Tall Dark
Stranger by Hans Heinrich Tayer
Originally
published in Oberhausen Festival Catalogue, 1970
Production:
Rick Hancox
Direction,
Script, Camera: Rick Hancox
Length: 14
minutes, 155m, 16mm
Prize:
Special Diploma of the Organizers of the XVII West German Short Film Festival,
The story
is quickly told. A farmer finds tracks in the snow that lead to his barn. He
opens the door timorously but lets his cocked gun fall quickly across from at a
table, where a hippy sits shrouded in a white gown. A non-verbal meeting of the
eyes eases the tension. Filled with embarrassment, the farmer puts a jug of
wine on the table-a sign of conventional hospitality. The Jesus-like hippy
refuses it and pulls out a water pipe and a large piece of hashish-his sign of
hospitality. In his inexperience, the farmer thinks it is something to eat, but
then draws on the water pipe, reaching for it more and more greedily. He gets
high and gets his violin, fiddle country and western
music on it and beats out the rhythm with his rubber boots. The hippy looks
calmly on, it makes him happy; he adds to the tramp of
the boots by banging two spoons.
Cut: Simple
visions of driving tractors, his cattle and his farm are shown over the
farmer’s closed eyes. The next day; the farmer has fallen asleep next to the
hashish pipe. The hippy looks at him with knowing eyes, packs up his pipe,
halves the chunk of hashish and leaves it next to the sleeping farmer. The
short adventure into mutual knowledge, the dissolving of generation barriers
for the space of a night is ended. In his normal clothes, without his Christlike robe, the tall dark stranger leaves the small
barn.
In The Greening of America by Charles Reich,
the author writes about the psychedelic hippy movement as a revolution whose
source may be found in the individual and in the culture. Only in its final act
will it change the political structure. In another part, hetakes
the position that middle class consciousness will not accept this movement. He
sees this motivation as jealousy on the part of the middle class concerning a
lifestyle they dare not partake of themselves. “If this generation is shown,
how they also can take part in what they envy, the way to change is open.. the pleasures of the new
generation are seemingly unattainable that are actually open to all.” If we
accept this film as an example of the peaceful revolution of the psychedelic
drug culture, the middle class has a key in hand toward a new understanding and
eventual liberation of the self; a liberation from the narrow chains forged by
the illnesses of civilization, such as belief in machines, consumer oriented
thought, dependence on the media and loss of ego. The farmer dreams of machines
and the worth of his cattle. He has not understood much. He could not unravel
the hippy’s message. The young dealer in his holiness has remained a stranger
to him. The simple grasp toward the sacred drug becomes a greedy snatching as
if for the next glass of beer, even when the deeper layers of he age of technology and desensitization are overwhelmed.
The presumption that a trip is a merry although estranging amusement is
fundamentally contradicted here. The hippy is the superior. It is to be hoped
that the rest of the piece of hashish will open the farmer’s eyes a bit more.
The suge4stion of the hippies- a bucketful of LSD in the municipal water supply
and the world will live in peace and their eyes would be opened, would only be
a drop on a cold stone.