Kenneth Anger was a devotee of Aleister Crowley, so it's not all that surprising to find this short by him, a visual tour of some of Crowley's paintings and drawings, which range from realist to imaginary, light and Gothic.
However, I personally have a knee-jerk reaction to artists filming other artist's art, and "The Man We Want to Hang" is a good example why. At times Anger focuses in on a certain aspect of the drawing or painting, and then pans or tilts the camera in various directions to reveal more about the work. Sometimes he even zooms in from a larger image to a detail. The problem I find with constructions like this is that we are no longer looking at the art or the painting, nor appreciating it on our own nor the original artists terms. Rather, we are being lead, by the filmmaker, to see what the filmmaker wants us to see--which should be interesting, because it creates a dialog between the artist and filmmaker, but really is just annoying. Things that interest the filmmaker may not interest the viewer in quite the same way, and it's really annoying to be forced to look at one thing when perhaps the eye wants to look at something else.
In terms of a visual essay or document, this short is useful because Crowley's aesthetics are quite obviously reflected in and reproduced in Anger's own. Not that you need Anger to point that out--his devotion to Crowley is well recorded, and a minimal amount of research into Crowley will open up a lot of Anger's symbolism. But in terms of comparing, for instance, Lucifer Rising to some of the figures and landscapes here, it is still somewhat helpful.
--PolarisDiB
However, I personally have a knee-jerk reaction to artists filming other artist's art, and "The Man We Want to Hang" is a good example why. At times Anger focuses in on a certain aspect of the drawing or painting, and then pans or tilts the camera in various directions to reveal more about the work. Sometimes he even zooms in from a larger image to a detail. The problem I find with constructions like this is that we are no longer looking at the art or the painting, nor appreciating it on our own nor the original artists terms. Rather, we are being lead, by the filmmaker, to see what the filmmaker wants us to see--which should be interesting, because it creates a dialog between the artist and filmmaker, but really is just annoying. Things that interest the filmmaker may not interest the viewer in quite the same way, and it's really annoying to be forced to look at one thing when perhaps the eye wants to look at something else.
In terms of a visual essay or document, this short is useful because Crowley's aesthetics are quite obviously reflected in and reproduced in Anger's own. Not that you need Anger to point that out--his devotion to Crowley is well recorded, and a minimal amount of research into Crowley will open up a lot of Anger's symbolism. But in terms of comparing, for instance, Lucifer Rising to some of the figures and landscapes here, it is still somewhat helpful.
--PolarisDiB
