Every house is an architecturally structured “path”: the specific possibilities of movement and the drives toward movement as one proceeds from the entrance through the sequence of spatial entities have been predetermined by the architectural structuring of that space and one experiences the space accordingly. But at the same time, in its relation to the surrounding space, it is a “goal”, and we either advance toward this goal or depart from it.
– Dagobert Frey
Grundlegung zu einer vergleichenden
Kunstwissenschaft
Karen may lose herself in resentment and fear, but the Navidson we see seems joyful, even euphoric, as he sets out with Reston and his brother to rescue Holloway and his team. It is almost as if entrance let alone a purpose -any purpose-in the face of those endless and lightless regions is reason enough to rejoice.
Using 16mm motion picture (colour and B/W) and 35mm stills,
Navidson for the first time begins to capture the size and sense of that place. Author Denise Lowery writes the following evocative impression of how Navidson photographs the Anteroom:
The hot red flame spits out light, catching on
Tom, entwining in the spokes of Reston’s wheelchair, casting Shape Changers and
Dragons on a nearby wall. But even this watery dance succeeds in only illuminating a
tiny portion of a corner. Navidson, Tom and
Reston continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with
shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally
what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now
nothing less than obvious and undeniable
– as if there never could have been a question about the shape, there never could
have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding those inky folds,
coming up with its own sense, something far more perverse and contorted and heavy with things much stranger and colder than even
this brief shadow play performed in the irregular burn of sulfur-mythic and inhuman,
flickering, shifting, and finally dying around the men’s continuous progress.
[199-See chapter ten of Denise Lowery’s Sketches: The Process of Entry (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1996).]
Of course, the Great Hall dwarfs even this chamber. As Holloway reported in Exploration #2, its span approaches one mile, making it practically impossible to illuminate. Instead the trio slips straight through the black, carefully marking their way with ample fishing line, until the way ahead suddenly reveals an even greater darkness, pitted in the centre of that immense, incomprehensible space.
In one photograph of the Great Hall, we find Reston in the foreground holding a flare, the light barely licking an ashen wall rising above him into inky oblivion, while in the background Tom stands surrounded by flares which just as ineffectually confront the impenetrable wall of nothingness looming around the Spiral Staircase.
As Chris Thayil remarks: “The Great Hall feels like the inside of some preternatural hull designed to travel vast seas never before observed in this world.” [200-Chris Thayil’s “Travel’s Legacy” in National Geographic, v.
189, May 1996, p. 36-53.]
Since rescuing Holloway’s team is the prime objective, Navidson takes veiy few photographs. Luckily for us, however, the beginning of this sequence relies almost entirely on these scarce but breathtaking stills instead of the far more abundant but vastly inferior video tapes, which are used here mainly to provide sound.
Eventually when they realize Holloway and his team are nowhere near the Great Hall, the plan becomes for Reston to set up camp at the top of the stairway while Navidson and Tom continue on below.
Switching to Hi 8, we follow Navidson and Reston as they react to Tom’s announcement.
“Bullshit,” Navidson barks at his brother.
“Navy, I can’t go down there,” Tom stammers.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re just giving up on them?”
Fortunately, by barely touching his friend’s arm, Billy Reston forces Navidson to take a good hard look at his brother. As we can see for ourselves, he is pale, out of breath, and in spite of the cold, sweating profusely. Clearly in no condition to go any further let alone tackle the profound depths of that staircase.
Navidson takes a deep breath. “Sorry Tom, I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
Tom says nothing.
“Do you think you can stay here with Billy or do you want to head home? You’ll have to make it back on your own.”
“I’ll stay here.”
“With Billy?” Reston responds. “What’s that supposed to mean? The hell if you think I’m letting you go on alone.”
But Navidson has already started down the Spiral Staircase.
“I should sue the bastards who designed this house,” Reston shouts after him. “Haven’t they heard of handicap ramps?”
The dark minutes start to slide by. Based on Holloway’s descent.
Navidson had estimated the stairway was an incredible thirteen miles down.
Less than five minutes later, however, Tom and Reston hear a shout.
Peering over the banister, they discover Navidson with a lightstick in his hand standing at the bottom-no more than 100ft down. Tom immediately assumes they have stumbled upon the wrong set of stairs.
Further investigation by Navidson, though, reveals the remnants of neon trail markers left by Holloway’s team.
Without another word, Reston swings out of his chair and starts down the stairs. Less than twenty minutes later he reaches the last step.
Navidson knows he has no choice but to accept Reston’s participation, and heads back up to retrieve the wheelchair and the rest of their gear.
Amazingly enough, Tom seems fine camping near the staircase.
Both Navidson and Reston hope his presence will enable them to maintain radio contact for a much longer time than Holloway could. Even if they both know the house will still eventually devour their signal.
As Navidson and Reston head out into the labyrinth, they occasionally come upon pieces of neon marker and shreds of various types of fishing line. Not even multi-strand steel line seems immune to the diminishing effects of that place.
“It looks like its impossible to leave a lasting trace here,” Navidson observes.
“The woman you never want to meet,” quips Reston, always managing to keep his wheelchair a little ahead of Navidson.
Soon, however, Reston begins to suffer from nausea, and even vomits.
Navidson asks him if he is sick. Reston shakes his head.
“No, it’s more. . . shit, I haven’t felt this way since I went fishing for marlin.”
Navidson speculates Reston’s sea sickness or his “mat de mer,” as he calls it, may have something to do with the changing nature of the house:
“Everything here is constantly shifting. It took Holloway, Jed, and Wax almost four days to reach the bottom of the staircase, and yet we made it down in five minutes. The thing collapsed like an accordion.” Then looking over at his friend: “You realize if it expands again, you’re in deep shit.”
“Considering our supplies,” Reston shoots back. “I’d say we’d both be in deep shit.”
As was already mentioned in Chapter III, some critics believe the house’s mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it. Dr. Haugeland asserts that the extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data. [201-Missing. – Ed.] Ruby Dahi, in her stupendous study of space, calls the house on Ash Tree Lane “a solipsistic heightener,” arguing that “the house, the halls, and the rooms all become the self-collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always in perfect relation to the mental state of the individual.” [202-Ibid. Curiously DahI fails to consider why the house never opens into what is necessarily outside of itself.
If one accepts Dahi’s reading, then it follows that Holloway’s creature comes from Holloway’s mind not the house; the tiny room Wax finds himself trapped within reflects his own state of exhaustion and despair;
and Navidson’s rapid descent reflects his own knowledge that the Spiral Staircase is not bottomless. As Dr. Haugeland observes:
The epistemology of the house remains entirely commensurate with its size. After all, one always approaches the unknown with
greater caution the first time around. Thus it
appears far more expansive than it literally is.
Knowledge of the terrain on a second visit dramatically contracts this sense of distance.
Who has never gone for a walk through some unfamiliar park and felt that it was
huge, only to return a second time to discover that the park is in fact much smaller than initially perceived?
When revisiting places we once frequented as children, it is not unusual to
observe how much smaller everything seems.
This experience has too often been attributed to the physical differences between a child and an adult. In fact it has more to do with
epistemological dimensions than with bodily
dimensions: knowledge is hot water on wool.
It shrinks time and space.
(Admittedly there is the matter where boredom, due to repetition, stretches time and
space. I will deal specifically with this problem in a later chapter entitled “Ennui.”)
[203-See also Dr. Helen Hodge’s American Psychology: The Ownership Of Self (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), p. 297 where she writes:
What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson’s comdors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Mysr-like discoveries f see Chad; p. 99.] thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? or better yet: what is exciting? While the degree varies, ‘ are always excited by anything that engages us, influences us or more simply involves us. In those endlessly repetitive hallways and stairs, there is nothing for us to connect with. That pennanently foreign place does not excite us. It bores us. And that is that, except for the fact that there is no such thing as boredom. Boredom is really a psychic defense protecting us from ourselves, from complete paralysis, by repressing, among other things, the meaning of that place, which in this case is and always has been horror.
See also Otto Fenichel’s 1934 essay “The Psychology of Boredom” in which he describes boredom as “an unpleasurable experience of a lack of impulse.” Kierkegaard goes a little further, remarking that “Boredom, extinction, is precisely a continuity of nothingness.” While William Wordsworth in his preface for Lyrical Ballads (1802) writes:
The subject is indeed important! For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability… [A] multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves.
See Sean Healy’s Boredom, Self and Culture (Rutherford, NJ.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984); Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Boredom: The
Literary I-f istory of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995); and finally Celine Arlesey’s Perversity In Dullness … and ViceVersa (Denver: Blederbiss Press, 1968).]
When Holloway’s team traveled down the stairway, they had no idea if they would find a bottom. Navidson, however, knows
the stairs are finite and therefore has far less anxiety about the descent.
Unlike the real world, Navidson’s journey into the house is not just figuratively but
literally shortened. [204-Missing. – Ed.]
This theme of structures altered by perception is not uniquely observed in The Navidson Record. Almost thirty years ago, Günter Nitschke described what he termed “experienced or concrete space”:
It has a centre which is perceiving man, and it therefore has an excellent system of directions which changes with the movements of
the human body; it is limited and in no sense
neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are fixed relative to
man…
[205-Gunter Nitschke’s “Anatomie der gelebten Umweit” (Bauen + Wohnen , September 1968)] [206 Which you are quite right to observe makes no sense at all.]
Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that “architecture comes into being only when experienced.” [207-Christi Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & Architecture, p. 13.]
Norberg-Schulz asserts: “Architectural space certainly exists independently of the casual perceiver, and has centres and directions of its own.” Focusing on the constructions of any civilization, whether ancient or modem, it is hard to disagree with him, it is only when focusing on Navidson’s house that these assertions begin to blur.
Can Navidson’s house exist without the experience of itself?
Is it possible to think of that place as “unshaped” by human perceptions?
Especially since everyone entering there finds a vision almost completely-though pointedly not completely-different from anyone else’s?
Even Michael Leonard, who had never heard of Navidson’s house, professed a belief in the “psychological dimensions of space.” Leonard claimed people create a “sensation of space” where the final result “in the perceptual process is a single sensation-a ‘feeling’ about that particular place…” [208-Michael Leonard’s “Humanizing Space,” Progressive Architecture, April 1969.]
In his book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch suggested emotional cognition of all environment was rooted in histoiy, or at least personal history:
[Environmental image, a generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world] is the product both of immediate sensation and of
the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action.
[Italics added for emphasis]
[209-Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts; The MIT Press, 1960), p. 4.]
Or as Jean Piaget insisted: “It is quite obvious that the perception of space involves a gradual construction and certainly does not exist readymade at the outset of mental development.” [210-J. Piaget and B.
Inhelder’s The Child’s Conception of Geometry (New York; Basic Books, 1960), p. 6] Like Leonard’s attention to sensation and Piaget’s emphasis on constructed perception, Lynch’s emphasis on the importance of the past allows him to introduce a certain degree of subjectivity to the question of space and more precisely architecture.
Where Navidson’s house is concerned, subjectivity seems more a matter of degree. The Infinite Corridor, the Anteroom, the Great Hall, and the Spiral Staircase, exist for all, though their respective size and even layout sometimes changes. Other areas of that place, however, never seem to replicate the same pattern twice, or so the film repeatedly demonstrates.
No doubt speculation will continue for a long time over what force alters and orders the dimensions of that place. But even if the shifts turn out to be some kind of absurd interactive Rorschach test resulting from some peculiar and as yet undiscovered law of physics, Reston’s nausea still reflects how the often disturbing disorientation experienced within that place, whether acting directly upon the inner ear or the inner labyrinth of the psyche, can have physiological consequences.
[211-No doubt about that. My fear’s gotten worse. Hearing Bailey describing my screams on the radio like that has really upset me. I no longer wake up tired. I wake up tired and afraid. I wonder if the morning rasp in my voice is just from sleep or rather some inarticulate attempt to name my horror. I’m suspicious of the dreams I cannot remember, the words only others can hear. I’ve also noticed the inside of my cheeks are now all mutilated, lumps of pink flesh dangling in the wet dark, probably from grinding, gritting and so much pointless chewing. My teeth ache. My head aches. My stomach’s a mess.
I went to see a Dr. Ogelmeyer a few days ago and told him everything I could think of about my attacks and the awful anxiety that haunts my every hour. He made an appointment for me with another doctor and then prescribed some medication. The whole thing lasted less than half an hour and including the prescription cost close to a hundred and seventy-five dollars.
I tore up the appointment card and when I got back to my studio I grabbed my radio! CD player and put it out on the street with a For Sale sign on it. An hour later, some guy driving an Infiniti pulled over and bought it for forty-five dollars. Next, I took all my CDs to Aaron’s on Highland and got almost a hundred dollars.
I had no choice. I need the money. I also need the quiet.
As of now, I still haven’t taken the medicine. It’s a low-grade sedative of some kind. Ten flakes of chalk-blue. I hate them. Perhaps when night comes I’ll change my mind. I arrange them in a tidy line on the kitchen counter. But night finally does come and even though my fear ratchets towards the more severe, I fear those pills even more.
Ever since leaving the labyrinth, having had to endure all those convolutions, those incomplete suggestions, the maddening departures and inconclusive nature of the whole fucking chapter, I’ve craved space, light and some kind of clarity. Any kind of clarity. I just don’t know how to find it, though staring over at those awful tablets only amps my resolve to do something, anything.
Funny as it sounds-especially considering the amounts of drugs I’ve been proud to consume-those pills, like dots, raised & particular, look more and more like some kind of secret Braille spelling out the end of my life.
Perhaps if I had insurance; if one hundred and seventy-five dollars meant I was twenty-five over my deductible, I’d think differently. But it’s not and so I don’t.
As far as I can see, there’s no place for me in this country’s system of health, and even if there were I’m not sure it would make a difference. Something I considered over and over again while I was sitting in that stark office, barely looking at the National Geographic or People magazines, just waiting on the bustle of procedure and paper work, until the time came, quite a bit of time too, when I had to answer
a call, a call made by a nurse, who led me down a hail and then another hall and still another hail, until I found myself alone in a cramped sour smelling room, where I waited again, this time on a slightly different set of procedures and routines carried out by these white draped ministers of medicine, Dr. Ogelmeyer & friends, who by their very absence forced me to wonder what would happen if I were really unhealthy, as unhealthy as I am now poor, how much longer would I have to wait, how much more cramped and sour would this room be, and if I wanted to leave would I? Could I? Perhaps I wouldn’t even know how to leave. Incarcerated forever within the corridors of some awful facility. 5051. Protective custody. Or just as terrifying: no 5051, no protective custody. Left to wander alone the equally ferocious and infernal corridors of indigence.
To put it politely: no fucking way.
I know what it means to go mad.
I’ll die before I go there.
But first I have to find out if that’s where I’m really heading.
I’ve got to stop blinking in the face of my fear.
I must hear what I scream.
I must remember what I dream.
I pick up the sedatives, these Zs without Z, and one by one crush them between my fingers, letting the dust fall to the floor. Next I locate all the alcohol I have buried around my studio and pour it down the sink. Then I root out every seed and bud of pot and flush it down the toilet along with the numbers of all suppliers. I eventually find a few tabs of old acid as well as some Ecstasy hidden in a bag of rice. These I also toss.
The consumption of MDMA, aka Ecstasy, aka E, aka X, has been known to bring on epilepsy especially when taken in large quantities. Eight months ago, I ingested more than my fair share, mostly White Angels, though I also went ahead and invited to the party a slew of Canaries, Stickmen, Snowballs, Hurricanes, Hallways, Butterflies, Tasmanian Devils and Mitsubishis, which was a month long party, all of it pretty much preceding Thanksgiving, and a different story altogether.
There are so many stories…
Perhaps I’ll be lucky and discover this awful dread that gnaws on me day and night is nothing more than the shock wave caused by too many crude chemicals rioting in my skull for too long. Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace.
Then again perhaps in finding my clearing I’ll only make myself an easier prey for the real terror that tracks me, waiting beyond the perimeter, past the tall grass, the brush, that stand of trees, cloaked in shadow and rot, but with enough presence to resurrect within me a whole set of ancient reflexes, ordering a non-existent protrusion at the base of my spine to twitch, my pupils already dilating, adrenaline flowing, even as instinct commands me to run.
But by then it will already be too late. The distance far too great to cover. As if there ever really was a place to hide.
At least I’ll have a gun.
I’ll buy a gun.
Then I’ll crouch and I will wait.
Outside shots are fired. Lots. In fact one sounds like an artillery cannon going off. Suddenly the city’s at war and I’m confused. When I go to my window a spray of light sets me straight, though the revelation is not without irony.
Somehow the date escaped me.
It’s July 4th.
This country’s birthday. Wow.
Which I realize means I forgot my own birthday. A day that came and passed, it turns out, in of all places Hailey’s arms. How about that, I can remember the beginnings of a nation that doesn’t give a flying fuck about me, would possibly even strangle me if given half the chance, but I can’t remember my own beginnings-and I’m probably the only one alive willing to at least attempt on my behalf that tricky flying fuck maneuver.
Which might be worth some sort of smile, if I hadn’t already come to realize that irony is a Maginot Line drawn by the already condemned- which oddly enough still does make me smile.
Fortunately Reston’s nausea does not last long, and he and Navidson can spend the rest of the day pushing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
Initially, they follow the scant remains of the first team and then continue on by following their instincts. Based on the fact that there was very little evidence of the first team’s descent remaining on the stairs, Navidson determines that the neon markers and fishing line last at most six days before they are entirely consumed by the house.
When they finally make camp, both men are disheartened and exhausted. Nevertheless, each agrees to alternately serve as watch. Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes-clearly a painful process-before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing. Reston spends his time tinkering with his chair and the mount on the Arriflex.
Except for their own restlessness, neither one hears anything during the night.
Toward the end of their second day inside (making this the ninth day since Holloway’s team set out into the house), both men seem uncertain whether to continue or return.
It is only as they are making camp for the second night that Navidson hears something. A voice, maybe a cry, but so fleeting were it not for Reston’s confirmation, it probably would have been shrugged off as just a high note of the imagination.
Leaving most of their equipment behind, the two men head out in pursuit of the sound. For forty minutes they hear nothing and are about to give up when their ears are again rewarded with another distant cry. Based on the rapidly changing video time stamp, we can see another three hours passes as they weave in and out of more rooms and corridors, often moving very quickly, though never failing to mark their course with neon arrows and ample amounts of fishing line.
At one point, Navidson manages to get Tom on the radio, only to learn that there is something the matter with Karen. Unfortunately, the signal decays before he can get more details. Finally, Reston stops his wheelchair and jabs a finger at a wall. On Hi 8, we witness his gruff assertion: “How we get through it, I don’t have a clue. But that crying’s coming from the other side.”
Searching out more hallways, more turns, Navidson eventually leads the way down a narrow corridor ending with a door. Navidson and Reston open it only to discover another corridor ending with another door.
Slowly they make their way through a gauntlet of what must be close to fifty doors (it is impossible to calculate the exact number due to the
jump cuts), until Navidson discovers for the first and only time a door without a door knob. Even stranger, as he tries to push the door open, he discovers it is locked. Reston’s expression communicates nothing but incredulity. [212-See Gaston Bachelard’s La Poétique de L’Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), p. 78, where he observes:
Francoise Minkowska a exposé une collection particulièrement émouvante de dessins d’enfants polonais ou juifs qui ont subi les sévices de l’occupation allemande pendant La demière guen. Telle enfant qui a vécu cache, a Ia moindre alerte, dans une annoire, dessine longtemps après les heures maudites, des maisons étroites, froides et fermées. Et c’est ainsi que Françoise Minkowska pane de “maisons imrnobiles,” de maisons immobilisées clans leur raideur: “Cette raideur et cette immobilité se retrouvent aussi bien a Ia fumée que dans les rideaux des fenêtres. Les arbres autour d’elle sont droits, ont l’air de Ia gander.”…
A un detail, Ia grande psychologue qu’était Francoise Minkowska teconnaissait le mouvement de la maison. Dans Ia maison dessinée par un enfant de huit ans, Françoise Minkowska note qu’à Ia porte, ii y a “une poign&; on y entre, on y habite.” Ce n’est pas simplement une maisonconstruction, “c’est une maison-habitation.” La poignée de Ia porte désigne ëvidemment une fonctionnalité. La kinesthdsie est marquee par ce signe, Si souvent oublid dans les dessins des enfants “rigides.”
Remarquons bien que Ia “poignCe” de La porte ne pourrait guère être dessinée a l’échelle de La maison, C’est sa fonction qui prime tout souci de grandeur. Elle traduit une fonction d’ouverture. Seal un esprit logique peut objecter qu’elle sert aussi bien a fermer qu’à ouvrir. Dans le regne des valeurs, la clef ferme plus qu’elle n’ouvre. La poignée ouvre plus qu’elle ne ferme.
[203-See also Dr. Helen Hodge’s American Psychology: The
Ownership Of Self (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), p. 297 where she writes:
What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson’s comdors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Mysr-like discoveries f see Chad; p. 99.] thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? or better yet: what is exciting? While the degree varies, ‘ are always excited by anything that engages us, influences us or more simply involves us. In those endlessly repetitive hallways and stairs, there is nothing for us to connect with. That pennanently foreign place does not excite us. It bores us. And that is that, except for the fact that there is no such thing as boredom. Boredom is really a psychic defense protecting us from ourselves, from complete paralysis, by repressing, among other things, the meaning of that place, which in this case is and always has been horror.
See also Otto Fenichel’s 1934 essay “The Psychology of Boredom” in which he describes boredom as “an unpleasurable experience of a lack of impulse.” Kierkegaard goes a little further, remarking that “Boredom, extinction, is precisely a continuity of nothingness.” While William
Wordsworth in his preface for Lyrical Ballads (1802) writes:
The subject is indeed important! For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability… [A] multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves.
See Sean Healy’s Boredom, Self and Culture (Rutherford, NJ.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984); Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Boredom: The
Literary I-f istory of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995); and finally Celine Arlesey’s Perversity In Dullness … and Vice-
Versa (Denver: Blederbiss Press, 1968).]
See also Anne Balifs article in which she quotes Dr. F. Minkowska’s comments on De Van Gogh er Seurat aux dessins d’enfants, illustrated catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musèe Pedagogique (Paris) 1949.]
As Navidson pulls away to re-examine the obstacle, he hears a whimper coming from the other side. Taking two steps back, he throws his shoulder into the door. It bends but does not give way. He tries again and again, each hit straining the bolt and hinges, until the fourth hit, at last, tears the hinges free, pops whatever bolt held it in place, and sends the door cracking to the floor.
Reston keeps the chair mounted Arriflex trained on Navidson and while the focus is slightly soft, as the door breaks loose, the frame gracefully accepts Jed’s ashen features as he faces what he has come to believe is his final moment.
This whole sequence amounts to a pretty ratty collection of cuts alternating between Jed’s Hi 8 and an equally poor view from the 16mm camera and Navidson and Reston’s Hi 8s. Nevertheless what matters most here is adequately captured: the alchemy of social contact as Jed’s rasp of terror almost instantly transforms itself into laughter and sobs of relief. In a scattering of seconds, a thirty-three year old man from Vineland, New Jersey, who loves to drink Seattle coffee and listen to Lyle Lovett with his fiancée, learns his sentence has been remitted.
He will live.
As diligent as any close analysis of the Zapruder film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here [214-Though still see Danton Blake’s Violent Verses: Cinema’s Treatment of Death (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).] reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced his upper lip, blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205). Ample information perhaps to track the trajectories of individual skull bits and blood droplets, determine destinations, even origins, but not nearly enough information to actually ever reassemble the shatter. Here then-
the after
math
of meaning.
A life
üme
finished between
the space of
two frames.
The dark line where the
eye in
something that was never there
To begin with
[215-Typo. “T” should read “t” with a period following “with.”]
Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: “Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact. Watch how the frame does not, cannot anticipate the action. Jed’s in the lower left hand corner of the frame! Nothing’s predetermined or foreseen. It’s all painfully present which is why it’s so painfully real.” [216-you probably guessed, not only has Ken Burns never made any such comment, he’s also never heard of The Navidson Record let alone Zampanô.]
Jed crumples, his moment of joy stolen by a pinkie worth of lead, leaving him dead on the floor, a black pool of blood spilling out of him.
In the next shots-mostly from the Hi Ss-we watch Navidson dragging Wax and Jed out of harm’s way while trying at the same time to get Tom on the radio.
Reston returns fire with an HK .45.
“Since when did you bring a gun?” Navidson asks, crouching near the door.
“Are you kidding me? This place is scary.”
Another shot explodes in the tiny room.
Reston wheels back to the edge of the doorway and squeezes off three more rounds. This time there is no return fire. He reloads. A few more seconds pass.
“I can’t see a fucking thing,” Reston whispers.
Which is true: neither one of their flashlights can effectively penetrate that far into the black.
Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.
Thanks to this powerful flash, the Hi 8 can now capture a shadow in the distance. The stills, however, are even more clear, revealing that the shadow is really the blur of a man,
standing dead
centre
with a
rifle in
his hand.
Then just as the strobe captures him lifting the weapon, presumably now aiming at the blinding flash, we hear a series of sharp cracks. Neither Navidson nor Reston have any idea where these sounds are coming from, though gratefully the stills reveal what is happening:
all those doors
behind
the man
are
slamming shut,
one
after
another
after
another,
which still does not prevent the figure from firing.
“Awwwwwwwwwww shit!” Reston shouts.
But Navidson keeps his Nikon steady and focused, the motor chewing up a whole roll of film as the flash angrily slashes out at the pre-
vailing darkness, ultimately capturing
this
dark
form
vanishing
behind a closing
door,
even though a hole the size of a fist
punches through
the muntin,
the
round
powerful
enough to propel the bullet into
the second
door,
though not
powerful enough
to do more than
splinter
a
before this damage along with even the sound from the blast
disappears behind the roar of more slamming doors,
the last one finally hammering shut, leaving
the
room
saturated in silence.
Navidson sprints down the corridor to the first door but can find no way to lock it.
“He’s alive” Reston whispers. “Navy, come here. Jed’s breathing.”
The camera captures Navidson’s P.O.V. as he returns to the dying young man.
“It doesn’t matter Rest. He’s still dead.”
Whereupon Navidson’s eye quickly pans from the thoughtless splatter of grey matter and blood to more pressing things, the groan of the living calling him away from the sigh of the dead.
Despite his shoulder wound and loss of blood, Wax is still very much alive. As we can see, a fever-probably due to the onset of an infection- has marooned him in a delirium and although his rescuers are now at hand his eyes remain fixed on a horizon that is both empty and meaningless. Navidson’s shot of Jed, though brief, is not nearly as short as this shot of
Wax.
In the next segment, taken at least fifteen minutes later at a new location, we see Navidson elevating Wax’s legs, cleaning the wound, and gently feeding him half a tablet of a painkiller, probably meperidine. [217- i.e. Demerol.]
Reston, meanwhile, finishes converting their two-man tent into a makeshift stretcher. Having already arranged the tent poles in a way that will provide the most support, he now uses some pack straps to create two handles which will enable Navidson to carry the rear end more easily.
“What about Jed?” Reston asks, as he begins securing the front end of the stretcher to the back of his wheelchair.
“We’ll leave his pack and mine behind.”
“Some habits die hard, huh?”
“Or they don’t die,” replies Navidson. [218-A bit of dialogue which of course only makes sense when Navidson’s history is taken into account.] [219-See page 332-333.]
A little later, Navidson gets Tom on the radio and tells him to meet them at the bottom of the stairs.
