From A to B

From A to B, Ruben van der Vleuten 2013 

I've always been fascinated with the postal system, how I can drop an addressed letter into a marked box in one place and, less than 24 hours later, that letter will (seemingly) suddenly appear in front of the addressee 500 kilometres away, all whilst I've spent the night tucked up in bed, sound asleep.
Whilst I often earnestly ponder and wonder just how our mail gets delivered (usually) so efficiently and so quickly, Industrial and Interactive Designer Ruben van der Vleuten decided to find out just what the process is like by inserting a small camera in a self-addressed parcel.

The inside of the parcel, housing the camera, battery and controller circuit

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van der Vleuten said that the timer circuit was set to record a 3 second video every minute and to record longer videos whilst the box was moving, so that all the action was caught on camera.
Having just one camera lens seemed not to matter as he captured a whole lot of interesting footage. His edited video above takes you through the whole postal process and has answered many of my mail-related questions.

Very fascinating.

L'Ecume Des Jours / Foam of the Daze / Mood Indigo

Earlier this year - after being very highly recommended by a friend who lived in France for several years - I read l'Ecume Des Jours (Foam of the Daze) written by celebrated French author Boris Vian in 1947.
It's a lovely little novel set in a very imaginative, surrealist world where jazz, beautiful women and 'Jean-Sol Partre' reign above all.

The novel is full of great imagery and ideas, including talking mice, a sensitive environment that is reactive to emotions, fatal illnesses caused by flower-inhabited lungs, and a rather revolutionary 'pianocktail' machine which creates cocktails from the music played on a piano. I'm not really sure if the world that Vian creates is ultimately more beautiful than it is scary; I'm inclined to think otherwise, but it certainly is lovely to visit.
Not being French, I can't/won't attempt to comment on a well-loved novel by an author considered to be a national treasure, but I will say that it is a nice and surprising read, and that the upcoming film adaptation by Michel Gondry seems to be very well-suited to the director's oeuvre.

Just look at that imagery! Vian and Gondry were surely made for each other (although throughout his life Boris Vian was always staunchly against film adaptations of his novels - so I do wonder if he were alive if he would still remain adamant).

Being a fan of graphic design I did a search of Foam of the Daze book covers and posters and found that through its many re-prints there have been a number of beautifully designed covers.

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A poster from a French theatre production

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Illustration by Mary Birdy

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A poster for 1968 film adaptation by Charles Belmont

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Michel Gondry's 2013 adaptation is being released in English as Mood Indigo and stars Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh and Omar Sy. I look forward to seeing if Gondry envisions the world in the same way that I did when I read the book.

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"......how do you spend your time?"  

"I spend the better part of my day," said Colin, "contemplating the night."

- L'Ecume Des Jours, Boris Vian 1947

 

L'Eclisse - Vittoria & Piero

L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni 1962

In Vittoria's (Monica Vitti) second doomed love affair in L'Eclisse, she meets and is pursued by a materialistic stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon), the two both spiritually and emotionally empty, yet unable to fully connect with one another.

Monica Vitti & Alain Delon

Poles apart. Poles......apart. Yeah.

The pair first meet in a brilliantly executed scene in the Roman Stock Exchange, where the daily chaos of the stock market is shown as animalistic and primitive in its harsh nature and ruthlessness. 

The pair's love affair is always accentuated by their relation to the surrounding environment - the rich and looming history of the Roman stock exchange, the empty suburban streets, in the shadows of the city skyline, observing each other and others through windows and doorways.

L'Eclisse is well-known for its powerful closing scenes, which forgoes the main characters entirely. It is a poignant, beautifully-executed ending to a powerful film, and an interesting way to close Antonioni's trilogy.

L'Eclisse - Vittoria & Riccardo

 L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni 1962

Antonioni is the architectural auteur. He uses the built environment to depict the alienation of modern life, and emphasises landscape and architecture to diminish the human to their surroundings.
Being a fan of architecture and a cinematography lover, his films blow me over with their poetic and considered photography.

L'Eclisse is the final film in a loose thematic trilogy beginning with L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961), and it is possibly the most powerful and beautiful of the three.
The opening scene, shown below, depicts the emotionally exhausting break-up of Vittoria (Antonioni's muse Monica Vitti) and Riccardo (Francisco Rabal). The scene is quiet, with little dialogue and the continuous humming of a desktop fan, a fantastic inclusion to the scene. The mise-en-scene is crucial to the narrative, Antonioni using the room's dimensions, its objects, furniture and artworks to depict and accentuate the emotional states of the characters.

Francisco Rabal

Monica Vitti

It begins by revealing small details of the room and its occupants, giving an incomplete view of the scene, tactically showing fractured shots of the setting's elements, whilst gradually allowing viewers to piece together the scenery, and the plot.

The Criterion Collection cites Michelangelo Antonioni's favourite themes as "alienation and the difficulty of finding connections in an increasingly mechanised world" and L'Eclisse's opening scene is testament to this.

The director uses the art in the apartment as a visual representation of the character's interior states

This Roman structure alludes to the nuclear war threat, highlighted in the film's closing scene

Vittoria is disillusioned, alienated, and drifting amongst the solidity of the modern built environment, unable to make meaningful connections with other people - although really, all the characters share these struggles. This is tellingly shown in the last scene that Vittoria and Riccardo share together, where after futilely trying to mend their relationship, Riccardo walks away, not even attempting to look back at his ex-fiance.  

Riccardo walks away from Vittoria, never looking back

This is a very powerful and emotional film, Antonioni expertly manipulating images and mise-en-scene to depict the struggles of modern life.

If you're a lover of beautiful cinematography, considered mise-en-scene, architecture, the landscape and looking at beautiful people, L'Eclisse is surely for you.
Antonioni is a master of film art, and it's a pleasure to see the world through his eyes.