In the late 1920's film The Passion of Joan of Arc, there's this moment where a fly lands on the eyebrow of the Falconetti in the role of Joan. The fly lands on Falconetti and on Joan. The two of them, as one, move to shoo it away; their two hands, one laid atop the other, obvious and imperceptible. The fly lands on them separately, separated by spectators. (The world loves to separate us by our spectators). But the two of them, in a conscious or not reaction, act simultaneously -- one not overtaking the other, one not even conscious of the other, perhaps.
So the fly lands. Joan lifts her hand, and her fingernails are so dirty, her cuticles are chipped and dry from the salvation she is scraping from the men around her.
"Whose hands are these?" asks Joan who has been stuffed underground, pulled up like a marionette from the baseboard, thrust into the spotlight and the grey-toned faces and the movie camera. She doesn't know why her hands are dirty; they just are. And it doesn't matter anyway because her hands are attached to strings and are outside her general control. Someone else says Act, and they act. Dance, and they dance. But it is comforting, in a way. In a way it has always been like this.
The fly lands. Falconetti lifts her hand, and her fingernails are chipped because she arrived on the movie set four hours early for hair and makeup.
"Whose hands are these?" asks Falconetti who wants the fly off her goddamn eyebrow but knows the two dimensional memory of film out-values her impulse of disgust or beauty or whatever side of that coin she flips. So something acts for her instead, something that doesn't rely on instinct but creates it. She has always wanted to be someone else -- at least temporarily -- and when it shoves into her, it's as if watching her thousand selves from the panopticon. The panopticon with playback.
The fly lands. Their single hand touches their face, gently, like how you touch a door handle in the dark. Their single finger with the single dirty nail draws an almost circle around their single eye. The two of them are now indistinguishable, and it is that moment. And it is that motion.
And it is that motion.
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