Probably the most demanded “Play It Again!” film of all time. It has its own Wikipedia page, and the Honda Cog ad that was a homage to it was found to violate Fichelli and Wiess’ copyright of the image of tires bumping into each other and rolling uphill….See "Cog" too, but see the original first. Repeatedly. With a child, age 5-105…
"The Way Things Go" is a 30 minute film of a building-size Rube Goldberg or Mousetrap Game-like machine made out junk, tires, ladders, common chemicals, a pair of old shoes, things that burn easily, candles, rope, string, bowling balls, second-hand kitchen utensils, soap, ink, hand-tools, pipes, boards, plywood, tables, pallets, boxes, trash-bags, and odds and ends that appear to be at home in the abandoned factory it seems to have been filmed in. There are a lot of other things as well but no sense in spoiling the fun.
The action starts directly, with a dark, plastic bag, seemingly filled with trash, unwinding on the rope it is suspended by. As it undwinds, it descends, slowly. At some point, it knocks into something else, and we're off! This causes a third item to be released, which is delayed, but eventually bumps into the fourth bit. The movement continues, left to right, with the camera pacing along with at the front edge of the transition from prepared, loaded, cocked, standing-up, organized stuff to knocked over, burned up, scattered, fallen over, poured out, disorganized, stuff. It is, in short the march of entropy, inflicted on a chain of improbable constructions and cunningly made objects, each of which triggers the relaxation, disillusion, demise, dilution, dissolving, consumption or destruction of the next, but not before the impulse is passed along.
At first its just like history- one darned thing after another- but after a while you realize there is a rhythm to it, things which repeat or nearly repeat, variations on a theme. It seems to be a HItchcockian continuous shot, but you eventually realize that one of the rhythms involves the camera pausing on the curious contents of a kitchen or serving tray, and there is a brief cut, then movement continues. That's how they get around the film magazines being shorter than the film itself. Whether the whole business really happened in one 30 minute interval of real time, or it was filmed in magazine-size episodes, the presentation is as if it was continuous. In fact, you don't see what releases the initial moving thing, and the motion doesn't stop, the film ends. For all we know its still running, art students and rogue engineers, chemists and physicists feverishly setting it up, outside the view of the cameras, while the edge of motion, the impulse, travels the length of the building, turns around, and returns to where it started. Over and over.
Sometimes one thing knocks over another. Some times something unstable is jarred into releasing potential energy in motion. Often the potential energy is height above the floor, but some times its torsion or compression of a flexible part, or a combustable item set alight. Sometimes its pressure in a container, or simply the contents of a container which run out for one reason or another. The pace is delayed by unwinding and unwrapping, by shallow inclines, by sticky surfaces, the time it takes an object to cross a distance. But something is always going to happen next, if you just wait for it.
I first saw this on Public Television in the middle of the night, about the time it was first released, and I was utterly enchanted with what I saw. Years later, my brother says, "Have you seen "The Way Things Go"? I have a copy of it" and I have no idea what he's talking about, but as soon as he starts describing it... well, I realize I've found whatever that was, again! And its glorious. I take the tape home, where the young child watches it all the way through, laughing, pointing, but mostly rapt. It ends, and all the child wants is to rewind the tape and watch it again! Its a 30 minute, maybe 31 minute, film, but you need to set aside at least an hour if you watch it with children. They'll want to see it twice.
Product Details The Way Things Go 100 feet of physical interactions, chemical reactions, and precisely crafted chaos worthy of Rube Goldberg or Alfred Hitchcock – a discussion starter for …
icarusfilms.com/cat97/t-z/the_way_.html
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