Mille Gilles

A film by Ijsbrand van Veelen. FirstRun/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.
44 mins.

Reviewed by Michael Punt

mpunt@easynet.co.uk

In 1628 René Descartes gathered up his inheritance and left for Holland to lead his life as a philosopher out of the reach of his family. By 1637 he regarded his work Discourse on Method as a philosophical stepping stone to significant transformations in the practical sciences – especially medicine. For Descartes philosophy was personally useful, a means for the pursuit of truth, and a tool for the liberation of man from the tyranny of nature. His lasting legacy was to invert the relation between abstraction and utility, and make philosophy useful. To understand the difference between Cartesian abstraction and Cartesian utility however, quite different methodologies are necessary. Ijsbrand van Veelen’s film Mille Gilles, endevours to compress these two aspects of the impact of Gilles Deleuze on twentieth century philosophy and art in a way that may be consistent with a Deleuzian vision but comes close to incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. It is not simply that the core ideas are buried in their creative reconstruction, but that the purpose of the film is never quite clear: is it an exposition, a critical intervention, a reiteration, or an artwork?

Patricia Pisters’ exposition which runs throughout the film is, as one would expect from her authority, informed, clear and intellectually generous, but the cutting and superimposition of the image (together with the unavoidable undertitles) makes much of what is said hard to follow unless one knows in advance something of Deleuze’s contribution to philosophy and the humanities. This more or less rules out the film as a teaching aid, the more so since a number of other contributors, artists and musicians of considerable interest offer us incomplete readings of the elements of his philosophy that inspired them. Such eclecticism may be symptomatic of the very conditions that Deleuze tried to incorporate in his revisions, but exemplification is not the same as exegesis. The use of Deleuze by wonderfully creative individuals to challenge habitual thought does not necessarily explain the importance of his philosophical ideas.

Given the frequency of Deleuze’s metaphor of the ‘rhizome’ and ‘grass in the head’ that one finds in conference papers, artist’s statements and exhibition catalogues it is not surprising that it has virtually lost all vitality and significance through a process of casual appropriation. Like the Lacanian mirror, it is too frequently a short cut around a tendentious claim that should be carefully argued. As such the film becomes an object lesson for artists in how not to talk about their art. Art, like philosophy, is both fun and a serious business which deserves only the best of one’s mind.

Mille Gilles (the movie) however, does make its own artistic intervention. Van Veelen’s treatment of the image – its endless refraction and reworking as an electronic surface – does bring out the sense of intellectual helplessness that characterises the twentieth century. Nothing can be fully explained any more, and what we can explain simply unleashes the devil that history has repressed. At times the film is like an overworked draughtsman’s drawing in which the process of scratching and correction has gone on for so long that the paper is on the verge of giving way to the mark. More than the confident repetitions of familiar phrases, the fragility of the film image, as a picture without support, explains the key concepts against the grain of the text.

This is perhaps the abiding virtue of Mille Gilles, as a tempting trailer for the main movie on the importance of Deleuze’s philosophy as philosophy(a movie which has yet to be made). Mille Gille may encourage Moderns out of the Cartesian closet to look at his collection of important ideas. But by compacting his intellectual contributions with the various uses that are made of sound bites, it is always in danger of becoming mere hagiography.

It seems fitting that Descartes fled to Holland to live the life of a philosopher and get away from his father. It was a revolutionary time in Holland’s history that has left a lasting mark on the culture of the country. This perhaps explains why, four centuries later, this project should have been supported by the adventurous minds at VPRO (a Dutch television station). As part of a network of VPRO’s rejection of the canon and their earnest engagement with electronic media, Mille Gille, for all its shortcomings, is a valiant attempt to break habitual ways of thinking.