Power Of Emotion. The

German avant-garde film-maker and theorist Alexander Kluge makes no secret that Godard was a major influence on his work and it is certainly evident in this densely heteroclite montage of staged vignettes, documentary footage and archival film excerpts that more or less evidently relate to the film’s title.

The most easily accessible sections are the fiction pieces, although ironically two of them are largely concerned with the absence of emotion as first a woman refuses to express concern over her husband’s rape of her daughter and then later another women refuses to express concern over being raped by a man who saves her from a suicide bid.

A good deal of the film revolves around opera, always a locus of heightened emotion whilst war also has a prominent place. This summary, however barely touches on the rich variety of material which Kluge juxtaposes here in often apparently discontinuous ways. Clearly the provocatory intention was to keep the combinatory process as open as possible and for the audience to make their own connections, something which means that, although in its own way a remarkable film, The Power Of Emotion will appeal largely, if not only, to the academically-inclined.

DVD Extras: Audio Commentary by Dr Michelle Langford, The University of New South Wales

Available from: Madman

 

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