Blissfully yours embraces this contemplative/meditative temporal mode (similarly to Spring, Summer) and lacks the causal links that define the movement-image. However, Spring Summer is, I would argue, more narrative driven and has a cohesive structure characterized by the three generations. This film is thus more suited to Deleuze’s time-image where:
films give rise to pure optical and sound situations (392 Chaudhuri and Finn)
thus…
producing images of process, of transformation; such images are…the open-ended politicization of the image. (393 Chaudhuri and Finn)
It is through the open image that the political dimension of Blissfully Yours is accessed. While watching the film I felt like I had entered some kind of trance. Brett Farmer descirbes the film to be “like a walking dream” and I definately found in to have a somnambulistic quality to it. I think these qualities are an important aspect of the entire aesthetic experience of this film. As boredem perhaps is also. Finn and Chaudhuri talk about the way boredem may be a way of defamiliarizing real-time duration.(392) The film has some incredibly long shots with a static camera and minimal dialogue which help to create this dream-like/boredom effect and allow us to move beyond the image. I believe this is a similar concept to that of deterritorializing sound in that it allows the viewer to extend their thoughts, open up beyond what is being shown to the virtual images in the mind. (398)
“When the image stops, the viewer keeps going, moving deeper and deeper, one might say, into the image.” Schrader
Blissfully Yours reminded me of a Chinese film I saw at MIFF called Still Life. It also embraces this open image/stream of consciousness kind of filmmaking.
