Dharma Guns (2010)

Directed by: François-Jacques Ossang | 93 minutes | drama, thriller, science fiction | Actors: Guy McKnight, Elvire, Lionel Tua

The principle is well known: to survive in the chaos that surrounds him, a person constructs his own story. From scraps of memories and expectations he builds a past and a future, with clearly defined characters, completed events and concrete expectations. This story gives meaning to everything that happens around him, it is the place in which everyday events are integrated. Without such a story, chaos reigns.

Anyone who visits a cinema is confronted with a concentrated variant of this. Everyone knows the awkward first minutes of a movie, in which unknown characters appear and in which events take place that you can not yet appreciate. Only when the characters have a past and the events have a context, can you as a viewer disappear into the story. It helps if you are familiar with the rules of the genre, the mold of the story.

‘Dharma Guns’ is a film that deliberately leaves the viewer struggling. At first sight there are characters and there is a plot. There are references to events (a lost script, a war), the music suggests all sorts of things, chapter titles seem to clarify the meaning of what is to follow. And there is ample use of genre conventions, especially the old-fashioned spy thriller and romantic drama.

As a viewer, you will try again and again for the first hour of ‘Dharma Guns’ to make sense of the events. What are the Dharma Guns? Why does that character look like a Nazi? Why does cult writer Lovecraft keep popping up? You are like a person with amnesia, who constantly tries to interpret the events around him. Only after a long time does the viewer discover that what he sees only has a suggested coherence and that he is actually looking at a (beautifully shot) story without meaning.

Does that make ‘Dharma Guns’ innovative, experimental cinema? Not really. He is especially reminiscent of the experiments of the nouvelle vague, Jean-Luc Godard in particular. The film is about film, about expectations and conventions, and therefore seems especially interesting for theorists. For the average visitor there is not much more than a wonderful movie experience. But you also get that by watching a spy thriller from the fifties while enjoying magic mushrooms.