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Alan Berliner's - WIDE AWAKE |
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Contributed by Sara Schieron
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Wednesday, 19 April 2006 |
The recent release by personal documentary legend Alan Berliner, WIDE
AWAKE is a semi-indulgent expose of the filmmaker's struggles with
insomnia. As much about sleep depravation as it is about the creative
process, the film is a playful and engaging exploration of the patterns
we create wittingly and unwittingly on a daily basis, and where those
patterns lead.
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Provoked by the birth of his first child, Berliner resorts to the same brand of nagging inquiry we've seen in NOBODY'S BUSINESS. His family teeters between exasperation and sympathy as he pushes them for answers to questions they may or may not have. To an effect, his questions about the sleep disorders of his father and grandfather are also questions about heritage: how does a family create a disorder and how can I stop it? Yet, the question: "should I stop it?" is also posed, as it's made clear that, regardless of the lineage of insomnia in his family, his insomnia is built by a patterned behavior that, for whatever reason, has worked for him.
Assembled to suggest a circular structure, the film begins with the conflict of Berliner's insomnia and explores the tension between the need to fix and the need to keep that disorder. Berliner is a filmmaker but he's also the trusted archivist of his family's photographs, films and documents, in addition to this he extensively collects and archives sound files, newspaper articles, and random objects. And he does all of this critical, deliberate, specific labor in the wee hours of the night. This is, by the way, a fact he seems to like. Obsessed with the issue of sleeplessness he can rattle off artists and philosophers who equate the rebelliousness of art and inquiry to the rebelliousness of keeping one's own schedule apart from the world. Charlie Parker, he says, would have been a different person with out his sleep depravation. To an effect, his need to change his sleeping patterns is met by his fear of losing his established creative process. This is a creative process we get to watch in all its array and disarray. And in that flurry of madness and organization, it's not hard to see why this is a difficult change for Berliner. His work looks meaningful and his actions show us he's vindicated by his labor. Yet, Berliner is aware of the dangers of his exhaustion. He says the term "human error" could be reconsidered to mean ‘errors we make when we're sleepy', because, as he shows, the fate of the nation, and the world series does rest on such things as a good night's sleep.
Using a beautifully compiled collection of clips both from vintage narrative and educational films WIDE AWAKE goes into a fantastic universe of cultural references and old commercials to prove that the world is full of sights that need to be studied. Clips from retro sleeping aid commercials are repeated at near seizure inducing speeds and we see the pattern of our nightly actions scrutinized. These montage patterns smack of BALLET MECHANIQUE and the group of suggestively communistic film experiments of the 20's. Body as machine is all over this film.
At the same time, Berliner knows he's not a machine and his son is there to remind him that his insomnia is hurting his family. He has spent his working life trying to keep up with the world and now that he has a son, he wants to keep up with his son - who sleeps 10 hours a night. This task seems all the more challenging to Berliner than any other he's tackled. Sadly though practically, the film ends before we can see the end of the journey.
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