Eric Rohmer was a misanthrope: his films by and large show people who are stupid, nasty, hypocritical, and self-deceived. The films show no violence and very little suspense, yet they are are "strong" -- psychologically exhausting -- stuff: I can never take more than one a month. (90 minutes' listening to these characters makes me feel sick to the heart).
The fact that the man lived his entire life in great privacy constitutes further evidence of his misanthropy.
I understand the man well: my view of the race isn't any better than his; and I suspect that I am even more secretive and further removed from society than he ever was.
It is this proximity to him which makes me aware of the great mystery at the heart of the idea of Eric Rohmer: why on earth did he continue to make all these films?
If people are nasty -- not worth knowing -- then, surely, there is no point making movies about them. After all, if reality sucks, then nothing much is gained by saying -- repeatedly -- how much it sucks. One should either try to change it; or create alternatives to it; or escape it; or forget it. Constant belaboring of an intractable problem is a recipe for nothing but frustration. Was Rohmer not frustrated by the very labor of making his films?
What's more: if people are nasty, then there is no point making movies for them to see. (Or writing novels for them, or cooking them dinners, or serving them breakfast in bed). And if they are self-deceived deceivers, then there is no point engaging them because -- well, because they don't really know what they are saying and what issues from their lips is not worth hearing.
(Everyday I walk past a pig-sty. I know the pigs are pigs, but there seems to be no point telling them so: they would not understand it).
My guess is that Rohmer knew all this but could not help himself. This strikes me as very sad for Rohmer (who could not have been happy making them) but lucky for us. His films are depressing stuff, not to be taken lightly, but they are still very good films. It does us well to take them -- in small doses, far apart.
___________________
A note concerning the title:
I am convinced that Eric Rohmer does not actually exist. He is an idea. A masonic cabal, like the Rosecrucian Society. (Lot's of people believed in its existence, too).
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
21.1.10
22.10.09
Watching Gattopardo
Last night, watching (for what surely was the 127th time, or was it 128th?) Visconti's Gattopardo, I paid special attention to Don Fabrizio's reflections on Sicily, Sicilian history and her people's character; they were no doubt Tommasi di Lampedusa's own (historicist) reflections, held in absolute and honest conviction that they meant something (while they don't: they are the world's purest nonsense). One wants to thank di Lampedusa for having put them in the mouth of a fictional character, where they play an important role painting the character himself: a depressed middle aged man, possibly sick, whose intellectual powers, he realizes, do not measure up to the gravity of the times, or the role he has to play in it. Had Lampedusa written a philosophico-historical treatise, he'd have made a fool of himself; thank goodness he didn't have the ambition to be a thinker and chose to be a novelist instead.
A similar relationship obtains between Thomas Mann's own powers of reflection -- mediocre at best, and actual drivel for long stretches -- and his ability to weave them into powerful novels; divided into voices and fragmented by action, thus rendered incomplete and inconclusive, the thoughts -- or snippets of thoughts, rather -- expressed by various characters in The Magic Mountain and Doktor Faustus strike as as suggestive of great depth in the same manner in which a partly clothed woman's shoulder appears to our eye far more alluring than it is, or the way in which the shadow of a hat rack, viewed obliquely may seem a mysterious figure crouching in the dark: the uknown is mysterious and seems, by virtue of its mystery, profound.
A similar relationship obtains between Thomas Mann's own powers of reflection -- mediocre at best, and actual drivel for long stretches -- and his ability to weave them into powerful novels; divided into voices and fragmented by action, thus rendered incomplete and inconclusive, the thoughts -- or snippets of thoughts, rather -- expressed by various characters in The Magic Mountain and Doktor Faustus strike as as suggestive of great depth in the same manner in which a partly clothed woman's shoulder appears to our eye far more alluring than it is, or the way in which the shadow of a hat rack, viewed obliquely may seem a mysterious figure crouching in the dark: the uknown is mysterious and seems, by virtue of its mystery, profound.
19.10.09
The only thing we can do
X thinks that Barry Lyndon is visually lovely, has good costumes, landscapes and interiors, but little more than an ordinary story. Last year, Y said precisely the same thing about another old favorite of mine, Visconti's Senso.
I wonder what my friends would think constitutes an extraordinary story?
And is an extraordinary story possible? Life's not a terribly complicated business: a limited number of possible life goals (food, shelter, sex, freedom, happiness, knowledge, skill) combined with a limited number of possible relationships (parents/children, siblings/friends/allies, lovers, masters/slaves, strangers, enemies) ends up generating a rather small grid of possible plots. 6 x 7 = 42, says math. 36 says Polti. 20 says Tobias. 7 says the volunteer librarian Jessamyn West.1
Really, the only thing we can do is tell an old story well -- beautifully, if we can, or with suspense, if we can't. The story itself cannot possibly matter, because, if you think about it, every new story you ever hear, you have heard already.
There is a kind of delightfully youthful innocence about the complaint that X tells an ordinary, old story: it is the charming expectation that new, different, surprising stories are possible.
PS. Here is a well written novel review, oblique to this post:
I wonder what my friends would think constitutes an extraordinary story?
And is an extraordinary story possible? Life's not a terribly complicated business: a limited number of possible life goals (food, shelter, sex, freedom, happiness, knowledge, skill) combined with a limited number of possible relationships (parents/children, siblings/friends/allies, lovers, masters/slaves, strangers, enemies) ends up generating a rather small grid of possible plots. 6 x 7 = 42, says math. 36 says Polti. 20 says Tobias. 7 says the volunteer librarian Jessamyn West.1
Really, the only thing we can do is tell an old story well -- beautifully, if we can, or with suspense, if we can't. The story itself cannot possibly matter, because, if you think about it, every new story you ever hear, you have heard already.
There is a kind of delightfully youthful innocence about the complaint that X tells an ordinary, old story: it is the charming expectation that new, different, surprising stories are possible.
*
PS. Here is a well written novel review, oblique to this post:
Let's see: In many key aspects, Jane Eyre rewrites Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Gaskell's North and South and Browning's Aurora Leigh rewrites Jane Eyre. One conclusion might be, therefore, that reusing plots is not in the least a problem. Of course Vergil also self-consciously rewrites Homer, and Milton both Homer and Milton (and quite a few others). Is the limited number of plots a problem, then, or an advantage — a bug or a feature?
29.8.09
Un conte de Noel
or
The wretched tiresomeness of the anglos
There are numerous films with this title, both French and English.
Invariably, the English movies are about the same things as the French ones: betrayal, disloyalty, sexual dalliance, parents’ failure to love their children (and the reverse), failure to live up to standards of friendship; and so forth. In short: moral failure all along the line; which is to say, well, life.
But – and this is my point here -- also invariably, the English language films are dark, sick, depressing – Scandinavian – while the French films – though they can be profound – manage to be lighthearted and – well, generally quite funny.
(Profundity, it turns out, contra my anglo friends, has no need of moral reproach).
The anglo productions are invariably steeped in the five thousand year old sauce of divine moralization: even the famous sexual revolution has not cured the anglos of their leviticus moralizing zeal: the rules remain, they have merely been tweaked (“dally all you want before you’re married, but once you marry, well, then have eyes only for daddy” – how does one who has dallied all her life do that?); while the French – well, the French seem to make do – with all the heartache it entails but without the divine retribution and without the moral disgust.
Here is to the French. (Herdade grande, red, 2006; and well before noon, too; but, hey, it's afternoon somewhere in the world, no?)
BBC7 is mostly lower-middle-brow. But it sometimes rises above itself to produce something quite good. Last month it was Wharton’s Reef. Good, excellent, wonderful, insightful, wise – well written and well acted, too boot. But, oh, so bloody Anglo-Saxon, so damn – well – sick.
My reaction to this literature is like my reaction to Dostoevsky: instant, deeply felt, uncontrollable revulsion.
(I am a Crime and Punishment tosser, i.e. one of those who have pitched it out the window with disgust… in fact, I suppose, I am a serial-tosser since I repeated the same – Heimlich? -- maneuver with Brothers Karamazov twenty years later. It is a kind of monoethlon: how far anf fast can you pitch your Dosoevsky?)
Yet, surprisingly – or not surprisingly, if you know their literature – the anglos love Dostoevsky.
There is something about the feelings of moral disgust that stimulates the anglos; they appear like that madman who having accidentally stepped into a piece of dog poop in the street, turned round, retraced his steps and, re-locating the poopismo, trod it again; and again; and again.
One assumes – with delight.
(Not my kind of party).
Invariably, the English movies are about the same things as the French ones: betrayal, disloyalty, sexual dalliance, parents’ failure to love their children (and the reverse), failure to live up to standards of friendship; and so forth. In short: moral failure all along the line; which is to say, well, life.
But – and this is my point here -- also invariably, the English language films are dark, sick, depressing – Scandinavian – while the French films – though they can be profound – manage to be lighthearted and – well, generally quite funny.
(Profundity, it turns out, contra my anglo friends, has no need of moral reproach).
The anglo productions are invariably steeped in the five thousand year old sauce of divine moralization: even the famous sexual revolution has not cured the anglos of their leviticus moralizing zeal: the rules remain, they have merely been tweaked (“dally all you want before you’re married, but once you marry, well, then have eyes only for daddy” – how does one who has dallied all her life do that?); while the French – well, the French seem to make do – with all the heartache it entails but without the divine retribution and without the moral disgust.
Here is to the French. (Herdade grande, red, 2006; and well before noon, too; but, hey, it's afternoon somewhere in the world, no?)
*
BBC7 is mostly lower-middle-brow. But it sometimes rises above itself to produce something quite good. Last month it was Wharton’s Reef. Good, excellent, wonderful, insightful, wise – well written and well acted, too boot. But, oh, so bloody Anglo-Saxon, so damn – well – sick.
My reaction to this literature is like my reaction to Dostoevsky: instant, deeply felt, uncontrollable revulsion.
(I am a Crime and Punishment tosser, i.e. one of those who have pitched it out the window with disgust… in fact, I suppose, I am a serial-tosser since I repeated the same – Heimlich? -- maneuver with Brothers Karamazov twenty years later. It is a kind of monoethlon: how far anf fast can you pitch your Dosoevsky?)
Yet, surprisingly – or not surprisingly, if you know their literature – the anglos love Dostoevsky.
There is something about the feelings of moral disgust that stimulates the anglos; they appear like that madman who having accidentally stepped into a piece of dog poop in the street, turned round, retraced his steps and, re-locating the poopismo, trod it again; and again; and again.
One assumes – with delight.
(Not my kind of party).
23.8.09
Manoel does it again
The one film career which I have followed longest (since Os Canibais, 1988 -- a wonderful opera with a delightfully odd libretto), that of Manoel de Oliveira, has delivered another of its usual short, quirky, otherworldly jewels: Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura . Based on a short story by Eça de Queirós, Portugal's better-than-Flaubert, the film's action is firmly set in the nineteenth century bourgeois ethos (boy loses employment with his uncle when he develops a fancy for a girl his uncle disapproves of; quits the family business; undertakes a colonial venture; returns home to marry her, but rejects her upon discovering that she is inclined to... shop-lift) -- but also set in modern Lisbon's realities -- restaurants, euros, traffic, neon lights.
It's as if the heroes were ghosts still living out their great tragedy a hundred years later, oblivious to the fact that they have died, time has passed, and everything has changed around them.
The film's otherworldliness is only increased -- and rendered more delightful -- by a kind of fanciful, dream-like jumbling up of the city: the house where the boy works is in a recognizable street in Chiado, though the view from the storefront is onto the market hall in Principe Real and at 11 o'clock one hears from it clearly the bells of... the Basilica de Estrella -- at the top of Lapa, of course. Etc. A kind of know-your-lisbon test for her lovers.
The recurring view of Castello and the Graca hill (where I now live) is, by the way, not from the Miradouro, but from the terrace of Hotel de Chiado.
I failed one of the test's trick questions: in a certain scene a bell strikes one on a church tower with a handless clock; there are trees in front of it, possibly jacaranda. I could not identify it. Santos-o-velho? Sao Antonio? Sao Mamede? Or -- does Carmello have a tower? I will spend the next week walking with my eyes raised up to gaze at the city's clock-towers -- until I find it.
It's as if the heroes were ghosts still living out their great tragedy a hundred years later, oblivious to the fact that they have died, time has passed, and everything has changed around them.
The film's otherworldliness is only increased -- and rendered more delightful -- by a kind of fanciful, dream-like jumbling up of the city: the house where the boy works is in a recognizable street in Chiado, though the view from the storefront is onto the market hall in Principe Real and at 11 o'clock one hears from it clearly the bells of... the Basilica de Estrella -- at the top of Lapa, of course. Etc. A kind of know-your-lisbon test for her lovers.
The recurring view of Castello and the Graca hill (where I now live) is, by the way, not from the Miradouro, but from the terrace of Hotel de Chiado.
I failed one of the test's trick questions: in a certain scene a bell strikes one on a church tower with a handless clock; there are trees in front of it, possibly jacaranda. I could not identify it. Santos-o-velho? Sao Antonio? Sao Mamede? Or -- does Carmello have a tower? I will spend the next week walking with my eyes raised up to gaze at the city's clock-towers -- until I find it.
10.4.09
Last summer in Marienbad
The camera glides slowly, soundlessly through the hall, towards the chandelier and then underneath it. In the film's black and white photography it looks like glowing gigantic thousand-armed squid in some terrifying darkness-deep of the ocean. But it also looks like a Persian calligraphic inscription carved in molten light against a filigree background. As the eye dives beneath the chandelier, the shimmering outline of another appears down the hall.
9.4.09
Les Brodeuses
Pretend for a moment that a film is nothing but an aesthetic object.
Then the aesthetic core of Les Brodeuses is the 120-second sequence around minute 36:Sequins do not usually want anything that micro-focused. It is OK for any project they sponsor to feature Monteverdi arias or sequined embroidery – they are not Visigoths; but they also need the mainstream plot, drama, especially love drama, best if fulfilled in the end. (And it is). But perhaps that conventional content (and it is very conventional: an older single woman dealing with her only son’s tragic death; a younger single woman trying to decide whether to keep her baby) also serves as a setting for the central scene, the way a ring might set a stone, the face the eye, the body the face, the altar its statue; the way swathes of dull Miltonese set the far-in-between moments of utter and disarming beauty. The aesthetic rule number one is that a beautiful object’s setting must be duller than it itself, or else it will exhaust the eye and steal the show. Not that the film is dull – it is all visually very beautiful; and the story is touching and well and intelligently told. But aesthetically speaking, everything in the film is duller than this sequence. As well it must: its beauty is difficult to match.
2/8/09: Good bye, South, Good bye has the same sort of aesthetic core: the four minute motorcycle ride through the hills around Chia-yi, the director's ultimate nostalgia trip; and mine, too)
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