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records, and tapes, so that thousands of copies of a given work can be in circulation at any one time and can be found by their true audience. But this will never happen with film; the economics are against it.
MacDonald:
When I showed
The Lighted Field
at Utica College this past spring, Pat [MacDonald's wife, Patricia O'Connor] leaned over to me at one point and said, "He must love magic." It struck me as an astute comment; in a sense you're in the Georges Méliès tradition; for you the camera is the magician's top hat.
Noren:
True in the sense that everything in that film was done in the camera at the moment of shooting. That's always been a point of pride with me, it's true of all my films. No optical printers or special processes. All invention in the moment of shooting itself. I stress this so that you'll fully appreciate my virtuosityand my humility.
The Lighted Field
is a magic trick, prestidigitatious resurrection of the dead, animation of the inert. That's the metaphorical nexus of the entire film. We all love magic, at least as children. That's basic good health.
I once spent some time studying occult matters, but in the end all of that just gets in your way. It's a trap like any other systematized way of thinking.
I still get a great deal of pleasure from alchemical thought and imagery. There's some wonderful cinematic poetry there and also some very sound, commonsensical advice about how to live.
I always liked this quote from "The Exposition of the Typical Figures":
As the first substance of your work, seek the Water of Life that flows beside the Tree, and keep its counsel, and the counsel of the Wind and counsel of the Earth and counsel of the Sun. For while you anxiously look about in out-of-the-way places and long for extraordinary events to come to you, while you are desirous of witches brews and love potions and instant cures, you pass by the clear motions of the Blessed Stream. While you gather in groups to see unprecedented lights and colors in the nighttime sky, and while you await incredible assignations of power on earthly lands . . . the Stone of Heaven lies directly at your feet . . . it is that upon which you stand.
MacDonald: The Lighted Field
has a very different mood from your earlier films. In fact, the clarity of its mood helped me see that, while many of your visual concerns may have remained consistent since
Huge Pupils
and
The Wind Variations,
each film feels the way it does because of your overall mental state during the period when you were shooting.
The Lighted Field
showed me that the films are more personally expressionistic than I had realized. Specifically,
The Lighted Field
seems a very happy film; you seem happy as a filmmaker, as a family man, as husband and father; a certain psychological darkness seems to have lifted. I have