Overall, I enjoyed the presentation of Eisenstein's Strike. The film presented many iconic shots, such as the proletariat deluge and the factory shots glorifying the aesthetics of modernized mechanization. There was a small handful of cinematic tricks or spectacles, such as the superimposition of animal faces over those of the activists. I found the frenzied kinetics of Eisenstein's editing, especially during scenes of oceanic entropy involving mass frenzy of the workers. I thought the soundtrack followed the film thematically was really interesting - but I didn't hold it to the same authenticity.
As you had forewarned, the film definitely tested my patience and endurance. I think that the energy chart of a work strike would begin with dormancy prior to revolt, the rush and euphoria of the actual rebellion, followed by the struggle against poverty once on strike. I think the film reflects this model quite closely. It's beginning, after the initial mechanical spectacle, is scatterbrained - the plot directionless as the film follows the different activists (The Owl, etc.) These individuals do not compete spectacle-wise with the power of the factory. However, it is upon the suicide of a single factory worker (death to the individual) that the collective is formed. This sight of unified masses was an awesome sight. It was hugely entertaining - on a production level, the sheer number of actors and extras is amazing! The anti-spatial editing of the frenzy, precursor to the Odessa Steps fever surge, is didactically enthralling, fantastical propaganda, subversive and spectacular. The aftermath, however, sucks, testing your stamina through narrative molasses. As the workers grew weary, so did I. I became fatigued and bought whatever surreal delirious dreams were thrown at me in Part 5. The murder of the Bull was, of course, physically hard to watch - any on-screen snuff is, even after having watched Cannibal Holocaust the same week.
The Vertov reading to me was very modernistic, advocating for aesthetics of "radical necessity, rhythm, and speed" and the modeling of mankind after machine, Vertov framed the individual as heavily flawed when compared to the machine. Strike likened the masses to that of a machine. The only sight more awesome than the factory mechanics was the collective proletariat beast hijacking it. Also, Eisenstein's support of rapid editing and montage, a pioneering of art technology, shares Vertovs celebration of movement through machine.
In the Reese reading, there was a section referencing Eisenstein that discussed the pattern in The Avant-Garde of "innovation, consolidation, reaction." The pattern occurs quite literally in Strike: the triumphs of industrialization kicking-off the film, the merge of the proletariat mass, and their subsequent revolt.
Much of our class discussion of Strike has been whether or not the film follows-up on Eisenstein's famous theories of Dialectical Montage. I think that there is very interesting dissonant space between the different tectonic plates in film's narrative. The depthlessness of introducing various individual activists versus the clear narrative direction of united workers, for example. Also, there is a scene after all the activists are introduced in which the activists see a spy while at the docks. The anti-spatial, discontinuity editing of this scene demonstrates the absence of harmony as a result of individualism. In comparing different sections of the film, I find that, whatever synthesis can be extracted from their juxtaposition is a hazy paradigmatic nebula, and not easily defined. Eisenstein's notion of an ideogram, birthed from "copulative" hieroglyphs, is perhaps standing, but only in a macro sense. There are without a doubt many juxtapositions antithetical forces, but the opposed forces are quite massive, and the fourth-dimensional space between them even more massive. Srtike could be somewhat of a haiku, a 6-line haiku-like cross-examination of dissonant forces.
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