Looking for Langston

i stand before the gates of hallucination, i too in search of langston. because it is impossible to remain outside — seeing that he is being sought means seeking him too. it means being complicit.

we search for him in his reverberations, in his origin, in his existence and in his legacy, in all his many forms. and we find him. utopically, we find him — which helps us imagine a kind of fullness, a world elevated, almost perfect.

the film opens with a quote from toni morrison, taken from the tribute she gave at james baldwin’s funeral in the 1980s. she quotes him: “one does not lightly choose to oppose one’s society. it is easier to feel at home among one’s compatriots than to be mocked and hated by them.” it opens with this sentence that says it all — if we can accept that a single sentence can say it all — especially when it comes to the difficulty and emotional cost of taking a stand against the values, norms, or beliefs that prevail in a society. it says it all in the sense that challenging social consensus is not an easy choice — it brings isolation, rejection, and hostility: the price of dissent. it says it all in the sense that the desire to belong makes one avoid becoming the target of contempt, preferring instead conformity, alignment with the larger group — even if the price is to give up the greatest expressions: truth, freedom.

the film juxtaposes tributes. it fuses them. or rather, it reveals a juxtaposition that was already there. it reveals causes and effects. it moves, in all directions, from story to story, from legacy to legacy.

however, it happens that, just as when reading many novels, or watching many films, one can end up worn out by the stories. other possibilities then open up: making films that do not seek to tell stories, or that go beyond the stories they want to tell; watching films that do not seek to tell stories; not looking for stories in the films we watch. we can, for example, try to stop talking about stories and start talking about images. how can we respond to a story, or remake a story, without repeating its usual formula?

looking for langston does not seem very interested in obeying the laws of a type of cinema that has been crystallizing—and that has tyrannically become what is considered cinema par excellence—nor the laws of the masses, nor the laws of literalness. this disobedience is a principle, a response, a form of revolution—

the possibility of being free—as a spectator, as a filmmaker—free from the anxiety of reason, of understanding, of linearity. free from fear. free to experience a beauty free of violence—although isaac julien plays with that possibility—of violence—he withholds it from us, offering us other futures, other paths. we are no longer present when it arrives. which makes it exist in vain, for itself, falling into emptiness. and thus we become untouchable, belonging to another dimension—the realm of dream, hallucination, love, desire, freedom, and also brotherhood.

langston, julien, baldwin, morrison, hemphill, nugent (among, of course, many others) offer us refusal — the refusal to be part of an oppressive system. and julien, by showing them united, makes freedom not only dazzling but also seem easy — and makes us feel that maybe it is. or could be. or could come to be.

perhaps we can only find langston — and all his friends — through pleasure, and through accepting pleasure as a form of knowledge (echoing the thought of roberta smith — very rightly shared by a friend).

those who are under the power of someone or something have this knowledge, and so they are always beyond those who hold power — they dance, drink, play music, kiss, laugh, exercise freedom with their own bodies — knowing that any institutional or constitutional solution is a step, but never a true solution, never true freedom.

“humor is laughing at what you don’t have when you ought to have it,” said langston. humor as rupture, then. as a form of resistance and survival in the face of adversity.

as a response to tragedy, to lack — of rights, of opportunities, of recognition. laughing as a way of exposing the fragility of order and hierarchy. laughter that arises from the awareness of deprivation — always unjust.

to laugh at what is missing is a way of exposing the absurd, of disarming pain, of transforming suffering. it is a form of relief, yes, but also of subversion and critique. a form of protest, a survival mechanism, a way of affirming one's own humanity, even in the face of theft.

seeking langston is seeking (and finding) that laughter — the kind that exposes, opens, and transforms. it is living — truly living — 46 minutes that simultaneously offer us ghostly portraits of oppression and pull us out of political despair. and that withdrawal is a celebration.