Avant-garde filmmaker James Benning’s “11 x 14” bores audiences at first, but over the span of its 80 minute runtime, it reveals why it’s a staple of experimental filmmaking. Its singular nature of capturing the audience goes all the way back to the idea that sparked its creation.
Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art hosted a screening and Q&A with Benning on Thursday as his 1977 film “11 x 14” nears 50 years since its release.
“My original idea was to make a narrative where there’d be a main character, and every time you saw him, he was a different person,” Benning said during the Q&A.
Benning said during the Q&A he wished to show the film because he shot it while teaching filmmaking at NU during the late 1970s.
“I think this is a good place to begin with my work,” Benning said. “It suggests everything I’m going to do in the future.”
“11 x 14” is a disconnected experimental foray into narrative loosely tied together by isolated shots of figures and vehicles.
It begins with a shot of what Benning calls a “trope of cinema itself”: a couple saying goodbye to one another. An 11-minute shot of a man sitting on Chicago’s “L” train plays thereafter. From there, Benning goes wherever he wishes.
The film includes shots of billboards, a sex scene, clips from a past Benning film, a long shot of a chimney and so much more. The audience has no idea what they will watch next, yet the film somehow still feels cohesive.
After viewers adjust to the rhythm and new language the film creates, trust builds between Benning and the audience. No matter what plays on the screen next, it will be the right image.
“I’m interested in deconstructing narrative in the piece, and then doing these other kinds of experiments about what I thought cinema was at the time,” Benning said.
It took until the latter end of the movie for me to fully engage with it. At first, the film’s slow pace and not-so-obvious narrative frustrated me, but before I knew it, I had settled in and began to feel what Benning was trying to say.
The Midwestern landscapes and ’70s billboards and music dispersed throughout the film are all vital pieces of its elusive yet resonant style. These pieces craft an aesthetic experience that requires no direct narrative.
The consistent aesthetic identity tells the audience that “11 x 14” is a film that shouldn’t be understood but rather felt. This vibes-based nature of the picture fits perfectly with Benning’s idea of having a main character that’s a different person in every scene.
It’s not a reach to say the transfer of identity of the main character extends to the audience themselves. The images in “11 x 14” make the audience feel like an active participant in the movie. They are caught within vehicles and landscapes they exist in.
It’s almost like the film could continue but with a shot of an audience member in place of the film’s characters. And the crazy thing is … it would still work just as well.
“11 x 14” asks its audience to be patient. Nowadays, this is a big ask, but I urge you to give it a chance. The film’s structure and abstract tendencies may not be for everyone, but if you buy into Benning’s vision even for just a second, you will feel his passion and authenticity.
“Even to this day, I’m trying to make films that try to add to the vocabulary of filmmaking rather than to satisfy or make people happy,” Benning said. “There’s some joy in this – there’s baseball, sex, good tunes.”
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