the refrain of love

This week’s blog topic is to think about the theme of a film based on the elements we as viewers saw and heard from the film and then think about the relationship between elements and the overall feeling.

I choose Nathaniel Dorsky’s Love’s Refrain to examine this topic. What left in my memory about the film is the overall feeling of a series of dream like scenery, like the feeling given by the lomography pictures. In the past I always considered this type of film cannot be tasted by its individual pieces, meaning the film is not memorable in its particular scene but an overall sense.

However, we were asked to clarify the visual and sonic elements appear in the film before screening and thus I made myself realize the elements. The film presents one and another frames of urban scenery, natural and artificial creatures. For example, a white string pinned on the trunk of the tree and naturally let the wind blow on it. The string is blown like figurative movement. It is this type of scenes presented in the film that gives the sense of sweetness and the flow of nature. Hence, if we are defining the theme of Love’s Refrain based on what we saw and heard (scenes→overall→theme), my understanding step is:

The film is purely presenting urban sceneries → overall pleasure feeling → since the harmonious scenes we received from the nature flow into city scenes → what Dorsky’s meaning Love’s Refrain.