Simpson Residence is a strange place.
The residents’ antics, from taking homecoming week too seriously to dangling someone in the cafeteria to announce a party, may seem childish to an outsider. But to those living in dorm culture, Simpson is a community built on tradition, friendship, and personal growth. To many Simpsonites, the dorm is a place where boys become men.
Former student Joshua Hamilton’s new short film, “Ecce Viri,” began as a documentary project to film a year in the life of Simpson. However, the final version of “Ecce Viri” — Latin for “Behold Men” — is not a traditional documentary, and the cinematography of “Ecce Viri” is not styled as a traditional photographic history.
If anything, the 10-minute “Ecce Viri” can more accurately be described as cinematic poetry, an ode to the places that made Hamilton who he is. There is little traditional plot. Rather, Hamilton cut the film’s shots together to evoke the spirit of memory itself.
Hamilton uses the camera to reveal deeper truths about manhood than appear on the crude surface. He combines images from his home state of Texas with scenes from Simpson shenanigans. Footage of memorials to the fallen soldiers of the Texas Revolution intermingle with the mischief of college boys.
At first, this may seem dissonant. However, as the film progresses, the connections between the places becomes more apparent.
In a 1954 speech to the Chi Omega sorority, historian Russell Kirk said, “Voluntary associations, true fraternities, unite individuals by the power of sympathy against arbitrary measures, and train their members to stand forthrightly against oppression.”
“Ecce Viri” expresses this teaching of Kirk. The men of Simpson, and similar voluntary institutions, are growing to change the world and do good in it. “Ecce Viri” points out that Simpson acts as a transitory stage in its residents’ lives, taking them from being boys, to being “boy-men,” and eventually into manhood.
The short film ultimately explores two important questions: How do boys grow into men? and, What are these men?
Hamilton’s grandfather, interviewed for the film, answered the latter question simply: “Total integrity.” Manhood is tied directly to the cultivation of the soul and active pursuit of virtue in “Ecce Viri.”
Manhood, for the subjects of “Ecce Viri,” is not to be found in the things society considers “mature” — things that would get a movie an R rating. Rather, manhood is tied to things society might even consider immature — lessons from children’s stories, for instance, forgotten by many students in contemporary America.
Junior Sam Clausen, interviewed in the film, claims that those childhood lessons, about virtues like kindness or wonder, are what help boys transform into men. Rather than shed these lessons like a cocoon, the boy-men beheld in the film embrace them and carry them into adulthood, ready to face the terrors of the world firmly rooted in the right.
“Ecce Viri” is a love letter to one of those voluntary associations of which Kirk spoke. It is not ideological propaganda, nor is it simply cut together to stimulate emotion in the viewer.
Real art defends and sustains what is Good, True, and Beautiful in the world, not by imposing standards on it, but by reflecting nature. And “Ecce Viri” does just that.
The film is being shown at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 17, in the basement of Lane Hall.