A Strainer for the Sea of Advertisement

Diring is a stylish hara-kiri of an advertisement maker. The director Ignas Miškinis has turned the guts of the advertisement business inside out and made a film about nothing. For nobody understood what that ‘diring’ was in the end. This, precisely, was the idea: to show how it is possible to blow the biggest bubble out of anything. It is interesting from which side of the bubble – the inner or the outer one – have the makers of this film been looking at the business and entertainment industry? And on which side has the audience gathered? And finally: has the bubble blown up?

This is one of those stories that show the very process of creating a story (or fiction). Old masters liked to make films about film making. Miškinis’s work is not about making a film, but about making diring without having the slightest idea what that could be. Despite that, everybody keeps repeating: diring, diring – as if repetition in its own right provides meaning. Or, perhaps, the invested money provides it? Huge money promised, but never shown, by the four men in suits (LT United, your are late...).

Diring is a heroic effort to include a new word into the Big Dictionary of Lithuanian Language, which means (approximately) a meaningful nonsense, subtle kitsch, a valuable nothing, a stylish tastlessness and a noisy fooling of oneself or solemn trifling. During Diring everybody keeps running, driving, speaking on the phone, convincing, giving somebody a run-around, in short: communicating. And communication, as we know, does not create a product. But we need a product. An intoxicating one, like the last model centrifuge. And how to make it such, if the means are ancient and they do not think for themselves, only repeat images that have been supplied to them? And then it starts: I diring, you diring, he, she dirings… The ear that has not yet forgotten the Russian language sends signals to the unconscious that this may be something like production of holes, and this, according to a philosopher, is the most meaningless activity, because nothing is made out of something. However, there is nothing here; thus, there is nobody to fool.

Therefore, important looking anonymous people commission diring to an advertisement agency, and the hot quest for it starts. A competing company emerges as well as its director’s (Neringa Varnelytė) lover Jura (Dainius Gavenonis) who is the only one who knows THAT word. Or, at least, has learned to pronounce it. Thus diring becomes Diring: the message and the sender have been confused, but what is the difference? The boss of the advertisement agency, Dildė (a wonderful work of Juozas Gaižauskas) proudly shows the portrait photo of Jura to his clients. This is the way a goat shows a bottle of milk in her fridge when a little donkey asks whether she has happiness.

I am not familiar with the business world, but it is really advantageous to culture when one speaks clearly about money: without pretending that intellectual work costs nothing because there is no way to weigh it. And it seems strange to the naïve gaze of a critic when the heads of two ‘smart’ advertisement agencies are hooked on empty bait. Well, of course, this is not critical realism, but an invented story; I would say even: a film fable with a moral. Thus, the degree of invention is greater.

The director cannot decide what that diring is, but he successfully fouls the trail. Perhaps it is good that the only right answer is not given at the end thus leaving all allusions that have formed in the viewer’s head valid. It is an old truth that the unknown horrifies most. So, perhaps, diring is also revealed best through the permanent state of chaos by imitating a meaningful and even profitable activity, and in reality just diring, diring until it wears off. It is of no importance what. Yet such a strategy of drifting does not protect from reefs. Sometimes the makers of this film play too much with tricks and start going round and round like a cat chasing its tail. Thus Tarantino-like absurdity and bravado loose their momentum and start skidding. A mistake! Such films should drive without stopping, even if younger (or older) viewers had to change their nappies. An example of this is the episode of filming the clip. Well, we understand that nobody understands, knows or wants to do anything and, when forced, try to ‘do without doing’. That they temporize. Ramūnas Cicėnas acts wonderfully, Dainius Gavenonis shines in all his beauty and they really do not become boring, but the rhythm of the film gets stuck for too long. 

Summing up the extenuating and aggravating circumstances, the results of Diring are such: a good idea, perfect actors, dialogs not lacking irony and humour, stylish costumes (sometimes up to the point of throwing up – on purpose) and unexpected twists of the plot promise a great entertainment; the lost rhythm and repetition decrease it. It is possible and even necessary to watch it. It is for you to decide whether Diring has pierced the bubble of advertisement or just tickled the soles of the ‘gang’.