The Thinking Machine #64
Inkblot
In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.
In two works – Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) and the first episode of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog TV series (1988) – two very rational men receive a sign that their child is drowning nearby. That sign is an astonishing spectacle: a spreading inkblot of colour, a mortal stain. Far beyond being simply an uncanny device of cinematic suspense, these impressive inkblots signal, in psychological terms, a dissolving of rigid conceptions, and an encounter with the unconscious.
