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Michael Almereyda's Nadja (Part 3 of 4)

© Jeremiah Kipp

At one point, I was scheduled to interview Michael Almereyda in connection with an article about Renegade Filmmakers (whatever that means). Almereyda respectfully backed out, though he did provide a (lively and enjoyable) fleeting phone call to say he enjoyed the thoughtful questions. Hopefully, at some point we'll be able to reconnect so he can speak for himself, but let's have some fun here. I'll use my own questions to the director as an attempt to spell out some thoughts about Nadja. How about that? Doesn’t that sound like a fun idea? OK, maybe not. But I've already committed, and it's too late to turn back now.

QUESTION: How did being an art history student affect your cinematic choices over the years? Is it something you always come back to, or is this a moot point?

ANSWER: Like fellow New York filmmakers Todd Haynes and Matthew Harrison, Almereyda came from a school of design much more open to experimental film. (This is actually incorrect. He studied art history at Harvard. – JK) It's about forms and textures, as opposed to such trifles as plot and coherent structure. Nadja is as simple and straightforward a narrative as Dracula or, more appropriately, Dracula's Daughter (which apparently is the flick Almereyda references scene-for-scene), though the enjoyment is drawn more from a sustained mood of eerie dread through watercolor imagery.

Example: One of the more famous shots in Nadja is when the title character seems to be gliding through downtown side streets at a dreamy, deliberate pace -- lighting a cigarette and gazing forlorn at nothing in particular. In the background, running like hell in incredibly slow motion, unable to catch up, are the heroes (Jim and Lucy, to be specific). This has more to do with the logic of dreams, where you can be pushing your legs to move, move, move but you just can't pick up any speed. You'll never be able to catch up to the prize. While Almereyda clearly lifts this image from Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, (as it turns out, he didn’t! – JK) one has to tip a hat to the filmmaker. If you're gonna steal, why not steal from the masters?

Then there are the multiple tracks of bizarre aural configurations, hums, buzzes, blips, ellipses and tones that serve to further disorient the viewer in ways that lure us into some weird, internal blurred-out trance. It's more intoxicating than annoying. The Lynchian use of sound (and I remind the reader that Lynch produced the film with his own money, was a de-facto Godfather, and stood up to bat for Almereyda when few others would) is actually quite beautiful and layered, incorporating a memorably evocative soundtrack (if you like Portishead, that is.)

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