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Clip description
Jeremy Fliszar (Jacek Koman) prepares to deliver a university lecture on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, 'The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne’ (1510). His colleague, Christoper Atherton (Martin Jacobs), lies unconscious in hospital. Christopher’s wife, Sorel Atherton (Angie Milliken), visits him.
Curator’s notes
Kicking off a film with a lecture on Freudian critical analysis might seem a risky decision on paper but What I Have Written offsets the density of Jeremy’s lecture with cinematography, editing and music that emphasise flow and forward momentum. The particulars of his theory are not so important as the mood, storyline and visual clues this opening credit sequence sets up. That the basic content of his lecture involves differing interpretations of images resonates with the film’s themes of authorship, interpretation and different versions of events. Jeremy is an interesting figure in the story, at first providing a ‘Greek chorus’ of sorts regarding the film’s themes, later precipitating Sorel’s suspicions of her husband’s infidelity by handing her his manuscript. He is a friend of the couple whose own point of view on what has happened between them is initially obscure.
The hospital scene introduces the second of the film’s three main visual styles. Sorel’s scene has a more hand-held feel, a grainier, lower-contrast image and an emphasis on existing environmental light. By contrast, Jeremy’s scene has a more considered aura to its compositions. It is rich in light, shadow and saturated colour, low in grain, with careful use of focus. Jeremy’s world even seems a little inflected with the rich colour and carefully rendered light and form of the paintings he studies. In a written text, these different styles might be shifts between first-person narrators, or, in a third person narrative, from one character’s perspective to another. Although almost subliminal at this stage, they act as a clue that there are different perspectives involved in this story.
