Questions of Time and Medium in Decasia

I thought this week's film Decasia brought up some interesting questions about film’s relationship to both time and the medium itself. While watching the film, I couldn’t help but be constantly reminded of the fact that what I was watching was nothing more than a constant flow of celluloid that happened to have images captured on it. By both depicting the process of developing film and through the physical characteristics of the film itself, the film keeps its viewer completely self-conscious of the viewing experience, completely unable to “lose him or herself” in the film. By showing literally decayed and deteriorating film, the medium is always present, wholly inescapable; the viewing experience is never able to become anything more than just that – pure viewing. Never at any point is the illusion that grounds the success of traditional narrative films that what is being viewed is “real life” allowed to arise.

Ultimately, rather than achieving any transcendence or broader impact, the events of the film are instead very tightly bound to the medium, only existing in the few remaining parts of the deteriorated film. This is especially striking in moments in which a whole section of a frame is missing and yet the action continues around this gaping hole. These moments profoundly shatter any illusion of depth and show cinema and photography for what they are: wholly flat images that seem to offer a glimpse into the alternate universe of the past but ultimately cannot. This question of the past is also brought to the fore by the decayed nature of the film. By showing film that has deteriorated over time, the film brings cinemas relationship to time immediately into the viewer’s consciousness, forcing the viewer to accept that the events they are watching are lodged deep within in the past. Ultimately, the decay of the film forever dates the referent to a time not of the present, and by doing so coerces the viewer into confronting the apparent strangeness of this fact.

All in all, through its decayed film, Decasia demonstrates the idiosyncrasies, limitations, and paradoxes of the medium itself. While watching the film I was reminded of Barthes’ point about the mortality of the photographic image and how this was in an (unfortunate) contrast to memory, which he deems no longer the former of history. Decasia shows this in the most literal fashion. With the decay of the film, parts of the events are fundamentally lost to the abyss of time, and while this may not change the viewer’s ability to literally interpret the actions on the screen, the very fact that part of this history has been lost forever, people’s faces distorted and never to be seen again, is enough to make the film unsettling and intriguing.