Time according to Theo Angelopoulos – Ο Χρονος κατα τον Θοδωρο Αγγελοπουλο

Theo Angelopoulos: Ulysses' Gaze

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

Theo Angelopoulos: Voyage to Cythera

Ο παρων και ο παρελθων χρονος

Ισως ειναι κι οι δυο παροντες σε χρονο μελλοντικο,

Και ο μελλοντικος χρονος εμπεριεχεται σε χρονο παρελθοντα.

Αν ολος ο χρονος ειναι παντοτινα παρων

Ολος ο χρονος ειναι χωρις λυτρωμο. 

(Η αποδοση στα ελληνικα ειναι δικη μου)

Burnt Norton, Four Quartets, T S Eliot

Theo Angelopoulos: The Weeping Meadow

Introduction

Theo Angelopoulos died in a accident on 24 January 2012. He was a Greek film director, producer and screenwriter.

Ο Θοδωρος Αγγελοπουλος πεθανε σε τροχαιο ατυχημα την 24η Ιανουαριου 2012. Ηταν σκηνοθετης, παραγωγος και σεναριογραφος.

As it happens with every great filmmaker, a lot has been written and said about Angelopoulos. Most of it is stereotypical and cliche, which Angelopoulos himself hated. As an example, I site his “left wing” ideology, that he was the filmmaker of the “defeated” side in the Greek civil war of 1944-1949. In addition, a lot has been written regarding Angelopoulos’ “sequence-shot”, which imposes huge demands on the spectator, almost forcing him to delve into the image and its slow motion. Angelopoulos is notoriously difficult, but pays off handsomely the brave ones who can stand their ground in front of the ocean of slow images the director throws at them.

Όπως συμβαινει με καθε μεγαλο σκηνοθετη, εχουν ειπωθει και γραφτει πολλα για τον Αγγελοπουλο. Και τα περισσοτερα απο αυτα ειναι κλισε και στερεοτυπα που ο ιδιος ο Αγγελοπουλος απεχθανοταν. Αναφερω για παραδειγμα το οτι ηταν αριστερος, το οτι εκανε κινηματογραφο για τους ηττημενους. Επισης πολλα απο τα γραφεντα και γραφομενα εχουν να κανουν με τα παροιμιωδη πλανα-σεκανς του Αγγελοπουλου, που απαιτουν απο τον θεατη να εντρυφησει στα οσα βλεπει. Ο Αγγελοπουλος ειναι πολυ δυσκολος αλλα ανταμοιβει πλουσιοπαροχα οσους αντεξουν.

In his artistic development and path Angelopoulos followed a helix curve. Its description requires a separate article and I will not do it today. Today I want to focus on Angelopoulos’ treatment of time, a recurrent and self-standing topic in his movies.

Στην καλλιτεχνικη του διαδρομη ο Αγγελοπουλος ακολουθησε μια ελικοειδη πορεια. Και μονο η περιγραφη της απαιτει ενα ξεχωριστο αρθρο. Δεν ειναι αυτη η προθεση μου σημερα. Σημερα θελω να εστιασω στον τροπο με τον οποιο ο Αγγελοπουλος χειριστηκε τον Χρονο, που ειναι ενα συνεχως αναδυομενο και αυτοτελες θεμα στις ταινιες του Αγγελοπουλου,

Theo Angelopoulos: Voyage to Cythera

Part I: The sequence shot

Μερος 1ο: Το πλανο-σεκανς

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”

Το παρελθόν δεν είναι ποτέ νεκρό. ∆εν έχει καν παρέλθει.
Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner

The sequence shot is one of the trademarks of Angelopoulos and a major tool in his treatment of time in his films.

“The sequence shot offers, as far as I’m concerned, much more freedom,” Angelopoulos explained. “By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyse the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it.” (The Guardian)

Το πλανο-σεκανς ειναι απο τα ιδιαιτερα χαρακτηριστικα του Αγγελοπουλου και σφραγιζει την διαχειριση του χρονου στις ταινιες του.

Σε αρθρο της βρεταννικης εφημεριας “Γκαρντιαν” διαβαζουμε τη σχετικη αναφορα – δηλωση του Αγγελοπουλου: “Το πλανο-σεκανς κατα τη γνωμη μου σου δινει πολυ περισσοτερη ελευθερια. Αρνουμενος να το κοψω στη μεση, προσκλαω τον θεατη να αναλυσει καλυτερα την εικονα που του δειχνω, και να εστιασει ξανα και ξανα στα στοιχεια εκεινα που αισθανεται οτι ειναι τα πιο σημαντικα μεσα σε αυτο.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The weeping Meadow

David Jenkins in his BFI article, helps us with the way Angelopoulos is deploying the “sequence shot”:

“His stock-in-trade is the immaculately choreographed sequence shot in which his camera lopes ominously and gracefully across landscapes, through rooms, shacks, courtyards, over and around huddled crowds of people who themselves produce artful formations as they mingle within the frame. His colossal geopolitical masterwork from 1975, The Travelling Players (O thiassos), offers just 80 separate shots during its four-hour running time. History, catastrophes, celebrations, political intrigues, social shifts are rarely recounted in the traditional linear sense – rather, they are daubed on to a vast and elaborate narrative fresco.”

Theo Angelopoulos - Reconstruction film poster

Ο Ντειβιντ Τζενκινς σε αρθρο του στον ιστοχωρο του Βρεταννικου Κινηματογραφικου Ινστιτουτου αναπτυσσει τον τροπο με τον οποιο ο Αγγελοπουλος χρησιμοποιησε το πλανο-σεκανς στις ταινιες του.

“Το σημα κατατεθεν του ειναι το αψογα χορογραφημενο πλανο-σεκανς, στο οποιο η καμερα του με χαρη αλλα και απειλη δρασκελιζει νωχελικα τοπια, δωματια, καλυβες, αυλες, περιτριγυριζει συνωστισμενα πληθη πουαναπτυσσονται σε καλλιτεχνικα σχηματα καθως εμπλεκονται στο πλανο. Η κολοσσιαια γεωπολιτικη δημιουργια του απο το 1975, ο Θιασος, προσφερει μολις 80 διαφορετικες ληψεις στη διαρκεια των τεσσαρων ωρων της. Η Ιστορια, οι καταστροφες, οι γιορτες, οι πολιτικες συνομωσιες, οι κοινωνικες μεταλλαξεις, σχεδον ποτε δεν παρουσιαζονται με γραμμικο τροπο, αλλα στιβαζονται στον τεραστιο και περιπλοκο αφηγηματικο καμβα του Αγγελοπουλου.”

Part II: Beyond technique

Μερος 2ο: Το επεκεινα της τεχνικης

“Αιών παις εστί παίζων πεσσεύων”

Time is a child playing dice

Ο χρονος ειναι ενα παιδι που παιζει ζαρια

Heracletus, Ηρακλειτος

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

Barthélémy Amengual notes in his essay “The poetics of History”:

“History dictates to the filmmaker his two major themes: time and remembrance. Time is the body and the place of History. Remembrance is the human form of time.  Remembrance is the clerk of time, but also its palimpsest. The last shot of “Reconstruction” reproduces the first shot. The traveling players ends in 1952 at the spot where it started back in 1932: the rail station of Aegion. All the actors are there, including those who have died or left.”

Ο Barthélémy Amengual στο δοκιμιο του “Μια Ποιητικη της Ιστοριας” σημειωνει:

“Η Ιστορία υπαγορεύει στον κινηµατογραφιστή τα δύο µεγάλα του θέµατα: το χρόνο και τη/τις µνήµη/ες. O χρόνος είναι το σώµα και ο τόπος της Ιστορίας· η µνήµη, η ανθρώπινη µορφή του χρόνου. Η µνήµη είναι ο γραµµατικός του χρόνου,
µα και το παλίµψηστό του. Το τελευταίο πλάνο της Αναπαράστασης αναπαράγει το πρώτο. O θίασος ολοκληρώνεται το 1952 εκεί όπου είχε αρχίσει, το 1932: στον σιδηροδροµικό σταθµό του Αιγίου. Όλοι οι ηθοποιοί είναι εκεί, ακόµα και
οι απόντες: αυτοί που έχουν πεθάνει ή αποχωρήσει.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

“In Angelopoulos’ films time, which is nothing but the bedrock of every change, manifests itself between the start and the end of the same sequence shot. If the sequence has begun with the dusk, it concludes with the dawn. Like a river, if it starts flowing from a source, it ends at a totally different place. Time stems from and flows in fornt of our eyes, as we see a rose bloom in accelerated motion. The moment (in the context of the sequence shot) extends itself; we have to wait for the sugar to dilute itself first. After a while time is transformed (in the flow of panoramic travelling shots) by acquiring Bergsonian duration and, almost in hiding it is submerged in history. The present becomes remembrance; not a frozen dot in the past, but a moving unit of becoming, a gathering of being, of the group, of the world.”

“Στον Αγγελόπουλο, ο χρόνος, που δεν είναι παρά η κοίτη κάθε αλλαγής, εκδηλώνεται µεταξύ αρχής και τέλους του ίδιου πλάνου-σεκάνς. Αν το πλάνο έχει αρχίσει σούρουπο, ολοκληρώνεται την αυγή· αν έχει αρχίσει σ’ έναν τόπο, εκβάλλει σ’ έναν εντελώς διαφορετικό· αν σε µια εποχή, καταλήγει σε µιαν άλλη. O χρόνος πηγάζει και κυλά µπροστά στα µάτια µας, όπως βλέπουµε ένα ρόδο ν’ ανθίζει µε αξελερέ. Η στιγµή (στο πλάνο-σεκάνς) παρατείνεται: πρέπει πρώτα να περιµένουµε να λιώσει η ζάχαρη· µετά από λίγο, µεταµορφώνεται (µέσα στη ροή των πανοραµικών τράβελινγκ) σε µπερξονική διάρκεια και, στα κρυφά, βυθίζεται στην Ιστορία. Το παρόν γίνεται µνήµη· όχι νεκρό παρελθόν σηµείο, αλλά κινούµενη µονάδα τού γίγνεσθαι, συνάθροιση του είναι, του ατόµου, της οµάδας, του κόσµου.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

Part III: When the cycle closes

Μερος 3ο: Οταν κλεινει ο κυκλος

The secret roar of the approaching events is coming to them (the wise men).

Η μυστική βοή τους έρχεται των πλησιαζόντων γεγονότων.

C Cavafy, Σοφοι δε προσιοντων, Κωστας Καβαφης

Theo Angelopoulos: Ulysses' Gaze

In “Ulysses’ Gaze”, the Greek filmmaker “A”, played by Harvey Keitel starts his journey in the Balkans in a taxi driven by Thanassis Veggos, a legendary Greek actor. When they stop to rest on a snow-covered mountain, Veggos says:

“Do you know something? Greece is dying. We die as people. We have completed our cycle. I do not know how many thousands of years in the midst of broken stones and sculptures… and we die…

But if Greece is going to die, let her die quick! Because the agony lasts very long and makes a lot of noise.”

Thanassis Veggos in "Ulysses' Gaze"

Στην ταινια “Το Βλεμμα του Οδυσσεα”, ο Ελληνας κινηματογραφιστης “Α”, που τον υποδυεται ο Αμερικανος ηθοποιος Χαρβευ Καιτελ  ξεκινα το ταξιδι του στα Βαλκανια μεσα σε ενα ταξι που το οδηγει ο Θανασης Βεγγος. Οταν σταματουν να ξαποστασουν σε ενα ορεινο περασμα σκεπασεμνο με χιονια, ο Βεγος λεγει απευθυνομενος στο “Α”:  

“Ξέρεις κάτι; Η Ελλάδα πεθαίνει. Πεθαίνουμε σα λαός. Κάναμε τον κύκλο μας. Δεν ξέρω πόσες χιλιάδες χρόνια ανάμεσα σε σπασμένες πέτρες και αγάλματα… και πεθαίνουμε…

Αλλά αν είναι να πεθάνει η Ελλάδα, να πεθάνει γρήγορα! Γιατί η αγωνία κρατάει πολύ και κάνει πολύ θόρυβο.”

Eternity and a Day - Film Poster

Part IV: The return of the father

Μερος 4ο: Η επιστροφη του πατερα

Forthcoming is already present and becoming is already done.

Το γενόμενον ήδη εστί και το γίγνεσθαι ήδη γέγονεν

Ecclesiastes, Εκκλησιαστης

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a day

During the Greek Civil War (1944-1949) Angelopoulos’ father was arrested by the leftists and disappeared without trace. Young Theo spent days going to mass graves with his mother, trying to locate the father. Eventually the father returned alive. In one of his interviews, Angelopoulos recounts:

“I was playing in the street when I saw him coming from a distance. Instead of shoes, he had his feet wrapped in rugs… I called for my mother. She came out of the house without breath. I remember how they run into each other… we got into the house… the emotions were so high that nobody was saying a word… we were watching each other in silence… he was not speaking either… we were watching the father, we were watching each other… We had soup for dinner, and it lasted for an eternity. I was 9 years old.”

The Hunters - Film poster

Ο πατερας το Αγγελοπουλου συνεληφθη απο τους αριστερους στη διαρκεια του Εμφυλιου Πολεμου και εξαφανιστηκε χωρις να αφησει ιχνη. Ο μικρος Θοδωρος περασε μερες με τη μητερα του, γυρνωντας απο τον ενα μαζικο ταφο στον αλλο, ψαχνοντας να βρουνε τον χαμενο πατερα, που τον νομιζανε νεκρο. Μετα απο πολυ καιρο, ο πατερας επεστρεψε ζωντανος. Σε ένα απόσπασμα συνέντευξής του («Θόδωρος Αγγελόπουλος», εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, σελ. 189) θυμαται:

“Έπαιζα στο δρόμο, όταν τον είδα να έρχεται από μακριά. Αντί για παπούτσια είχε στα πόδια πανιά… Φώναξα τη μάνα μου. Βγήκε αλαφιασμένη. Θυμάμαι πώς έτρεξαν ο ένας προς τον άλλο… μπήκαμε στο σπίτι… από τη συγκίνηση δεν μιλούσε κανείς… σωπαίναμε και κοιτούσε ο ένας τον άλλο… ούτε αυτός μιλούσε… κοιτάζαμε τον πατέρα, κοιτάζαμε ο ένας τον άλλο… Το φαγητό ήταν μια σούπα, κι αυτή η σούπα κράτησε μια αιωνιότητα. Ήμουν 9 χρονών”.

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a Day

Epilogue

Επιλογος

I conclude this post wiht a comment I wrote on an article written by Nikos Xidakis in the daily newspaper “Kathimerini”. Xidakis claimed that Angelopoulos was the filmmaker of the “defeated” ones. Here is what I wrote in response:

“In my eyes Angelopoulos depicted in his own personal and unique gaze the existential deadend he experienced, exactly the way he lived through it, conceptualized it, and formalized it. There is a hero in his films, the filmmaker does not deny this. He is a lonely and defeated hero, but not necessarily. Defeat is not always a given. Angelopoulos’ hero has many questions and is not ready to accept the “easy” answers. Whether he is searching for his lost dreams, like Manos Katrakis in the Voyage to Cythera, or lost pioneers, like HArvey Keitel in Ulysses’ Gaze, the hero has more questions than answers. Angelopoulos’ Word is also very important, it is a Pictorial Word. Angelopoulos’ shots transcend Time and Space, and interweave them into a mix that is difficult to tread, and becomes sometimes repressive. The fog and the drizzle are heavy on you. Your gaze is dampened by the endless snowed landscape. But as the old saying goes: “Every man carries his own sadness.” Angelopoulos was brave to share his sadness with us, and express it in his own way. He did this in a authentic way, without screens and covers. This does not mean that his sadness and its expression are necessarily accepted or liked. Deconstructing it or, even worse, trying to appropriate it as your own has no meaning.”

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a day

Σε σχολιο μου πανω σε ενα αρθρο του Νικου Ξυδακη στην Καθημερινη, που δημοσιευτηκε μετα τον θανατο του Αγγελοπουλου, εγραψα:

“Για μενα ο Αγγελοπουλος αποτυπωσε με το δικο του προσωπικο και μοναδικο υφος το υπαρξιακο αδιεξοδο που βιωσε, οπως το βιωσε και το συνελαβε και το τυποποιησε. Υπαρχει ο ηρωας, δεν τον αρνειται ο σκηνοθετης. Ειναι ενας ηρωας μοναχικος και ηττημενος. αλλα οχι αναγκαστικα. Η ηττα δεν ειναι παντα δεδομενη. Ο ηρωας του Αγγελοπουλου εχει πολλα ερωτηματα και δεν ειναι ετοιμος να δεχτει τις ετοιματζιδικες απαντησεις. Ειτε ψαχνει τα χαμενα του ονειρα, οπως ο Κατρακης στα Κυθηρα, ειτε ψαχνει χαμενους πρωτοπορους, οπως ο Καιτελ στο Βλεμμα του Οδυσσεα, ο ηρωας εχει πιο πολλες ερωτησεις απο απαντησεις. Ο Λογος του Αγγελοπουλου εχει επισης μεγαλη σημασια, αφου ειναι Λογος Εικαστικος. Τα πλανα του Αγγελοπουλου διασχιζουν τον Χωρο και τον Χρονο και τους συνθετουν σε ενα μιγμα δυσκολοδιαβατο και πολλες φορες καταναγκαστικο. Σε βαραινει η ομιχλη και το ψιλοβροχι, σου θολωνει το βλεμμα το χιονισμενο ατελειωτο τοπιο. Οπως ομως λεγαμε παληα στην Ελλαδα, “ο καθενας με τον καημο του”. Ο Αγγελοπουλος τολμησε να μας μιλησει με τον τροπο του για τον καημο του. Και το εκανε αληθινα, χωρις φερετζεδες. Αυτο δεν σημαινει οτι ο καημος αυτος και η εκφραση του πρεπει να ειναι αρεστος ή αποδεκτος. Ουτε και εχει καμια σημασια η αποδομηση του, ή ακομα χειροτερα, η αποπειρα οικειοποιησης του απο διαφορους.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The Dust of Time

Okuribito (Departures) – A film of Yojiro Takita

“Departures” is a very special film of Yojiro Takita, about Daigo Kobayashi, a cellist with a Tokyo orchestra, who loses his job because the orchestra is disolved and moves back to his birthtown, Yamagata in the northwest.

His mother has died a couple of years ago and has left him a home.

NK Agent - The Building

Daigo and his wife Mika move from Tokyo to Yamagata, they settle happily in their home and Daigo starts hunting for a job. One day, Daigo reads an add in the newspaper, about a job opening in a firm specializing in “travel”. He eagerly responds and arranges an interview. In the interview he meets the boss of the firm, Ikuei Sasaki, who hires him on the spot, without even asking any questions.

Daigo and his boss

Daigo soon discovers that the firm is an “encoffination” agent, with the name “NK Agent”. They are hired by funeral homes and their job is to clean, dress and place the dead in their coffin. The process takes place in front of the mourning relatives and friends and is extremely important for the sending off of the dead.

Daigo’s first “job” is tough. An old lady has been found in her flat two weeks after her death. Daigo vomits and collapses as he faces (and smells) the corpse. A rough beginning.

Daigo and Mika

As he continues and learns the job, Daigo becomes more and more tuned in. He learns that the boss got started when he lost his wife nine years ago, and he wanted to see her off in the best possible way.

When Mika, Daigo’s wife learns about his job and challenges him to leave it, Daigo stands firm. Mika leaves him to return to her parents, only to return back to Daigo after she finds out she is pregnant with their child, and she has made peace with the fact that Daigo’s job is going to stay.

The death of the old lady who owns the steam baths in town give Mika the opportunity to see Daigo in action, and break any resistance and reluctance she might have.

She witnesses how Daigo performs his duty, turning it into an art that supercedes the awful presence of Death by expressing in motion and spirit respect for the dead and by releasing the beauty of the diceased to the amazement and joy of the family and friends who are present.

Jeff Chuang comments eloquently in Japanator:

“His mesmerizing performance of cleaning, dressing and presenting the dead in front of the bereaved was a sight to see. The process is mostly silent (other than dressed with Joe Hisaishi’s usual, musical excellence), yet there is a precarious balance between mechanical precision and forceful gentleness as Motoki manipulates various pieces of fabrics, tools, and the body in front of us.

The art of encoffination as presented is one that respects both the living and the dead; a minimal amount of skin is exposed during the process. The encoffiner moves the body for the minimum as necessary, and the encoffiner ultimately recreates an image of the dead during the prime in the deceased’s life. The whole process is both cathartic and moving, and I found myself thinking about my lost loved ones over the years. I believe this is the strongest argument for such critical success of Departures at the Academy Awards as well with the numerous other awards it won–the ability to evoke such deep convictions from its viewers with a simple gesture, in a way that we do not feel manipulated.

And the feeling of conviction extends to the characters in the movie as well. Motoki plays a jobless cellist, who gave up and moved back to his childhood home along with his young wife. In search of work, Motoki’s Daigo Kobayashi meets his new boss through a misprint, and a baptism of vomit and awkward moments mark the beginning of Daigo’s new career. The interplay between Daigo’s new line of work, his wife, and his return to the familial memories he left behind play out through the film, with each death, each encoffination bringing the living ever closer together.”

There is another layer of the movie. Daigo’s relationship with his father, who left his family when Daigo was a boy, to follow a woman he fell in love with.

Daigo hates is father, who disappeared since he left, without a trace.

Fate however, has other designs. One day Mika receives notification of Daigo’s father’s death.

She convinces Daigo to go and offer his father his services.

Daigo reluctantly accepts and …  the rest on the screen.

I hope that the absolutely wonderful soundtrack of the movie will give you a good push to go and see the movie. You will not regret it, as a matter of fact I think that you will write back to me, to thank me for the recommendation.

La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous with Mullet): Food and Family Politics

Couscous with Mullet, or “The Secret of the Grain” is a movie of Tunisian born director Abdellatif Kechiche. I love this movie and this is why I am writing this article.

Let me start by introducing the characters of the movie

Slimane is a 60 year old dock worker who has been fired and is divorced from his wife Souad. He lives at the hotel of his partner, Latifa.

Souad is the ex-wife of Slimane and mother of their children. Most importantly, she is the cook of the magnificent “Couscous with Mulet”, the dish that permeates the film like a music score.

Latifa is the hotel owner and partner of Slimane, and mother of Rym. She has not come to terms with the fact that Slimane’s ex-wife and children do not accept her as a member of the family.

Rym is Latifa’s daughter and is the key person of the movie after Slimane.

The plot goes like this.

Slimane has a dream to open a couscous restaurant, serving his ex-wife’s recipe of couscous with mullet (kephalos in Greek). He buys an old tugboat and transforms it into a floating restaurant.

Rym supports Slimane in making his dream come true. She goes with him to the Bank, to the Local Authority, trying to get all the permits, the loans, and when the opening night comes, she fights (and succeeds) to convince her mother to go to the restaurant.

There is however drama in the opening night, far more serious than Latifa’s hesitation.

The couscous that Souad has cooked disappears. It is in the boot of Slimane’s son car, but never made it to the restaurant. It is still in the boot, and far away. The crowd gathered in the restaurant become edgy. They are hungry, they want their food. And at this point, Rym dances one of the most exhilarating belly dances I have ever seen. Take a look at this video clip.

While Rym is dancing her heart away, Latifa is preparing another pot of couscous to replace the one that disappeared.

What I saw in the movie

This is a movie about food and the politics of the family. It is only to be expected that food is intricately related to the politics of the family, as it is one of the fundamental elements in our lifes. Yet it is seldom that it emerges as such in cinema or other arts.

Lets start with the ex-wife and Slimane’s children. They all have a regular Sunday lunch, and Souad cooks her famous couscous with mullet. We are talking about a broken family that tries to hang together by the skin of its teeth. Disintegration and breakage is not only between father and mother. One of the sons, married to a Russian immigrant, with a baby recently born, is having an affair with another woman in a rather obvious and provocative way. In a very tense scene towards the end of the movie, the Russian wife openly accuses Souad as the supporter of her son in his amorous adventures outside his marriage.  This accusation is thrown in the face of Slimane, who appears to be the originator of the path to infidelity and break of the family. Isn’t he the one who now lives with another woman, isn’t he the one who is outside the family? Isn’t it natural for the son to copy the father’s behavior?

Over the Sunday couscous, the family would appear to be united again, even at the cost of pretending to be so. The same couscous is however the kernel of Slimane’s new life as a restaurant owner. And Slimane is not the cook, Souad is. The couscous is the material that even temporarily unites the family, it is the – potentially – only solid ground on which the family can step on. The dish exists and will continue to exist because it brings with it the memories of the motherland, and therefore the motherland itself.  The movie takes place in a small town in the south of France, with a large community of immigrants from North Africa. All the leading characters are either North African or Russian (the son’s wife).

There is another layer in the movie: who is the leading character? Is Slimane the protagonist? I am not so sure. He opens the restaurant, but the cook of the signature dish is his ex-wife, Souad. And when the crisis of the missing couscous breaks out, it is not Slimane who resolves it, but Rym and Latifa. Slimane appears to be willing but weak. The force of nature named Rym is the real protagonist of the movie, and a very charming one. She loves, she demands, she argues, she wants what she considers to be hers. And she desperately tries to support Slimane. She desperately wants a father, and a man for her mother.

I could go on, but want to stop here. I hope that I have given enough motives to those who have not seen the movie to go and see it. As for the ones who have already seen it, this is an invitation to rethink the movie, and/or see it again. Every good movie deserves to be seen at least twice.

The Awards

César 2008

As you may have already spotted on the poster, the film won 4 Cesar awards (the French equivalent to the Oscar)

• Best Director – Meilleur réalisateur - Abdellatif Kechiche pour La graine et le mulet
• Best film – Meilleur film - La graine et le mulet, réalisé par Abdellatif Kechiche, produit par Claude Berri
• Most promising actress – Meilleur espoir féminin Hafsia Herzi dans La graine et le mulet
• Most original scenario – Meilleur scénario original- Abdellatif Kechiche pour La graine et le mule

64 Mostra Internazionale d’ Arte Cinematografica di Venezia

In the 64th Film Festival of Venice, the film won two awards.

• Silver Lion – Leone d’ Argento – Gran Premio della Giuria – Cous Cous
• Award – Premio Marcello Mastroiani for a new actor/actress – ad un attore o attrice emergente  - Hafsia Herzi

Alain Resnais’ and Marguerite Duras’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour”

‘I remember Hiroshima’
‘You remember nothing’

“You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.”

” I saw everything. Everything.”

It has been quite a while that I wanted to write about Alain Resnais’ movie “Hiroshima Mon Amour”.

Alain Resnais

I get to do it today, 66 years after the bomb drop that marked the history of the world.

On the surface, it is a love affair with the city of Hiroshima and her people providing the background.

A French actress doing a film in Hiroshima meets a Japanese architect and they have sex. As time goes by, “He” asks “Her” to stay in Hiroshima forever. There are elements of “falling in love” “She” denies. In the process, “She” brings forward a painful memory that has marked her life. Her love affair with a German soldier during the war. He was killed the day before the liberation of France, and she has been marked by this relationship, both literally and metaphorically.

She appears to be mourning forever. Is she able to love?

How can she love when she does not admit that she is full of memories of her first love?

She has never told anyone about the German soldier, only the Japanese man.

The traditional reading of the film ascerts that the woman had forgotten and/or repressed the memory of her German lover until she met the Japanese man, who made her remember him. I beg to differ. In my view the woman is full of memories of her German lover, and until she met the Japanese man in Hiroshima she was not admitting it. Repressing a memory does not equate forgetting.

The sense of breakthrough that comes in Hiroshima is that the woman is able to reminisce and talk about the German, and all the horror that followed his death.The issue has never been forgetting. The issue was the continuous mourning and draining of psychological energy, was the open gaping wound in her existence, that made her until Hiroshima unble to admit and talk about what had happened to her.

Only by talking about it she has been able to start playing with the idea of loving again, which is metaphorically the same as staying in Hiroshima and not going back home to her husband.

But this is not an easy game. The inner conflict is strong. She wants to stay, she wants to love, she wants to frame her memory of the German soldier in the reality of her Japanese lover, but she cannot do it.

The time frame of the movie is varied.

In current time, it covers 24 hours.

In past time, it covers more 20 years.

This variance also applies ot the location.

The current location of the movie is Hiroshima, in Japan.

The past location is Nevers in France.

At the end of the movie, the woman gives the man the name “Hi-ro-shi-ma” and the man names the woman “Ne-vers”.

Julia Kristeva has written an essay “The Malady of Grief: Duras”, published in her collection “Black Sun”.

According to Kristeva, Duras’ story is about the meeting of two disasters:

“Nevers here, Hiroshima there. However intense it may be in its unnameable silence, love is henceforth in suspence, pulverized, atomized. To love from her point of view, is to love a dead person.The body of her new lover merges with the corpse of her first love, which she had covered with her own body, a day and a night, and whose blood she savored…. But the very dynamic Japanese engineer is also marked by death because he necessarily bears the moral scars of the atomic death of which his countrymen were the first victims.”

Marguerite Duras

Dumas comments in her scenario for the movie: “All one can do is to speak of the impossibility of speaking of Hiroshima. The knowledge of Hiroshima is something that must be set down, a priori, as being an exemplary delusionof the mind”.

1001 Ways to Die – (6) Peter Falk, American Actor

Peter Falk, one of my favorite actors, died at the age of 83 on 23rd June 2011. He  died peacefully at his home in Beverly Hills. In the last years of his life he was suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

I got to know Peter Falk from the “Columbo” detective movies in the early 1980′s when I was in the US. I liked the movies very much, as Lieutenant Columbo would always catch the bad guys, the murderers who were trying to flee their inescapable fate.

Columbo in his car

Usually the murderer(s) was a very rich and/or powerful guy. Columbo would enter their impressive houses and mansions, and initially he would create more a wave of sympathy rather than fear, as he was a scruffy looking guy with a crumpled raincoat that he would wear all year long.

Columbo was always underestimated almost until the moment the murderer was caught.

In addition to his scruffy looks, he would carefully lead the suspect to believe that he (Columbo) was naive, almost thick in the mind. Add to this his absent – mindedness, and you have the recipe for a disaster in the investigation. How would Columbo ever catch anyone?

His most famous one liner was “Just one more thing”. He would say this when he was by the door, ready to leave the suspect’s home. He would turn his head, bend slightly, and say it. As I recall, the suspects were invariably irritated by the “thick, slow, absent-minded” lieutenant, but were enduring his questioning, almost sure that it would lead nowhere.

As famous as Columbo himself was his car, a Peugeot 403 convertible, released to the market in 1958. If Columbo was scruffy, his car was a moving wreck.

Peugeot 403 Cabriolet, 1958

However, he never gave it up, even though in some episodes he had a chance. In the photo above you see a well maintained model.

I would now  like to give a short example of his investigative method, or rather of his method of leading the murderer to entrapment and the inevitable confession. In the Episode “Any old port in a storm”, Columbo investigates the murder of a young Californian. The suspect is his half-brother, a wine producer and connoisseur. However, he has alibi: at the time of the death, he was attending a conference in the East Coast. Columbo knows that something is wrong and there are many contradictions in the suspect’s statements and stories, but he has no proof.  The suspect has an extensive and rare wine collection that requires the continuous operation of a temperature and humidity system all around the year. Finally, the whole question focuses on the operation of the wine maintenance system. When the victim was murdered, the temperatures where on the high side. The murderer had to keep the body of the victim in the wine cellar while he was attending the conference, but should the system be operational, this would keep the body in a condition that would change the estimated time of death. Therefore, the killer switched the system off for the critical 24 hours he was away. Columbo needed to prrof that the system was off, but he had no record of it. He therefore invites the murderer to dinner at his favourite restaurant, and at the end he offers a bottle of rare port. The killer tastes the port and immediately says that this bottle has gone bad. This was the needed proof, as the bottle was taken from the killer’s wine cellar. Vintage Columbo all the way!

Peter Falk was not just columbo. In his long career he has played in many movies. As this post is personal, I do not want to list all the movies, only the ones I have seen.

Wings of Desire Movie Poster

“Wings of Desire”, the wonderful movie of German Director Wim Wenders made in 1987, I have presented in another post. In this movie, Peter Falk played himself.

Another movie where Falk starred, was “Anzio, 1968, directed by Edward Dmytryk.

Anzio Movie Poster

Falk plays Corporal Jack Rabinoff, a “killing machine”, who is based on a real First Special Service Force soldier Jake Wallenstein, who ran an illegal brothel of Italian prostitutes in a stolen ambulance Most of the men, including Rabinoff, are killed. (Source: Wikipedia)

I confess I do not remember anything about the movie as I write.

A Woman under the Influence, Movie Poster

Closing this personal note on Peter Falk, I would like to refer his masterpiece, “A Woman under the Influence”, a John Cassavetes film made in 1974 and distributed in 1975.

Falk and Cassavetes were good friends. When Falk read the scenario and Cassavetes told him that nobody was willing to produce the movie, Falk gave him 500,000 dollars.

Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands

The movie was made, and Falk played the Italian blue collar worker who is married to Gena Rowlands, the “woman under the influence”. The movie is Cassavetes’ best.

Peter Falk and Model

Peter Falk was also a figurative artist. He loved to draw and paint.

Farewell Columbo!!!

Wings of desire – Der Himmel uber Berlin – A film by Wim Wenders (1987)

From the sea of Paros to the sky over Berlin!

Today I want to reminisce on the wonderful film “Wings of desire”, made in 1987 by Wim Wenders.

The title in German is “The sky over Berlin”, whereas for unknown reasons the title in English is the corny “Wings of Desire”.

The story is simple like a fairy tale. Two Angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sanders), go around Berlin listening to what people are saying, stand on high places and statues, medidate, think about the past. Ordinary humans cannot see them, nor can they hear them speak.

 This film is shot in black/white and color. The Angels cannot see color. Therefore, when the shot is from the angels’ point of view, the shot is black and white (with a blue tint), and when the shot is from a human point of view, it is in color.

Bruno Ganz

Damiel’s wanderings lead him to a small circus, where he meets Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a trapeze artist. Talented and lovely, Marion is also angst-ridden and profoundly lonely. She confines herself to her trailer after performances, dances alone to the live music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drifts through the city, trying to fulfill her “desire for love, desire to love.” Yet she fails to connect with anyone.

Solweig Dommartin

Apparently, angels have similar existential problems. Being eternal, Damiel has neither a beginning nor an end, and therefore lacks definition. He wants the simple pleasures of a finite existence: to feed a cat, enjoy a meal, tell a lie.

Divinity has its purpose, but as Peter Falk, playing himself as a former angel, informs Damiel, there is nothing to compare to the sensations of the finite. Falk became famous in the US with his portrayal of Detectiv Columbo, the absent minded naive but very efficient police crime detective.

Falk’s role also connects the film to history. He’s come to Berlin to make a movie about a private detective in WWII, and extras stand around on the set wearing Nazi uniforms and clothes marked with the Star of David. The past is alive and well within the city, and old newsreel footage is cut into Wings of Desire, seen from car windows, the ghost of memory. It’s another division between realms, one of many in the movie. Wim Wenders and cinematographer Henri Alekan (Topkapi), along with assistant director Claire Denis, create a vivid visual division between the heavenly and the earthly.

The angels and what they see are shot in crisp, cool black-and-white (restored here to a more silvery hue rather than the gold of previous DVDs) while the mortal experience is shown to us in full color, rich in tone and often garish. Humanity experiences the full spectrum, whereas the angels’ vision is limited. For all of their peeping in on our brains, the angels are confined. They can’t do anything else. This is the core of existentialism: choice is what makes us free. Our imperfections define us. The brightest light burns half as long.

At another level, Wings of Desire is about a world divided, about the line between the spiritual and the physical, the fanciful and the practical. Between the poetry of words and thought and the true poetry of life.

The screen play is written by Peter Handlke, the Austrian poet and play write. I came to know his work with “The fear of the goalie before the penalty kick”, and then with “Kaspar Hauser”.

Peter Handke

In addition to the script, he wrote the poem “Song of Childhood” for the movie. Here is an excerpt:

“When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?”

 

THE END

 

La Dolce Vita – Fellini’s Masterpiece

“The film first impinged on the world at large in February 1960 when foreign journalists reported back to their readers, listeners and viewers on the controversial reception in Italy, where it divided audiences, critics and clerics, and led to Fellini being both spat on and cheered at the Milan premiere.” (Source: Philip French’s film review in the Guardian)

“Jesus Christ swings over Rome in a breathtaking opening sequence; a statue suspended from a helicopter where Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) beckons to a gaggle of sunbathing beauties below. He’s a spiritually bankrupt man who pushes girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) to the brink of suicide with his incessant philandering. Nonetheless he cannot resist ‘the sweet life’ of sex and partying, seductively embodied by Hollywood movie star Sylvia – a voluptuous Anita Ekberg framed like a goddess as she cavorts in the Trevi Fountain.” (Source: Stella Papamichael’s film review in the BBC)

The Fontana di Trevi scene.

And the unforgettable music of Nino Rota.

“It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around”. (Anita Ekberg)

Ekberg is quoted (in a TV interview) as saying “Mrcello was zero when I met him, I made him famous!”.

No matter what the real case is, both Marcello and Anita are beautiful and doomed in this movie.

“La Dolce Vita”  is actually a bittersweet life, with the bitter taste ever present, not letting the sweet enjoy a victory. Marcello never really gets around to the sweet comfort of victory or pleasure. He is always chasing, something elusive, without being able to actually experience something, as the object of experience is continuously fragmented and disjointed.

Fellini has described La Dolce Vita as “a journey through the inauthentic” (in Federico Fellini’s Autobiography, a documentary by Paquito del Bosco available on the Criterion Collection DVD, La Strada). The film displays an almost palpable anxiety over the question of distinguishing the authentic from the inauthentic, the real from the simulated; and it is because of Marcello’s inability to make reliable distinctions between these categories that the film steadily moves towards a sense of chaos and disorder. The pervasive superficiality and artificiality of the characters Marcello encounters suggest a psychology in which identity is always concealed behind a social mask, and masquerade and performance have become the key elements of self. Such a view of human psychology inevitably forces us to confront the irreducible distance between self and other, a distance that is most often represented by Fellini as a breakdown of human communication. …. La Dolce Vita is a dense, complex portrait of modern life; a scathing critique of media culture, of its artificiality and sensationalism, its squandering of social energy in pursuit of the trivial, its insatiable appetite for scandal and the thrill of “the new. And it is equally an analysis of the “modern” self, of the narcissism and vanity that underlie sexual desire and which inhibit any meaningful communication between human beings. La Dolce Vita is about the emotional and spiritual cost of embracing such values. And it is also an expression of Fellini’s own anxieties as an artist, his concern that as a filmmaker he is like Marcello, a chronicler of the trivial and the unimportant. The crisis in Fellini’s conception of himself as an artist and filmmaker would find its fullest fictional treatment in his next solo film, 8 1/2. (Source:  Fellini’s Roman Circus)

At the end, he encounters again the beautiful young girl from a little cafe he met earlier.  A profile like an angel.  She beckons to him, but he can’t hear her across the waves.  He goes back to his degenerate orgiasts who are leaving the beach where they were gawking at an enormous “sea monster” the fishermen brought in.  Might there be a shred of hope left for him? (Source: Journey to perplexity)

Marcello cannot hear what the angel figure across the beach of Fregena is telling him He knows very well that he is not going to stay there, that he is going to go. He will walk away from his only chance to redeem himself. Redemption appeared before him and he turns it away. Marcello actually watches his redemption ticket being burned.

La Dolce Vita is a big puzzle with a simple end, that there is an end, sooner or later, and there are only limited choices that appear in front of us.  The choices we make and the end are intertwined.

We talk a lot about the end. The personal end, as I cannot foretell or describe the end of the world or the universe, should there ever be such an event. What is the personal end? I do not know, I have not experienced it yet. But I have a picture of it in my mind, it is the circus characters’ band walking on the beach at sunset, when the daylight gives its place to the darkness of the night. (the photo is from Fellini’s 8 1/2).

Sweet Movie (1974) – A film by Dusan Makavejev

Now that memory lane is open, and thanks to the slow boat ride to Vienna, I bring back to my personal space the masterpiece of Dusan Makavejef, Sweet Movie.

To begin, I quote from “criterion” the story of the movie,(not that it matters a lot):

“Sweet Movie starts its story with a contest—the Miss World competition of 1984, where top honors go to the prettiest virgin. The winner is Miss Canada, and her prize is marriage to Mr. Dollars, the world’s wealthiest man. Her new husband turns out to be quite a weirdo, though, with a gold-plated penis and a morbid fear of sex-related disease. Angered by her rejection of him on their wedding night, he has her kidnapped, stuffed into a suitcase, and shipped off to Paris, where she makes love with a Spanish crooner. Next she joins a subversive commune, living amid the extravagant shenanigans of its wildly uninhibited members.

Meanwhile, steaming down an Amsterdam canal is a most unusual boat, named Survival and bearing an enormous image of Karl Marx on its bow. The passengers are mostly children, the cargo is candy and sugar. Captain Anna Planeta is hailed by a bike-riding sailor with “Potemkin” written on his cap, whom she picks up and takes as her lover, treating him to steamy sex in her on-board sugar vat. Later she stabs him there, but he responds with laughter. Evidently, even death isn’t very fearsome on the good ship Survival.”

I remember the communal boat “survival” with Karl Marx’s head on its prow,

the chocolate infused orgasm,

and the murder in the sugar vat, but most of all, the movie brings back to me this unique sense of subversive, ruthless fun.

Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa, Bandiera rossa, Bandiera rossa!

And the sailor wears the Potemkin hat! Brilliant!

And, of course, the glorious score of Manos Hadjidakis!

Music & lyrics : Manos Hadjidakis,
except 4 & 8 : lyrics by Makavejev & Ann Lonnberg

1.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:42)
2.Oi paragkes kai oi anthropoi (1:30)
3.Serenata gia thn sexoualikh apousia (3:16)
4.Is there life on the earth? (2:35) with Anne Lonnberg

5.H sexoualikh polyrrythmia (2:07)
6.Oi paragkes kai h kefalh toy karl marx (2:56)
7.Nyxterino (3:24)
8.Is there life on the earth? (1:04)
9.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (3:37)
10.strip tease gia tria paidia (4:47)
11.nyxterino gia dyo fones (2:22)
12.o xoros ths sokolatas (2:39)
13.ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:31)
14.h sexoualikh polyrrythmia kai ta tria paidia (3:01)

Additional music : Les Chants Révolutionnaires du Monde – Les Flûtes Roumaines

(those of us who are old enough, may remember Anne Lonnberg as the young blonde girl who played with Yannis Voglis in “Koritsia ston ilio”

to refresh our collective memory, and in the spirit of Dusan, here is a clip, which starts by showing the shepherd Voglis chasing the blonde Lonnberg)