Screenings of “The Arc of Oblivion” will be held in this ark on Saturdays in August. Photos courtesy of Sandbox Films
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
In the trailer for Maine filmmaker Ian Cheney’s fascinating and evocative latest documentary, “The Arc of Oblivion,” none other than filmmaking legend Werner Herzog quotes the above lines. Taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” the famous verse is a wry comment on humanity’s egotistical and enduring belief that, in the grand sweep of eternal time, anything we leave behind will matter.
Cheney wants to talk about that idea.
“People put a plaque to a loved one on a bench in a park, knowing that, some day, it will be torn up. They do it all the same. What does that tell us about ourselves. It’s a beautiful insanity.”
“The Arc of Oblivion” is a title that, like the film itself, contains a wry joke linking the eternal and the here and now. On its headier level, “The Arc of Oblivion” is the inexorable progression of time, where all we are and all we’ve experienced will be swallowed up, no matter how many pictures we take (or, like poor, vainglorious Ozymandias, how many massive statues of ourselves we plant in the earth). On the other level, there’s an actual ark, an impressively styled wooden ship, sitting landlocked on a field belonging to Cheney’s forbearing parents, just outside of Rockland.
It’s there that, for every Saturday in August, Cheney – the award-winning director of such similarly thought-provoking documentaries as “King Corn,” “The City Dark” and “The Most Unknown” – will screen “The Arc of Oblivion” for a small audience of strangers drawn to his impractical, beautifully insane wooden ship, to watch his film and talk about what it is they wish would outlive them.
“The idea was to have this sort of strange and beautiful screening in a very intimate space that smells of oak and pine – and, of course, it’s the vessel this film was made in. Tiny, 24-person showings, with music and an old popcorn machine, and rosé. We all watch this together in this ship, then have an hour to exchange responses, ideas and memories afterwards,” Cheney said of this singular screening setup.
It’s not hard to see why the legendary Herzog (the film’s executive producer) was drawn to “The Arc of Oblivion,” even appearing inside the ark toward the end of the film. Herzog’s own documentaries (“Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “The White Diamond,” “Grizzly Man” and “Into the Inferno,” among them) similarly examine mankind’s tenuous (Herzog would say perilous) relationship with nature, the German director’s sepulchral voice constantly reminding viewers that their place in this universe is anything but guaranteed. Plus, as Cheney said laughing, “In (Herzog’s 1982 drama) ‘Fitzcarraldo,’ Werner actually dragged a ship over a mountain.”
Beautiful insanity indeed.
“The Arc of Oblivion” was born, according to Cheney, out of a realization that, as a father of two, he was amassing mountains of digital photos of his children. “I started making the film when I had two kids coming into the world. Suddenly, I had all these photographs, multiplying out of control on my phone, and no physical existence at all. I started to think about all these pictures and the piles of my kids’ crappy art (no offense kids), and thought, ‘What traces of their past lives will they actually want.’ ”
And so he built an ark.
Filmmaker Ian Cheney builds an ark on his family’s landlocked property just outside Rockland.
“For the film, it was a way of literally housing not just all these photos, but ideas and conversations about all this. Plus, the construction of it, the assembly of the raw materials caused examples of nature’s archives to spring up. Rocks, tree rings, soil, all preserving records of wildfires, hurricanes, floods. The ark itself became what film fans would call a McGuffin, the thing that sparks movement at the beginning, that provides propulsion but ultimately becomes less important.”
Cheney’s filmmaking journey took him from insular, shipbuilding thinker to world traveler, as he and his crew set out to chronicle others whose similar thoughts on the impermanence of it all manifest in equally eccentric and imaginative ways.
“We intentionally steered away from archives in a traditional sense,” he said. “We were drawn to corners of the world where memory and record-keeping were in play in surprising and unusual ways.”
“The Arc of Oblivion” sought out forms of record-keeping around the world.
An ancient library in the desert preserves ancient copies of the Koran. A researcher finds invaluable record of natural disasters in bat guano. An Austrian man builds his own beautifully insane archive in an abandoned salt mine, dutifully transcribing strangers’ internet missives on clay tablets for some unspecified future eyes to read. (You’re welcome to submit your words for posterity.)
And then there’s the ark, a physical metaphor standing in testament to Cheney’s artistic and existential questions, sailing proudly on a field in Maine. “The ark became something of a thought experiment, too,” said Cheney, whose parents are seen throughout the film, both baffled and bemused by their son’s latest filmmaking endeavor. “If you have an ark and are faced with the obliteration of everything in the world, what would go in there?”
It’s a good question, at least partly since – to wax a bit philosophical – that’s exactly our situation. Forget the immediate dangers of war, disease and environmental destruction. Those things have come and gone before and will again in the unstoppable flow of time. Everything we are and everything we’ve built, loved or otherwise experienced is destined, inevitably and inexorably, for nothingness. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Or is there?
“How do we navigate evidence that, on the one hand, nothing lasts, that the universe pulls everything apart?” asked Cheney. “Then, on the other hand, the fact that everything lasts, that nothing in the universe completely goes away. It’s a closed system.”
“The Arc of Oblivion” asks those questions and more, with Cheney attempting to pluck common threads from the human desire to endure. “People doggedly save some scraps of their lives, of others, of their ancestors. Or they dig up some past of the natural world. There’s an irrepressible forward march in such things. I was really struck by the fact that, no matter what, humans (and nature, too) keep storing and destroying records. There’s some comfort there. That we belong in this universe, belong in these processes.”
Werner Herzog in “The Arc of Oblivion.”
Cheney’s film is a lovely, fascinating and even unsettling glimpse into the human ache stemming from the deeply buried and immutable truth that, without exception, all we are will disappear. I think about the simple plaque erected on the grounds of the chapel my late mother frequented (and essentially ran with unbridled and unstoppable determination). Gathered for yet another memorial, my haze of grief lifted inexplicably when I saw the plaque cemented on a weathered Maine boulder, listing her name. Even in the face of unthinkable loss, I drew some indefinable comfort from the solidity of metal and stone. They’ll crumble to dust, too, of course. But not for a while.
“The Arc of Oblivion” has made a successful tour of film festivals and is preparing for its voyage through cinemas and streaming. If you’d like to see the film in the intimate confines of an actual ark in a field outside of Rockland, visit the Sandbox Films website, sandboxfilms.org, to reserve a free seat through the month of August. Bring your memories.
Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and cat.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
