In the darkness of a theater, the opening moments of the film Liminal offered me the gift of heightened vision. There on the big screen were many Hoosier landscapes in motion, enlarged and refreshed, more alive than usual, thanks to the cinematic images gathered from above by a drone. The slow-motion rhythms of the footage, underscored by striking and compelling rhythms of the composer’s music, focused my attention and helped me shape questions for myself. Drawing from flights over a few dozen sites in Indiana, the documentary seems to ask, if this is how we live and how we use the land, what sort of people are we? What sort of people might we still become?
Liminal opens with clues to our ancient history, beautiful remnants of the thick forests and wetlands that made up most of this land a few centuries ago. From above, the tree canopy undulates in the breezes, the waters glisten in the sun. Whenever the scene changes, the music changes, as we journey across Indiana, seeking clues about what we’ve done to and with the land. Details large and small come before one’s eyes.
From a height you see a loose coil of yellow hose beside a shed, you see papers helter-skelter on the dashboard of a pickup truck far below. You see houses and barns, orderly rows of crops, harvesting machinery inhaling a green row of corn or soybeans. You see the sharp lines of a quarry wall, the shock of black coal exposed to the light of day, bulldozers, and rows and rows of train cars we use to transport raw materials. The drone flies past smokestacks and over industrial sheds and refinery pipes. You see proud and alarming evidence of our many industries.
The film suggested to me that you know a people by how they tend their land. But there are no words spoken in the film, there’s no editorializing, The film trusts us to think for ourselves.
We oversee the hustle of highways, the rust and dust of industrial sites, the tidy farms, the tall centers of cities, and subdivision streets winding this way and that. We see the places where we pile our broken cars and appliances when we are through with them, we see pools of water unnaturally bright with the effluvia of mining and manufacturing, and so much more, more than a person can keep in mind, even in just 55 minutes of viewing. Happily, a gloriously illustrated book version has just come out. While the film is called Liminal, the book from IU Press is called Indiana Transformations. I hope public and school librarians have ordered copies for their shelves.
I’ve looked up the word liminal in the dictionary more than once over the years. It’s a ghostly word for me even now, something about transitional spaces, about changing one thing into another version of itself, about unanswered questions, about what we and this place might become. For me, the most hopeful scene takes place on the Fourth of July. The land is dark to the far horizon, but in countless places silent fireworks rise up gracefully in slow motion. Undeniably, we in this troubled place have something substantial in common. Maybe we as a people could find a way to build from there.
Or maybe we’ll lay waste to the entire planet. Do we have to? I can’t tell whether we Hoosiers, we Americans, have the skills to ask that question together. Where would the conversations be held? In public or in some secluded rooms where only the powerful can speak? And are we bold enough for the challenges that the biggest questions must imply?
Liminal is a provocative film just under an hour long. It’s showing for free at the University of Notre Dame on Tuesday, February 18, at 6 pm in Room 105 of Jordan Hall, not far from the parking lots in the shadow of the football stadium. The film’s director, IU South Bend’s Zach Schrank, will be there for a discussion after. Join us and see what you think.
