Monochrome Nightmare
Le Cauchemar De l’Homme Noir Et Blanc Directors: Matt Green and Duncan Brown
The words ‘student film-making’ are normally enough to strike fear into the heart of any critic; one finds oneself, rather unfairly, expecting little more than naïve philosophising and camerawork clumsier than Blair Witch. How pleasing then, to find a student film that manages to rise above such misconceptions. Le Cauchemar de l’Homme Noir et Blanc is an unusual and technically accomplished offering from Matt Green and Duncan Brown that is both comical and nightmarish in equal measure.
This “horrifi-comic short” (in the directors’ words) is presented in the style of an antique film reel, with monochrome footage accompanied by a frenzied soundtrack that matches the brisk pace. Moments of slapstick are interspersed with dream-like sequences that smack of David Lynch, hinting at something darker beneath the surface.
The directors defy expectations of character and plot, opting instead for a more surreal approach that relies on interrelated images to form its ambiguous narrative. Literally translated as ‘The Nightmare of the Black and White Man’, the film is concerned with the process of filmmaking itself. After a less-than-promising start, in which the ‘film within a film’ construct threatens to become selfindulgent, Le Cauchemar gets going when the familiar Oxford setting is made to appear alien.
As the filmmaker surveys a girl in the mundane surroundings of Café Nero, we then see her as a celebrity under the scrutiny of paparazzi. The film later cuts to a bleak riverside, where the girl lies dead – but as to why she lies there, we are none the wiser. It is this constant thwarting of the audience’s expectations that make the film such a challenging, yet involving, experience.
As for the eponymous ‘Black and White Man’, he is fabulously presented as a rather daft teddy bearkilling clown, sporting a macabre grin worthy of one of the extras from Mulholland Drive. The film’s message, if we are meant to find one amid the chaos on screen, is unsettling. The opening shot – a sign prohibiting digging in a wood – is mirrored at the film’s climax, and acts as a warning to the ‘critic’, or perhaps to the filmmaker himself.
The horrors unearthed in the film perhaps allude to the dangers of such ‘digging’, and this fearful sense of introspection creates an atmosphere of discomfort. Disconcertingly abstract, at times absurdly funny and downright weird throughout, Le Cauchemar de l’Homme Noir et Blanc displays a degree of originality that would leave some established film-makers green with envy.
21st Apr 2005