Nicolas Provost, Stardust, 2010
Video projection. Installation dimensions variable, video: 19 min 52 sec
Courtesy the David and Indrė Roberts Collection
As a roller coaster train rattles past a facsimile of the Statue of Liberty, the words ‘New York New York’ flash in bright lights. Las Vegas screams, the sounds of thrill literally flying through the air. This neon-studded city is well-known to all who are familiar with American culture, partly as the city has become a familiar location in Hollywood cinema. Spectacle is palpable everywhere on the streets, be it in Little Venice, by the Great Pyramids or around the Empire State Building. Las Vegas is an environment that prides itself on being a loose fabrication of another reality.
The built environment underscores and amplifies what Stardust (2010) unpicks: the make-believe of cinema. The film lays bare the apparatus that constructs stories and dreams. Provost’s shots of residents, workers and visitors going about their daily business have been dubbed with excerpts of dialogue taken from famous American thrillers, their lip movements almost matching but revealing a purposeful disjoint. It’s all CIA agents, vault keys and double crossings. 'You have no idea what men in power can do!,' someone shouts down their flip phone. In actuality, this was probably a more mundane conversation, but the audio suddenly gives the man speaking a slightly crazed look about him.
Stardust stacks up cinematic tropes from genres like the heist movie or film noir, particularly tricks used in these films to create suspense or an air of mystery. The most obvious of these is the swelling music, but the edit also has a big part to play. What in film theory is known as the ‘Kuleshov effect’ has been put to good use.1 This is a montage technique where associations are created by the way two sequential shots interact with each other, the loose images together creating a narrative or emotion. Clever montage combined with excessive camera panning and slow zoom keeps the frame centered on individuals, busy deliberating on their phones or just waiting around.2 Seen as a singular image there would not be that much happening. The way these images have been assembled means the whole twenty minutes of the film is constructed as if we are on the cusp of something big happening. Any minute now.
1 See how the technique works, 'The Kuleshov Effect — A Silent Experiment', YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8akNCJQz-0. Last accessed 24 June 2020
2 The insights in this paragraph are mainly thanks to David W. Pendleton’s essay 'Cinema Between the Real and the False: Nicolas Provost’s Plot Point Trilogy', in Dream Machine: Nicolas Provost, (Uitgeverij Lannoo, 2015)
The links to Hollywood cinema are shown even more literally. Stars of the big screen make appearances throughout. We see Danny Trejo and Dennis Hopper in the midst of intense discussions whilst eating McDonald’s fries, Jon Voight having a drink and someone resembling Jack Nicholson being driven around in a limousine. It remains unclear if these are actual cameos, coincidental ‘off duty’ captures or, in the case of Nicholson, merely a good look-a-like hiding behind sunglasses. Although their presence is shrouded in the same sense of mystery the film is creating, the point of their appearance is not lost. These are all actors largely known for roles in films that follow a well-trodden good guy/bad guy path and more often than not they play the anti-hero or villain.
It is clear that on surface level Sin City is full of seduction. Scratching beyond that though quickly reveals it is only a thin disguise. Provost contrasts the gold glittery façade and the make-believe of the Strip, with the surprisingly bland and generic interiors. Once his cameras are positioned inside hotel lobbies, by gambling machines and bars, the uniformity and slight abject sadness of the place in emphasised. None of the interiors have windows or sunlight, some are decked out with office panels on ceilings and walls, security booths and reception desks look uncomfortably small; the glitz and glam suddenly seems far removed.
So, is this a film about film? Stardust certainly breaks through the spectacle of the silver screen, showing how easily elements like plot, suspense and stardom can be manipulated by an edit. It’s fitting that this mirror being held up to cinema itself is placed in a setting that makes no secret of being a capitalist fabrication.
One of the most pertinent moments comes roughly 15 minutes in, when the camera stops on a person standing frozen amidst bustle and shops selling tacky souvenirs, a look of complete disillusionment on their face. Suddenly the underbelly of the city is rendered fully visible again and the spell is broken.
The shots that follow include a long zoom on the face of a croupier, his nametag identifying him as Peter, who cold stares the viewer down the lens. His silence also indicates a shift in the pace and feel of Stardust. Plot twist! Moving from suspense film to disaster movie, suddenly the entire crowd in shot is seen gazing up at the sky. They might be bracing themselves for the arrival of superheroes or monsters, but my money is on an alien invasion — bringing real dust from the stars down with them.