The Essayistic Mode

The Fox reading gave me new insight to the essayistic mode through Fox’s explanation of the term ‘essay’. Fox explained that the term ‘essay’ comes from the French verb ‘essayer’ which means “to test” or “to try”. The mode is like a verb; the essayistic mode is an active mode “in which a proposed idea or question is tested by a range of means and intersecting lines of argument.” I hadn’t thought of the essayistic mode being particularly active since an essayistic documentary doesn’t always promote an active response to an issue or even an active point of view of an issue. The active nature of the documentary is not necessary the message of the documentary but the approach to the discovery and making of the message. The mode is active through its exploration of an issue through multiple perspectives and approaches. The filmmaker is active in working to acquire a broad range of perspectives and opinions of a question or issue and using what they discover to formulate an answer or opinion to the question/issue. Though, as Fox explains, “quite often an essay does not arrive at a finite conclusion, yet the ideas discovered during the process may reshape and reinform the initial query in unforeseen ways.” The essayistic films seems more concerned with the process of shaping and discovering a perspective than the actual final perspective and opinion. 

These ideas can be seen in Marilyn Levine’s and Ross McElwee’s film Something to Do with the Wall. In this film the film makers create a collage of opinions and perspectives of the Berlin Wall by people who live near the portion of the German wall which was near the former heart of Berlin. The film makers demonstrate that not everyone hates everything about the Wall. For example, some like the un-trafficked area which allowed children to play safely in the city. While another lady describes how the Wall lets her creative side thrive since the Wall reminds her of the danger and constant presence of reality. These perspectives along with others perspectives of detachment, anger, awe, and acceptance, shape a overall new perspective for the viewer of the Wall without the filmmakers ever specifically stating what the Wall is and what it does and has done to society in that area. They show that there is no real concrete view of the Wall and that people’s opinions are changing and evolving just like society. The filmmakers are able to show the change of people’s perspective of the Wall through their continued exploration of perspectives three years after their previous exploration in Germany and days after the Wall fell. The film was more concerned with exploring what the Wall was and how it affected those who lived closest to it than it was concerned with what the Wall literally was. The film didn’t come to a finite conclusion but it did provide new insights which shaped a new perspective of the subject which is what an essayistic film typically does.