Stone Puzzles—The Film (Almost a Review) By Michele Tavola
Main actresses: the protagonists are sixteen stones collected by Dominique Robin during walks that might have seemed like just pleasant strolls in the mountains, but which were actually casting sessions for his lm. As is usually the case with films in which human beings perform, the choice is not made randomly by putting in front of the camera the first person you pass on the street. The selection is careful and meticulous: you need the right personalities for the script, the right faces for the role. Likewise, our artist-director does not pick up the first stone he founds on the path, but goes in search of the perfect subject to give shape to his project. As Dominique himself explained, “we are dealing with stones polished and fractured by time, whose pieces have not yet been dispersed; ancestral forms modified by the rain, the sun, or perhaps by the passage of a heavy animal.” As beguiling as the divas of cinema, they do not reveal their exact age, but they are about seventy million years old.
Supporting actors and actresses: the hands of nine actors and actresses who interact with the stones, assembling the individual fragments to recompose the original form. Some are quick and agitated; others linger, hesitant. Some, after finishing their work, brandish the recomposed puzzle like a trophy, a symbol of success. Still others, having completed the task, rest symmetrically on the marble table before leaving the camera’s frame, as if exiting with a bow like the respectful salute of a martial-arts practitioner at the end of a fight. Their movements are embodied thoughts and, if we observe attentively, we can reconstruct the personality, psychology, and character of the people to whom they belong.
Scenery: marble tables shot from above through a frame that allows no glimpse of the edges and that insinuates in the viewer the sensation that the surface is infinite. The stone protagonists rest on other fragments of rock, smooth and perfectly cut, which present fascinating textures, as visually powerful as the most successful compositions in the history of informal painting. The twins of these tables probably worked as models for Jean Dubuffet between 1958 and 1962, when the French artist created the Phénomènes series.
Screenplay: first frame: the decomposed fragments of rock rest on the table, arranged randomly. Last frame: the stone is shown perfectly recomposed. Between the first and the last image, the hands make the puzzle.
Plot: sixteen episodes, one for each stone protagonist. In the course of each episode, the hands, starting from the individual fragments of rock, are dedicated to restoring shape to the stone. They all begin and end in the same way, like life, which begins with birth and ends with death. Like the episodes in the film, some existences are simpler, others more complex, some shorter, others longer. One could bet that the critics (more or less militant), will produce multiple exegetical interpretations, propose different readings, some symbolic and some literal, analyzing the meaning of the film in varied and surprising ways. Like all great works, Robin’s work cannot be interpreted in a single, unambiguous way—it is destined to be misunderstood and distorted.
Photography: deserves an Oscar nomination.
Soundtrack: the sounds of nature in the Tuscan countryside, the singing of birds in the background, and the sound of stones tapping together—all this placidly accompanies the rhythm of the images.
Duration: twenty-four minutes, during which time is suspended; it ceases to be a determining element for the development of the action and is replaced by the poetry of the forms that are gradually composed.
The screening: the run at the Italian Academy in New York is not a first: the lm has already been presented in Montalcino, Tuscany, and in Venice and Milan. But as almost always happens, the protagonists, following the custom of stars who always appear on special occasions such as Oscar Night or the Venice Film Festival, have shown up, punctual and flinty. The stones, in addition to being on screen, are presented physically as sculptures, in photography, in drawings inspired by them, and in an artist’s book of 164 pages. In addition, for guests who want to try their hand at the stone puzzle, there is the opportunity to play with the re-composition of fragments of a stone, experiencing first-hand what the artist did and then communicated in his film: it is an opportunity to understand the feelings and emotions from which the whole project was born.
Michele Tavola is a curator at the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia.
Autres articles
- Actualité Nouvelle Aquitaine, été 2017, Stone puzzles, p67. Numéro consacré aux sentiers et chemins. Texte et photos : D. Robin
STONE PUZZLES