Today I caught up with the movie Rose of Nevada. I came away with that familiar feeling with movies of this genre, that a coherent meaning was obscured from view. As a consequence it was difficult to find sympathy for the characters and their relationships in each time frame. Without some kind of signpost we find ourselves using much of our mental and emotional resources just to piece together and grasp a narrative.
I found myself finally able to accept this technique, but by then my feeling was disinterested detachment from character, and I looked more at the surface techniques, including the extraordinary realism around the storm. It is the kind of movie, such as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer or Memento, where time slicing is a vital part of the narrative. So, a second viewing becomes more enlightening and the experience becomes richer.
Such films that
fragment time ask us to do significant
intellectual work, but there is usually an emotional anchor that keeps us
invested while we solve the puzzle.
In Memento, it
is Leonard's desperate search for meaning; in Oppenheimer, it is
Oppenheimer's moral and psychological journey. Even when the chronology is
fragmented, the emotional trajectory remains relatively clear.
Rose of Nevada seems less interested in such emotional
identification. It works around atmosphere, memory and place. The characters
often feel like discrete, disconnected figures in a folk tale or legend rather
than fully developed psychological individuals. That may be intentional, but it
comes at a cost. We expend energy simply
trying to establish "where" and "when" they are. For me at
least, not a lot left over for empathy.
So, "disinterested detachment" sums up my initial response. Maybe this mirrors the way the film is crafted? I have learned after viewing (I tend not to read reviews before seeing a movie) that the movie was shot without sound, and all the sounds – voices as well as all else, were dubbed in afterwards. Oddly distant dialogue, the slightly unreal soundscape, and the fragmented timescales all placed a layer of distance between me and what was in front of me.
The storm sequence is perhaps the clearest exception to this direction of trvel in the film. Here, narrative uncertainty becomes irrelevant in these isolated action snapshots. The
sea, the boat, the weather, the physical peril—these are immediate and
comprehensible. Here, the technique adds to the experience rather than obscuring it. I found
these sequences, and the business of catching, gutting and storing the fish, among the most compelling for exactly that
reason.
So yes, a second viewing of Rose of Nevada is for the best, though I think there is an
important distinction with Rose of Nevada compared, say, to a second viewing of Memento. Here, a second
viewing (I haven’t tried it yet) should reveal how meticulously the narrative
has been constructed. We expect the puzzle pieces to click together, because that is
the story, and the story lose ambiguity and brings a clarity by its end. With Rose
of Nevada, I am not entirely sure that a second viewing would lead to that kind
of resolution. Rather, it would just help me to stop worrying about the puzzle
and attend to other things: the imagery, the sound design, the symbolism, the
sense of Cornwall as a place haunted by its own past. And all that.
So , thinking on awhile, Rose of Nevada has something in common with modernist literature than with
puzzle-box cinema. For example, reading The Waste Land for a second time – or even
umpteen times - does not necessarily “solve”
it; instead, once we are less anxious
about understanding every reference, we begin to notice patterns, echoes and
moods. The experience deepens without becoming entirely transparent.
That raises the question of what kind of satisfaction a film
owes its audience. I suppose over these years of looking at traditions around modernism through art cinema and modernist poetry, we know that
ambiguity and uncertainty are watchwords. But for me anyway, ambiguity works best when there is still
something solid to hold onto—character, emotion, theme, image, or story.
So for me, Rose of
Nevada is too ambiguous. It asks too
much of the audience before it has earned an emotional investment. It’s not
just me saying "I didn't understand
it." The film’s artistic method and ambitions compete with, rather than support,
its human drama.
I will see it again: I am confident my opinion will shift, like those gutted fish on the trawler's deck!