Matthew Porterfield's "Hamilton"

As we started class today Carl showed us a movie by Jonas Mekas, "Notes on the Circus", This was a movie that Jonas Mekas had made in 1966 and was color, sound, 16mm. What Carl actually showed us was from a bigger film,"Waldon" by Jonas Mekas. But ,"Notes on a Circus", was a gathering on images from a circus that Jonas Mekas filmed and he put them at different speeds over the one song. It was a nice introduiction to time and and how things can be so different and uncertain when there isn't a clock around to tell you the time or you can't rely on your own perception to know what realioty you are in or what is going on. And in a way that is how i think Carl was trying to prep us for the observation of time and reality for the movie that ,"Hamilton". All together i liked this film that Jonas Mekas had made, it was entertaining, puzziling, and interesting how all he did was mess with the speed of the film to mess with time while the only sound, a sonf by unknown, was pretty much the only guide we had to keep us in check as to what was going on before us.
In class on Monday we went to the UWM Union Theater to veiw the full length feature film, "Hamilton", Color, Sound, 16mm. Made by Matthew Porterfield, this film was about time. This film was shot in Baltimore, MD during the summer. Carl told us that Matthew Porterfield was a former film student who dropped out of NYU's film school and gathered about 50,000$ to film ,'Hamilton". When Carl told us this it made me think about Kevin Smith and how he droped out of film school gathered up some money and went on to make, "Clerks", which is one of my favorite movies.
This also made me wonder where / how could i get 50,000$, for a film of mine? But as Carl went on to explane more about Matthew Porterfield's movie, Hamilton", he said that Matthew Porterfield look's up to a french filmmaker ,Robert Bresson. Who say's that non acting actors are best. in so many words. Carl had toled us that Matthew Porterfield considers his film, "a silent film" and as we watched you got that impression because yes there was diolauge but not an entier amount, and the rest of the movie was mostly visual gems, much like the way Dorsky films.
In the film ,"Hamilton", there was no real scense of time or family connection. when i say family connection i mean that there were two african -american girls with a white grandmother and what seemed to be a latin-american ,"step daughter" and i say that losly; how had a child with the white grandmothers white son. So all you can really tell is that they are a family and in the end i guess that is all that really matters . As the film went on from start to finish thought the only real scense of time that i could tell was that all of this happened within the span of a day or so.
The slight plot of the movie was that the latin -american girl who had the child with the white grandmothers son was leaving town" tomorrow" for location unknown for a few months. and that most everybody involved thought that the white boy should spend more time with the girl and his child. This story felt like to me something you would see on the WB or on an after school special, with a warning to kids about teen pregnancy. But Matthew Porterfield did not make ,"Hamilton" this way. Because there was no warnign and no authoritative voice or message at the end saying so. In the end of, "Hamilton", the girl leaves with her baby to location unknown, and the guy is riding his bike carring flowers in his hand while another younger boy rides bikes with him. Then the movie ends, we never do know who the flowers are given to, or where the girl goes. but there does seem to be this little message at the end that the saying," it's never to late!" , doesn't seem to apply to every situation.
Overall i did like ,"Hamilton", i thought that it was an alright movie, that Matthew Porterfield put alot of work into and i do think that it was a good experiment becaue it didn't give the audiance closure, there wasn't great star power or woderful acting but, the actors fit there part as far as setting tone and place in the movie. And the visual shots of the movie were wonderful overall.