A Video essay by Scout Tefoya finds the reflective surfaces and auteurist echoes hiding in Michael Mann’s BLACKHAT.
“Anaphora is a simple grammatical construction; it simply means the repetition of words at the beginning of successive sentences. Repeat something at the start of a few ideas and it starts to sound like an incantation, the start of a spiritual invocation. For me it’s how the auteurist part of my brain works. I see the signals up front that tell me who’s work I’m watching, they align my defenses, attune me to the inner working of the art in front of me. The anaphoric tendencies of the directors are signals to those of us looking for a way in. They’re mutual shibboleths, allowing us to know they have a coherent body of work, a continuity of visual and aural ideas of which to keep track. A body of work becomes a road map or a sheet of music. A way to orient oneself inside an artist’s mind.”
