This is a short documentary by Martin Rietti on the artist, Yayoi Kusama. I am going to use this film for a deconstruction exercise.
After the opening titles, there are shots of a city in black and white. I am assuming it is Japan, because that is where Yayoi Kusama lives. A piano plays a melody softly in a high register, and then this really high registered piercing noise sounds. It’s an unsettling noise. Yayoi then recites what seems to be a poem. The english translation to the poem is in capital letters on a black still, which allows audiences to focus on the sound of her voice speaking in Japanese and the poem’s translation. During the poem, the high pitched noise sounds intermittently, and a soft droning sound plays throughout. Coloured words then pop up on the screen, like ‘repetition’ ‘self obliteration’ psychosomatic’, which gives the impression that Kusuma may suffer from mental illness or an unsettled mind, which matches the unsettling noise which keeps piercing the soundtrack. The words speed up, and then it opens onto a woman in a studio.
This shot of Kusama in her studio begins in black and white and slowly turns to colour. I love this technique (now I want to use it in something), and I think it works really well because of Kusuma’s obsession with the shape and form of polka dots, which come out really lovely in black and white, but her work is so vibrant and colourful, so it’s nice to slowly reveal that element of her and her art.
There is a lot of light in her studio. I think that the key light is the light in the background and at the top of the frame, and that the fill lights are behind the camera. Kusuma is framed in the middle ground, surrounded by her huge paintings, with her cart of tools in the foreground. A title frame comes up with her name in red italic font.
Then a shot comes up of a closeup of her hands fixing her paint splattered red and white smock. Over the top of the shot is the word ‘obsession’ in slightly opaque red italic font. More layers in the soundtrack are added, what sounds like synthesizers echoing.
Now the interview bit starts. Subtitles are in white capital letters. There is a great extreme closeup of her hand reaching towards the camera, and the camera pulls focus from her paint splattered smock to her hand. Follows are a series of closeups of her feet in polka dot socks, hands painting polka dots, eyes. This series of closeups shows that this documentary is like a character study of this woman.
I like the shots of her where there is subtitles in the middle of the frame, instead of at the bottom. They make it seem like these sentences are more important that the others, but it also just looks really beautiful.
Some of the shots with the subtitles in the middle play with focus. They must have been shot with a long focal point.
This is the first shot that you see of Kusama’s whole face. The key light is on her left, which is lighting the on-side of her face, because although she is looking straight down the barrel, her shoulders are angled towards her right. This shot is the longest shot so far in the film. It is a very very very slow zoom into her face, and it shows that she has face ticks and twitches. Her painting in the background is very out of focus, and it is green orange and purple, which contrasts with her red hair, clothes and makeup. The drone and high pitched noise is gone, and it’s just a synthesiser playing a fast and rhythmic melody.
Following are shots of Kusama in her studio, painting. Now and then, the words from before (plus some other words like ‘well unwell’ and ‘illness’) are layered over the top of shots of her painting. There is also an opaque layer of patterns that is layered between the shots of her and the words.
Another cool shot is a strobe effect, where it switches very very fast back and forth between two stills of her paintings. Now and then it throws in a still of her from behind.
And yeh. There we go. Cool Cool Cool.
