Cinnamon

Cinnamon offers an insight into the world of American drag racing from an Afro-American point of view. The mechanic John Bowles, an expert and wise veteran of the scene, collaborates with Erin, a female driver who works as a bank teller during the week. Their relationship is based on a shared reiteration of small gestures. The mechanic studies the car to adjust it to the girl’s driving style, while Erin tries to focus on the start, because “there are drivers who give everything at the start, and others who give everything at the arrival”. The relationship between the two is watched as if it were a dialogue based on a shared code, a sort of musical bond where the mechanic tries to have his music executed by the pilot. When Erin finally starts, her car darts into the horizon. The camera does not move. It has fulfilled its job. Cinnamon is a metaphysical reflection on the relationship between human and car on a par with Monte Hellmann’s Two Lane Blacktop. The short Chevelle, on the other hand, explores the systematic destruction of several automobiles at the end of the consumer cycle. The action of systematic destruction is a work too, in a society that does not build anything anymore. What’s more, the film also constitutes a very strong comment about the crisis that has affected the US car industry. Thus this poignant short becomes a requiem for the American industrial society where the human element remains outside the frame of the picture. The machine that films is alone with the machines that are being crushed and reduced to almost unwilling and bizarre objects of found art. The importance and the centrality of car culture has rarely if ever been addressed more precisely and more strongly than in these two films. Everson composes a soulful minimalistic tune that hauntingly reveals the loneliness of the human in a landscape filled with objects that have lost their value and meaning.

Giona A. Nazzaro