutes). Today’s users of Instagram or Hipstamatic
often experiment with the same still life genres of the earlier filmmakers.
Imagine these all cut into a 65-minute film, subtracting the humor and life, and you have a pretty good idea of watching Hotel Monterey.
Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akeman camped out at Hotel
Monterey (a rather seedy residential hotel in Manhattan) and began filming
Edward Hooperesque still lifes (with people or without). In shots running from
three minutes to beyond six minutes, these static images of elevators, the
lobby, individual rooms, corriders, bathrooms, the roof and surrounding New
York environs. There is no sound.
After awhile these static color images become rather
hypnotic and I found myself wanting any sense of movement or flaw in the film
to suggest life.
Near the end Akeman
finally begins experimenting with movement, from lengthy shots that consist of
the filmmaker dollying down a long pea-green corridors toward windows looking
at a distant street. The walls are painted in high gloss and light reflects as
the camera moves. Three versions of the same move change only in that one is
done in night lights and the other two are done in daylight. In each frame, as
soon as the eye finds something moving—car tail-lights, a light turned off in a
distant building, a bird barely seen—they immediately take over focus. I found
myself watching a car drive down the street as if it was a new sight.
Another sequence of over six minutes consisted of watching two elevator doors randomly opening and closing.
I am reminded of a visit to a wonderful modern art museum in
Beacon, NY, which is housed in an old factory. There was lots of space for the
exhibits, but as I walked through I kept wanting to see a person in strong
color reacting to the artwork.
For me, cinema is about movement and human contact. Frozen
images at 24 frames per second with only cuts makes me feel separated me from life.
Hotel Monterey (1972) *
[Note: there is no soundtrack in the actual film, so to get an idea of the experience, turn off your sound.]
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