ALEX MCQUILKIN
Joan of Arc
October 18 through November 24, 2007

Who's a Martyr Today?
by Joe Fyfe
November 15, 2007

Alex McQuilkin's new two-screen projection film is ironic, sincere, casual, rigorous, knowing, adolescent, narcissistic, and emotionally generous. It is a small masterpiece.

For most of its five minutes and 18 seconds the artist is present in full color in the right frame, approximating short fragments from Carl Dreyer's black and white silent film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) that is projected on the left. In it, McQuilkin wears a gray T-shirt that says "OK" in white letters while her occasional voice-over mumbles about how she couldn't get the film out of her head.

In one of the many ways that the original film was radical was in its use of close-ups, which McQuilkin matches with tight blocking (a common attribute of many of her films) of her torso and face. Mournful medieval music by The Anonymous Four is the soundtrack.

By the (very short) time she begins to cut her long, strawberry blonde hair, McQuilkin's film has matched the emotional climate of the original. Her body shifts within the frame to reveal an electrical outlet behind her and an electric razor appears to finish the job. It has the power of a grim intruder.

In the original film, according to French film theorist Andre Bazin, when Dreyer ordered the actor in the executioner role to cut Maria Falconetti's (Joan of Arc) hair, the film crew began to cry.

Like Dreyer, McQuilkin is interested in how the film medium can be used to reveal authentic emotion. As Oscar Wilde said, "A mask tells us more than a face."

Joan of Arc, the artist narrates, was put to death at age 19. Several underlying themes intersect - adolescence as a state of spiritual purity and the adolescent desire to be a religious martyr. Contemporarily, it begs the question as to what constitutes martyrdom.

Toward the end of the film, McQuilkin's shorn head appears, matching the tilted angle of Falconetti's shorn head. Here the use of highly definitive color film and the subtle detail of McQuilkin's gold nose pin contrasts with the filmed black and white rawness of Joan of Arc's face. (Dreyer insisted there be no makeup on his actors.)

McQuilkin's film and Dreyer's (observed Bazin) aspire toward a state of emotional dignity that is found in religious painting. The actor's filmed visage becomes the equivalent of an icon.

The film closes with the artist's observation that Joan of Arc was the only figure in history that the Church both put to death and canonized as a saint, using her for their own symbolic purposes not just once, but twice.