EXIT review - 4

fORUM fILEM KUALA LUMPUR
The Film Forum of Kuala Lumpur

PATRICK LIM: EXIT
The Second Camera As Magnifier Of Truth

Interpretation by Dr. Anuar Nor Arai

EXIT is the pleasure of knowing the facets of truth. Single-mindedness is simply self contention and a self desolated state of mind. Memories of murder by a basic tone of being speculated tend to proliferate its truth without alienating without self display of annoyance and hesitations. Truth is naturally unbound by words. Patrick tries to tell through the face of the lady in the room in her physical advance towards the interrogator the act of sexual violence. Patrick does not proceed to physical sexuality and thus makes to say as a statement in EXIT that sex is in the mind. Everything done is a state of mind whether it is the past or the present. The image of the chair which is not in the shot (Off-frame) when the lady advance towards the interrogator gives a sort of placement and stands as a story for itself. The table, the projector’s window, the cigarettes, and the three walls within the confinements of the small room and within reach of the camera in the camera room, act to discover the relationships of physio-space. EXIT conclusively tells that there is a new revelation in truth through word-image and visual-image.

to be continued...

TRUE - 4

Personal Journal - 4

(Update: I have been shooting TRUE for the past 21/2 months now, whenever I have the time which is usually during the weekends. So far I have about 24 minutes of the opening edited and it is slowly taking shape. The two leads are very committed and they are doing a really good job so far. Brando is competent as the film lecturer and Kylie as the perky friend the male lead but her scene has to be reshot as I found out after viewing the rushes with my wife, there is no emotional weight to the scene. To be continued...)

About 6 months ago, the storyline to TRUE began to take shape as I was working out the details of the story.

to be continued...

TRUE - 3

Personal Journal - 3

The other thing that I wanted to do is to tell a simple story. Many nights of discussing and arguing with my friends, Johan and Brando and my wife, Jennifer gave me a more insight to myself and my works. Johan argued that I have to make a film that people can relate to, rather than the existentialistic approach of my shorts. Brando argued that I have to work within the telemovie industry first to hone my skills before embarking into the realm of features. Arguments that are valid but I took up Johan’s challenge to simplify my storytelling approach. I feel that the telemovie industry does more damage to your ability as a filmmaker than helping. The only thing that helps is the efficiency one has to have as one has only 10 days plus extra 2 days to complete a 90 min project. My wife and I discussed many nights over my future, where I am supposed to head. I am more of a person that uses my instinct and feelings in whatever things that I do and my wife is the rational beacon that anchors me down whenever I drift afar.

to be continued...

Brando and myself at Snow Summit,
California in 1994
originally posted by patrick

EXIT review - 3

fORUM fILEM KUALA LUMPUR
The Film Forum of Kuala Lumpur

PATRICK LIM: EXIT
The Second Camera As Magnifier Of Truth

Interpretation by Dr. Anuar Nor Arai

The style of Patrick in EXIT is formal. He keeps the tone of the real very close to reality. Camera seems very gradual and juxtaposition of shots keeps the characters in situations without eliminating consequential space. Intervals and duration of time are always within the regions of real time. Images are explored by the camera through rational editing, and the field of forces in oppositions between the interrogator and the interrogated are very controlled within the impulse of their emotions and movements set for them. The feeling of place and atmosphere is very soft in Patrick’s EXIT. Lights and darkness are well distributed in diffused lighting to suggest that Patrick’s search for the grey areas of the human mind between black and white, between truth and false, are within the narrative of expressing feeling and ideas. Actors are pressed to imagine within the confinements of words and actions. It is within the physical confinement of imaginations of the mind between the two in the room that demand the art of falsifying each other. Patrick gets his narrative through without superfluous display of images. Visual movement is across space from full shots to extreme close ups, and in between are the medium shots and inserts of objects especially the cigarettes in the mouth, the lighter and the cigarette packet.

to be continued...

TRUE - 2

Personal Journal - 2

There was a particular story that has been percolating in my head for a while now since 2002 and that was about a blind girl directing a film. I tried to write a script about it but I ran into the block. The detail of the story swims around in my head but I could not get it into a white sheet of MICROSOFT WORD.

The Genesis of TRUE

I wrote an unfinished script two years ago called STARRY, STARRY NIGHT...based on the song, VINCENT and the story was also about a blind girl who is a singer. I had a beautiful opening but as the story proceeds, I did not have the personal connection to further the story or basically I suffered the excruciating cliché of the writer’s block. Early this year in Berlin, the thought of the blind girl came back again but in a different form. This time, she emerges as a filmmaker in my mind. I thought to myself that it was an interesting idea but I had to work out the logical progression of her journey being or becoming a filmmaker.

to be continued...

During a rehearsal with actors
originally posted by patrick

EXIT review - 2

Patrick Lim: EXIT
The Second Camera As Magnifier Of Truth

Interpretation by Dr. Anuar Nor Arai

Physical movements of characters are normal with subjective suggestions to the senses and the intellect. In the opening scene, the walk in the doorway represents the point of departure of a short psychic travel of the interrogator and it rather fixes a mind-scape into the interrogation room. The camera gives a perceptual experience along with the steady-cam long take. The camera does not wander but grabs the spontaneity of the physical entity with the interrogator thinking of the lady already seen in his mind. The subject of the lady who tried to control the atmosphere of a small room set in oblivion to herself is in a reversal confrontation with the interrogator at the end of the day. The cool display of juxtapositions in visuals and words keep EXIT in an alleged forwardness of false reality unfolding in the eyes of the camera and the sound track in the next room. The camera in the room has become the third interrogator, the legal denominator, and the attitude of the director. It is a cinema of attitude and instrumental to as magnifier of truth. The first camera fails to present reality in its objectivity and seems to portray the technological bias set on the characters. Words begin to fall in every part of the mind thus creating neutral ground between the two persons in the room. Neutral ground moves along with the objective camera. A gradual intrusion of the camera (a subjective point of view) into the face of the lady in the room does not reveal truth through the perspective of the lense. And all the gestures that relate to the interrogator – the lighter and the cigarettes – become difficult in all its simplicity. Simplicity is thus a concept that has functional truth. Objects add more to subjectivity. The mind is always the keeper of truth in the shades of grey between black and white. Truth seems to grow within the visuals and the audios.

to be continued...