TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. The rise of AI has had seismic implications for Hollywood. Movie scripts can be written by bots. And one AI company has even created a computer-generated actor. But amid this transformation, one director has created an art installation that hearkens to the old days of cinema. In 2000, an unknown Mexican filmmaker made waves at Cannes with a film about a car crash titled "Amores Perros." The director, Alejandro Iñárritu, has now turned the film's extra footage into an art installation. Contributor Carolina Miranda reviews the show.
CAROLINA MIRANDA, BYLINE: Walk into the first-floor gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and you'll be forgiven for thinking that you've wandered into the building's machine room. The clatter of industrial appliances makes normal conversation a challenge. And the room is hot, even a bit steamy. But move deeper into the space and you'll find that you're actually in the middle of a movie.
Large projectors display looped scenes on six screens staged around the room, all featuring snippets from director Alejandro Inarritu's first film, "Amores Perros," which debuted to much acclaim in 2000. On one screen, you catch a piece of one of the movie's brutal dogfights. On another, a hand reaches up a woman's skirt. A car chase ensues and a brutal crash. Then that same crash plays again from another angle. This is "Sueno Perro," devised by Inarritu with the help of a robust production team. The installation takes the unused scraps of his groundbreaking film and transforms them into an environment that not only plunges the viewer right into the movie but into the act of filmmaking. You see slates marking the beginning of the action. You see takes and retakes. Occasionally, the strips of colored film at the end of a reel come into view, casting an orange light on the room.
"Sueno Perro" in Spanish translates to dog dream, and Inarritu's installation certainly feels like a dream of the original movie - fragmented, chaotic, out of order. At times, you hear the convulsive explosion of the film's climactic car wreck. Sometimes that same crash occurs in eerie silence. Like an actual dream, it's then up to the viewer to make sense of what the bits might mean. Like any movie, the images also function as a time stamp of the past. The old sedans look dated. One of the film's stars, Gael Garcia Bernal, is still a teenager, and the Mexico City of the film is one that has not yet been gentrified by the digital nomads of the 21st century.
As Inarritu writes in a book about the project, a film is made of time and light. But what makes "Sueno Perro" truly remarkable is its analogue nature. "Amores Perros" was made before digital cameras had completely transformed moviemaking. Inarritu, a storyteller who embraces excess, shot a million feet of film to make the movie. But the final cut, which clocks in at about 2 hours and 30 minutes, used only about 13,000 feet of that footage. That left about 187 miles of film on the cutting room floor.
In an era when the word movie has come to mean a video you can shoot and edit on your phone, "Sueno Perro" is a reminder that films once carried physical weight. A 35-millimeter reel weighs about 5 pounds, and the average film was about two reels long. The use of celluloid film also involves photochemical processing, and displaying the work requires large projectors that generate heat and noise. Making a movie is a creative process. It used to be an industrial one, too. "Sueno Perro" makes this industrial nature visible and visceral. In the gallery, massive reels rotate on the large-format projectors typically used in old movie houses. Long strips of 35-millimeter film travel through elaborate looping systems that reach a height of more than 6 feet.
In addition, the designers have pumped a small amount of fog into the gallery, making visible the beams of light projected onto each screen. To enter the space isn't simply to be surrounded by the images of Inarritu's movie but the mechanics that make it possible. It's a reminder of all the physical things that have been lost to the immaterial pixel. Vinyl records have given way to streaming, newspapers to websites and apps. Directors used to haul around heavy reels to display at film festivals. Now, at most, they carry a small hard drive. And as acts of creation have been turned over to artificial intelligence, "Sueno Perro" stands as a reminder of what could go missing when you take out the human touch. The physical world, full of love and pain, can be a really enthralling place.
MOSLEY: Carolina Miranda reviewed "Sueno Perro" on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through July 26. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with Riz Ahmed on starring in the new series "Bait" as a British Pakistani actor whose audition to play James Bond sends his life into a spiral, or with human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson about reflecting on the harsh truths of our nation's history, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations on what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.
(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL, ET AL.'S "REBEL ROUSER")
MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL, ET AL.'S "REBEL ROUSER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.