The master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has described cinema as “writing with light,” a description I’ve always found — dare I say it? — illuminating. I love that when you watch a movie with a projector, whether you’re in a cinema or someone’s living room, you can accidentally interrupt the picture with your body if it blocks the light. I love that the image can change based on the quality of the light shining through the film or the screen. There’s something wonderfully physical and ephemeral about the experience that even the shift to digital movies hasn’t altogether eradicated.
Storaro and I probably both owe some debt to Loie Fuller, the pioneering American performer who is the subject of Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum’s new documentary, “Obsessed With Light” (in theaters). Apparently we’re not the only ones. The film argues that Fuller (1862-1928) was one of the most influential artists of the modern era. Onscreen interviewees and quotes from luminaries (like Taylor Swift) make the case that things we take for granted now — copyrights for artists, or body positivity, or the entire field of modern dance — all exist thanks to Fuller’s forward-thinking, wildly inventive life.
She was both the very famous star of Paris’s Folies Bergère and an icon of the Art Nouveau movement, with an eye toward the possibilities abstraction held for dance. She spent her career constantly innovating, and much of what she did was copied and evolved by those who admired her work. Part of the film follows contemporary dancers, who are influenced by and reclaiming her legacy, too, bolstering the case for her relevance.
Fuller’s signature creation might be the serpentine dance, which combined flowing choreography borrowed from “skirt dancing” with silks and lighting to create the impression of waves and whirling. Very early films by Georges Méliès, the Lumière brothers and Alice Guy Blaché featured Fuller’s serpentine dance.
Some of that footage — among the first to be hand-colored — makes its way into “Obsessed With Light,” and it’s the best part of the film. When Fuller decides to experiment with radium onstage, we see the beautiful (and, of course, dangerous) results, too. All of those clips are mesmerizing and alluring and haunting, as if we’re actually looking at invisible spirits or fairies captured unawares.
“Obsessed With Light” suggests that while Fuller isn’t a household name anymore, she ought to be. But I don’t think this documentary will accomplish the task. The landscape of dance films is littered with interesting takes on choreographers and performers — for instance, Wim Wenders’s “Pina,” Alla Kovgan’s “Cunningham,” or Elvira Lind’s “Bobbi Jene” — that aim to evoke their subjects’ work, instead of mostly telling their stories. (Two of those are in 3-D, but it’s true even if you’re viewing them in 2-D.) For such a boundary-breaking, unorthodox artist, it becomes particularly frustrating when the film itself is so unremarkable.
Not taking a more innovative, form-focused tack is a choice, of course. But by using the conventional tools of educational-style documentaries — interviews, archival footage, an actress (in this case, Cherry Jones) reading from the subject’s diaries and letters — Fuller’s many accomplishments start to blur, and the film feels as if it’s hopping around. With someone as fascinating as Fuller, a more lyrical approach might draw all the pieces together more fruitfully.
Still, I liked “Obsessed With Light” for that older footage. We’re watching several art forms, modern dance and cinema, as they come into being simultaneously. Fuller isn’t just lit up as she performs; she dances with the subject of her obsession, making it a character in her work. She manipulates it so it’s as alive as she and her silks are. We’re lucky to still be able to watch.
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