Where the Chocolate Mountains is a 55 minute experimental movie that uses amongst other trickery multiple superimpositions, mirroring (hence the title of this review) sculptural work, and delivers a visual narrative. I was sceptical before viewing the movie because the works of this artist that I've adored looked very definitively like the work of a celluloid film artist and this work was digital. Indeed in the Q&A after the screening I attended, Pat said that he was very resistant to changing to digital, but he said he did it because working with film was getting harder and harder. Contrary to his expectations it actually freed him up; he could do what he wanted more quickly, and he had more materials available (digital archives particularly). Digital technology has set him free to become an absolutely major artist, in my opinion. And I think old age has led him to "Pinturas negras" territory.
The Chocolate Mountains are an area of California where the military tests ordinance. They aren't anything special to look at. As a child growing up in California, O'Neill's family used to take holiday trips to Mexico. They used to go past signs to The Chocolate Mountains and Pat always wanted to go there because of the name. So it's some sort of analogy for America, the name is very seductive, but there's a lot of violence there and actually the mountains don't look so great. It's a complicated movie, he finds a lot of beauty in and around the L.A. River and in L.A., but there's also a sense of the infernal at every turn.
He made some sculptures from wood for the movie which are integrated throughout. His first calling before film was as a sculptor and his influences as an artist are largely sculptors. He manages to use some fairly simple cone scultpures in a variety of ways, some end up being very erotic (suggestive of thighs). He sometimes rotates them just to illustrate the relentlessness of time marching on (that was my take at least!). Oftentimes the conic imagery relates to unexploded ordnance.
My favourite shot from the movie is in the L.A. River, below some sort of bridge, and it looks like two snake-like creatures made of pure flame flirting with one another. He filmed a lot of actual materials on fire to graft into the movie. Scenes like this in the movie often have an unusual eroticism.
Although most of the film had scenes which are multiple superimpositions (O'Neill mentioned that 5 is his magic number for number of images to layer), some of my favourite shots are just completely unvarnished mobile phone footage he took whilst on a holiday in Ireland. There was a dog on the beach where he was staying who was lame in one of his front feet, but would still chase after anything, and would bark incessantly to try and get people to throw things to chase after. O'Neill said that he identified with the dog, mad, pathetic, old, energetic. Some of the scenes which chimed most with me are of buildings such as cathedrals, which he somehow manipulates to look more like capricci, filled with these flame creatures, filmed with a reflection along a vertical line, i.e. horizontal symmetry.
He uses a lot of weird cool sound clips. Creaky doors from his house but also audio from a long list of old b-movies such as The Beast of Yucca Flats.
It's a haunting film noir that has a true sense of night's mystery. The title potentially makes reference to the fact that though inspired by the Chocolate Mountains, they do not actually appear at any point in the movie.
The Chocolate Mountains are an area of California where the military tests ordinance. They aren't anything special to look at. As a child growing up in California, O'Neill's family used to take holiday trips to Mexico. They used to go past signs to The Chocolate Mountains and Pat always wanted to go there because of the name. So it's some sort of analogy for America, the name is very seductive, but there's a lot of violence there and actually the mountains don't look so great. It's a complicated movie, he finds a lot of beauty in and around the L.A. River and in L.A., but there's also a sense of the infernal at every turn.
He made some sculptures from wood for the movie which are integrated throughout. His first calling before film was as a sculptor and his influences as an artist are largely sculptors. He manages to use some fairly simple cone scultpures in a variety of ways, some end up being very erotic (suggestive of thighs). He sometimes rotates them just to illustrate the relentlessness of time marching on (that was my take at least!). Oftentimes the conic imagery relates to unexploded ordnance.
My favourite shot from the movie is in the L.A. River, below some sort of bridge, and it looks like two snake-like creatures made of pure flame flirting with one another. He filmed a lot of actual materials on fire to graft into the movie. Scenes like this in the movie often have an unusual eroticism.
Although most of the film had scenes which are multiple superimpositions (O'Neill mentioned that 5 is his magic number for number of images to layer), some of my favourite shots are just completely unvarnished mobile phone footage he took whilst on a holiday in Ireland. There was a dog on the beach where he was staying who was lame in one of his front feet, but would still chase after anything, and would bark incessantly to try and get people to throw things to chase after. O'Neill said that he identified with the dog, mad, pathetic, old, energetic. Some of the scenes which chimed most with me are of buildings such as cathedrals, which he somehow manipulates to look more like capricci, filled with these flame creatures, filmed with a reflection along a vertical line, i.e. horizontal symmetry.
He uses a lot of weird cool sound clips. Creaky doors from his house but also audio from a long list of old b-movies such as The Beast of Yucca Flats.
It's a haunting film noir that has a true sense of night's mystery. The title potentially makes reference to the fact that though inspired by the Chocolate Mountains, they do not actually appear at any point in the movie.
