While in 1964, with Empire, Andy Warhol and John Palmer directed a monumental movie (8 hours, five minutes) that reminded Americans of the position of its country in the geopolitical arena, post Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct 16 -28, 1962), by depicting the stability through time of such a famous landmark as the Empire State Building, located in New York, Theoretically, a paranoid conspiratorial phone call, is an uptaded version, post Patriot Act (Oct 26, 2001), that reminds Americans of the cost that demands keeping the position of its country in the geopolitical arena through time: an enormous package of lies, misinformation, disinformation, and cynical psychological operations (PSYOP).
Theoretically, a paranoid conspiratorial phone call (2,020) recovers the human aspect missing in Empire, by depicting a man talking by phone surrounded by books in a feature film of commercial standard length (one hour, thirty two minutes, eigh seconds), but it applies the same visual film techniques (or design) than the movie produced by Andy Warhol: a static camera focused on a stationary object with environmental light changing naturally. Empire, quintessential art film, is a black-and-white and silent film, Theoretically, on the other hand, embraces movies as entertainment, and adds the human voice through dialogue (even though as viewers we only listen to one side of it, becoming for us a monologue to be completed by our imagination if we want to.) So, with the rythm of the images we find that the main character, “The Boss”, by delivering his lines imposes a second rythm with his words, and by sharing ideas, allows the intellectual participation of the viewers, who can even be moved by his performance, which makes a great difference with Empire, when we consider the extremelly stoic behavior shown by the Empire State Building. Theoretically, concedes room for enjoyment to the general audience because it doesn’t intend, as Empire pretends, to canonize the American establishment by requiring from the spectators a quiet, formal, and respectful attitude, similar to the one of veneration. The aesthetic distance required to endure Empire in its integrity has been expelled from Theoretically, by appealing to the popular aesthetic, interested in the theme, the subject, the narration, even though the movie keeps the visual approach of Warhol, Palmer, and Jonas Mekas, who was the cinematographer.
Thematically, Theoretically, a paranoid conspiratorial phone call is a compilation of conspirational topics as understood by the most irreverent theorists, and the caricature imposed on the high ranking officers of the American security agencies blowbacks and embarrasses the conspiracy theorists themselves if we consider that the main character “The Boss” is also “The Pro Bono Spy Hunter” and he is talking alone, with himself, but using a phone, like a more modern schizophrenic who cannot differentiate reality from fantasy, like it is revealed at the end of the German expressionist movie The Cabinet of Doctor Caligary (1920), directed by Robert Wiene. A clue that indicates the feasibility of this possibility is that “The Boss” does something to the phone every time he calls “The Pro Bono Spy Hunter.” It can be accepted that he “secures” the line is we concede space for narrative fantasy but, it is also possible, that he just disconnects the line and answers to his own imagination. This ambiguity provides food for thought for supporters and detractors of the Military-Industrial Complex, widening the potential audience of the movie, an achievement not found in Empire and other renown art films.
Since the camera focuses on a human, the frame in Theoretically, a paranoid conspiratorial phone call reminds us of painting and classical painters, even though the moving image allows the main character to change facial expressions and move within a range, like a painting that has captured the human nature in its development at a given time. Renaissance art in Italy privileged the human presence and when we think about Leonardo DaVinci or Michelangelo, our mind conveys images of people, painted with great detail or even idealized. It is not possible to watch Theoretically, in its entirety without remembering the use of the baroque chiaroscuro or tenebrism by Caravaggio and the presence of the candle as light source in paintings like The Penitent Magdalene, or The Dream of Saint Joseph, by another baroque painter, Georges De La Tour, but updated with luminance provided by a contemporary computer display. This pictorial approach allows emotional accesibility to Theoretically, in contrast to Empire, whose ominous architectural subject is aligned in sensitivity with the cold and even overwhelming protagonism that most constructions acquire in the artwork of the famous American painter Edward Hopper, a feeling that Alfred Hitchcock exemplified with the Bates Motel and home in Psycho (1960), two buildings that could have been modeled easily after the House by the Railroad (1925) by Hopper.
Empire was added to the National Film Registry in 2004, due to its cultural significance in America. At a time when Hollywood invokes superheroes to preserve the U.S. establishment, sane movie producers avoid the minimalist film language and subject applied to the Warhol and Palmer classic, which makes more logical that foreigners could pay attention to updating Empire blending two opposite aesthetic tendencies: film as art and movies as entertainment. Leonidas Zegarra, writer-director-producer, is known in Peru and Bolivia by his feature films that combine popular aesthetics and his own film language experimentation. Jorge Villacorta, who wrote and directed Theoretically, a paranoid conspiratorial phone call (2,020), is an art historian and media scholar who has studied Mr. Zegarra’s movies carefully, becoming his personal film critic and media adviser, and even being an actor in a couple of his feature films, in addition to being Mr. Zegarra’s assistant director at least once, in María y los niños pobres (2010) [The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Impoverished Children]. Thus, a collaboration like Theoretically, was in the horizon. What is original is that Theoretically, is spoken in English, and designed to be consumed by the American audience, a strategy that allowed the film to become the most popular Peruvian “crime” movie after its second week, according to IMDb.com and its Advanced Title Search. Even though it is premature to give a diagnostic, it seems that this Peruvian movie may become a new American classic.
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2154413593
Embed Code (Paste in the html format):
<iframe src="https://www.imdb.com/videoembed/vi2154413593" allowfullscreen width="360" height="270"></iframe>
