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90-Second Cinema: Brock Enright
Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be The Same, an excerpt

In 2006, New York’s Perry Rubenstein Gallery asked mixed media artist Brock Enright to create a special exhibit to be displayed early the following year.  Upon accepting, Brock and his girlfriend Kirsten Deirup traveled across the country to her parents’ cabin in Mendocino, California in order to give Enright a new perspective in which to work.  Filmmaker Jody Lee Lipes traveled with the pair, documenting Enright’s creative process as well as the couple’s many arguments about their rapidly dwindling money supply.

This month’s 90-Second Cinema clip finds Brock and Kirsten in the middle of one of their heated arguments.  But this time, the focus is not on money, but on whether or not Brock is imposing on Kirsten’s family, despite the fact that the couple hasn’t yet arrived in California.  Many of the couple’s fights are captured in long shots, as if Lipes wanted to give them some space.  But here, the camera has nowhere else to be but in the backseat, filming the tension rapidly rising in the cramped vehicle.  It’s a cross-country trip, during which Lipes no doubt filmed hours of footage, but we see only about seventeen minutes of their time on the road.

Brock worries that Kirsten “can’t handle these types of behaviors.”  But we’ve already spent the start of the film (and will spend another hour) witnessing Kirsten cursing, jumping, and simulating sex all under Brock’s direction.  He claims that the trip to Mendocino was to find a new space in which to create; but did he already know that his material was about to get even more disturbing?  This is one of the many times during the film that it’s unclear as to whether or not we are seeing the true Brock.  Lipes shoots in a decidedly un-documentary style; he uses gorgeous lighting, musical montages, and prose-like narration, as well as purposely breaking the rule of thirds in his shooting style.  There are no shaky cam techniques or sit-down interviews, lending to the fly-on-the-wall style.  On the surface, it seems as if those involved do not even realize the cameras are following their every move.

But in the beginning of the clip, a curious thing happens. We open with an extreme close-up on Kirsten’s worried face as Brock sleeps next to her, another intimate moment captured on film.  But in the car – and it’s only for a matter of seconds – Brock seems to be directly addressing the filmmaker, referring to his girlfriend in the third person.  “Kirsten really wants me to do this…but I shouldn’t do it on her property.”

It’s this small aside, heard as we watch Kirsten’s stone-faced reaction, which sticks in the back of the viewer’s mind as the film progresses.  Brock is, in fact, acutely aware that he is being filmed. This awareness, combined with a style more seen in narrative films, raises an interesting question.  Are these fights and disturbing performances themselves part of a performance?  After all, nearly everyone seen on camera is an artist of a very specific type – ones that are not afraid to embarrass or expose themselves (both physically and emotionally) for the sake of their craft. The surprising ending shows a calm, completely non-theatrical couple.  Was it the unexpected development in their lives that changed them?  Or even before the 18-month time jump, if the cameras had been off and the makeup washed away, would we have seen the same man?

By Mary Iannone

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