1. In two clips, Karma Police and Rabbit in your Headlights, we have two
similar but not identical situations. A person is being followed, is hit by
cars and at the end there is a kind of a cut. In one case it is a complete cut
- the person stops running and stands still, so that the cars explode - a
reversal of the situation - and in Karma Police he lights a match, starting a
huge fire. This breaks the vicious circle of the nightmare, and indeed I find
it very successful, which...
2. ... is why I admire these two video clips very much. They present a
very nice cinematic equivalent of waking up, because his standing still means
for me "Okay, if I wake up, the nightmare will disappear."
3. The video clip Karma Police stages another feature of the nightmarish
situation perfectly, namely the paradoxical mixture of immobility and violent
motion. You move, but the faster you move in a nightmare world the more you
become aware of your immobility. For example, when the car...
4. ...accelerates and tries to catch up with the person, but, though it
gets faster, they somehow never meet. This is interesting because it sheds new
light on the old paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, whereby Achilles cannot
catch up with the tortoise. This is the elementary machinery of dream logic. So
why do I mention this? Isn't this mixture of extreme mobility and immobility
also our situation as cinema or video spectators? We are, as spectators, having
our own mobility reduced, while...
5. ... simultaneously being bombarded with extreme activity. We are
immobilised, but at the same time ?part of a cinematic event?. So I would say
that nightmare is not only one of the possible (?) and themes of film, but that
the formal composition of film is itself something nightmarish.
