This didn't have quite the same level of impact on me as its sister film "Deseret".
In "Four Corners" Benning uses the famous spot where four southwestern states meet, a starting place and from there uses a combination of landscapes and other images and written words to study four paintings by four very different artists to study how art relates to the natural world, ethnic and class history, American political history, the despoiling of the land, etc, etc.
And it's the etc. etc that made this tough for me on first viewing. Unlike "Deseret", this seemed to be trying to cover so many ideas and themes, that I ended up a bit lost, not quite sure how all the pieces joined together. In other spots, perhaps because Benning didn't have as much time to go into each element he's exploring, the themes occasionally felt more simplistic and heavy handed than I'm used to with Benning's work.
All THAT said, this is one of those cases where I could see a second viewing revealing more connections and deeper layers now that I have a sense of the film as a whole, so I will keep an open mind.
In "Four Corners" Benning uses the famous spot where four southwestern states meet, a starting place and from there uses a combination of landscapes and other images and written words to study four paintings by four very different artists to study how art relates to the natural world, ethnic and class history, American political history, the despoiling of the land, etc, etc.
And it's the etc. etc that made this tough for me on first viewing. Unlike "Deseret", this seemed to be trying to cover so many ideas and themes, that I ended up a bit lost, not quite sure how all the pieces joined together. In other spots, perhaps because Benning didn't have as much time to go into each element he's exploring, the themes occasionally felt more simplistic and heavy handed than I'm used to with Benning's work.
All THAT said, this is one of those cases where I could see a second viewing revealing more connections and deeper layers now that I have a sense of the film as a whole, so I will keep an open mind.
