Топология сирен (Topology of Sirens)

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Jonathan Davies’s Topology of Sirens, one of the most assured and evocative feature debuts of the past few years, which premieres as part of the FIDMarseille International Competition, takes this paradox as one of its primary animating forces. It follows Cas (documentary filmmaker Courtney Stephens), a sound engineer who moves into her deceased aunt’s home in what appears to be an unnamed neighborhood of Los Angeles. As she reconnects with her friends within the local experimental music scene, she discovers within a locked closet of the house a rare hurdy-gurdy. Inside the outdated instrument are seven answering machine mini-cassette tapes, each labeled with a mysterious symbol and containing different varieties of soundscapes and audio effects. This cryptic find begins a loose series of wanderings across the greater LA area, as linkages and coincidences pile up without necessarily coalescing into a unifying purpose or meaning.

michaelgsmith 4.5/5

TOPOLOGY OF SIRENS is a tantalizing mystery film in the vein of Jacques Rivette that imagines contemporary Los Angeles as a kind of giant game-board. Much like how PARIS BELONGS TO US features the search for a missing tape of "revolutionary guitar music" as a narrative jumping off point, so too does Jonathan Davies' first film use the discovery of mysterious micro-casettes inside of an antique hurdy gurdy as a catalyst for an existential detective story. What I really loved about this film is the way it imbues physical objects - and the physical media that is rapidly disappearing from our world in particular - with a totemic significance that makes it feel incredibly modern. A lot of critics are going to liken this to the work of other filmmakers (a couple of mesmerizing scenes on a baseball field recall Antonioni's BLOW-UP in particular) but the best point of comparison I can make is with Thomas Pynchon's 2013 novel Bleeding Edge, which has a similarly haunting quality in how it treats the recent past as if it were ancient history. An astonishing debut.

connordenney 4.5/5

Topology of Sirens takes place in the world of experimental music—not only is its narrative driven by the discovery of mysterious audiotapes, but key scenes are soundtracked by lovely, eerie drone music, and the great electroacoustic artist Sarah Davachi has a prominent role—and in a way, its form follows the impulses of the genre. The film's central mystery develops gently and expectantly, keeping us intrigued for the resolution but enjoying its riffs and asides just as much. There's quite a bit of Angela Schanelec and Helena Wittmann in director Jonathan Davies's approach to the mystery genre: clues are dropped matter-of-factly and frequently open up additional paths for Cas to follow, and the film's emotional core develops through Courtney Stephens's meditative gestures and expressions as well as her conversations with friends or those aiding her in her search.

lizardcalvin 5/5

This is at its heart a mystery. Almost like a video game. An enigmatic quest. Like something you almost feel you could solve yourself. There are certain symbols in it and it felt like I could rearrange them to find the answer to something… a puzzle. The rhythm of it, the sounds of it. The infrequent dialogue is like its own music, like with the Twin Peaks-y hum, chatter, tea cups, and discordant piano of the cafe scene, for example. Organic female friendships. Reminiscent to me of Rohmer’s Reinette and Mirabelle. The main character creates friendships and seeks out help from those friendships in cool natural ways.

icsfilm

Morris Yang reviews Jonathan Davies' TOPOLOGY OF SIRENS, a film that seeks to reclaim the possibilities of myth-making where myth has seemingly been relegated to outdated dogmatism or artisanal curios.

fidmarseille: interview with the director

Cas, the main character of your film, engages in a personal quest after finding mysterious mini-tapes. Following her quest, the film itself develops into an exploration of environmental sound and experimental music. What was the first impulse at the origin of Topology of Sirens?

 

When I first moved to Los Angeles and started venturing out of the city for the first time, I was mesmerized by the big green hills and mountains that come into view as you drive out of the city, blending into the blue atmospheric perspective in the sky. These are very different from the hills you see in Hollywood, sparse but still dotted with small roads and patches of houses that seemed almost impossible to get to. To this day I still wonder, even if I rationally know the answer is very simple, what could be happening there, how do I get there? So the film is in large part an imaginary answer to that feeling. Another big thing is that one of our producers Tyler Taormina, who directed last year’s Ham on Rye, and I actually have a drone duo called Fjords, whose music you can hear in both of our films. That experience informed a lot of the film. That type of music was very comfortable territory for me at the time, so it seemed like a natural fit for a subject. I’d long dreamed of making a film that combines sensibilities of the cinema I love with 90s PC adventure games that I grew up on, which is something I don’t see in film too often. So I thought I’d combine all of these impulses and see what happened.

Most of the actors are either non professionals or musicians themselves, who perform their music in the film. The narration is thus punctuated by a series of music performances. How did you chose the musicians/actors of Topology of Sirens? How did you work with them, direct them through the making of your film?

 

— There’s several performers in the film, but Sarah Davachi and Whitney Johnson (who records under the name Matchess) are the two musicians who are “acting,” though they’re really just playing themselves on screen. I had been a fan of their music and knew they were broadly interested in the same ideas that the film was interested in, so it seemed a natural fit and I think this is what drew them to the idea of appearing in such a film, not having done so before. In some ways it was a very hands-off approach with them as I did not want them to “act” so much as just react and convey certain ideas and topics in their own words.

Then there are people like Curtis Berak, the hurdy-gurdy collector who’s featured in the film, who I found by just searching around LA. He’s a walking encyclopedia on hurdy gurdies and harpsichords (the harpsichord hall in the film also belongs to him). The first time I met him, it was like getting a three hour personal class on the history of hurdy gurdies, it was great. So, I let him just do his thing and talk to Courtney, and I wish we could have included more as he’s a joy to listen to. Interestingly enough, he was also a teaching assistant for Manny Farber in the 70s and once regaled me with a tale of being personally tasked by Straub-Huillet to care for a print of The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach.

 

Courtney Stephens, who portrays the protagonist Cas, is not a professional musician herself but a non-fiction filmmaker in her own right – she co-directed The American Sector which premiered at Berlinale last year. She was an essential bit of casting not only because she’s the lead role, but her experience as a documentarian (and inquisitive conversationalist in general) made her a perfect fit to guide the other non-professional actors. The idea of casting her was recommended by a mutual friend outside a performance by the great noise artist Merzbow, which I always find amusingly fitting for the film.

The film consists mainly of long and wide shots, with a large depth of field. It enables a constant immersion of the characters in their environment, air and sound, and gives architecture and urbanistic design a strong presence. Can you comment on these choices?

 

As mentioned, it had been one of my dreams to make a film that invokes the spirit, logic, and aesthetics of 90s PC point-and-click adventure games, which employ a similar visual grammar to the film. Games like The Secret of Monkey Island are just as important as any film to how I conceive of a visual language. So in some ways it was just a natural, instinctive choice. It’s this immersive quality that these games excel in, and so they were not only an influence on the visual design of the film but nearly every other element from the dialogue to prop design. And, with the music often blending in and out of the environmental sound, it was important to also see both “worlds” in equal measure visually as well. It often feels like this kind of master shot cinema has so much in common with these games that it blows my mind that these two spheres are likely in large part unaware of each other. Can you imagine if, say, Bela Tarr was secretly a video game nerd? It would make total sense to me, honestly. Perhaps we’ll all see a lot more of this, with the generation that grew up on games becoming more prominent as cinematic voices.

А почему стоит жанр - детектив? Это не драма? Сюжет и трейлер интригуют.

фильм устроен как мистическое путешествие, вот и подобрали ближайший схожий. в интервью описано подробно.

фильм устроен как мистическое путешествие, вот и подобрали ближайший схожий.

Спасибо. Люблю такое медитативное кино.