I’ve been meaning to watch Bodysong (the Simon Pummell stock footage documentary set to Johnny Greenwood’s score) since I missed it at the MFA a few months ago. Instead it’s been collecting dust with the other sad Netflix rejects. I shouldn’t have waited – this is actually pretty fascinating per initial inclination. Somehow in this short little film they manage to summarize the entirety of human existence – a birth/kids/sex/art/war/religion/death kind of swirly-smorgasbord. Many of the clips are shown in either slow or accelerated motion which is mesmerizing whether source is bizarre or mundane. The first words (actually, more accurately just vocalizations) in the film don’t appear until and hour or so into it, and when they come it’s kind of a shocking transition towards the last more modern third of the film.
Here’s a bit from Pummell FAQ on the team’s filmmaking workflow.
This team produced a massive flow of possible footage. At one point we were running three cutting rooms simultaneously to be able to sort and select from this mass of material. The image overload was sort of exciting and nauseating at the same time – the richness of it and yet the randomness of it. All the time we were looking for the patterns, the hidden signs, the connection with the story.
Each clip in the film has a short backstory described on their website if you’re willing to install Shockwave (which I wasn’t aware still existed). To be honest enjoyed it more when each scene was out of any kind of real historical context – a strength of this film is the lack of voiceover explaining what the heck is going on.
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