UNCOMMON SENSES
Uncommon Senses, a kind of sequel to Speaking Directly, might be called Jost’s second feature-length State of the Union essay, made 15 years later. Like its predecessor, it is composed of several different and relatively autonomous sections, each of which has its own form and mode of address. While both films can be described as didactic, the first is overtly autobiographical, the second more a multifaceted statement about America. Subtitled Plain Talk & Common Sense, Uncommon Senses is Jost’s eighth feature to date, and it can be regarded in some respects as a summation of his previous efforts–a varied, durable body of independent work that, despite its limited exposure, has tended to grow in resonance and power over the years. At the same time, like each of the preceding features, Uncommon Senses can be seen as a fresh effort, a departure. (Jost’s ninth feature, Rembrandt Laughing, was completed earlier this summer.)
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Composed of a prologue, ten sections, and a postscript, Uncommon Senses confronts head-on the notion of multiplicity (which all ambitious writers about this country have seemed to rely on–from Walt Whitman to Carl Sandburg to John Dos Passos to Thomas Wolfe to Jack Kerouac and beyond). The rapturous catalog is its organizing principle. The endlessly burgeoning list–with counterparts in everything from the Bible to the Sears Roebuck catalog to almanacs and telephone directories as well as in such writers as Herman Melville, Allen Ginsberg, and Thomas Pynchon–has always had its seductive and contagious side; this sentence shows its influence. But few artists in this country have ever tried to analyze or critique this list-making habit as a rhetorical and ideological impediment, a mode of discourse that conceals and mystifies in the process of showing us “everything.” Part of the originality and importance of Jost’s new film is that it proceeds to do just that–to critique list making even as it employs it.
Part three, “Crosscurrents,” takes up the multiplicity of “received images” of America, literally as well as figuratively, by running through a partially pixilated inventory of postcards and similar American iconic images (both still and in motion). These images appear in various ways: several appear on the screen at once or in succession; the images themselves range from toy tanks moving over dollar bills to Mount Rushmore to apple pie a la mode being eaten in fast motion. Meanwhile Jost’s offscreen narration contrapuntally discusses the range and nature of this imagery. (In more ways than one, this is the sequence that shows Jost’s technical and conceptual virtuosity at its most impressive; it would be impossible to paraphrase all he does here without creating an endless catalog of one’s own.)
Part eight, “America,” returns us to the conceptual didacticism of “Coasts” by giving us another carefully controlled history lesson, this time through animated maps, accompanied by original music by John A. English that reflects some Native American influence. Here the history covers about 500 years in five minutes, with red dots denoting Indian settlements and white dots standing for whites. The focus is mainly ecological–the withdrawal of forests, the beginning of farmland and irrigation, and eventually the construction of military installations. But it must be admitted that here the absence of narration creates a problem–what I know about this sequence comes from a conversation with Jost, and without his tips, I doubt that many spectators will have much of an idea about what they’re seeing.
The two concluding lectures, one should note, were both written by Jost, and however reductive and prosaic they may seem in relation to what has gone before, the film’s overall structure and cumulative drift might be said to make them inevitable. At the same time, whether or not this coincides with Jost’s own aims, I think it would be shortchanging the overall richness of the film to interpret it exclusively as a linear argument. The materials set before us can be mentally juggled and synthesized other ways as well, and each of the sequences can be regarded as starting points for an analysis as well as consecutive building blocks. The argument in “Heart of the Country,” for example, that what we call “America” tends to be hidden rather than visible, although it certainly applies to nuclear warheads, also applies to poverty, racism, sexism, and a great deal more.
