DEKALOG 1 : FAITH versus REASON

It’s my birthday and I have spent the morning watching the first instalment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s DEKALOG. I am captivated by his cinema in a similar way that I am captivated by Bergman’s films. They are full of ideas and meaning, about the big issues in life, so you feel you are not wasting your time.

 

                                   

Dekalog 1 is called ‘Thou shalt have no other God’s before me’, which must be the name of the first of the Ten Commandments. The title sums up the message of the film perfectly. A young boy, Pavel, lives in the city of Warsaw with his father (all the films use a massive apartment block as the physical landscape), and is visited sometimes by his aunt, his mother living elsewhere. Like the little boy in Haneke’s ‘The White Ribbon’, Pavel asks questions about the meaning of life, and ponders over, and is confused  by, the sight of a dead dog he was fond of, found freezing in the ice. His aunt offers him hope in the form of her Catholic point of view, however his father’s message is somewhat, gently, bleaker. The aunt tells Pavel that his father believes that ‘measurement could be applied to everything.’ As a professor at the university, his philosophy is the use of reason an scientific method. He tells his students ‘a properly programmed computer… may have its own aesthetic preferences…a personality.’ In his universe God has been replaced therefore b y technology. Faith and mystery subside, and intellect and reason triumph.

 

       

Unfortunately, his computer tells him that the frozen pond at the back of the flats should be solid enough to withstand three times his boy’s weight. Pavel  receives his new Christmas ice skates with glee, and ventures off to test his father’s theory with tragic consequences.

I love seeing parallels in films. There are obvious ones here with the famous drowning scene from ‘Don’t Look Now.’ In both films the father of the doomed child is busy at work, and an ink bottle is spilled, and dark ink is spread across his work (the ink is a blackish-blue in this film, and a blood red in the other). The spreading seems to work as a grisly portent to tragedy. In ‘Don’t Look Now’ by contrast, the father sees his child dead in the water, and drags her out, helplessly. He then roars in a private grief, howling into the atmosphere. In this film, in a chilling few minutes, Pavel’s father watches absolutely helplessly as his son’s boy, and that of a friend, is dragged by rescuers from the thawed pond. So much for science, and for his scientific calculations.

 

             

In destructive harmony with his beliefs, Pavel’s father desecrates the altar at the church and prepares for a newer, bleaker existence. The film seems to be endorsing the value of faith, although it can be seen that the faith-filled aunt is filled with sorrow, too. Perhaps her response is less fraught in some way.

Kieslowski likes to use symbols in his films. The frozen water bottle is a good example. Pavel has left it out overnight. It is frozen solid, but the bottle itself is cracked. It seems to be representative of the boy’s fragility. He is curious and intelligent and his future at this point holds so much promise.  There is a lovely scene, too, in which Pavel, like any other child, is mesmerized by his new skates, and can’t sleep through thinking about them, and the promise they hold. He lays in his room, in a lovely blue light, and tells his father he is watching them gleam.

Sylvia Plath in a BBC radio interview in 1962 ruminated on what she saw as the important themes poetry should explore:"... I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrific, like madness, being tortured, this sort of experience, and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and an intelligent mind.  I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn't be a kind of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience. I believe it should be relevant, and relevant to the larger things, the bigger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on."

             

 I think Kieslowski endorses these ideas too.

 

              

 

The view of the street from your window pane

VAN MORRISON’S highly underrated record of the early 80’s, ‘INARTICULATE SPEECH OF THE HEART’ featured a catchy tune called ‘The Street Only Knew Your Name.’ In the song Van sings about the streets of his childhood, a theme he eludes to time and time again. We can deduce a lot from his time growing up in Orangefield, East Belfast, from this particular song:

 

'Your street, rich street or poor

Used to always be sure, on your street

There's a place in your heart and you know from the start

Can't be complete outside of the street
Keep moving on through the joy and the pain

Sometimes you got to look back to the street again

Would you prefer all those castles in Spain

Or the view of the street from your window pane
And you walked around in the heart of town

Listening for that sound

And the street only knew your name

Well the street only knew your name, your name.'

                              

 It makes me think about my own past, my suburb and street in particular, and the house which my parents still inhabit, who knows for how much longer. The house is in a bit of disrepair, and the backyard is largish. A good recipe for future flats.

 

Chauvel Street, Reservoir, is a reasonably long street with ordinary suburban houses on either side. My parent’s house is next to the corner at the northern end. The road is not too busy, so we could play tennis on the road many years ago. Also football games where the goals were the space between the gap in the front fence at the top of the driveway. There was also chalked-in hopscotch if I recall correctly, outside the front fence, pre-teen.

There were families on all sides and around the corner. My gang, growing up, played cricket in the summer diagonally opposite on the corner across the road, where Chauvel Street ends in a ‘T’. None of us were very good, although I considered myself excellent at the forward defensive block. Most of the time it was amicable, but Wayne had his moments. He was a bit older than the rest of us, but not quite an adult. Unemployed, he drank quite a lot, Coke especially, wore a ‘Far Canal’ t-shirt that made our eyes pop out of our heads, and even had tattoos (way before trendy women got them). He also had his own Stuart Surridge cricket bat. We only had one bat at this time. We were supposed to run with it after a single, and hand it to our partner to face the next ball. However, I continually forgot, and would drop the bat after I took off like a hare for the single. Wayne would tolerate it a couple of times, but by the third time he completely lost his temper after having said, twice, “don’t drop the bat!!!” He marched aggressively to the middle of the wicket, grabbed the bat, and stormed over to the nearest telegraph pole. Here he smashed his precious bat into several pieces, splinters flying everywhere, announcing with venom “right, now no-one’s going to play!” This is just one memory of Wayne. Most of the time I was in a kind of awe of him, and felt a certain gratification every time he spoke to me, even though I knew I didn’t want to turn out like him.

I felt very differently about little sister Leanne.  I say ‘little’, although she was slightly older than me, and freckled and probably quite plain, but I found her enchanting all the same. Looking back I think I sort of fell in love with her, from the ages of about eight to thirteen, if that’s possible, when we were close.

 

The sibling I saw the most of was Craig, the youngest in the family, but not much younger than me. Craig looked up to me for my supposed academic ability (I went to the high, he went to the Tech), and I liked him for his sturdy character, his mischievousness, and above all because he was happy and uncomplicated.

 

That wasn’t all of the ‘A’ family. An older sibling with glasses I had little to do with, and two parents that did fix themselves firmly in my mind. Mrs A was a stay at home mother, unhappy, suffering, struggling, but always polite. Her husband was a plumber whose life, it seemed, was out of control. He would get home from work late, often roaring drunk, and agitated like an abusive Roddy Doyle character, and take it out on his poor wife. The language was obscene to my tiny, innocent ears, and I wondered how the children coped. There were times when there was yelling and screaming, and the smashing of plates, whilst Craig and Leanne and I were in the bedroom playing Monopoly. Manic disturbances would erupt from the lounge or the kitchen, meanwhile Craig or Leanne would roll the dice, simultaneous pleasure etched on their faces, as they landed on Mayfair or Park Lane exclaiming “I’ll buy it!” I was bewildered.

 

So the three diverse and intriguing ‘A’ siblings would lounge about at night and on weekends on the street corner where our beloved bitumen cricket pitch was. Other sons (not daughters) would frequently migrate there, including the Italian boy Luch, whose mother would scream out something about ‘mangiare’ around dinner time every night. I guess my mother must have called me for dinner as well, except sometimes I would sneak out after the rest of the family were in bed. Late at night the ‘A’ clan were still out there. They didn’t seem to be encumbered by rules. I would pretend to go to the toilet. The loud flushing sound would drown out the sound of the key scraping in the back door lock, and I was away, for hours at a time. One time my father also went to the toilet this same night, and must have checked the back door and discovered it was unlocked. I had to go around to my bedroom window at the back of the house. I shared this with my brother whose sleep I disturbed. He promptly woke the whole house. Mother was in a state of semi-rage.

 

The other pleasant memory in regards to the corner gang was the times when I would be home, engrossed in adolescent reading, and I would stream out the front door in an exalted mood, full of news of the book I had just read, eager to tell my generous, expectant audience. The ‘A’ family didn’t read much, but somehow they found the fact that I did, interesting in some way. One time I specifically remember it was ‘Ten Little Niggers' by Agatha Christie. A tremendous story to re-tell, almost like you were entrapped on the island yourself.

 

                    

 

The reading of books was a little one-sided, but we were all music enthusiasts. It was Suzi Quatro V Melanie, and I was hopelessly outnumbered. ’48 Crash’ seemed brash and discordant to me, much preferring the lyrical softness of ‘Little Bit Of Me.’

 

I received my first pushbike, a metallic coloured Malvern Star, when I was thirteen. I was an eager frequent flyer around the streets of Reservoir, whizzing by in my brown cords and any number of Miller shirts I owned. I had a little tool kit I never quite mastered, and loved the bold, black tape on the curved handlebars. I once lost my head and rode all the way to Brunswick. I rang my parents pretending I was lost. The real reason I rang was because I wanted them to share my awe of riding as far as Brunswick. The fastest I rode was down the hill on Rosenthal Crescent, from the massive roundabout that connects Hughes Parade. Reckless and dangerous, a kind of bungy jumping of its time. Nowadays I would be second guessing emerging cars.

 

                          

 

The only shops in the vicinity of Chauvel Street were (and still are) the ones in Gellibrand Crescent. The shops there have changed so much over time. There was a fish’n’ chip shop way back when, two rival milk bars, and a service station on the corner block which is now a kindergarten. Each little shop featured its own little intrigue. The first milk bar was my preferred one. Craig and Leanne and I used to buy a bottle of milk and ask the shopkeeper to open it and pour some flavoured topping into it. We had an early and delicious version of ‘Big M’ before ‘Big M’ even came out. We also gorged ourselves on lollies, icy poles and football cards. Sunnyboys were a favourite. Sometimes, like a mild version of the lucky ticket in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, there would be gold writing inside the Sunnyboy telling you that you had won a free one. They were very generous with their give-aways in those days.

 

I loved being out on the streets. I felt free and the conversations were always buzzing. It all ended, for me, when I got to about Year 11. I had my first girlfriend then, living in a completely different part of Reservoir. She and I were inseparable, and I forgot all about the Luch and the ‘A’ family. I guess they survived without me.

 

      

THE UNTOUCHABLES- SUGARY FRENCH FARCE

I HAVE been watching quite a lot of ‘GET SMART’ lately, for old time’s sake. And it has dated quite a bit, as you might expect, and the jokes are repetitive-

‘Have you got all that Max?’

Not all of it 99.’

‘Which bit do you want me to go over?’

‘The bit after you say ‘now listen carefully, Max.’

                                      
              
At least it’s clever humour, and clever in how ridiculous it is, and unpretentious, and full of odd ball, loveable characters like Larabee and Siegfried. Watch ‘From Russia With Love’ again and it makes ‘Get Smart’ even funnier. Sean Connery’s little quips are nowhere near as good. There’s even a ‘Get Smart’ episode called ‘Dr Yes.’

As a contrast I saw a new French comedy last night, at the Westgarth, in Northcote. It is called ‘The Intouchables.’ It is about an unemployed young black man named Driss (Omar Sy), who lives in a poor part of Paris, seemingly headed for a life of drugs and crime, with nothing really going for him except for his humour, brazenness, creativity and entrepreneurial skills (in other words, loads), all of which offer him a chance to avoid his bleak future. He gets the unlikely job of being a full time carer for a fabulously wealthy, highly cultured older white man Philippe (Francois Cluzet), who deeply loves his music and art. As a full time carer, Driss occupies the accompanying room of a highly ornate mansion. There is any number of jokes about how uncomfortable Driss is about looking after his patient, who needs a lot of looking after, as he is paralysed from the neck to his toes after a hang gliding accident. The classic odd couple warm toward each other fairly quickly, and throughout the course of the film Driss deeply enriches Philippe’s life by helping him rediscover a sense of fun, adventure, and even romance, after it seemed that music and literature and art were all that were left for him to enjoy. And of course, in learning how to look after someone else, and living in such fertile circumstances, the black carer has his life enormously enriched as well.

         

The premise of the film is lovely. And I can see how attractive Driss is to Philippe- he is funny, irreverent, and above all doesn’t take pity on him, and even refreshingly makes lots of jokes about being crippled, incapable, and so on. A scene that takes place at the opera, in which Driss laughs uproariously at the singing and costume of the actor below him on the stage is funny. It’s send up of the earnestness of the rich and the theatre crowd in general reminded me of the Marx Brothers irreverent humour and their wonderful digs at the Establishment.

However I became tired of the predictability of the whole thing after a while. There were the same sorts of jokes all the time, with Driss trying very hard and slightly grating on me towards the end, when other sections of the crowd were warming more and more to him. It was the clumsy and half-hearted attempt to build pathos into the film that irked me as well. There was a ‘serious’ sub-plot about Driss’ family lurking in the background. I felt that the scriptwriter’s weren’t sure what to do with it. Perhaps they felt the film needed something else, which it probably did, but it wasn’t dealt with well. And I didn’t believe for a second in the romantic past of the white man either.

Everybody seems to love this film. But for me it’s too sugary and sweet. I have never gone for crowd pleasers. Much prefer the murkiness of a Mike Leigh film. Every single frame seems hell bent on trying to extract a smile from its audience. And of course, as it seems to be saying, black people are funny and beautiful, even those from the Parisian wrong side of the tracks. Well, I kind of know that already, but of course they’re not all cute, funny and loveable. And wealthy white cripples can be grumpy and full of self-importance. But you know what? Underneath it all, if given the chance, they really do have the capacity to be fun loving rascals. Well, now I know.

                              

Romanticising Melanie

MELANIE

 

VAN Morrison begins his moving and meditative 1986 album ‘No Guru, No Method, No Teacher’ with a song that typifies his compulsion to relive the past:

‘When I was a young boy back in Orangefield,

I used to gaze out my classroom window and dream

Then go home and listen to Ray sing

“I Believed In My Soul” after school.’

Lately I have been doing the same. Except not with Ray Charles, who is still a fairly much undiscovered pleasure, and not even with Van, who I didn’t really get to know until university with ‘Moondance.’ When I was a young boy dreaming about music in my classroom and looking out the window, it was Melanie Safka I was thinking about.

No doubt Van would have been listening to Ray Charles on an old record player, or perhaps tuning into Radio Luxembourg. For me, now in 2012, too dreamy and tired to think about reading, and totally disinterested in TV, I have been watching Melanie on youtube. The headphones of yesteryear have been replaced by a skinny white set of earplugs courtesy of Apple. And there is a whole magical wonderland of not just music, but images of Melanie and live recordings to go with it. The visual becomes just as significant and enjoyable as the aural.

So I have rediscovered the music that is still in my bones. Her charismatic and original voice stirs me as much as it used to. It soothes and is of great comfort. Perhaps it reminds me of less complicated days. Songs half- forgotten like WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’RE GOING and STOP I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT ANYMORE stir in me a soft and seductive melancholy. I learn for probably the first time that they are on a soundtrack to a Stanley Kramer film called ‘RPM.’ The languid song JIGSAW PUZZLE is another that’s half-forgotten, but the images are familiar- the world of outcasts and tramps, and even a ‘methylated sandwich.’  And there it is- it is originally a Rolling Stones song on ‘Beggar’s Banquet’- I’m not sure I ever knew that. Again, it is news to me that she sang another Stones song, WILD HORSES, and that there’s even a Randy Newman cover called I THINK ITS GOING TO RAIN TODAY.

I can hear all of my favourite Melanie record- STONEGROUND WORDS- on youtube. Miraculously, it is a recording of the album, with its familiar tiny screeches and scratches:

‘I'll go to the garden that follows the seasons
Live in the field where the healing grass grows
Go to the mountains where air's clear for breathing
Clear is just another way to see
I feel to know.’

Melanie is there live singing ‘Chords of Fame’ at Montreux (so is the original Phil Och’s version which seems to me to have very little of the soul that her version has).  She appears on various ‘Tonight’ programmes- the ubiquitous Johnny Carson and Johnny Cash; variously talking about Woodstock; after her comeback from having children circa 1974; and appearing during my favourite Melanie phase in 1972 singing ‘DO YOU BELIEVE’:

‘Do you believe it's morning
I'm alive but that's the last thing on my mind
If our night time words mean good-bye
Let our morning words be kind
Didn't your eyes say you'd never change your mind
Didn't my eyes say I do believe your eyes
I do believe them, I do believe your eyes.’

Another great feature of youtube is that you can read what other people have said about the song and clip you have just listened to. It makes you feel a part of something. Seemingly it’s not just you in the lounge room with your senses awake and your eyes closed. You have shared this experience with hundreds or thousands of people worldwide. And Melanie comments are never sleazy or idiotic. It tells you that you are on to a good thing.

                          

 

ENGLAND, ENGLAND MY ENGLAND- CONTEMPLATING THE NORTH- CAN YOU FEEL THE SILENCE?

OK. The first three words of the title are a bit clichéd. But I like it because of the Lawrence reference, and also because it seems to sum up my feelings tonight, as I pore over a map of England and think about ten years ago, around the time we made the fateful and fatal decision to pack up and leave. And come home. Back to Australia. I think of King Lear, poring over his own map, readying himself to divide up his kingdom amongst his three daughters and three new son-in-laws. But my reasoning is different to his-  unlike Lear, I don’t have a ‘darker purpose’- I merely wish to wallow in my beautiful memories of a decade ago.

                   

At this time, ten years ago, we were living in Gloucestershire, the market town of Newent, specifically. I remember I had been teaching at a soul destroying school in the north in a former mining town called Mansfield. I only barely survived, getting through with the help of the spectacular car journey every morning and afternoon: the beautiful green of the English wintry countryside, watching birds settle on ancient fence posts, old cottage-sized post offices in little towns with grand red pillar boxes, waving to anonymous school kids on the side of gravel roads, the air distinctly cool and fresh, and above all Nick Cave belting out songs like ‘Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow’ and ‘The Sorrowful Wife’, released just a year earlier on ‘No More Shall We Part.’

                            

I saw the advertisement for Newent Community College somewhere, and as a good omen knew people in the gorgeous nearby town, Ross-on-Wye, near Wales, and drove down for an interview. There were a number of those old black and white timber buildings in the town, very seductive for people like me from new Australia, including the fish ‘n’ chip shop built in 1493. I got the job, which is why, ten years ago I was living in Newent, Gloucestershire, weighing up whether or not to come home or move, after two and a half years, to another spot somewhere else in England. If we stayed, Yorkshire was a distinct possibility. We had been to the north, but only stayed for a period of time as high up as Lawrence country, in the Midlands. Then there was the pull of home, and the family, and my old job, and Penny, the family cat. Oh, and my books, and ordinary life, and the feel of being more settled. Of course we could have stayed in England and eventually feel settled as well… but we didn’t. We came home in December, 2003.

 

    

As I pore over this map of England, I fantasise about living there again, and contemplate all the treasures that England beholds. At the same time I try to remember in my blinded idealism and rose coloured glasses that there are horrors in the UK that one can’t help but being glad to have escaped. The pernicious royal family is one, and the revolting pomp and ceremony of the ridiculously looking and ridiculously named ‘Beefeaters’, the sickening talk all the time of Viscounts and Barons and Lords, the Duke of Buckley and the Duchess of Kent, the vomit inducing National Anthem that they tried to force all of us to sing in Melbourne way back when…

Despite all of this, how I wish I was there!

 

             

The top right hand side of my map is an area just below Scotland, encompassing the moderate sized county of Northumberland. It is chiefly known for its castles. It is a place I could easily spend the rest of my life. We visited the castles that Turner painted long ago, crumbling then and still crumbling further, but such a great part of the Romantic landscape- Dunstanburgh, Alnwick, Bamburgh. And there’s Norham Castle, fixed in my memory as the subject of a majestic Turner painting of yellow and blue housed at the Tate Gallery.

 

 I recall a tourist page that had a picture of the one of the world’s most beautiful birds, the Puffin. Alas, we didn’t see any. But we did go to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. You have to be careful to remember to go back to the mainland before the tide comes in or you are stuck. Holy Island, if I recall correctly, features in the novel ‘Border Crossing’ by Pat Barker. It is her territory. The accents are beautiful in this part of England, which could easily have been Scotland. I imagine they feel a little bit separate to the English. I saw an old book called ‘The History of Northumberland.’ I remember thinking how lovely it would be to live here and read this book in the conservatory of the house I am living in one day.

Directly below my map is the county of Durham, featuring a University and one of many counties that boast a glorious Cathedral, although not my favourite in England. The counties just south and west of Durham interest me a lot more. What could be more impressive than Cumbria? ( formerly known as Westmoreland, from memory).  It is the glorious setting for Wordsworth’s moving ‘Prelude’ and it is the location for Lizzie’s trip with the Gardiner’s in ‘Pride and Prejudice’- “what are men to rocks and mountains?”  I don’t even know if there is a school in Cumbria. Of course there must be, but when I think of Cumbria I think of Lizzie’s rocks and mountains, and famous lakes, everything remote to work or working. It was when he was touring the lakes that Lawrence learnt of the end of the First World War. It strikes me as a great place to find out a war has ended. I could live in Cumbria, but every day I would be pinching myself. The thought is just too surreal. I could enjoy Van Morrison’s song ‘Summertime in England’, all Wordsworth and Coleridge, even more because it is set here, in Kendal. It is one of two songs that contain my favourite lyric in music: ‘Can you feel the silence?’

Yorkshire is next on the map, and in my mind a more realistic option. This is because it is where we were going next, if we didn’t come home. The Bronte’s resided there. We went to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth countless times, just like Sylvia Plath, and saw the little green sofa that Emily supposedly died on, on December 19, 1848. Yorkshire also features the majestic Castle Howard of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ fame, and Scarborough, where Ann Bronte is buried in a last ditch effort to save her life by the raging waters. The school in which there may or may not have been a vacancy- I can’t remember- was called ‘Skipton Girls’ High School’ in Skipton, North Yorkshire. This is where I fancied working throughout 2003 and beyond. A tranquil life of teaching Literature to enthusiastic English girls, and living on a little farm with some goats and sheep. We would have one of those ancient fences around our property that are characteristic of the area. They are made of blocks of blue stone that are piled up randomly and have been there for centuries. Someone in the UK said that Yorkshire is ‘God’ Own Country’, and I’ve heard it said about other places as well, but in the case of Yorkshire I can almost believe it.

                       

Of course there is another important literary legacy in Yorkshire- it is where Ted Hughes comes from, his parent’s farm called 'The Beacon' in a town called Mytholmroyd, with poor Sylvia Plath  buried quite close by, in Heptonstall. We visited the pub they used to go to, 'The White Lion' and I sat, like countless others before me, astride the gravestone with the memorable epitaph: ‘Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.’ If you know anything of her, you will know why the ‘fierce flames’ and ‘golden lotus’ are absolutely perfect.

        

The north of England is a beautiful part of the world. But it is just one of many options I would gladly take up if I could live in England. I’m putting my map away to become enticed with other places in England, another time.

SOKUROV'S NEW TAKE ON 'FAUST'

                                   

I AM immediately drawn to the name ‘Sokurov’ as I glance over the Melbourne International Film Festival guide in The Age. It all began at an earlier MIFF occasion- ‘Mother and Son’- going by, admittedly, a heartfelt recommendation by Nick Cave that was originally published in ‘The Independent on Sunday’:

 

'A FRIEND of mine invited me to attend an advance screen of a Russian film in Soho. I asked him what it was like and he said, "Well, nothing really happens and then someone dies. Come along. You'll love it." My friend was releasing the film in this country, so I felt obliged. Sitting through a Russian film is the kind of thing friends do for each other.

I arrived late and made my way to the front row just as the opening credits were ending. Ten minutes in, I started quietly crying and continued to do so for the 73-minute duration of the film. Now, I've cried in films before but I can't remember crying quite so hard, without pause, all the way through. When the film ended and the lights came on, a red-eyed woman sitting behind me pushed a Kleenex in my direction and asked me if I would write something about it for one of the newspapers.

The film is called Mother and Son, and is directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. It explores the final day in the life of a dying mother (Gudrun Geyer) and her adult son (Alexei Anaishnov). It is morning. The mother wants the son to take her for a "walk", which involves carrying her through a series of dreamlike landscapes, whereupon he returns to their bare, isolated home, feeds her, and puts her to bed. The son then leaves the house to walk on his own and returns to find that she has died. All this takes 76 minutes. But what we witness in that time is a thing of such beauty, such sadness, that to cry, for me, was the only adequate response.It was a profound experience.'





 Such a simple story of a love a son has for his dying mother. He carries her across stunning landscapes that are filmed with some sort of a distorted – known as anamorphic- lens, inspired by the craftsmanship of Caspar David Friedrich. She is lovingly cradled in his arms like the Pieta, and their image appears at the bottom of the screen, at the bottom of a path that reaches upwards along a kind of valley. It takes some time for the distant figures to reach the top of the screen, hence the top of the mountain. It reminds me of Van Gogh’s appreciation of the Christina Rossetti poem:

‘Does the road go uphill all the way?’

‘Yes, to the very end.’

‘And does the journey take all day?’

‘From morn to night, my friend.’

Thankfully, Sokurov has all the patience in the world as we celebrate the moving and beautiful portrait of this son’s love for his mother. There is very little need for dialogue. Dialogue would spoil the mood. There are insects, however, and the final inevitable release. The emotions for the mother are palpable.  It is no less tense, but far less complex, than Paul Morel’s love for Gertrude Morel in Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers.’ Like Gertrude Morel, this Russian man’s mother dies too, but much more quietly and peacefully, accepting the inevitability of death. Her son has taken his mother on her final journey, so there must be a sense of relief for him, too.

Another MIFF brought us “The Sun’, about Emperor Hirohito, and the enormous sense of expectation on his shoulders as Japan’s role in the Second World War becomes increasingly complex and the war is ending. Hirohito is in a bunker underneath Tokyo. He is fascinated with marine life and in an extraordinary sequence marvels over a specimen crab. Equally interesting is his vision of flying fish as airplanes in the sky.  It is a very personal piece which examines Hirohito’s conscience and portrays him as a man who, although at odds temperamentally with General Macarthur, also in the film, is able to share dinner and a cigar with him. Hirohito seems timid and child-like, against the brash American. The American press corps take delight in photographing this strange, elusive man, which is the funniest moment in the film.

 

  

I saw ‘Russian Ark’ at the old Lumiere cinema in Exhibition Street. A stunning technical achievement, the camera and the film’s narrators wander through a multitude of rooms inside the Winter Place, recreating a tapestry of historical events, all done without any digital editing, in a single sequence. The scene in which the ghostly figure of the eccentric narrator pauses in front of Rembrandt’s ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ is a personal favourite. Each room seems to represent a different historical period, including the time of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and the frightening world of Josef Stalin. The location is beautiful, as are the costumes and paintings. A long sequence of an orchestra being filmed is slow and seductive, and the large number of inhabitants inside the Winter Palace, drift out the exit and into the cold air during the closure of the film.

 

 

‘Father and Son’ was played as a one off at the Nova in Carlton, as part of a Russian Film Festival called, I think, ‘Russian Resurrection.’  The beauty and honesty and tenderness of a parent and a sibling is quite different here. I would love to see the film again. I remember a lot of shots on a rooftop somewhere in Russia, and some stained glass. Like some of his other films, there isn’t a lot of action. It is mostly meditative. The experience was almost as equally moving as the tenderness in ‘Mother and Son.’ This time it is like the touch between father and son in Rembrandt’s ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, except there is a homo-erotic element which I find fascinating. Their embraces are vigorous and warm and sometimes vaguely sexual.

 

      

‘Which takes me to ‘Faust’, which is based on Goethe’s version, not the Marlowe that I taught at Newent Community College in Gloucestershire, which is the one I am familiar with. The film went for over two hours, but it went by very quickly, and tired as I was, I concentrated on every frame, marvelling at the lighting, the depiction of a previous time, the ancient villages and rugged landscapes. Faust is impoverished and unfulfilled and desperate to know the secrets of the soul. He meets a bizarre Mephistopholean figure, who has a body that is more bestial than human, with a penis attached from behind rather than at front. Faust makes his pact, written in his blood, and finds himself unwittingly wearing armour in the loneliest and most desolate landscape imaginable. This, it seems, is his Hell- there is no way out and no food or water, not exactly the gates of Hell opening, as in the Marlowe, but devastating for him nevertheless.  I was hoping to see that horrific, doomed,  fiery opening. Faust gets his woman, the Gretchen, in this film called Margarete. She is pale and innocent looking, porcelain and quite beautiful, and rural looking. Faust is obviously desperate for his moment in time with her. When it comes it is surprisingly understated, rather than being lustful or overtly sexual. Faust does pore over her naked body but it is sensitively done. Sokurov uses the most intense close-ups I have ever seen, and her pale face and reddish hair lights up the screen in this incredible yellow glow. All else is dark. The heads of other members of the audience are lit up as well. Sokurov revisits the anamorphic lens, reminiscent of ‘Mother and Son’ again, but this time inconsistently, as if he wants to try it for a certain effect in some shots only. I read somewhere that the painterly influence is someone other than Casper David Friedrich this time- someone I don’t know called David Teniers, a Flemish painter, and a landscape painter from the same period known as Herri met de Bles. It is the latter that is the more obvious-  I have looked at these pictures and I can see the striking resemblance.

 

                                

 

 

The influence of a painter on a director and cinematographer is a fantastic thing. Ingmar Bergman admired Edvard Munch. I might be wrong, but I thought I could see Munch’s influence when I saw Bergman’s ‘Cries and Whispers.’ It is the stilted figures, the sisters, like in the sad, raw Munch pictures that show his grieving family.

 

                             

The vision of Hell in Sokurov’s ‘Faust’ reminds me a lot of the vision Shakespeare created for the musing Claudio, facing execution,  in ‘Measure For Measure:

‘‘…to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world.’    


  

 

 

 

 

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE: not just a study in voyeurism

A LONELY young man living somewhere in urban Poland lives in a crowded tenement apartment block and becomes fixated on a woman of around 30-35 who lives in a similar sized apartment opposite. Like James Stewart in ‘Rear Window’, he finds the goings on in the apartment interesting and becomes obsessed, watching with a well -trained pair of binoculars. The woman occasionally takes a lover, other times going to the fridge or unwinding from a busy day, often in underwear, oblivious to the hungry male eyes peering at her.

 

                               

 

Krzysztof Kieslowski is an imaginative and daring film director, somewhat in the style of Michael Haneke, in that his audience is often made to feel unsettled. Each time I see one of his films I know I am in for an engaging and truthful ride about ordinary people who somehow find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. ‘A Short Film About Death’ was about an unhinged young man, who seemed to be like many troubled people you might find anywhere on the streets, who happens to unexpectedly murder a taxi driver in bloody and gruesome circumstances. The murder is compelling in its unexpectedness and the taxi driver is totally vulnerable and unsuspecting. It is the manner of the killing that is compelling. He takes a long time to die, after prolonged attempts at strangulation, only to find that he is finally bludgeoned by a rock. Even the killer seems to be grimacing by this point. Like Macbeth, he goes so far, and there seems to be no turning back. Both ‘Death’ and ‘Love’ are part of a long series of films based on the 10 commandments under the title ‘Decalogue.’

 ‘A Short Film About Love’, begins with the young man named Tomek  breaking into what looks like some sort of laboratory, stealing a telescope, intercut with scenes of the young woman in her flat playing cards and pacing about with a paintbrush in a state of undress. When he gets home he begins what will become a nightly ritual of preying on her with his hungry eyes. Of course the film won’t be much unless, like ‘Rear Window’, the subject is interesting and complex in some way. The young woman doesn’t let him down.

 

                 

To add intrigue to the personality of the young voyeur, we get glimpses of the  lonely home life he shares with his doting grandmother. She ironically asks him to watch ‘Miss Poland’ on the TV, an innocent form of voyeurism, very different to his own version of Miss Poland across the way.

There are phone calls, ones he makes to her, as if the dispassionate distant view of her isn’t enough and he needs to hear her voice. Then he makes the discovery that she has a lover and the sexual embrace turns him away momentarily from the telescope, just when we thought this might ramp up his attention. So, it seems, he is curiously emotionally involved. Another lover.  The same response. This time, in one of the few  comic moments in the film, he picks up the phone when he sees the embrace and rings the gas company about an imaginary leak, in her apartment. He is going to do his best to interrupt things. The gas man’s voice on the phone says ‘don’t light anything.’ When he hangs up he immediately lights a cigarette. The gas men come around, superfluously of course, and it works a treat. The love making is disrupted, the mood broken. Tomek laughs devilishly, and in a sudden burst of anger punches a hole in his wardrobe door. It is unsettling and is the first sign of potential derangement.

There is the expected anger and disbelief when Tomek catches up with the woman in the street and tells her he watches her through her window. Later, when the woman challenges Tomek over the reasons he watches her, he tells her in candid fashion it is because he loves her. When she asks him if he wants to kiss her, sleep with her, her experience enters a new realm. She is an object of brutal desire for men, but Tomek is more complicated. He is simply different. He has an emotional need for her that her playboys don’t have. And she finds it fascinating, and appealing.

When Tomek does summon the courage to see her again, he appeals to her in traditional fashion by knocking at her door and asking her for a date for ice cream!  The date organised, Tomek whirls around in circles dragging his milk crate. Kieslowski is presenting Tomek as a child, emotionally stunted. He craves attention and affection and is spectacularly inexperienced. These two are a very unusual match. In a beautifully realised scene, played simply and almost without music, the woman can see two lovers behind her in the café, the male lovingly caressing the female’s hands. She wants this too. She establishes that Tomek has taken her mail, has watched her for a year, and has sent her false money orders via his job at the post office- basically acknowledges in an understated way that this is ‘harassment’:  and yet she wants him to caress her hands.

At her apartment Tomek can see where she lives for the first time without a telescopic lens. Her tenderness and close proximity are unbearable for him, and in a scene vaguely reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’, Tomek  suddenly runs home, humiliated.

Shifts occur. She turns casual lovers away. She has real feelings for another man. And she briefly turns into voyeur as she tries to tenderly watch over Tomek as she fears for his mental health. As a basin of water turns red with blood, we remember that Tomek has been associated with blood before, blood-red as in violence. Her colour has been white, as in spilt milk when she cried one evening and turned the milk bottle over. She has been in need of the milk of human kindness since the beginning and having found it, is desperate to keep it.

Towards the end of the film the roles are reversed as the woman’s tenderness is awakened and she continually looks out for Tomek who has been recuperating in hospital. She becomes a kind of tender voyeur, as his telescope is replaced by her opera glasses. In another interesting reversal at the very end, she watches over her apartment from Tomek’s telescope in a kind of fantasy play, and can see herself crying over the spilt milk from an earlier scene in which she is crying and at her lowest ebb. Suddenly Tomek appears in the frame and comforts her, tenderly. It is how things might have been. The tragedy therefore is the distance that the two lonely lovers can’t bridge. The music in these final moments is haunting and slow and meditative. This film is a kind of grown up Romeo and Juliet and moving in every way. The emotions may have initially appeared cheap but they have turned in the end to something profound.