“This Is Your Man – Go with Him”: About the Disrupted Identification in the Films of Alan Clarke Cover Image

„To jest twój człowiek – idź z nim”. O zakłóconej identyfikacji w filmach Alana Clarke’a
“This Is Your Man – Go with Him”: About the Disrupted Identification in the Films of Alan Clarke

Author(s): Karolina Kosińska
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Alan Clarke; Robert Bresson; identification; behaviourism in cinema; bodily perception of cinema; British cinema

Summary/Abstract: Alan Clarke’s later films – like Made in Britain (1983), Christine (1987), Elephant (1989) – reveal a fully crystalized, mature creative strategy of the director. This strategy is defined by extreme reduction and repetitiveness of the narrative, emphasis on the compulsiveness of the characters’ actions, concentration on behavioural aspects combined with a radical rejection of psychology. It is realized primarily through long “walking” shots, and it results in a corporeal, trans-like experience of the film, in a specific relationship of the viewer with the characters and also, consequently, with the body of the film itself. Clarke forces on the viewer the constant contact with the human figure on the screen, while methodically depriving him or her of the possibility of identification. The author problematizes this disturbed identification by analyzing Alan Clarke’s films and by situating them in the context of Robert Bresson’s Notes on Cinematography, which in a way anticipate Clarke’s style, and also in relation to the theoretical concepts of bodily perception of the cinema developed by Jennifer M. Barker.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 114
  • Page Range: 104-124
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Polish