Jon Jost's Speaking Directly

I was rewatching a few films and decided I would review one of my favorites, Jon Jost’s Speaking Directly. I don’t normally review films but there is a serious lack of attention to Jon Jost and his large body of work so I think it is worth writing about. The film takes the form of an experimental autobiographical essay and is the first feature length film he created. Due to his lack of maturity as a filmmaker at the time, it is definitely not his best work but I’d like to argue that it is his best experimental concept.

The film is very rare, and I’m not sure that copies of the film exist or ever existed for physical purchase anywhere, as it was mainly screened at random festivals over the years. If you are interested in watching any of Jon’s films they all can be streamed digitally here, and I believe the profits from that link go to him so check it out.

The film consists of a mix between a home movie, a diary, and an experimental musing about what it is to be alive and witness the world around you. The film attempts to describe himself and communicate in a raw way who he is, how he feels, and how he relates to the various identities that he ascribes to. One poignant example is his description of what it means to be “American” whilst at the same time fundamentally disagreeing with the decisions of the state and most other citizens.

It also brings up questions about what it means to desire to record materials onto a film about yourself to present to other people and what the intent of such a film even is. He combines elements of these questions while toying with the form of the medium itself through experimental shorts that are scattered throughout the autobiographical material.

Before I go further I should be fair to the person reading this and say, this is a completely self-indulgent, patience testing experimental film that is done by someone who is basically making a very raw film about themselves. Most people will not enjoy the film and I suspect that most people would find it very boring to watch. This rawness though is part of the film’s charm. It is incredible to me how much emotion can be generated just by an essentially random person going around filming the things in his life and capturing his musings about what meaning those things have for him.

Through this film, he preserves a snapshot of the time period that he existed within and where he was mentally through his past state of being in a very plain and straightforward way. The process of filming allows him to slowly builda up a complete picture of what it is like to be Jon Jost that is amusing to watch as an outsider to his little life.

Through the course of the film, he begins cataloging everything about himself and documenting it, showing where he lives, showing all of his friends, showing his landlord, showing his possessions, as well as showing the process of making the film itself. There is one particularly fun point a friend of his states that they find the project to be hopelessly pretentious, instructing viewers to walk out of the theatre because of how dumb the film is in his opinion.

The film content is mostly about moments like these where his life reaches into the film in a way we can experience. The entire film is beautiful to look at and filled with lots of long takes of moments in Jon’s life. Most shots are done with a tripod making it feel much more like a traditional film than some handheld documentary mess. Most of the content of the film is described to us via Jon’s voiceovers throughout.

I’ll discuss the film further than I already have, I’m not trying to write a piece of film analysis, only a short recommendation. I have enjoyed every one of Jon Jost’s films that I have seen, but this is by far my favorite, (I have only seen his older work). Raw video diaries like this are always intrinsically interesting to me almost moreso than traditionally structured films. There is a lot more room to experiment with a video essay or diary than something that requires structure.

In fact, I would argue that a lot of the best filmmakers operate by making what I’ll call video diaries in disguise. They tell their emotions and thoughts at a particular time in their life through the process of making a film and their repertoire of films end up being veiled expressions of themselves as they change over time. Each film acting as a whiteboard for concepts, thoughts, and ideas that they are currently engaged with to express themselves at that point.

Fassbinder and Godard are like this, as is someone like Woody Allen, who roughly makes the same film every single movie starring himself as the main character in a thin veil. This style of filmmaking is my favorite kind of work because it is about the director themselves which allows them to bring in more creative elements than other directors. The narrative in such filmmakers’ films is often just a series of semi-arbitrary elements which act as vehicles for the director’s autobiography of expression.

The material content of such films is a lot less important in many ways than the composition of it together, the composition is the filtering of the content through the filmmaker’s view that makes it special. Every director does this to some extent obviously, but very few place themselves and their emotions or personalities first and foremost into the center screen. A director like Godard is essentially feeding their thoughts directly through the characters’ mouths.

Video diaries are the kind of movies I would make if I was going to try to create something. By that I mean it would be mostly plain autobiographical musings about my current state of being and my thoughts on what I like to think about that hopefully didn’t grow to be too self-indulgent. If I made such a film it would probably be created more for me and my friends than with the intent to entertain a wider variety of people.

I find artifacts like Speaking Directly to be extremely engaging and they exemplify what I want out of a film. He is indirectly speaking as directly as he can about himself and his experiences as best as he can. I highly recommend this film and all of Jon Jost’s other work to anyone with patience for long slow films.