Buster Keaton’s ‘One Week’ and the poetics of space
Since the conception of the cinematic medium, many directors have been fascinated by the relationship between film and architecture. However, very few of them have pushed the boundaries of cinematic architecture as Buster Keaton did throughout his endlessly enigmatic filmography.
There are many examples of Keaton’s obsession with architecture and its destruction, notably towards the end of Steamboat Bill, Jr. where forces of nature completely restructure human civilisation. But for me, the most interesting film which captures Keaton’s architectural concerns is his 1920 two-reeler One Week.
Cited as the first independent production of Keaton’s career, One Week revolves around Keaton and his bride, who receive a DIY house as a wedding gift. Unfortunately for Keaton, a man who was rejected by his wife messes up the arrangement of the individual parts, which results in the construction of a grotesque monstrosity.
In his seminal meditation on architecture called The Poetics of Space, philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote: “If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” What does the house in One Week represent, then?
Originally, One Week came about as a critique of a documentary released by the Ford Motor Company, which featured prefabricated houses. In the years that have followed, that house has become a powerful metaphor for many things. For modern audiences who cannot even afford cramped rented apartments, it’s a mockery of an institution that has failed the people.
No discussion about the symbolism of architecture in Keaton’s cinema can be complete without referring to Will Jennings’ incredible essay – Buster Keaton: Anarchitect. In it, Jennings writes that the asymmetric assemblage’s “resultant grotesque is a parody of the Ford documentary, but also of the American dream and its architectural embodiment” (via Lapus Lima).
With a roof that doesn’t fit, walls that look like they are on the verge of collapse and a door that opens into space, the house of One Week threatens the symbolic systems which govern Western architecture. Not only that, it represents a rupture in the tradition of conceptualising houses as picturesque commodities.
The bathroom door on the first floor that leads to the external world instead of an internal passageway is a particularly perplexing curiosity. It’s a teleological paradox whose existence defies the logical lenses through which we view reality, almost like a portal to the future, but those who pass through it are only destined to fall through – as Keaton does.
The symbolism of such a door was actually replicated by Daniel Cockburn in his 2010 experimental sci-fi film You Are Here to great effect, seen as a passage to other universes. There’s no such escape for Keaton, who cannot escape his material conditions and the suffocating reality of a house that sticks out, in every sense of the word.
Interestingly, One Week can also be read as an allegory about the process of artistic creation. The anarchy of the house’s aesthetic framework represents a radical deviation from the norms, something that is essential for the evolution of all arts. However, the greatness of One Week can be chalked up to its ability to speak to the current climate.
The house in One Week is exceedingly virtual in nature, engaged in a never-ending process of production. It’s almost like a house is a sandbox video game, an illusory image of freedom which can never transcend its virtuality. For those who will never be able to buy a house in their lifetimes due to deepening socioeconomic inequalities, the house in One Week is a painful reminder of the only housing units they’ll ever “own” – the blurry pixels that come together to let us live our dreams through Minecraft.
Watch the short below.
