Journal Prompt: video art exhibition

SCORSESE AT ACMI

The box office staff assured me that an hour and a half would be ample time to absorb all there is to absorb from their Scorsese exhibit. The staff obviously did not consider the fact that an hour and a half was barely enough time to scour every storyboard, study every marked up script and analyse every carefully chosen film excerpt displayed throughout the exhibit. 

The exhibition begins in a mock set up of Scorsese's grandparents' living room, as the story of their journey from Italy to the US - narrated by Scorsese, himself - is told on the television screen in the fake room. It becomes clear that it's no coincidence that family, whether blood relation or symbolic, is such a significant theme in Scorsese's films.

It was quite a remarkable experience to be engulfed in the filmmaker's world for this period of time. Behind the scenes pictures of some of Hollywood's biggest stars on the set of the Scorsese films that launched their careers cluttered the walls, while original costumes used to get Cate Blanchett into character as Katherine Hepburn and Gwen Stefani into character as Jean Harlow dominated the floor.

The theme of red was particularly noticeable. Scorsese's films are known as some of Hollywood's most violent, and this idea is echoed all throughout the exhibition. Personally, I would have appreciated a sub-category on said violence within the exhibition, with Scorsese discussing his motives behind creating such violent pieces of work, and why this appeals to him. Obviously, such subject matter is par for the course when it comes to the gangster genre but Scorsese's specific style of covering this violence is similar to Tarantino's in that it is often included in sequences that are on the light-hearted side, not necessarily allowing audience's to feel the full weight of what they have just witnessed.

But the aspect that separates Scorsese's work from others and propels his into the realm of art rather than merely film is his collaboration with editor Thelma Schoonmaker. It is commonly acknowledged that a screen work does not really exist until it enters the editing suite - this is where the real magic is done, allowing the narrative to come alive. The exhibition uses the example of a crucial sequence in Goodfellas (1990) in which protagonist Henry Hill is paranoid about being caught moving cocaine around the city. Scorsese and Schoonmaker do not simply tell you how Henry is feeling with this sequence. Your heart is racing at the same speed, sweat beads begin to form on the back of your hands and you are sitting on the edge of your seat, praying that you do not get caught. Schoonmaker's quick cuts, keen sense of narrative timing and use of exaggerated sound design make all of this possible. 

The purpose of art, after all, is to illicit an emotional response from the consumer. After an hour and a half in the world of Scorsese, I was still hungry for more.