Um dia destes tive uma conversa sobre essa elementar circunstância cinéfila que consiste na paixão por filmes que ainda não se viu, fundada apenas no que sobre eles se leu. Um caso em que isso se passa comigo actualmente é o de RR (2008), aka Railroad, de James Benning:
RR [is] a collection of precisely calibrated long takes of trains passing through sublime stretches of American landscape. Both an unabashed paean to the beauties of the machine age and a stealth metaphor for the chugging, linear mechanics of cinema, RR nevertheless includes its own gestures toward cultural disquiet, including audio of readings from the Book of Revelations and a recording of Eisenhower’s denunciation of the military-industrial complex. Benning’s endorsement of unhurried acts of looking stands as an implicit critique of the attention-deficit age, and even here one might circle back to Debord: In one segment of RR, an off-camera radio plays snatches from a classic jingle for Coca-Cola, providing Benning with his own détournement moment. “That’s the way it is and the way it will stay,” a woman’s voice sings. “What the world wants today is the real thing.” (In Artforum)
"So, your goal in life is to go out and make structuralists out of people" (Douglas Gordon em conversa com James Benning).
