Review of Chronicle of a Summer

I see that some people are becoming drowsy during screenings of this film? Actually the previous critique reminds me of a scene in Annie Hall when Annie and Alvy are waiting in the movie line and a man behind them is obnoxiously breaking down the "indulgent" vision of Bergman for an uninterested date and won't shut up because he feels he has an "opinion." Well, maybe we have all been that guy once or twice. But you know, Anthropology is tough; it's not an ethnocentric entity as individuals are. It's a "one way journey" as a professor of mine put it...once you turn off the cultural program (if you can) running your higher functions, you are set adrift onto a sea full of dangers with no life raft. If you survive, you do not view the ocean the same way ever again. Sorry to get metaphorically annoying as if I were qualified to say anything, but this film is not a waste and it should not put one to sleep if one is interested in ethnography. It takes a direct approach of sorts and it is an art form. I have come to see that. There are layers of truth in this work and telling data the filmmakers have taken unique artistic and analytical pains to share with us by abandoning their theoretical life rafts to sink or swim. The film portrays a very different kind of ethnographic subject-Us- the children of Mother Modernity from various walks of life and since a major theme being explored by Rouch is happiness, I think in some small way it applies to many of us; we the individualists. Maybe by reading some of Rouch's articles as a supplement to his film work the viewing experience will become much more invigorating for some. If not, then I guess anthropology isn't going to win this one. I give it a ten for real originality man.