Desire in "Voyage on the North Sea"

I am going to focus this week’s blog post on Marcel Broodhaers’ Voyage on the North Sea and the role that the viewer’s desire plays in providing the fuel for the film. To begin with, it is important to note that the film deals with the relationship between film as a medium and painting (or, one could argue photography) as a medium. The on-screen action is composed solely of the different paintings of ships out on sea, and the actual film is what creates a montage of sorts out of these different images. I’m pretty sure that montage is nowhere close to being the correct word to describe the film, but I can’t think of any other word at the moment. While Eisenstein’s or Godard’s montages create meaning through the combination of multiple, presumably drastically different images, Broodhaers combines a few different ships to form a short film. What is the meaning in this? Is Broodhaers even trying to get a specific point across? (I really don’t know the answer to this – I’m quite puzzled).

Personally, the reason that I continued to actively watch the film had nothing to do with the meaning I was getting out of it; instead, I paid attention because I so desperately wanted the ships to move. The static image distances the viewer, as it is not acting in the way the viewer may initially expect it to; the ships on the water do nothing but sit there silently. This distance between what the viewer expects and what actually happens perpetuates a kind of desire in the viewer. Although one knows that there is no way the ships in the painting are going to move, one watches in anticipation, hoping that something besides a still painting will be show in the shot.

Another part of the film that I would like to mention is the close-up of part of the ship. I am not totally sure what the close-up was of, but it appeared to be textured and touchable. To me, it looked like some type of fabric used for clothing. A large part of me wanted to be able to touch it, yet I knew I could not, because what I was seeing was not only a painting, but also a painting inside of film. These different layers also contribute to the aforementioned distanciation between viewer and film that allows for active participation on the part of the viewer.