Conceptual-art portrait of Los Angeles County, comprising 35 two-minute shots of streams, hills, buildings, factories, gardens, highways, rivers, cattle, trains, people, the ocean, a cemetery, the skyline, policemen, back streets, a jail, soccer players. Bennings' camera remains static, and in the absence of commentary the only sounds we hear are whatever's audible in each of these places: snatches of dialogue, distant background music, the rumble of cars and trains.
Needless to say, Los won't be to all tastes - in today's market-oriented climate, such a project necessarily runs the risk of 'pretentiousness' accusations - but it's surprising how quickly you adjust to the film's unique rhythms, and this is a very straightforward, accessible kind of experimentalism. In terms of an artist using cinema to express himself, it dwarfs almost all this year's 'conventional' releases: if any film of 2001 can possibly change the way its audiences think about and view their world, it's James Benning's mysterious, majestic, magical Los.
Needless to say, Los won't be to all tastes - in today's market-oriented climate, such a project necessarily runs the risk of 'pretentiousness' accusations - but it's surprising how quickly you adjust to the film's unique rhythms, and this is a very straightforward, accessible kind of experimentalism. In terms of an artist using cinema to express himself, it dwarfs almost all this year's 'conventional' releases: if any film of 2001 can possibly change the way its audiences think about and view their world, it's James Benning's mysterious, majestic, magical Los.