Savannah Electric

It is probable that Perry Stratychuk hoped to break out of anonymity with his just-completed, full-length feature, Savannah Electric, a kind of science-fiction film.

To try to make a feature film in Manitoba is certainly ambitious; to try to make it in Stratychuk’s style—that is, almost alone—is doubly so. It is a project with small chance of succeeding and Savannah Electric is not a success. This is unfortunate, because the filmmaker, on the basis of his previous work, deserves much more recognition than he has received up to this point. On the other hand, it may be that Savannah Electric has taught Stratychuk valuable lessons about his limitations.

In person, he is soft-spoken and shy, but the very name of his film company, Destiné Films, suggests his belief that, sooner or later, he will be noticed, and when that happens, it will be due almost entirely to his own efforts.

Eschewing groups and cooperatives, he has taught himself all aspects of film production, through watching, reading and doing, and has put this knowledge to practice in Savannah Electric. The film was written, directed, shot, edited and produced by Stratychuk himself. He even wrote some of the music. He took the same approach with his earlier short films—Room Four Memory (1980), His First Million (1981) and A Soft Look (1983)—and to good result. All of these have won awards at American film and video festivals.

A Soft Look, which has been shown on the material CBC network, won the Silver Award at the Houston International Film Festival. This documentary, about Czechoslovakian-born Winnipeg artist Andrew Valko, is also a statement on what it means to be an artist whose vision dominates everything in his life: his habits, conversation, relationships. As a portrait of an artist, it is a work of art in its own right. Instead of simply showing Valko’s paintings, the camera insists on its own perspective, singling out images—a cigarette burning in an ashtray, shrimp being expertly sliced by graceful hands, a woman’s figure silhouetted at an unexpected angle—which produce an atmosphere of inchoate, inarticulate meaning. Speaking about this film, Stratychuk says, “I like the idea of drawing people into a world, so they can feel the obsessions and emotions I’m interested in. It was with this film that I first realized that I could convey a personal view.”

Some documentary filmmakers, like the Film Board’s Michael Rubbo, draw attention to their personal view by placing themselves frequently in front of the camera, even discussing the problems they’re having with the film. Stratychuk assiduously avoids any such display; he is not only invisible, he is inaudible, writing no dialogue, delivering no narration.

Savannah Electric, however, marks a departure from this self-effacing style. In some ways it seems like a drawn-out version of Room Four Memory, in which a variety of images—a mirror, blood, a downed pilot, a barn—are presented in a way that suggests, but does not clearly delineate, some sort of connectedness. Both films have the quality of private mythology, replete with images carrying special meaning for the filmmaker. In Room Four Memory the images sometimes possess the shock of the sudden penetration of nightmare into the ordinary waking world, but in Savannah Electric this is not the case. It is evident the filmmaker isn’t yet up to the challenge of a full-length fiction.

Savannah Electric has some of the characteristics of science fiction. Its premise is that an artificial intelligence has developed to the point where it is more powerful than the human beings who created it. In some anonymous, desert corner of the world, men labour in the service of the machine.

The narrative line is broken frequently and the relationship among events is often unclear. There are actors, human figures acting out roles, but there is almost no characterization. Lacking a conventional plot and characters, Savannah Electric is not a movie in the sense of entertainment. Yet the desert setting, the pursuit scenes, futuristic wardrobes and computer technology all incline the viewer to think of a variety of Hollywood fantasies—Mad Max, 2001, even James Bond. It goes without saying that low-budget Manitoba production can’t hope to compete with such films for razzle-dazzle.

Even though Savannah Electric seems to invite such comparisons, they are undoubtedly unfair. It isn’t a high-tech sci-fi movie. What, then, is it? Perhaps it’s a parable, in the tradition of 1984 or The Castle. At the beginning the screen is blank. A cultivated male voice interrupts the synthesizer music track to tell us about a bounty hunter named H.A. Roc. We slowly grasp the fact that the voice belongs to a nameless artificial intelligence. Perhaps it is The Benefactor, whose computer-generated visage appears some time later.

H.A. Roc hunts people on behalf of The Benefactor. Men in white protective suits work inside a decrepit building, processing some mysterious substance they carry around in cannisters. In return, The Benefactor gives them “cheap paper symbols…it satisfies them and afforded me dominion.” The last third of the film concentrates on a labourer’s attempt to escape from The Benefactor’s bondage. Throughout, the environment is bleak and sterile, either desert exterior or interiors of ill-lit places with paint peeling off the walls. The whole film is black and white.

The film seems to strain at parabolic profundity: computers may one day take over our lives—maybe they already have; we are slaves, content to do repetitive meaningless tasks as long as we get enough cheap paper symbols. But the human urge to freedom cannot be denied, and there will always be at least one hero who, even though he may die in his attempt at escape, will never be spiritually defeated.

As messages go, this is something of a cliché. It could have worked, though, had there been a human dimension to the characters involved. In depicting a totally alienated world, Savannah Electric also alienates the viewer. No word of dialogue is spoken, apart from The Benfactor’s diary-like narration and a voice which sounds like a female HAL 9000, who wants one of the workers to explain why he’s been so quiet lately.

Who cares, then, if the workers try to escape The Benefactor’s power? Who cares, especially, about H.A. Roc, The Benefactor’s Clint Eastwood-type hit man? The film fails on two levels. Its unspectacular technology makes it unsatisfactory as a film in the James Bond mode. And it falls short as a 1984 clone because it lacks depth of character. Watching Savannah Electric is frustrating and off-putting. It’s as though the filmmaker has merely delivered up his private obsessions for public consumption. Still, not all is loss: some of the camera work bears the stamp of Stratychuk’s unique way of seeing, the editing has some very interesting moments, and the music is excellent.

At 26, Stratychuk has not yet found his own voice. If he is to continue in the fictional rather than documentary mode, the private mythology will have to become more public, more mature. Stratychuk has taught himself an enormous amount by being the auteur-director: working alone has enabled him to avoid distraction and to follow his intuition. Perhaps he is confident enough now to work with other creative minds in future productions.

His dilemma: shall he continue as an independent private myth-maker, and risk obscurity; or shall he take the traditional group approach to filmmaking, yield up some control and perhaps inhibit some of his creative expression?

He’ll undoubtedly find the answer. In A Soft Look, Andrew Valko says, “People become artists and then they try to go backwards, break down all the barriers and start looking at things in a new, fresh way…and it takes a long time.” Stratychuk is a natural artist. He looks at things in a fresh way. With time, and with the right people to work with, he will be heard from. ♦

Ralph Friesen is a regular film reviewer for Border Crossings.