Her previous films, Sylvia Krystel-Paris (FID 2004) and Le temps qu’il reste
(FID 2008), already explored the spaces of music and speech in cinema,
between picture and sound, seeing and listening. With One, two, many,
Manon de Boer pursues her work which plays on both political and aesthetic
variations and issues, this time by tying together three gestures which
eventually merge into a single one giving pride of place to the body.
One. A strong blow from deep inside flutist Michael Schmid as he plays a
piece by Istvàn Matus. Breath turns into a note. A supreme breath, literally
a panic, before the note and beyond music itself, rendered by a mobile,
enveloping camera, alert to the slightest muscular contraction. Two. The
film departs from oneness and opens up to multiplicity, to invisible community,
as suggested by an off-screen discussion about a text by Roland
Barthes on togetherness. Many. Clearly carried out in the finale, this community
of “numbers” becomes a flowing wandering among the listeners and
performers of Tre canti popolari by Giacinto Scelsi, a piece that is all piercing
sounds and onomatopoeias: on the verge of words. Music brings about
motion and creates a choreography through sheer listening.
The title obviously conjures up the expression “one too many”, only to forcibly
negate it. Indeed, to selectivity, Manon de Boer clearly prefers music’s
utopia in motion: music at work, to meditate and listen to. The film delivers
a lesson in politics, parting or bringing together bodies and sounds.