Milton Moses Ginsberg's first feature film Coming Apart (1969) emerged at the tail end of the Sixties. This was the decade in which Warhol had investigated the effects of long-duration, 'static' films such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964); in David Holzman's Diary (1967), Jim McBride presented a film diary in which the apparatus of filmmaking was made explicit, with the protagonist documenting his personal life on celluloid; Michael Snow had explored the character of a single room in Wavelength (1967); Tony Conrad had reduced the magical silver screen to a Flicker (1966).Released on Hallowe'en in 1969, Coming Apart is rarely mentioned today, yet it prefigures the home recording, YouTube diarising, other webcam exploits and the documentation of our daily lives that is so prevalent today. And it bears the traces of the much-considered avant-garde culture with which it was contemporaneous when it was first screened. Moreover, it is a film whose formal approach succeeds in 'reflecting' the dramatic content and is certainly worth taking a closer look at.
The film is a document of the encounters that psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Rip Torn), under the pseudonym of Joe Glassman, has with a number of women, including lovers and former patients. He is using an apartment, away from his wife and workplace, to which he can invite these women. Joe seems to be recording these conversations and sexual encounters in order to evaluate his own psychological condition; he is disturbed by his behaviour and becomes increasingly unnerved by the camera's record of this. The camera is hidden and the women, for the most part, are unaware of its status as anything other than a "kinetic art object". This is a personal document and Joe wants control of its production. As a psychiatrist Joe is used to the position of interrogator and is keen to maintain this position - he scolds one of his patients (Sally Kirkland, whose performance as the damaged, erotic, frantic JoAnn in the film is compelling), for attempting to take his picture. Joe regularly stops and restarts the recording, so the film omits periods of time and action of unquantifiable lengths. So desperate to find a sense of identity, sanity and order, Joe literally controls the film.
Coming Apart, like many of the 'minimalist' and 'structural' films, but also the earliest films, has a technical economy. The film is shot using one camera, always fixed in position but moved from one point to another every so often, and the camera is identified as part of the onscreen environment. We even see it reflected in the glass hanging in Joe's apartment. As opposed to the omniscient eye which looks upon the typical Hollywood film the camera is located firmly within the drama and the function of the recording device is even directly questioned (this tendency is carried on in works such as Tony Conrad's Concord Ultimatum (1977) and The Blair Witch Project (1999)). Of course this seems commonplace now, owing to the endless self-reflexive documentation and bedroom sermons aired across the world wide web, particularly in virtue of the fact that the camera is stationary in the film, reminding me of an example as seemingly unrelated as the guitar 'virtuosos' filming themselves on YouTube.
As a subject of examination the film offers Joe not only a camera, but also a mirror with which he can 'see himself'. The mirror covers the entire wall behind the couch and its edges match those of the camera frame for the most part. The name Joe Glazer suggests both Gaze - looking - and Glaze, the latter given a variation in his pseudonym Glassman (Glass Man). The mirror glass reflects Joe's behaviour and the film captures all that unfolds in front of it and even behind it. As a psychiatrist, Joe must be well-versed in the symbolic resonance of the mirror.
All of the sound is direct but several passages lack a visual element - the screen is blank. The artificiality of the filmmaking enterprise is underlined by the intrusion of technical faults and features into the fiction onscreen. The recording microphone issues feedback and the leader tape is left in the film. Ginsberg uses this material to give the impression that the film is something homemade and amateurish.
Throughout, the film is almost coming apart.
For all of the apparent formal divergences from the usual Hollywood film that Coming Apart takes, the setup allows Ginsberg to maintain and even simplify many of the straightforward techniques of the dramatic film. The positioning of the camera and mirror within the room allows a variety of shots to accumulate: close ups, medium close ups, wide shots. Although the lack of complex edits removes the typical shot/reverse shot procedure, the use of the mirror enables us to see the faces of two characters as they are engaged in a conversation. The shots that would ordinarily comprise an edited sequence are mapped along a single plane. In the essay accompanying Kino Video's DVD release of the film, the director describes the visibility of two characters when conversing face to face as being an "odd and pleasing result". The 180 degree line can be traversed whilst maintaining the relative positions of the characters on a particular side of the frame. And what is behind the camera is made visible - the film cleverly tries to expand its playing field to encompass a space beyond the screen in front of us (which even reminds me of the way in which Velazquez used a mirror in his painting Las Meninas), which actually contributes to the 'reality' by removing the sense of a film crew (a comforting thought typical of those perturbed by horror films) and gives the sense of a diary/found document.
It may seem that all of the angles are covered within the formal setup, but the inactive camera is not able to serve the drama all of the time, particularly during much of the sexual activity and when Joe welcomes visitors at the door.
In Coming Apart the viewer is often excluded from the drama, yet drawn into the psychosexual interactions unravelling on the screen. We are not afforded the possibility of assuming the point of view of a particular character in Joe's apartment. We are only identified with the camera itself, invited to take on the character of a machine. We are nowhere to be seen when the camera looks directly into the mirror.
Yet we feel implicated when characters look directly at us - we are both absent and included. We are forced into self-awarenesss, instead of being comfortable in our anonymity. Although nowadays we are happy to share our own lives using social networking platforms, these are transmissions that are usually undertaken with the intention of communicating and we are still concerned when we are the subject of hidden surveillance. It strikes us that Joe's footage was not intended for public viewing - and this may have contributed to viewers' unease in the past. The camera itself is also absent and present. As opposed to the standard documentary process, the characters within the film seem truly unaware of the presence of the camera, which always modifies behaviour. Toward the end of the film, Joe explains to one of his visitors that she is being filmed. Once the apparatus is unveiled, the reality is lost as far as Joe is concerned and we immediately see the girl adapting her actions based on her awareness. Prior to making the film Ginsberg was an assistant on the television series Candid Camera and assisted the Maysles brothers in syncing their verite films. Coming Apart is open in addressing the issue of how behaviour changes once the individual knows that they are being filmed.
The linear start/stop editing of the film is intentional and is handled by Joe. This amounts to self-censorship uncommon in most films. Joe controls what we see and seems to do so according to impulse, rather than design - the editing thus becoming symptomatic of his psychological compulsions and emotional reflexes. This is evident in a fantastic montage of Torn's expressions, in which words are largely removed (see visual essay posted separately above). In the shooting script, published by Lancer (1969) Joe states that it is the expense of the film that leads him to conserve it by switching the camera on and off. The lack of edits serves the actors' performances; conversations and actions unfold throughout uninterrupted takes of several minutes, rather than being composites of discrete sequences from a variety of takes. This gives the dialogue a more natural and 'lifelike' feel. Such 'realism', however, can be off-putting to viewers who are used to the constructed pace of typical movies. Ginsberg has noted the influence of Yasujiro Ozu, whose films are also composed of long takes. Warhol took a more extreme approach in Vinyl (1965), by placing all of the action within a single shot. Coming Apart does not busy itself with building a back story or interweaving storylines. Ginsberg has compared the effect to listening in on the neighbours through the walls: "who needs a back story".
As devices, the camera and mirror allow us to multiply ourselves, to externalise ourselves, but only in a non-physical way. The multiplication of Joe via these devices seems fitting since he already uses two personas that we know of in his personal relationships. However, this self-obsession creates a psychic feedback loop and the film has the effect of amplifying Joe's nueroses. The use of the reflective surfaces exacerbates this tendency. At the outset of the film, Joe's recorded voice is also interrupted by feedback. The film is self-contained and amplifying, rising in intensity towards its peak. It is worth comparing the appearance of the nightime scenes with the visual pattern later achieved in Tony Conrad's Film Feedback (1974) a film which distilled cinema itself down to a self-enclosed, self-referencing mechanism, an endgame.
The mirror image and the recorded image are immaterial; their 'reality' and 'validity' can be deceptive. Joe is uncertain how much he can really discover about his psychology by referring to these images. Images can be illusory and appearances can be false. Joe uses this to his advantage: during one encounter with a young model he questions whether the photograph in his hands depicts her breasts accurately - this is obviously a ploy to see the girl's naked body. However, later in the film Joe is duped by a clown which throws off its suit to reveal an alluring woman; this alluring woman dissolves as she strips, leaving a skinny male. This shedding of identities indicates a failure of recognition on Joe's part and frustrates Joe's self-examination whihc only seems to envelop him in multiples of a single, confused identity. Joe must wish he could peel off the layers as easily as the clown.
One of the most conventional scenes in the film is a breakup scene that we may take to be Joe ending the relationship with his wife. Our engagement with the drama is prevented by the camera position which leaves us to stare at the characters' torsos. But this is not Joe's wife anyway, it is one of his preferred mistresses. Joe's real wife appears at the apartment later in the film and informs us of his double life. Joe Glazer/Joe Glassman, Psychiatrist/Photographer.
Coming Apart assumes the form of a film document that was not meant to be seen. Ultimately, the film finds us out, pulls us up on our voyeurism and ultimately denies us any further visual stimulus - the mirror is smashed by JoAnn who may even have killed Joe. We are denied further glimpses into Joe's life and at the end of the film we are left to reflect on our own personalities, instead of focusing on the neuroses of others.
Following the film's release there were few supportive voices behind it. Many derided the film's content as faux-transgressive and little more than a charming time capsule which tells us about the Sixties' sexual revolution. Others picked on the film's knuckleheaded formal execution as comparable to stag films. One dismissive Life reader commented on Richard Schickel's favourable review by protesting that Ginsberg is nothing other than "dirty old man!" Interestingly, Schickel's bold attack on presumed community standards is still worth reflecting on today:
"Still contemporary community standards are in such a shambles that no honest man can say with certainty whether an object of art (or commerce) really violates them." ('Cracking Up on Candid Camera', Life October 17, 1969)
Even in 1969, Schickel was pointing out the possibility that technological mediation and recording could dissociate us further from emotional reality, a question that is still central in web culture today. And on page 2 of the same issue of Life, a politically incorrect advertisement for a Sylvania television prides itself on providing a picture of life "the way it really is".
