A Close Bond: 1

A CLOSE BOND: 1

 


WHEN we think of Michael Haneke we cannot help but think ‘disturbing’, ‘frightening’, ‘chaotic’ or ‘disordered’, ‘dark’ and even perhaps ‘evil.’ I am thinking of Benny’s Video, The Piano Teacher, Hidden, The White Ribbon, Funny Games. This is why I was a little surprised with ‘Amour’ which I saw at the Nova tonight. Nothing really remotely frightening or disturbing, or evil for that matter- perhaps a little dark but nothing to jolt or shock the average filmgoer- well, perhaps one scene near the end, which we have seen before in ‘Betty Blue’ and ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, involving a strategically placed pillow.

The old couple, Georges and Annie, are quite lovely. They have an authentic old people’s relationship, where there is still love, but everything is faded, much like the elderly couple in Elizabeth Jennings’ poem ‘One Flesh.’ One day Annie stares into space whilst Georges is talking to her, and cannot remember having a wet towel administered to her in attempt to jolt her back to her senses. Her health deteriorates after a series of strokes, and she becomes paralysed all the way down one side, and totally dependent upon her husband for help with walking, toileting, washing, feeding, etc. When a nurse demonstrates how to attach a ‘diaper’, the look on Annie’s face is one of despair, of bare acceptance, staring her mortality in the face. She makes him promise she will never end her days in a hospital, and he does his best, but the constant grim grind is exhausting and debilitating. In the end Georges starts to lose his mind.
 

Just about the whole film is set within the confines of their lovely, spacious Parisian apartment. The camera tracks lovingly across the surfaces of its rooms. There is something real and convincing about the way the whole drama is played out. We watch and flinch sometimes because we know it will probably happen to us. The way it is so truthful is its biggest strength, a kind of opposite to the farce that was another French film on a similar topic, ‘The Intouchables’. Haneke has pared back the scary challenging nature of his themes for this one, which is why it is probably more palatable to Western audiences, even winning the Oscar for Best Foreign film.

There are a lot of examples of Haneke’s customary stillness- long, lovely shots full of meaning- a long still of an expectant audience awaiting an orchestral recital- full screen images of a brief series of paintings- thought provoking imagery, such as when Georges cut the flowers off a series of stems. There were three occasions when he let water run freely from the kitchen tap.
              

Occasionally someone from the outside came to visit the apartment, but most of the time the couple alone were enough to interest us, inhabiting their space in complex ways. It wasn’t claustrophobic- the spaces within the apartment are huge- but the drama is played out between them and for them alone- even siblings (Isabelle Huppert) are like outsiders, and friends and carers are either tolerated or not.

I now realise that I said earlier that there is nothing in this film that is overly shocking. This is interesting because I must have clearly come to a point in my thinking that it is perfectly reasonable and understanding that a man might kill his wife if he thinks she is suffering. I am not 80 years old or older. I cannot fully appreciate the dilemma that was in George’s mind. And yet, many of us, seeing Annie’s tortured despair in lifting her buttocks for the nurse to administer a diaper, would fully appreciate his kind and brave decision.

 

Diane Middlebrook’s “Her Husband” on the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death

                                                 
A couple of years ago I bought a biography of Katherine Mansfield (by Kathleen Jones), simply because it was about Katherine Mansfield. Having read a lot about her already, I wasn’t sure how much I would read that was new- however, I couldn’t resist, especially because it looked like such a big, beautiful book. To my surprise, it ended up being just as much about her husband, John Middleton Murry, than Katherine Mansfield herself. It chartered these fascinating years after Mansfield’s death in 1923 that I knew little about, including Murry’s subsequent marriages, his ongoing fascination with Mansfield, and the fact that he apparently to some extent reinvented her in the form of his first daughter. The book was a revelation because it was about so much more than Katherine Mansfield, and even the stuff I already knew was told with a lovely freshness and closeness.

I have just had the same experience all over again. At Sainsbury’s bookshop in Camberwell last weekend I came across ‘Her Husband’ by Diane Middlebrook. I thought this book would be yet another book about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, similar to many I have read before. Again I was wrong. Most of the Plath stuff I knew, perhaps not in as much detail. But the book charts new ground for me in the subsequent chapters that deal with Ted Hughes’ relationship with Assia Wevill (I used to think it was an ‘affair’ until I discovered that their relationship went for six years, until Wevill’s suicide in 1969. Plath died at the start of 1963, and of course Hughes and Wevill had a daughter, Alexandra, together as well. Interestingly the book uses the term “affair” in its index pages). The book makes a big rush of the 80’s and 90’s (Hughes died in October 1998), however it charts the 70’s in good depth, an incredibly painful period for Hughes which makes fascinating reading- a decade of emotional turbulence and obscure poetry.
 

Well, it is now 50 years ago that Sylvia Plath gassed herself in her London home. It was a freezing winter back then in Jan/Feb 1963. I discovered this when I read about Keith Richards complaining about the same winter in his book in the chapters detailing the emergence of ‘The Rolling Stones.’ This seems to be one of the factors that may have led to her suicide. Perhaps, too, a factor may have been the fact that she had finally written the (‘Ariel’) poems that she said would make her name as a great poet. A sense of personal satisfaction, then, and accomplishment. Of course her separation from Hughes must not have helped. They were still seeing each other as friends at this time, propelled by the bond of their two young children, although this relationship sounds like it was very strained. Hughes was still seeing Assia Wevill, the woman he left Plath for. Plath must have felt incredibly wretched at being left in the lurch as a young woman with two small kids and not a lot of money. Her novel ‘The Bell Jar’ had just been published to mixed reviews. She was relying heavily on the support of friends and a good doctor who was extremely worried about her mental state. He must have known that she had tried to kill herself before. The story of how Sylvia Plath died has been told numerous times, and to her credit, Middlebrook spends little time on it. What I found much more interesting was the breakup itself, played in their home in Devon, with Plath’s mother as guest resident.
 

The story really begins in 1962 with a telephone call that Plath intercepts from Assia Wevill, meant for Hughes. After the call it is said that Plath ripped the telephone wires from the wall. Plath and Hughes spent several hours upstairs talking whilst Plath’s mother made herself and the children disappear discreetly next door. In the morning their daughter reported back to her grandmother that her parents were in the garden crying, and subsequently Hughes took a train to London. Plath’s mother later told the story of how her daughter made a big, blazing bonfire of her unfaithful husband’s work- manuscripts and letters.

Hughes then conducted his new relationship away from his wife (Assia’s Wevill’s husband subsequently becoming another victim), occasionally returning to his Devon home where for the sake of the children things became more civil. They even journeyed to Ireland together, which suggests they hadn’t entirely given up hope. It was there, though, at a friend’s house, that Hughes suddenly disappeared on the pretext of going fishing, and in fact went to Spain with Assia Wevill.
                                   

Eventually Hughes returned to Devon to pack his bags and move out. This was only four months before Plath would kill herself. Middlebrook describes the letters Plath wrote at this time as being “wild with pain.” She did, however, begin throwing herself into continuing to write the poems that would make her name- mostly ones filled with rage. This included her most famous poem, “Daddy”, written in fact the very next day Hughes left their home.

I don’t know why I find Sylvia Plath endlessly fascinating. Perhaps it is because her story is so raw and, like Marilyn Monroe, so well documented. This book also does a great job in making the Ted Hughes story endlessly fascinating as well.

        

Shadows and Reflections in 'The Double Life of Veronique'

                                 

Krzysztof Kieslowski made ‘The Double Life of Veronique’, his first French language film, just after the Dekalog series and just before the Three Colours Trilogy. It was all made in quick succession, a kind of strong burst of creativity, and as the star of ‘Veronique’ says in an interview on youtube.com, he was exhausted and retired immediately after it. He did, in fact, die in his early 50’s not long after this.

      

At the start of ‘Veronique’, we see a little girl with her mother looking at the night sky for a star on Christmas Eve. Then, somewhere else, the film cuts to another little girl of about the same age with her mother, this time looking at the intricacies of a simple leaf. We get to understand later that this is our first glimpse of the two female protagonists: Weronika, in Poland, and Veronique, in Paris. They look identical and have intuitive feelings for each other, and yet they never directly meet. Both actresses are played by the stunningly beautiful Irene Jacob (also of ‘Three Colours Red’).

The first part of the film is about Weronika, in Poland, the vocalist with the beautiful orchestral voice. She makes passionate love with her boyfriend in an alleyway in heavy rain, and he looks at her, and holds her, like she is a rare pearl and he cannot believe his fortune. When she sees her father she says “I have a strange feeling. I feel that I am not alone.”

                              

There are hints there Weronika has a heart complaint, which sets us up for her fatal heart attack whilst performing with an orchestra. The camera is from her point of view and it darts and swoops sickeningly before, like Weronika, it crashes to the hard wooden floor.

Prior to her death, Weronika is walking near some kind of demonstration through the main square of Krakow when she sees her doppelganger getting on a bus. Weronika is transfixed by what she sees. Her double proves to be a French tourist about to go back to Paris, a French music teacher, and her name is Veronique and the rest of the film is about her.

Her very first shot shows her making love, but feeling melancholy like she is ‘grieving’ for somebody. She tells her father she is in love but doesn’t understand why because she barely knows the puppet man she admires from afar. She also says she feels like she has lost somebody close. With the puppet man looking at old photographs, she finds a photo she took of Weronika when she was a tourist in Krakow. It is a beautifully realised epiphanous moment and it causes her to grieve and cry freely. It is though a part of her has died.

                              

At the end of the film the man who makes puppets shows Veronique his latest two creations. He is also writing a book. It is about two girls of identical looks who are born in different parts of Europe at the same time. There is a strong intuitive connection between the women.  The film ends here with the realisation that Veronique will probably never be fully complete

This film is shot beautifully in soft light of rose sometimes, gold other times, and fixes on images that may or may not mean anything. It is very similar to Dekalogue in this way.  At around 7:30 minutes in Weronika tells her father she feels that she’s not alone. She is outside his study door in a yellowish green light that is soft and intimate. There is a mirror on a door facing inwards- hence we have a double image of Weronika.

On a train at 9:00 Weronika is on her way to Krakow. She holds a small translucent ball, like a bouncy ball, that appears to be some sort of talisman for her. She gazes through the ball as she arrives at the station. Our view is her view through the ball. Everything is upside down and dreamlike. This has a lovely dreamy effect.

 

At 22:30 some of the shots of Weronika are through her apartment window, in her lingerie. Again we have double images, this time in the reflected glass. The interior is pale yellow and very warm.

At 52:20, Veronique, in Paris, peers in at the window of a bookshop. A strong reflection is thrown back at her as her nose lightly touches the glass. Seconds later, in bright light, there is the close up of a rose coloured tea bag, spinning slowly around and around a tea filled glass. Again it is a warm, soft image that fits in beautifully with the look and feel of the film.

At 1:10:05 Veronique is hiding behind a large window of a door in a building off a Parisian street. The door has rose coloured stained glass and it throws of a lovely warm hue. It is the puppet man she is looking at, and the colours validate our favourable feelings for him. The stained glass also throws red colours into Veronique’s brown hair.

      

 

The final moments of the film, when Veronique is looking at the puppets made like her and her doppelganger, are fresh and attractive. The lighting is bright and she is wearing dark green pyjamas, and the walls of the room are also painted a lovely fresh green. The stained glass on the bedroom door is a similar green.

I am getting to know Kieslowski well. I can see how he must have taken a lot of care over his shots, and lighting in particular. There are many evocative images in his films that are mysterious and associated with a sense of wonder. His films are heavy with imagery and meaning, and the look of them is important. Much more important than mere storytelling. 

                           

 

Torquay 2013- 30 shades of grey

 

ALL the glamour and mystery and terror of the sea were on show for me during last week. All in three separate experiences.

The first- glamour- took place at nearby Jan Juc. A lovely jog of about one kilometre. The surging sea on the left, white capped waves hurled onto the sand. White, chalky cliffs on the right. Me, with the stretch of yellow sand, cushioned between. My soft sandy path suddenly ends. I have left the people, and the life saving flags, far behind. I can sing loudly, unheard and unencumbered:

 

"Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away."

Little rock pools. Tiny yellow and white shells. And then, just ahead, the path ends with a solid rock, but with the tide not fully in yet, I can skip around the corner over shin length water, and open myself up to an entirely new vista. You can pretend here that you have been transformed into a new, C S Lewis-type world and left ordinary life behind. There is a cosy hamlet of harsh cliff and gentle surf. A little boat could become shipwrecked here. The entrance to the hamlet is spacious and inviting. The sea here belongs solely to me, as do the shells and the smooth, untrampled sand.

 

   

The next evening, at about 9:00, I am on the long stretch of sand in Torquay that leads from the edge of the centre of town, northward about six kilometres to the beginning of the nudist precinct. I have run the six kilometres on a cool but hardly cold night, my feet damp despite trying to avoid every one of the waves that creep silently and stealthily in. I stop to catch my breath and look out, totally alone, toward the horizon. There are many shades of grey in this mysterious sea. They say that the sky reflects upon the water, and I think about this as I look across at the horizon, and it makes perfect sense. The grey in the water, however, is darker and more ominous than the grey in the sky. I try and remember the lines from Keats’ poem ‘On The Sea’:

"Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea."

Even though I am running into a breeze on my return home, I somehow feel more light footed and at peace. Not exactly exultant- last year I was singing something by Marvin Gaye at the top of my voice- more melancholy in a way, but restful and calm.

           

The next day is quite hot and I am at the Torquay surf beach. It’s crowded and rough. There are too many people about, and in the rough waters, people on ‘boogie boards’ are streaming in, propelled by a wave, almost crashing into people closer to the shore who are merely trying to enjoy jumping the waves. I go beyond the ‘boogie boards’, closer to the surfers on surf boards. I am hanging around with some other people, strangers who, like me, enjoy going out deeper to experience the rush of a threatening, crashing wave and being bashed about. Someone on my right says to his friends ‘let’s go back a bit’, but it doesn’t register with me. I don’t really know anything about a rip besides what I’ve read in a Tim Winton novel. If I cared to turn around at this point, I would have noticed that I have drifted out further than I thought, and across, outside of the space between the life saving flags. I am about to experience the terror of the beach for the first time in my life.

Eventually I do turn around. The waves are big and seeing how far in front of all the casual swimmers I am, I realise I have to go back. I still don’t realise I am caught in a rip. I perform freestyle for a while, but I am not a strong swimmer, and soon I have to rest. Optimistically I try and place my feet on the ocean floor. There is no hope of that. I pull myself up and swim again and find myself having to rest, more quickly next time. The water makes me panic easily. I still cannot stand up. I employ backstroke, but get distracted by water crashing over my face. Treading water for more than a couple of minutes seems unrealistic. I am starting to think of drowning. It’s awful. What have I done?

People caught in situations like mine are apparently supposed to raise a hand for help from somebody on the shore, or tread water and drift out of the rip zone and swim in with the tide. I am not thinking along these lines at all. All I know is that I cannot get any closer to the shore, and my family, safely ensconced in their tent, seem very far away. A little further away is a surfer. I cry out to him, weakly- “Excuse me, mate. I think I’m in a bit of trouble. Can you help?”

Well, Edward, as his name turns out to be, effectively saves my life. He is young and strong, and begins hauling me in. I gratefully clamber onto his board, and he somehow swims in, hauling my by the attached rope. I see how far we are from the casual swimmers again and feel stupid. It is a slow process, and at one point Edward says ‘we haven’t gained any ground, but we haven’t lost any!’ It takes about fifteen minutes, and at one point I am certain we are both in trouble, but Edward is strong and incredibly mature, and I am thank him profusely when he suddenly says I should be able to stand up now.

I walk slowly past the other swimmers, and onto the shore. My chest is red and burning and my arms ache. It is incredibly sweet to rest on the sand. Minutes later, I spot a green dye in the water, just where I was helplessly swimming. A loudspeaker tells us that this is where there is a rip, and for everyone to be cautious. I bet someone with binoculars was watching Edward and me from some tower. Incredibly, shortly after that, the life raft bursts onto the waves and rescues someone like me, who has been caught in a rip.

 

        

 

TALL STORIES AND A TALL MAN ON PALM ISLAND

 

 

 

Chloe Hooper has written her account of a riot and subsequent trial based on a black death in custody on Palm Island, QLD, a short distance from the Townsville mainland. It has stayed with me for several days. It is a journalistic novel in the vein of Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ and I keep thinking it would be an especially good book for high school aged Australian’s to read.

                                            

On Friday, November 19 2004, Senior Sergeant Cameron Hurley, on Palm Island, drove a woman named Gladys home after she was released from hospital, after being bashed along with her two sisters, by her partner. Hurley, at 34, was the senior policeman on the island. He was accompanied by his black liaison officer, Lloyd Bengaroo. A man named Nugent walked by the police car, shouting abuse. He was high from sniffing petrol and his mother had just been beaten by the same man who laid into Gladys. He was quickly arrested and placed into the police van. Then Hurley could hear another voice, belonging to a man he said he didn’t know, Cameron Doomadgee. Hurley said he heard Doomadgee swear at him, but this was not corroborated by anyone else in the vicinity. They could only hear him singing. Hurley says the abuse was aimed at Bengaroo, for being in the invidious position of both being black and helping a white man arrest black residents.

Outside the station, Doomadgee hits Hurley on the jaw. Hurley drags him into the station. He later claims they both fell into the station after a struggle, but the facts are very murky here because of contradictory evidence. The man who bashed the three sisters says that Hurley was delivering a series of punches to Doomadgee’s body. In court it is difficult to place much credence on this because this man had drunk over 40 cans of beer overnight, and half a dozen more in the morning. Doomadgee, and the other man newly arrested, Nugent, are placed in the same cell. Doomadgee is crying out for help, in pain. About half an hour later both men are checked, and Doomadgee is dead.

 

Following all of this, as told in ‘The Tall Man’, there is an investigation which results in a riot on the island- the investigation has found the death has been caused by accidental fall with no evidence of police brutality. The black people on Palm Island are naturally appalled. Doomadgee’s sister came to collect her brother the next morning- why was he suddenly dead? She was told only to come back in the afternoon. The investigation, as outline by Hooper, was seriously flawed. For example, Hurley was initially investigated by none other than two of his close police mates. The emphasis in the interview it appears was the fact that Hurley was punched in the face by Doomadgee. Hurley admitted he saw a ‘small’ amount of blood coming from Doomadgee’s ‘small’ injury above his right eye, but claimed he didn’t know how it got there. Hurley spoke of wrestle and resultant fall, but was strangely emphatic that he didn’t fall on top of the black man, a story he stuck to throughout. The three policemen, and a third more senior officer, again a strong supporter of Hurley’s, all had drinks and dinner together that night.

The riot was seriously dangerous and violent, and only managed when huge police reinforcements arrived. One of the first casualties was Hurley’s property and all his luxury goods- all razed to the ground. The man himself flew out quickly. The riot was precipitated by the actions of a local named Lex Wotton who, upon hearing his friend had supposedly died from an accidental fall, used a microphone outside the council buildings to say “Will we accept this as an accident? No! I tell you people, things going to burn…let’s do something!”

The inquest, which began three and a half months later, was riddled with complications but eventually found, some two years after Doomagee’s death, that Hurley was culpable: “ A simple fall through the doorway, even in an uncontrolled and accelerated fashion, was unlikely to have caused the particular injury.” This is when the police ‘closed ranks’,  up in arms about the fact that it was the first time a police officer had been found responsible for a death in custody.

                

This is a very well researched book. Hooper traces the background of the two key protagonists by venturing to the places of their past. These are terrible, in some ways shocking places like Burketown, North West of QLD, where Hurley was a popular and dominant character. Not surprisingly Doomadgee’s ancestral background is a place further west of Burketown called Doomadgee. Hurley worked here too. The best way for an ambitious policeman to accelerate through the ranks is to work in harsh, unpopular conditions.

This book exposes a number of important things. First of all we have interesting sections that reveal the part that faith plays in the desperate lives of many poor people. There is always the thought that there is something better in the future. Also, Hooper exposes in rich and unblinking prose what it means to live in places like Palm Island if you are aboriginal. The stories are incredibly sad, yet we have heard them before. Despair, extreme alcoholic abuse, sexual and physical abuse, any number of suicides (including Doomadgee’s own son found hanging from a tree not long after his father died), emaciated people, people prematurely ageing and reliant on insulin, any other number of health problems, poor housing and clothing, petrol sniffing, boredom and hatred, nihilism, and generally terrible health. One comment of a slightly different kind that stood out to me was of a young man bemoaning the fact that you see the same people every day. So this is a snapshot of the claustrophobic nature of life on Palm Island. Any yet youtube.com tells us that there are attractive aspects of the island, that it is a place that is attractive for tourists. Cathy Freeman espouses the beauty of the island. There are evidently two sides.

Another important thread in the story is the way the police support each other through thick and thin. Even though none of the hundreds of officers who offer support to Hurley know what happened in that police station on Palm Island, the police union is unwavering in their support. Surely some, even many, would have doubted his story. It seems that support for the fellow officer, regardless, triumphs over anything else. I guess each officer feels it could be them who might in future need to seek similar support. Perhaps it connects with a kind of ‘us versus them’ mentality. Depressingly, for some, the death of a black man may be insignificant compared to the career of a white man.

  

 

However the key part of the story of course is the trial and the subsequent outcome. Some three years after the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee the jury at the Townsville courtroom delivered a verdict of not guilty. This is despite the fact that it was beyond dispute that Doomadgee had received a black eye and bruised jaw, bruises on his right eye and eye lid, bruises on his forehead and the back of his head and both hands, four broken ribs, a ruptured portal vein and, most alarming, no less than a liver almost cleaved in two, probably caused by extreme pressure on the abdomen by something smooth like a knee.

Reading about the trial at the end of Hooper’s book, I am reminded of the trial in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ In this book Atticus Finch holds some comfort for the fact that the case against Tom Robinson actually resulted in a reasonably lengthy deliberation of the fate of the accused by the jury, even if Tom Robinson was found guilty. In ‘The Tall Man’ a member of Doomadgee’s family takes some comfort from the fact that “we got this far.”

It is very difficult, it seems more and more to me, to prove murder or manslaughter without incontrovertible evidence. Many men get off rape charges for this reason. The parents of a woman named Elisabeth Membry pretty much know who murdered their daughter in Ringwood, as well as the jury I assume, but without forensic evidence how can they be absolutely sure? The witnesses to Doomadgee’s death were either lying, unreliable or frightened. Could a reasonable jury convict Hurley on the evidence before them? As it turned out they were unable to do so. And Hurley doesn’t go to jail.

I heard someone say recently that there were a lot of grey areas in this case. By this I mean that she found some reasons for why she might excuse Hurley. It goes back to the fact that his was a very difficult job, and he may have cracked. Some of us may have reacted the same way to provocation after policing on Palm Island for a period of time.

The way I see it is that Hurley was in a position in which he should not crack. If this was his mental state he should not have been on the island. His inability to provide any reasonable explanation for Doomadgee’s injuries was also not acceptable.  The tragedy of Doomadgee’s death was greatly enhanced because there was no justice for the taking of his life. Somewhere in the book I remember Hooper or someone else saying “What if it was Hurley, not Doomadgee who had suffered these injuries and this death. Would he have been believed?” it’s obviously a farcical question. There is something about the stench of different rules for blacks and whites lingering in the air, here. I can just see the fists going backwards and forwards, the knee going in hard: “Do you want more Mister, Mister Doomadgee?” But of course I wasn’t there.

    

Dekalog overall, and Dekalog 10: the fallibility of the human spirit

 

                     

DEKALOG has been a fascinating viewing experience. Like the ten incredibly rich instalments in James Joyce’s literary Dubliners, Dekalog features varied and authentic experiences about the fallibility of the human spirit. This is what it comes down to for me, perhaps a little like what Bergman tried to achieve in his myriad films set on Faro, and what Micheal Haneke seems to be trying to do with his films about madness and cruelty and the sinister depths of the human mind.

The fallibility of the human spirit is such a fascinating subject. In this collection alone, in order, we have:

1.       The university professor who mistakenly decides the ice in the stream should still be hard enough to skate on, but is mistaken, and his son drowns.

2.       The woman whose husband might be dying, and who can’t decide whether or not to abort the child of the man she is having an adulterous relationship with

3.       The woman who is desperately lonely and tries to tear her ex-lover away from his new family as she is alone on Christmas Eve

4.       The woman who can’t help wondering if the lovely man she thinks is her father really is her father, and if her relationship needs to change as a result

5.       The young male drifter who randomly kills a taxi driver and must face the awful consequences

6.       The young male voyeur, fascinated by the woman living in the apartment across the way, who is equally lonely and vulnerable and desperate to be loved

7.       The insecure mother and daughter who are unwittingly damaging a little girl in their pursuit of her love

8.       The older female professor who is forced to come to terms with her own regrettable actions during war-time conflict in Warsaw.

9.       The surgeon who is unable to offer sex to his wife and kids himself when he encourages her to take a lover

10.   The brothers who become rich overnight due to a family inheritance but can’ seem to cope with their new found fortune.

                                 

The fallibility that exists in all human beings provides us with an opportunity to forgive wrongdoing and see things from a wide rather than narrow perspective. A recent Australian scandal involved the pranking of a London hospital, which may have contributed to the suicide of the nurse involved in the call. The pranksters were demonised by certain sections of society. As were the culprits of the terrible murder of James Bulger, and the murderer who took the lives of the little children at a school in Connecticut recently. We have to try and understand all these perpetrators. This idea was perfectly put by Michael Leunig in a cartoon many years ago, wishing Bin Laden, still at large then, a Happy Christmas.

 

 

Following is a discussion about the final Dekalog film, a comedy about brothers.

 

Dekalog 10 is the warmest and lightest of the whole series. Jerzy and Artur are unlikely brothers who inherit a fortune from their estranged father after he dies. A sudden flourish of wealth can cause major headaches and complications- as this film testifies.

                

Artur is the charismatic, energetic brother who fronts a popular punk band called ‘City Death’ and looks and acts a little like an older Jim Morrison or Michael Hutchence. Jerzy is more conservative in his dress and lifestyle, and neither brother sees each other very much. It is the sudden acquisition of wealth, in the form of a fabulous stamp collection, that brings them together as brothers in arms.

Following the funeral the brothers inspect their late father’s flat and have a nightmarish time trying to get in. Their father indulged in tight security, and there are any number of alarms, bars and padlocks that need to be opened or broken.

The naïve brothers gain an inkling that the collection they discover in a safe might be worth something, so they attend a stamp exchange and discover the unexpected news.

           

The complications begin in earnest when Jerzy gifts his young son an expensive series of stamps based on a 1931 Zeppelin motif. These exact stamps are referenced in an earlier Dekalog when a professor of ethics has a conversation with a stamp enthusiast in Dekalog 8. Jerzy’s son has sold the valuable stamps to a swindler, who has sold them to a dealer in town. Jerzy visits the dealer, indignant about being swindled, but realising quickly there is little he can do.

Their next primary concern, as the hassles add up, is security. Artur is becoming paranoid about his father’s apartment, and soon a vicious looking black dog is enlisted. Then there is the matter of the missing stamp. They have the blue and yellow 1951 Mercury- and to have the rose as well would mean they are sitting on an absolute fortune. Gaining the elusive stamp was an obsession of their father’s. As a kind of homage to him, they try and find it. The other co-existing challenge is to re-coup the Zeppelin stamps dishonestly taken. Artur manages this in a clever, underhanded way, in detective-like fashion.

There is a strong undercurrent of comedy throughout this episode, mostly at the expense of the naïve brothers. The narrative takes an absurd twist when Jerzy agrees to donate a kidney in exchange for the elusive ‘Austrian rose Mercury.’ The decision to agree takes place during a discussion between the brothers in their father’s apartment. They talk about this elusive stamp as though it is the most prized possession on earth. Suddenly they are supreme stamp enthusiasts. Previously they didn’t show a skerrick of interest.

 

The inevitable occurs. As Jerzy is going under the knife, and as Artur is keeping vigil at the hospital, his face being caressed by a nurse groupie, they are being burgled by some professional stamp thieves. There are close-ups of the pristine stamps, gently held by tweezers, and magnified by glass, that are made to look absolutely beautiful, to one who does not appreciate the value of a stamp like he does the value of a book.

   

Jerzey leaves the hospital in a state of semi-euphoria, holding the precious rose stamp, not knowing its decreased value after the theft of all the other stamps. Artur informs him and cries into his shoulder. Meanwhile, the supposed vicious guard dog finds himself suddenly out of favour, and as the policeman arrives, Jerzy admits he had disconnected the burglar alarm. The comedy of errors have piled up. Money does strange things to not only friends, but also brothers. Both brothers hold secret meetings with the bemused policeman, each accusing the other of disloyalty.

The film has a highly amusing coda. Both brothers witness a meeting across the road of a mirror image of their once much loved dog, the swindler who swindled Jerzy’s young son and the stamp dealer who organised the kidney transplant. Back at the apartment they admit that each suspected the other, and display their new, cheap coincidentally identical purchases. At last they have a set: an image of world championship wrestling, an image of a seal, and a commemorative stamp based on police and security services. At least they are able to have a good laugh.

                    

Dekalog 9: when trust is broken

               

With Dekalog 9, at last a drama about a marriage, a husband and wife relationship, complicated by his impotence and her searching- “thou shalt no covet thy neighbour’s wife.”

Roman receives the bad news at the start of the film- “Classic results and symptoms”. He will no longer be able to have sex. In the foreground in the next shot, with his wife Hanka behind, is a black telephone. Just like the $40,000 cash is in the foreground in ‘Psycho’, with Marion in the background. The telephone is the chief way Hanka communicates with her lover. The news devastates Roman. He stands outside his home in the cold, pouring rain for punishment. Afterwards, inside, shots show Roman to be strong looking and virile. Hanka suspects, and is not in a hurry to hear the news. Once he tells her, she says, pragmatically, “love is in one’s heart, not between one’s legs.” However he knows she is young, and in a sort of Lady Chatterley-like situation.

                      

Like Hanka, Roman’s mind now begins to wander. There is a pretty medical student waiting for an operation where Roman works as a surgeon. It is not a relationship he pursues, but there appears to be a spark there. Meanwhile Hanka is acting on her desires, in the form of a fit young man who always wears a ski jacket. When she gets Roman to try on a conservative suit jacket that is ill fitting, the difference with her man in the ski jacket is obvious.

This man, Mariusz, isn’t very discreet, phoning their home when Roman is present, leaving a little booklet of his in the glovebox of the family car. Perhaps he is keen for the relationship to be exposed. Roman earlier encourages Hanka to have a lover. However this is not how he really feels about the situation. He is upset and anxious about it. He even takes to secretly listening in on calls from another room on a device he rigs up. Later he will hide in the house they secretly meet at, and watch in the dark shadows.

Roman works out that it is Hanka’s mother’s house that is the rendezvous point. He gets keys cut for the place and gives it a good search, finding a postcard from Mariusz to Hanka. Roman holds it up to the camera to see, as if it is piece of evidence to be used in a court of law.

              

The only time we see Hanka and her young lover make love, she is wearing her wedding ring, and looks as though she is in pain. It’s a shot of a woman who feels horribly guilty. Shortly she will get rid of him, her love for Roman still strong. The young lover emerges, whistling in his blue ski jacket, oblivious it seems to her dark feelings. Roman is voyeur, but a different kind of voyeur to the young man in an earlier Dekalog. We can’t help excuse him.  With all this subterfuge going on, both Hanka and Roman carry their bodies heavily when they walk. They seem like broken people.

At Hanka’s mother’s apartment, the view through the gap in the curtains is simultaneously Roman’s view and ours as well. Through his eyes we see her deal firmly in expelling her lover, in order to alleviate their shared pain.

                       

Hanka and Roman forge a new bond of trust when everything is exposed. In a melodramatic sequence near the end, changing the rhythm of the film entirely, Hanka goes on a skiing holiday and is followed by her ex-beau. Again she rejects him, but is terrified Roman may discover (which he has) that they are in the same skiing village. Desperately ringing home, Roman has already left what is probably a suicide note by the phone.

 

There is further communication between husband and wife, but in some ways it is now too late. Dekalog 9 is beautifully shot. The scenes in various locations, including the snow fields, take the viewer away from the claustrophobia of the crowded Warsaw tenement blocks. It is a strong story of love and tragedy, and regret, and is very real. Hanka’s final, touching ambiguous words to Roman are “God, you’re there.”