A Non-Anthropocentric Antigone
By CŽdric Anger
Straub and HuilletΥs aim in Antigone is radically different from PasoliniΥs in Oedipus. Here the issue is not to reproduce the sensation of primitive violence expressed in the myth, nor the incorporation of biographical information in the legend, but to revive the spirit and the original conditions of SophoclesΥ play in the setting of the ruins of the Segeste theatre in Sicily.
At the centre of the film, there is first a tree that we sense had a hard time surviving the winter. The moss is dry and the leaves yellowed by the sun. The mushroom sprouting at the roots indicates the age of the tree. It is, in other words, a tree that Straub went to the trouble of observing and then filming. This is something few directors do anymore as most of them operate more and more like Τparachutists', filming without taking the trouble to look. The mechanical eye of the camera cannot imitate the trembling and blinking of the human eye. We must look; we see and show what we have seen; we must spend time in the shot locations and get to know even the merest pebble in order to film; we must let the elements of nature sweep us away and render the taste of the soil and sunlight. This is what the Straubs (Jean-Marie and his wife and co-director Danile Huillet) did, in tireless dedication to a give-and-take with Nature. When they arrive on a location, they do not limit themselves to a cursory glance; on the contrary, they stop at every detail (lighting, contrast) and retain only the effects. Straub chooses the impressions he wants to create and puts aside anything that is useless to him. He is an incisive observer of his chosen locationΥs reality and in order to better perceive things, he limits himself to specific impressions. For what matters most in film are the details and the reality of landscape is nothing more than the sum of these details. It is not difficult for someone to tell when a cinematographer has gone to the trouble of looking around him: things unfamiliar to others suddenly seem familiar. This is where the impression we get of Antigone springs from: that we see a tree for the first time. The creation of a shot for a film director is what the left hook is to the boxer: it is a matter of distancing. ItΥs a matter of ethics too, because Straub is well aware that you cannot film a tree or anything else if you donΥt take the time to look at it and make it come alive in the proper way. In reality, the question Straub poses is a simple one: where to place the camera? At what distance should it be placed from people and objects> this distance is the key difference between eroticism and pornography and Antigone must be viewed erotically when in her last moments the wind billows her robe, revealing her naked calf and the pores of her sunburnt skin.
Distance, a feature of space, guides Straub to use it as his springboard in respecting the ruins of the ancient theatre. And for the director, ΤorganisingΥ space means finding the perfect spot to film a scene that specific point from which we can film everything without cutting out anything to render the sense of the actors, the air between them without changing the axis. Economy of angle (there are only two slight zoom-ins in Antigone) is the driving force behind StraubΥs extensive research. He had to make all his previous films to arrive at this point. He had to make CŽzanne to be able to shoot the angles of Antigone. There is not a single ugly shot in Antigone, not only because he substituted Mount Saint-Victoire with the ruins of Segeste, but because he "built" his frameshots one by one, measuring how much sky and how much air over the heads of his actors there was according to the action, the abatement and the intensity.
Yet, we must point out that Straub does not measure the sky in the sense of the anthologist. Every inch he suggests is significant because all the characters in Antigone are not more important than the rocks, the tree or the light. If it is true that every shot expresses and contains the directorΥs view of the world, then we must directly add that in StraubΥs kingdom there is no man. Man will never be the centre of the universe, that is, the centre of the shot. Antigone is not an anthropocentric film. Like Renoir, thus Straub firmly believes that the world is a total. Consequently, he holds a profound respect for any living thing. Straub exclusively films the ΤenvironmentΥ and man in his universe is just one of the elements of this environment. It is not unusual for a character to exit the frame, while we remain there watching. There are no empty frames in Straub. The passion for observation leads him to the perpetuation of the tree and his respect for the surroundings will make him never cut a shot while a breeze blows or a bird sings. There are shots that must be extended, that must be allowed to take their time.
Thus, all the scenes in Antigone aim at seizing (i.e. precisely recording) anything that can be seen or heard, ranging from the wind rustling the leaves and blowing across the microphones to the light that the director observes in all its manifestations and the shadows of the clouds caressing the cheek like a veil. The sensuality is natural and if the light in Antigone is perhaps the most beautiful we have ever seen, this is because when darkness approaches, Straub turns off his cameras.
Sound is captured in much the same way. The authenticity f sound is a religion for Straub. The sound must be that which is recorded on location and Straub prefers a mediocre sound that is recorded at the same time as the image to the perfection of sound added later in the studio. As the director refuses to dub the voices, the film captures and records for eternity the sigh or flutter in the young girlΥs voice: whatever is impossible to reproduce. For in Antigone the bodies live more through the voice Π the variations, the intensity, the articulation Π than through their movements. It is not words that bring them to life; it is their articulation. And we rarely find this sense in cinema, that the actors learn to inhale their text at the same moment they recite it. In Antigone, the bodies move little. Straub does not, however, impose complete immobility. He may in fact be afraid of it since the presence of the wind is always felt, incessantly tousling the hair and ballooning the robes of the actors. The bodies are immobile Π without posing Π like the tree and they too seem rooted to the ground.
In this way this natural Antigone is reunited with the ancient spirit without SophoclesΥ play losing its timeliness for one minute (wars, despots and death still exist). It was re-interpreted first by Hšlderlin and then by Brecht. After the two Empedocles (The Death of Empedocles and Black Sin) Antigone is StraubΥs first female protagonist. In political tragedy men do not have the leading role; it is the turn of the young woman with the Τdead spiritΥ to lead the dance, to learn everything and to die. The beauty of SophoclesΥ work did not stop it from shedding light on the discord that rips the world apart and the myth of Antigone takes on new life every time humanity comes face to face with great trials.

From the article "Quatre aventures de la tragŽdie" that appeared
in the special publication for the ThŽ‰tres au cinŽma event, Bobini 1995