While viewing The Way Things Go (Der Lauf Der Dinge), I was of course amazed by the technicality of the physics knowledge and time required to create such a performance. After pondering the physics behind how a tire can roll up an inclined plane with steps on it, or how a table of green sludge can possibly be used as part of a Rube Goldberg Machine. I realized that something more simplistic was the reason I couldn't peel my eyes away from the screen.
What was this reason? The filmmakers of course put hours of work into their machine, and performed countless test runs, especially since it was shot on 16mm. But as a viewer, if one watches assuming that the whole time, everything happening in the film is a fluke, what captivates the viewer. The chance physics of a candle lighting bottle rockets strapped to a tire that can climb up a set of stairs?
Maybe the fact that we are watching objects move that normally require human hands to operate them, or in the case of a tire, a motor, built by a human. Even after twenty minutes of objects manipulating objects, I did not bore of watching sludge interacting with wood and tires. The idea of the film being narrative comes from the characters of the film being the materials used in the machine. These inanimate, silent characters seem to be just as interesting as a famous actress playing the heroine role in the latest epic Hollywood drama.
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