Who's Persecuting Who? Roman Polanski's VENUS IN FUR

VENUS IN FUR opens in motion, on a Parisian road,  lined by perfectly paralleled trees.  The camera moves through  increasingly swift paths, moving anxiously towards its end goal.  All the while the treetops open, reaching out and touching one another...a thin branch from the left border of the street meets the thin branch of the right side.  The visual roadmap changing before us, and these impossibly static left and right sides meet  one another's touch, like bending tentacles. They separate as the camera slows, hovering at a theater entrance.

Now we are among people.
How will their common goal connect? How will what was previously hidden about a person come to show it itself? Our masks? Our neuroses, our psychoses?
Is this another great Polanski film about persecution and persecution complexes?
Of course.
But here, we explore these matters by way of Speech.

Polanski sometimes has messy women color his movies. These messy characters are corporeal, blunt.  They are also like white rabbits;
Adjani's mysterious roommate Stella drew THE TENANT's Trelkovsky down a rabbit hole of doubles; all hunted, all victims, all outcasts. They were as literal and historical as they were psychological and neurotic. Seigner's sexually self possessed Mimi of BITTER MOON leads all the characters into a mystery of love and disappearance. In VENUS IN FUR Seigner's Vanda also leads.  She needs to earn his respect and trust before she can lure Thomas.  She allows him to see, through her ability to connect to once hidden parts of himself.
She also shows him a new way to connect to text, and to his relationship as a director.
These properties are nearly mystical/spiiritual, though depicted matter of factly.  She is a seer who leads the blind, not unlike Tess, not unlike Adjani in THE TENANT or Ruth Gordon's Minnie in ROSEMARY'S BABY.

The first time we see Thomas (Almaric) he is overheard speaking on the telephone.  He makes a joke of women today and their frivolity.  The conversation cuts off after he sarcastically jokes he could dress in drag.

In THE TENANT, Trelkovsky's fears and otherness are brought to the forefront when he dresses in drag in a pivotal scene in the film.

Is that what Vanda's character is? Is it Thomas? in drag? Or just another image of him, created or projected from their meeting.

There is a moment in the beginning when we understand that how they speak to one another, and in which voice, will dictate their forward motion, in a psychological sense. We are brought a precise moment where suspense of disbelief concretizes:  Thomas has previously been dismissive of this blowsy actress.  But suddenly  Thomas nearly spins towards her on the stage,now needing his glasses as if to see through something appearing unclear. She is reading a line and he replies to her, grabbing the book...
He  believes her in the role.
And in turn, he is willing to play his part.

This new  film too is about what is created when things brush against one another, when they line up, as do the left and right sides of the tree lined street.  Between men and women, between the actor and the author, between the artist and the audience, connections are revealed that change the look of the road.

THE IMMIGRANT: Singled Out

There is romance when they notice you.  You are  standing in a crowd, you are female, yet you are poor and strange, not of this place.  Are you going to find work, will you be accepted into a community, can you communicate well?  More importantly, will you be someone of worth?
In other words, will you be not nothing?


Ewa (Marion Cotillard) is transcendent playing a woman desperate to transcend.
She needs rescuing because she has been victimized by being a woman,  disadvantaged by being dependent on men to be saved from deportation and to make money to survive.  Her choices are divided but her claim is singular:  that she lives to make money to bring her sister home from the Ellis Island hospital.
The methods are twofold:  be a "moral" woman who saves money slowly, sewing, legally earning money.  She could be saved if a man would find her and love her and choose to marry her.  Someone mentions that maybe she'll get married and have children, and one can nearly see the birds dancing around Ewa's head as her eyes glow, her secret revealed.
The second method is less legal, yet more direct.  A dancing girl, a working girl, is just as eager to lure that male attention, except one is focusing on multiple men instead of a lone husband.

Bruno finds Ewa and she is given both options, two methods to choose from. She chooses, yet she changes her mind.  Does she do so because she repents?  Or is that she is simply walking down the second avenue...
Ewa recommits to Bruno, to their partnership  and their livelihood.  She again dances with the devil, or is he son of God?  He is a relative to Bruno, the same man perhaps, but he would be the husband, the alternative choice.
The choices are never entirely clear.  Bruno is sure that this is not the moral highroad, or even a smart decision, or that his cousin is even a decent or loving person.  Ewa waivers as well.  Is her intense declaration not to be nothing a revealing statement about needing to be valuable? And is commanding  financial value what her purpose eventually becomes?

Desire is muddled, but morality is even murkier.
The american dream is dirty and religious salvation is a lie. The true nature of Ewa's goals elude us every moment. But Ewa is still treated, filmically, as a religious figure.  She prays not to God but to the "Mother of God".  Even as Ewa's descends into transgression,  she is lit and captured on film as a glowing figure.  Complicating the religious imagery is a parallel series of images:  Ewa's thin and heart shaped jawline, glowing eyes, and her awkward deer like gaze into an audience of men.  She is seen as both a martyr and as a marvelously sexy woman aware and distracted by men looking at her.

And what has more value than for a woman to be chosen, to be singled out by a man. There is an entire city of women, or at least an island with ships full of them, all strange and foreign, all oppressed and in need.  Some special women will be seen for who they are. Is it their soul or their moral fiber that speaks to the man who finally sees and recognizes value in her? Or is it that her need to be seen bends a moral code to fit the circumstances of her life.

THE IMMIGRANT is an intimate and straight story as much as it is a story about the many shades of grey that complicate a woman's goals, heart and place in the world.

Your Film Becomes You: Jerry Lewis and HARDLY WORKING

Jerry Lewis was born as a wiry Jewish boy with a more Jewish name, in Newark, NJ.   But you wouldn't know it from  his 1981 film HARDLY WORKING.  Here  he is muscular, more manly in stature, suave, poised, intense, creative,  has a goy name of Bo Hooper, and he is serious about labor issues and  the  importance of the role of the artist in society.  At the same time you WOULD know it is the same Jerry from seeing HARDLY WORKING!  In the very same film, as the same man, he speaks with an undeniably Jewish new york/new jersey-ese tone, he is ugly, he is goofy, he is inept, he is selfish, he is simple and he is a schmendrick.

A little back track:

 Jerry Lewis directed himself in his first film in 1960.  He he had already been performing in motion pictures for eleven years.  After having a critical smash with his 1960 debut of THE BELLBOY, Jerry  continued to direct progressively more challenging and unconventional films on a regular basis, through 1970.

After 1971's tortured completion of THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED was sealed from the public and never released, Jerry went on a directorial hiatus for ten years, until he returned, again directing himself as the lead, in 1981's HARDLY WORKING.

After the internal artistic punch of TDTCC, Jerry took his time making a comeback and a return to the helm, but he still took a lot of chances. More than ever before, in fact.  The film consists of several jangly, disconnected sequences that serve as set ups to show Jerry failing in different job situations.  He is, at heart, a clown. The film opens with him as a beloved clown of a circus troupe that is being shut down.  He travels to the upper -middle class suburbs of Florida to move in with his sister and her  disdainful banker husband. There is an alteration of serious moments within the much more goofy episodes.

If you watch the film and note a strikingly earnest tone, a series of jokes that seem to go on a moment too long or hold too long for a laugh..or just a generalized strange combination of moral and political seriousness you dont quite buy and silliness that seems too zany...then this is because Jerry Lewis has (finally) succeeded in creating a most perfect evocation of the way he is, and the vision with which he sees and lives in the world.

Jerry is in conflict, and he is a man in progress. He goes and back forth between overcompensating to prove himself, and just being relaxed.  The film reflects this progressive turmoil. Jerry is pompous and he is also a clown. He is an egomaniac, and he also loves to speak (in my opinion  based on seeing him in person and also watching the telethons forever, it's out of both  true human concern as well as the love of hearing himself talking about being a good person.)

Jerry makes sense to me in a familiar way.  He strikes me as a similar type of person as my maternal Grandfather, Sol.  Sol could be described as a perfect definition of one who suffers "Small Jewish Man Complex", a complex more common back in the time of Jerry and Sol. 

Sol comes not from Newark , but from a tenement on Henry St., on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, born to immigrant parents. He is small in stature, but he becomes extremely fit and strong through bodybuilding and physical fitness; doing body (and nude) modeling for Physical American and other popular magazines. He also becomes brilliant, a voracious reader, and he is socially liberal, and he disavows his family's Judaism, becoming an Atheist.  

Jerry's first big break was performing with Dean Martin.

My grandfather's was getting a job at CBS in midtown writing for and with Arthur Miller.  Both men legally changed their names to sound less Jewish (Sol changed his when he was joining the Writer's Guild.)  Jerry is fascinating, and Sol is actually pretty interesting too.  I loathe and love things about both men. They both teeter between grandiose egotism and man of the people ridiculousness.  I make the comparison to point out the uncanniness of Jerry. How familiar and yet how strange he is. And HARDLY WORKING captures the essence of the discomfort of this perception and experience of him unlike any other film has before.

Jerry is magnetic in person , as himself.  He is a contradictory blast of ice and warmth, of sincerity and total falseness, and he is a marvel whose talent surpasses most on this planet.

HARDLY WORKING is his opus; refusing to shut up, making us laugh, making real a fantasy and a specific personality.

tacky morality: The politics of drinking and 'goodness' in GOD'S POCKET

PSH:  HONEST.

 A lazy way to characterize a geographic place is to say it is close to God, and use terms as nebulous and subjective as "goodness".
Is a working class town (in Massachusets? or  is too REAL and too GOOD to be a specific city?)worthy of being in the pocket of the Lord?   How small and invisible must one be to fit inside the cotton confines of a pocket?
Too small for the visual medium of film to perceive you.

GOD'S POCKET is comprised of people who drink a lot, drink as  lifestyle, or drink out of  Addiction. There is a New Yorky, Italian American immigrant contingent led up by a game John Turturro. He knows exactly who he is, I completely enjoy and believe him, yet I never believe he is  a member of this town.  Considering the rest of the pack, Turturro is still one of the most nearly honest people who populate the pocket.
There is also a Chicagoan Italian American Immigrant contingent; Lenny Venito slyly steals a scene or two to that end.
Question: Who is believable as a resident of a town of lies?
Answer: Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Without much context, there are multiple times when a character screams out at PSH's character that he isn't even from here!
You wouldn't know.  He seems at home.   Everyone in this community accepts him. He is a gangster, he is a husband, he is an Irishman. He shrugs, he goes above and beyond for his duplicitous two timing wife (a sleepy Christina Hendricks who tries her best with a lack of direction), and he never speaks up about the effort  he employs. His every breath and glance is Honest.

He drinks, but he is not a resident of the bar.

The drinkers speak the truth, and I believe them more than most of the protagonists.
Richard Jenkins drinks too much and he portrays a truth teller who is nothing but a big liar. But who is REAL and who is HONEST?
The real drinkers and the real actors are the only ones who I can believe exist in this town.  Eddie Marsan is so fucking bizarre and not like someone I recognize that i believe every twitch , every tonal shift in his non European sound . His body leads with his shoulders and his hips are absolutely invisible.  His spry energy and pointed looks are what is upright and good in the world. There is no God, only people that act like Eddie Marsan.  Hoffman is  electric as a tired man who is resigned to a partner in life who will never protect and support him as he does for her.  His line readings are not line readings, they are habitations ,and the real ghost of the person jumps out of his skin; suddenly the dead rises through his voice box as the melody of his voice shoots up abruptly, shocking us into an authentic person in an actual moment.

On paper the rest of them are also talented actors.  But they do not live in this town that is like seven different regions of the country sandwiched in one non existent idea.  The rest of the residents are playing with costumes, or playing with hair or accents or are playing at being nude. They lie to us, as the film lies about telling us who is good and who is god and where god places people.  People are not good because they work hard or because they define their community and wall it in.  People are not good because they try to challenge or question that community and it's borders.  People are good because they make me believe them in a scene in a movie.  And there is not much more here than that.

STOLEN KISSES

Antoine writes her too many letters

Catherine is now married and had a child

Army happily discharges Antoine

Antoine is stuck

Lonsdale:  I Don't Have Any Friends

Atoine turns inward

Now they write letters in real time

Good Things Come

It took almost 10 years, but Terrence Malick has finally made another film I love; one that far exceeds the reaches of  THE NEW WORLD.   In all truth, TO THE WONDER is now my favorite. It is a story of romantic love as essential and necessary as the Gospel. Is it really so long to wait 8 or 9 years for a great film? It is, but that is because  I feel as though I'd been waiting forever.   Waiting not just for this film, but also for a sense of personal contentment and total freedom. Waiting for the great Malick film to soar above the promises of his greatness.  And what is TO THE WONDER about? It's actually about waiting....(wait for it) ...for a sense of personal happiness and true freedom.
Malick's movie is the best film I never saw last year.

I am in love.
I am not in love in actual life; I live muted, with a betrayed, abandoned heart.  But in my filmgoing life, my virtual life that I live in lieu of an actualized life, I have just been shown the hope of the Promise's arrival.
I became aware of Malick, and the myth of his greatness, around the time that I became aware that movies and the love of them would be my life.  I was a pre teenager.  I made a list, several hundred items long, of all the movies I would learn about that were must -sees to help advance me on my road of film appreciation.  BADLANDS and DAYS OF HEAVEN were early entries.  The first one I saw was BADLANDS.  I figured I would love it. I had marked up the Washington Post TV Week schedule, tracking VHS tapings and real time views of sought  after movies. I still recall my excitement when I got to see BADLANDS, on an evening when the upstairs TV was free, on a local Baltimore station.   It was during my 8th or 9th grade. Of course the film was edited for television, but I can recall its impact.  Its cynicism, its style, and the way it used American landscape as a sort of visual storytelling shorthand; it didn't move me, it did not wow me, but i mentally checked these attributes as  movie watching elements I should continue to note.   Five or so years later, upon moving to NYC, i saw it screen on 35. I still think it's a strong film, but I also recognize the gap between the expectation i had awaited and the final moment of watching.  As cinephiles the first half  of our lives are marked waiting to see certain films.  This is probably less common now, post internet.  In my preteens and teens it was Malick, Truffaut, Warhol, Godard, Franco, Resnais, Ferrara and Ashby.  In my twenties it was Rivette, Ruiz, Zulawski and a zillion other films not defined by their filmmakers; my scope widened considerably.  It goes further than waiting for certain films. Every cinephile has their golden chalice; their OUT 1 print or  LAST MOVIE or HARDLY WORKING...I believe, that as cinephiles, we are often people looking to movies to fulfill a promise that we do not expect fulfilled within our own lives.
When I finally saw DAYS OF HEAVEN, it was a rental situation  in high school. I was  horribly disappointed. When I got to  NYU it was a personal favorite of my  film school boyfriend, so we went to see a print screen at Film Forum.  My viewing was more substantial this time around, but I still felt let down.  I went back to Film Forum to see it screen yet again in the early -mid aughts, still disappointed.  I've always liked BADLANDS more, but I guess I don't love either of them.  The eventual theatrical opening of THE THIN RED LINE was a major event. I was barely alive that year, but all of my  film school friends were obsessed with it.  I managed to see it opening day in my temporary new town of Washington, D.C.  I believe I saw it at the Uptown (D.C.'s Ziegfeld), so that made everything better.  This Malick was more of a stunner to me.   It was more difficult to nail down and explain.  It was the first Malick I saw that was closer to the type of film I was usually drawn to.  It demanded repeated viewings and was experimenting with something new.

I loved THE NEW WORLD.   It was a top personal life  experience of my year in  2005.
The mythic great Malick film you wait for had finally arrived: poetic storytelling and technique finally married with the content of the story..about newness and narrative of the formation of  a physical place.  I never connected with it emotionally, but with this film  Malick had finally lived up to hype.
I waited several more years to come across the next promised land...and then came TREE OF LIFE.  I can only say that this is the Malick film I find  the least connection and interest in.  I can liken the experience to that of watching a magazine editorial come to life.
So I dicked around a while before sitting down for TO THE WONDER.  My god. Terrence Malick, I'm almost 40, where have you been all my moviegoing life?  I felt that note being struck; the coexistence of innovative technique, visual beauty, and FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY- a spiritual center I could place myself in.  The film uses shortcuts, formerly less fully realized in earlier pictures like TREE, to economize the storytelling in  a chiefly visual manner. We are watching a love story but one that  happens in leaps and bounds,  all in the opening moments.  We understand, even without the subtitles translating the French.

 


Wes Anderson gets criticized for a very similar idea.   I think Anderson explores  alternative ways to do exactly what filmmakers like Walter Hill and Michael Mann do so well (THE DRIVER, THIEF, MIAMI VICE...) It is a way of streamlining the way we are told a story.  I realize now that he has been trying to do this, with varying measures of success, in his last few films, but without being fully realized until now.  The film opens with the
arrival of a lifetime of want and of not having.  Do I know anything about these characters backgrounds or if they'd ever had love before? No.  I say this because what I am shown and what I experience in this opening is ..the end.   A woman has reached her penultimate happiness. She spins through life.  Everything is beautiful, everything and everyone is connected. She is in love. She is radiant and she beams outwards to others.

It is just about halfway through the film when she is, in some ways, replaced and cast aside.  She stops spinning through the frames. Her voiceover tells us she is lost, and she is walking around alone, not knowing where go but to go home and collapse.
She tries to kill herself. She returns to him.  Her voiceover remarks that it is only the Weak who never take a stand (by ending a relationship i presume.) Her world turns dark and her spirit is in crisis.



I am used to waiting for things that never come. At this point in my life I'm pretty much at peace with the idea that the heartbreak and rejection from my latest relationship can only lead to my suicide or to a loveless life of utter misery.
It took 35 years of being alone, often hopeless, but foolishly hopeful for me to find true love.  I was  to lose that love forever in just less than three years.







I first heard about Terrence Malick when I was approximately twelve years old.  I saw my first Malick film when I was about 13 or 14 years old.  I saw TO THE WONDER tonight and I am currently about 38 years old.  24 years is less than three decades. Not so unreasonable.  How many 24s do I have left?  Do I remain resigned to life and to missing the possibilities I do not believe will ever cross my path? Do I confuse hope with the impact of the truth of how Malick depicts falling in love in TO THE WONDER? How truthful Malick can be! How right he is when he shows how love is the spirit, it is the 'wonder' in life, the thing missing that we need..the answers we seek, the prayer, the meaning, the everything...
How could her lover not see how earth and soul shattering the withdrawal of his romantic love would be? Her love for him was devotional, religious, and eternal.
It sounds pious to say for me, someone who does not like religion, and I know there is no God, but when the Priest showed up I could see that this is the OTHER side of falling in love onscreen. The love she experienced was Holy. Without that miracle she is equivalent spiritually to  the junkie, the criminal and the laborer who need Bardem's Priest.  She is alive but she is an empty shell; nothing is inside of her.  She is "in between"; she is without love.  It is the wait...IT IS THE WAIT that is the other storyline. The one that crisscrosses as the French bride falls in and out of her rapture. She is back in Paris. She is alone on the subway. She no longer dances to transport herself from place to place. She walks with her head down, and she stares unhappily on the Metro.


It is the wait for the new great drug, for the new 12 step fellowship to save and rebuild your spirit, that one person in the world who finally came along who would become your best friend and one true love and then leave you forever.  The wait for that next great film to give you life as a cinephile.

Today I woke up, and it all became worse.

drudgery of work and being a single girl.  A SINGLE GIRL. Benoit Jacquot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChVpXojsKRI



misery of the mind and the exacerbations of others...and NYC.  FROWNLAND. Ronald Bronstein.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf-Ffdxyl0g


agony of a life where work is torment...


and life outside of work is humiliation, rejection and loneliness.
DER WALD VOR LAUTER BAUMEN. (FOREST FOR THE TREES.) Maren Ade.