The Top of His Head

I have today become determined to go out and discover more about the work of Peter Mettler. My previous familiarity with Mettler's work was limited to his 11th film The Top of His Head from 1989.

Gus a successful satellite dish salesman is entirely caught up in the capitalist material world, until he meets the mysterious and alluring Lucy, who is wanted by the cops for her radical performance pieces that espouse environmentalism. ...but any description of the plot really doesn't cover it.

It's a film about breaking away from perceptions and finding other ways of seeing the world. Peter Mettler shows us this world through his cinematography. It's about God as a satellite. It's about working out which side of the net the fish is on. It's about a rust map. It's about last looks at the world. ...and it's about giving birth on a train to a monkey with a port on the top of his head.

The visual imagery is so rich that it becomes a valid substitute for plot in the film. Although Kathryn, who fell asleep two out of the three times I tried to make her watch this film, would probably beg to differ. I remember fondly for example the scene where there is a plasic curtain on the other side of which there appears to be a strobing light. As we pass the thick plastic we see that the strobe effect is created by a half naked man swinging an enormous storm lamp around and around on a very long metal chain.

I realised that one of the reasons I'd liked the top of his head was the cinematographer-writer-director Peter's expression of the looking (and the perspective of looking) changing the thing that it seen. The painting of Gus by his uncle for example, and the fish in or out of the nets.

This quote is from his most recent film: "Maybe there is a difference between looking for something and looking at something, when you are a part of what you are looking at, and you look at it and it looks back at you." (Gambling, Gods and LSD, 2002).

The Top of His Head does for Mairzy Doats what Reservoir Dogs did for Stuck In The Middle With You.

Mairzy doats and dozy doats And liddle lamzy divey, A kiddlely divey too, wouldn't you? Mairzy doats and dozy doats And liddle lamzy divey, A kiddlely divey too, wouldn't you?

OK. Once again Mettler shows (after Scissere) his gift for striking visual composition. There are certainly some mesmerizing scenes in this film - particularly the last few minutes involving the protagonist and a set of swinging strobe lights. But once again Mettler also forgets that in order for a substantial amount of people to find appreciation in a film there has to be enough of the familiar (not necessarily predictable.) Otherwise people are just going to lose patience with the film regardless of how skillful the cinematic technique is. Your film will fade into obscurity, as this one has. There also has to be more of a focus. If your main goal is to present striking visual imagery then that is admirable and fine - however, the film can't meander as much as this one does. There is no logical foundation here for a viewer to grasp ahold of.

That is not to say everything has to be clearcut. But here we have such a radically obscure presentation that the filmmaker is asking a little bit too much of his audience.