I think the general aim of our project is to articulate an approach to film that tries to excise modernist from existentialist thought (acknowledging that some would say they're one and the same). First, I realize that I've been trying to rid myself of Freud nee Stanislavsky and the lot of it. Therefore, no psychology, no backstory and no primal emotion. I think there is an emotional quality in our film, but for me, emotion is something that is contained and implied; it remains in the background. That's one thing that I didn't like about Network. There was all this emotional, theatrical, corporate maneuvering—all this yelling. That's what made the Godfather 1 and 2 work so well. Neither Brando nor de Niro yell. They simply act. That was one of the problems of Godfather 3. In that film, Pacino gets all reflective.
I'm also resisting the Bauhaus tendency to formalize and objectify characters as moving sculpture. What happens in many artist's films is the treatment of an actor formally as a figure followed by a corresponding attempt to reinvest that figure with character and personality. The result is the Mirror Mask/Heaven's Gate problem—a dissonance and disrepect for performance.
What I'm left with is performance in action. Here, the character simply performs. Emotion is implied but is visually indiscernible. Further, there is no real character arc. The Ben character doesn't have a need or a flaw. Instead, at the end, he simply reaches an uneasy state of equilibrium.
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