Helen (Rosalie Lowe) lives in a big house off the coast of Fort Clyde,
Maine, a location that is seemingly cutoff from the rest of civilization. We see another woman, Charlie (Anabelle LeMieux), moving into
the house at the beginning of the film. Charlie
is Helen’s research assistant. Their
daily work consists of Helen looking at CCTV monitors that display images of
the woods that surround the home. Meanwhile,
Charlie spends a day, sometimes a night, going to, gazing at, and analyzing the
spots filmed by the cameras. Suspended
in the air, large grey squares indicate where these spots are. These strange goings on are all in the
service of Helen’s talent for predicting the stock market just by interpreting
the images of the forest.
Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan’s first film is a
mystery. The film knows it’s a mystery,
one that’s whimsical, one with its own rules to abide and break, recalling
Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go
Boating. Where Rivette’s film is
loose, limber, and improvisatory, Bingham and Molzan’s is precise, cerebral,
and yet tranquil. Considering the
secluded location, there are no signs of cabin fever. Helen and Charlie stave off restlessness by
the work they do. Or, should I say, the
games they play.
For the Plasma is
all about making meaning from the environment around, about converting the
natural world into data to interpret.
Although different in terms of agenda, mood, and genre, For the Plasma belongs in a conversation
with a recent spate of Hollywood films fascinated with data: Zero Dark Thirty, Gone Girl, Blackhat. Where those films are epic (globe-trotting)
depictions of worlds swamped in images, generating paranoia for whoever has to
look and analyze them. For the Plasma, on the other hand, is
more reassuring. It seems to say, this
work, this analysis offers stability in one’s life. Stability turns into stasis though if
unchecked, if pursued for too long of an interval, then its time to leave this
hermetic environment, cocooned by the familiarity of people, places, and
especially things.
Even if the film presents us with squares (monitors,
screens, windows, suspended metal frames, the use of academy ratio), For the Plasma is actually a circle, a
circular narrative in fact. In one key
moment in the film, one that inspired me to write this post, Helen explains her
peculiar method of interpreting the market in the newspaper, circling a section
with a red marker. In turn, Charlie
demonstrates how the fictionalized insect in Kōbō Abe’s The Ark Sakura, the “clockbug,” survives. At a slow pace, the insect moves in a circle,
eating its own shit. The clockbug’s
movement conveniently describes the film’s movement, with its looping structure
in which Helen and Charlie frame, observe, analyze and repeat. The square becomes the circle.
