“If there is something comforting–religious, if you want–about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”
Democracy in America
In Portrait of a Lady, a rather curious misunderstanding occurs between Ralph and Henrietta. Curious, as the conversation takes place in a spirit of jocularity that masks the deeper feelings of the characters. Henrietta, as reporters are wont to do, interrogates Ralph in a highly personal and familiar way. Instead of taking offense, Ralph responds with wit, undertaking to dispatch each successive volley in a sportive manner. She declares him unserious, noting that he has a duty to marry. Ralph takes this as a proposal to marry her. She abruptly leaves after a few terse words, and we are left to ponder what offended her more: his presumption or the fact that she desired to say yes.
Later, when discussing the matter with Isabel, the difference is framed as cultural, between European and American sensibilities. More specifically, Henrietta embodies the democratic spirit. But what exactly is the democratic spirit? To ask highly personal questions without being personally involved in the answer.
“She had no interested views, and never supposed you would think she had.”
It is a great insight by Henry James. Americans, by reputation, do come across as nosy, probing, presumptuous. The assumption that personal questions must necessarily require a demand for some personal stake or claim in the outcome is deeply ingrained. The private lives of others? What business is it of yours? It is suspicious to say the least. The democratic spirit allows no person to escape the criticism born of equal standing. You are my peer. On this basis alone, I judge. Everyone has the right to pass judgment over me by virtual of our equal standing. What a terrible burden! How desperately we wish to escape this pervasive, invidious judgment. Democracy cannot long survive the contrary impulse, the desire to be lord and master of our own fate.
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Art
“Art is a lie, a lie that makes us realize the truth.” Picasso (maybe)
The Spirit Resides in the Heart and in the Earth
“The friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them.”
Not a Circus, but the Drawing Stage
“I know the world is a drawing-room, from which we must retire politely and honestly; that is, with a bow, and our debts of honor paid.”
Folly 101
“If one’s lot is cast among fools, it is necessary to study folly.” Count of Monte Cristo.
The Count of Monte Cristo
“Their agony formed part of their merit—if they were not seen alive, they were despised when dead.”
A perfect distillation of the desire for revenge. Not to eliminate, but to imprint the suffering on the body of the other. Instead of a destruction we are left with a game.
Muriel, or the Time of Return
Where does reality reside? In our memories alone? The fragments of our daily lives broken and reassembled into a coherent whole? We usually construct the story centered in first-person: This happened to me; this is the story of MY life. An illusion, though perhaps a necessary one given the elusive nature of what we mislabel “the events of our lives”. In truth, nothing ever happens to us as there is neither a happening nor an us, but a trace, a remnant of what has elapsed. Time erases us long before the action arrives to cleave to our bodies. Events are superficial and cannot penetrate. The action is determined, but the contours of our being are left undetermined. The decentralized rhythm of existence conjoins a greater totality within the duration. Not my broken pieces. Our broken pieces, synthesized into a totality we struggle to comprehend.
Muriel perfectly conveys this deeper reality. From the edits, the disconcerted shifts of time and tempo and emotion, to the dialogue shifting between the objective (the trite and commonplace observations that we tell to mask our deeper feelings), to the subjective, the unconscious, the longing, the haunting memories that evoke loss, grief, regret.
As Resnais explains: “A classic film cannot translate the real rhythm of modern life. In the same day, you do twenty-six things, you go to lectures, to the cinema, to your party meeting etc. Modern life is fragmented. Everybody feels that; painting, as well as literature bares witness to it, so why should the cinema not do likewise, instead of keeping to the traditional linear construction?”
And like a shroud or a tapestry hung above the scenery, appears the angel, Muriel. The haunting figure of a murdered woman, an Algerian girl tortured and raped by Bernard and a companion, hovers over our world like an omen, a judgement, a collective death sentence, but also hints at, if not the possibility of salvation, perhaps the miracle of atonement.
Common Complaints
My dislike of film criticism is well established. The whole mindset that begins by classification…two and a half stars out of four…is so contrived and alien to me, that I’m not even sure where the origin of such an approach lies. True, a rating system says more about the critic than the art, but what does it say about the art? It says that art exists merely as an excuse to talk publicly about the role of the art critic. And what role does the art critic supposedly serve in this view? The art critic serves as a bastion of artistic fitness to defend the culture against mediocre art. How or under what circumstances one achieves this lofty place is a bit vague. “I’ve seen a lot of films” is hardly persuading, for I cannot judge the quality of your viewing, your keenness, your attention to detail, your hidden biases, the sources or meta narratives you will draw upon for your analysis, or whether you even have anything interesting to say other than a recounting of your subjective experience. There’s a whole terrible class of this sort of critic, but Rex Reed is certainly the archetype, who often in his quest to shred, pan, and denounce, couldn’t even be bothered with a faithful summary of the events in the movies he was supposed to review (what a life it must be to be so distracted as to not pay attention to THE distraction on the screen.)
My favorite trope is the warning against any film portraying a religious figure or having religious-based core message to “avoid excessive preachiness.” How pray tell does one preach without preachiness? Well, it’s a matter of degree. But why? If I make a horror movie, must you warn me to “avoid excessive scariness?” A romance must “avoid excessive romance”? The same critics complain that film has devolved into boring repetitiveness, a lack of originality and novelty as studios chase formulas of past success. In truth, though, the critic doesn’t want to be challenged or pushed. They are perfectly fine with a film that hits all the preconceived notions, but throws in one or two idiosyncrasies enough to call it very good or great. But if we truly are thrill seekers, we should embrace a film that is willing to push us out of our comfort zones. Did you find the film too preachy for your tastes? Good! Your tastes are what this is all about. Rejection doesn’t make you smarter or better, it may even be a sign you’re not as open-minded as you like to believe. The devout should seek out films with stark, bleak messages of hopeless. The cynic should seek out films with fantastic, storybook endings. Are you feeling pushed? Good. Art isn’t supposed to work for you. Art is supposed to work on you.
The Hack 