Monthly Film Challenge Part 6: The Tree of Life (2011)

Many film critics hailed Terrence Malick’s ambitious fifth feature, The Tree of Life, as a masterpiece at Cannes, where it won the Palme D’Or. But the film was highly divisive since its first screening, leading to a major backlash. When audiences got a hold of it, there was very little fence sitting with people either loving it or hating it. It is a film that has been endlessly argued over, in terms of both its quality and its meaning. It is also a film that is particularly hard to be objective about. Your tolerance or intolerance of it will ultimately act as a reflection on how and why you love cinema.

There is very little that can be said definitively about The Tree of Life, and any pieces written on the film may be more telling of the interests of the writer as opposed to the qualities of the film. Terrence Malick presents a clear dichotomy between “the way of nature and the way of grace” in the first line of the film, but from there on the film is left remarkably open to interpretation. Forgetting any pretence at objectivity then, for me, The Tree of Life is really about two different things, one massive and wide-ranging and the other, in comparison, highly specific. It is about life, the universe and everything, but also it is about Jack’s (Hunter McCracken) maturation from childhood to adulthood via puberty. The former encompasses a huge amount, from the place of human beings in the world to an examination of the need for compassion in spite of a fiercely natural world. We move from parents grieving over the death of a son (a hint of the specific to come) to the creation of the world, the beginning of life on earth and finally the joy of reproduction. The family is seen in a highly positive light, a cocoon against the ruthless competition that remains prevalent in many guises throughout the earth’s lifespan – the grace of the family versus the brutal realities of nature. It suggests the rather insignificant place that humans hold in the grand scheme of things, but gives hope. The human way of life may be meaningless, but the little things are what matters. It is not an original message, in fact it may seem rather conservative but this ceases to matter since the film’s aesthetics are entirely unique (to Malick’s cinema at least) and absolutely breathtaking. These preoccupations allow for a film that is majestic, beautiful and really rather moving. In a sense, it is Malick’s masterpiece.

With the birth of Jack, the film becomes more specific, less meta-physical, though the bridge between the birth of the universe and the birth of Jack is surprisingly seamless. The film now meditates on the act of growing up, from difficulties with parents to a burgeoning sexuality to the awareness and acceptance of difference. Here also, in the figures of Jack’s parents (Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt), we see how the world works and the grace-nature dichotomy comes to fruition. The family becomes less a cocoon than a synecdoche of the world – full of dissatisfaction and rivalry, but also friendship and love. With this, the film successfully comes full circle, its two strains – the universal and the familial – coming together under the same themes, presented big and small.

However, having said all of this, the film’s greatest achievement is its lyricism. The Tree of Life is a visual and poetic film, which succeeds primarily thanks to the sheer beauty of its images, their marriage with music and the meaning through montage. The brilliance of The Tree of Life is not accurately expressed through its plot, or through an analysis of its themes – the above cannot take in the sombre modern-day scenes with the older Jack (Sean Penn), as interesting as it is, or the admittedly awkward impressionistic ending. What makes the film so powerful is that, by watching it, you find out something about yourself based on your reaction to what happens onscreen, whether you laugh out loud or get a lump in the throat. This may sound crude (and it is), but The Tree of Life is a film that can stun and move you while driving your best friend out of their mind with boredom. The Tree of Life is not as much a challenge to some people as it is for others, and working out why it worked or didn’t work for you might just tell you something about how you watch films and, maybe, how you see life.

The Tree of Life is a meditation, rather than a story. As a result, it is a unique and fascinating film that rewards multiple viewing. It is a film that is unashamedly, gloriously arty, if not particularly profound then remarkably beautiful and a fascinating example of the expressive potential of the language of cinema. Malick's images are beautiful, especially when considered alongside the editing and the brilliant music chosen to accompany them. There is another thing that is fresh and brilliant about The Tree of Life that has not really been touched on. It is a film about life and love and grace and nature made with ambition and an eye for beauty, but it is also extremely brave. Not politically brave, but artistically brave because it lays itself bare, dares you to laugh and succeeds in making you see and think about the world in ways that you never have before, all by virtue of one of the film’s most powerful attributes: its fearless honesty.

See the original, inaccurate review from the film's release in 2011 as an indication how one's opinion can change here.

La Jetee

Un Chien Andalou

The Seventh Continent

F For Fake
La Chinoise

Monthly Film Challenge Part 5: La Chinoise (1967)

La Chinoise is a 1967 film made by Jean-Luc Godard at the beginning of his political phase. It is commonly considered a classic because of its apparent prophetic nature since it is supposed to have predicted the May 1968 student revolt in Paris. It is commonly, and too easily, dismissed as socialist propaganda, ineffective because of the near incomprehension of its artistic sensibilities. There is no real plot, the film jumps between dramatic scenes, political speeches, intertitles, images and a variety of Brechtian devices intended to confuse the audience, force them out of their comfort zone of passive watching and actually engage with the film’s debate. Hence the key line comes at the beginning: “A film in the making.” As much as this may suggest that the film is an improvisation – Godard was never one for extensive planning – it also suggest that the film begins on screen but finishes inside the active viewer’s mind, where opinions are formed and the film’s message is finally chosen.

In this sense, the second key line in the film comes later, in a speech by Kirilov (Lex de Bruijn): “We demand the unity of politics and art. The unity of content and form…Works lacking artistic value, no matter how politically advanced are ineffective. In literature and in art we must fight on two fronts.” Here, Godard explains his methodology – a political film is only effective if it marries its message with revolutionary aesthetics. A truly political film is a film that cannot be used by the marketplace dominated by Hollywood, which promotes passivity and uncritical identification. The ways of viewing a political film must be different from the ways of viewing Hollywood films - later Godard would reject the means of production and exhibition of mainstream cinema entirely, making esoteric, homemade films on video. As an example of a political film usurped by Hollywood, Godard would point to the acclaimed The Battle of Algiers – a fantastic faux-documentary about the Algerian war, which shows the violence on both sides. Though the film is certainly educational, the viewer might leave without their opinions changed, much less radically altered, since the film can be viewed, or consumed, just like any other less politically-orientated Hollywood blockbuster. A more recent example might be Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained. Though Tarantino uses the horrors of slavery as a backdrop, the audience will get less of an impression of the evil of slavery, their outrage softened by a busy plot, likable characters and a happy ending.

The reason this introduction is so long is because La Chinoise is the kind of film that needs to be approached with an awareness of certain ideas already in place. A viewer must be ready for the film in a way that they don’t have to prepare for a Hollywood blockbuster – which, too often, you don’t even have to pay attention to. It is not really an emotional film; any thrills one might get from it are purely those of ideas. Similarly, the film does not provide any answers, instead insisting that one comes up with one’s own. The viewer has to engage with the film, actively watch and deconstruct and think about the film. The joy of La Chinoise, or any film like it, and possibly the reason why some many would dismiss it, claiming incomprehension, is that it is a film that is alive with invention. Godard’s love of the medium comes through via the range of aesthetic devices that he includes, but also because of his willingness to question our very definition of what constitutes a film. To dismiss La Chinoise as mere propaganda, as a result, is to deny that film can be more than what Hollywood thinks it should be.

La Chinoise takes its slight plot from Dostoevsky’s fantastic novel “Demons”, in which five amateur revolutionaries fill themselves with political dogma, chose an enemy and murder him. Dostoevsky’s target was the growing idea of nihilism; Godard’s, tackled much more ambiguously, is Maoism, best represented by Mao Tse-tung’s “Little Red Book.” La Chinoise follows five students, lead by Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky, then Godard’s wife), as they live in an empty apartment during the summer holidays, trying to apply Maoist teachings to their lives and possibly create the conditions to start a revolution. The film is divided into three movements. The first deals with the education of the students, showing them reading, attending lectures and being interviewed by Godard himself on their beliefs. The second movement is the shortest and deals with arguments about the applications of the theory that the students have now taken on board. Some advocate a new form of political art – providing the film’s manifesto – whilst others speak of the need for violence. The final movement is, hence, their plan of action once terrorist activity is decided upon.

As a film about left-wing terrorism, La Chinoise is seem rather sinister, or at least highly naïve, to some. However, Godard is a lot less didactic as he may initially appear. He is open to all of the divergent opinions within the group and can even be quite critical. Early in the film, we hear Veronique reciting some political dictum to the amusement of her boyfriend Guillaume (Jean Pierre Léaud, the child actor from The 400 Blows) – his later extremism suggesting a form of indoctrination or, simply, insincerity. Perhaps. Godard does not wish to make anything too easy for his audience, preferring instead that they listen to each of the characters as they present their arguments, then decide for themselves. The most sympathetic character is Henri (Michel Semeniako), but then he is the least hard-line and the one who promotes peaceful co-existence. He is called a reactionary and expelled from the group. Yvonne (Juliet Berto) is the working class member of the group and, despite the group’s supposed socialist values, she is frequently seen tidying up around them. We also frequently see her education – or, if you want, indoctrination - Berto’s performance moving from wide-eyed innocence to unblinking devotion to the cause. Most ambiguous of all, and possibly the best scene in the film, is Veronique’s encounter with Francis Jeanson, a real-life revolutionary. They meet on a train and discuss her right to commit terrorist acts, Godard filming the conversation from a fixed position, the frame balanced between Veronique and Jeanson – in other words, neutral. Here, Godard’s key desire comes to fruition. We sit and listen to the points being made by both characters, without sympathetic or biased editing or camerawork, and then, at its conclusion, make up our own minds.

La Chinoise is very much a true essay film, with imagery and text inserted into the onscreen action just as one would place a citation in a thesis. It is politically charged cinema, thoroughly in love with dialectical thinking and committed to engaging with an audience. La Chinoise does not wish to educate, or even convince; it merely wishes to communicate. Its key flaw may be that it is too daunting for most viewers, especially now that it is somewhat dated, but it remains a unique form of cinema that cannot be ignored by anyone who is truly interested in what cinema can do.

So give it a go and tell us what you think.

Next month: The Tree of Life

La Jetee

Un Chien Andalou

The Seventh Continent

F For Fake

Monthly Film Challenge Part 4: F For Fake (1973)

This month we look at a film that is a lot more fun: Orson Welles’ audacious F For Fake, which sees the great man having the time of his life with a cinematic format that can often prove to be a piece of work: the essay film.

Before you watch F For Fake, there are a few things that it might be worth reading up on, such as: Howard Hughes, if you don’t know, was a billionaire tycoon and famous recluse and allegedly deeply mysophobic; Clifford Irving wrote a fake autobiography of Hughes that fooled America; Orson Welles did an infamous radio version of “The War of the Worlds” that also fooled America; Pauline Kael, a highly influential film critic in the 1970s, wrote an article that claimed that Orson Welles took credit for the greatness of other people’s work in Citizen Kane – which deeply offended Welles; Oja Kodar was Welles’ mistress at the time of filming.

F For Fake begins as an apparent documentary on fakery and charlatans and much of the film’s running time focuses, though this is hardly the word, on Elmyr de Hory, a brilliant forger of paintings, and his biographer and subsequent rival Clifford Irving. However, the film is far from a straight biographical sketch as Welles freely moves where his myriad interests take him. The film is often incredibly fast-paced and it is easy for the inattentive viewer to get lost, with the cutting and the voiceover creating the impression of an improvisation in which Welles changes the subject, apologizes for not making much sense, calls it “mumbo-jumbo” and starts again for a different perspective. We often see Welles sitting at a dysfunctional editing table, trying to hammer the film into shape. This gives the impression of a film making itself right there in front of you, allowing the film to feel incredibly new and unique.

However, there is more, much more, to F For Fake than the ramblings of an eloquent master filmmaker, even if half the fun of the film comes from the fact that Welles is an infectiously bubbly and good-natured host. The film begins with a few magic tricks and this is what sets the film’s tone best – F For Fake is a film in love with trickery and it is all about what cinema can do to trick, such as when Welles’ clever editing creates a dialogue between two people who are not in the same room that results in the suggestion of a major revelation. Earlier in the film, he shows the effect that Kodar has on a series of men as she walks down a busy street, the film gleefully cutting and freezing while Welles claims that the actors were real people and gave their reactions at unawares and for free. Welles will promise, “During the next hour everything you will hear from us [Welles and his collaborators] is really true and based on solid fact.” Later, he will even repeat it in writing, yet we are never sure that we can trust him, especially because he is so excited by the subject of fakery. Ultimately, F For Fake keeps the viewer at unawares almost throughout, preferring that they question everything they see.

F For Fake is a film of many subjects, one of which is a questioning of art. Elmyr de Hory is frequently heard saying that if a painting hangs on a wall for so many years, then surely it is art. Elmyr de Hory’s fake paintings have apparently always fooled the experts. These so-called experts are one of the targets of the film – people who dictate the taste of their culture by their own opinions, and yet these opinions are rarely based on fact and can often be contradicted. Remember that Welles had a grudge against Pauline Kael at the time. Welles asks who the real fakers are; people who can paint like Picasso or the experts who arrogantly claim that their work is Picasso. But Welles goes further than this, stating that if the artist himself cannot tell a genuine work from a fake then what does it matter whose signature is on the painting. And, similarly, why should Picasso have all the acclaim and all the riches when other, impoverished artists are just as capable. Welles suggests a difference between genuine art and art for commerce and sees the experts as complicit with the market, turning art into golden investment opportunities via the cult of personality. For Welles, art is less to do with who and more to do with truth. And this is what leads us to the film’s best scene, a beautiful and profound sequence in which Welles visits the cathedral at Chartres, “the premier work of man perhaps in the whole Western world and it is without a signature.” Welles muses aloud on this cathedral, his words moving from praise to ruminations on art in general and on to man and life and death. Art, Welles’ own personal conception of the term, is movingly reaffirmed while its critics are questioned.

Welles presents a version of his own autobiography, in which he emphasises his own falsehoods: the lies that allowed him to act in the Gate Theatre in Dublin despite being an inexperienced sixteen year old and the infamous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” The effect of this broadcast is made clear: “I didn’t go to jail – I went to Hollywood.” He identifies strongly with Elmyr de Hory, whose own fakery was a result of his destitution after “experts” disregarded his own original paintings. Clifford Irving’s representation of Howard Hughes equally mirrors the original conception of Citizen Kane, which was to have been a fictionalised biopic of Hughes. In a few telling sequences, Welles goes to Las Vegas and points his camera at a hotel penthouse window, presumably where Hughes was eking out an existence. He looks at a series of Hughes myths, developing the idea that the truth will never be discovered from behind the series of myths and lies propagated by Hughes and others. Ultimately, a lot of F For Fake is unclear and a lot of the joy of the film is down to Welles’ own embracing of the fluidity of fiction and fact. At once, he presents a shot of himself reciting poetry about man and truth while distorted through a curved glass (suggesting “Through the Looking Glass”, The Lady From Shanghai and distorted truths) and yet cocks his gaze at the camera and mumbles ‘pretentious.’ As anyone can see, the running time of F For Fake is 85 minutes and even Welles himself delights in “lying [his] head off.”

As is probably obvious from the above, F For Fake is a fast-paced ideas-packed essay. It is a film that rewards multiple viewings and yet is always a lot of fun. Orson Welles delights in simply being a spinner of tales, the more convoluted and confusing the better. We often see him sitting down at a restaurant regaling assorted people with his stories and at times, the film suggests what it would have been like to have had dinner with Welles, his chatter moving seamlessly, and sometimes not so, through a wide range of topics, all interesting and all told with verve and humour. Indeed, a lot of the value of F For Fake is simply how enjoyable it is. Thematically complex and somewhat dark, F For Fake is probably the most fun you will have with an essay film. Exuberant, playful cinema at its finest.

So give it a go and tell us what you think.

Next month: La Chinoise

See also:

La Jetee

Un Chien Andalou

The Seventh Continent

Monthly Film Challenge Part 3: The Seventh Continent (1989)

This month, we turn our attention to a film that is less formally innovative, but yet serves as a good introduction to a kind of discursive cinema that will return again and again in subsequent articles. The Seventh Continent attempts to have a conversation with its audience, asking them questions and suggesting answers rather than giving them. The film is in many ways a debate about the modern world, though one that is philosophical more than political. Many will disagree with the film’s suggestions yet the film is of value for its willingness to engage its audience, rather than merely sedate them with mild entertainment and easy answers.

The Seventh Continent is the feature film debut of Michael Haneke, the troubling and always controversial director of Hidden and The White Ribbon. This first film bears all the trademarks and preoccupations of Haneke’s later work alongside a deeply disturbing and challenging worldview. The Seventh Continent is the first part of Haneke's 'Trilogy of Glaciation', a term he was to regret, and is followed by the unconvincing Benny's Video and the repetitive 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.

Georg (Dieter Berner) and Anna (Birgit Doll) are a professional couple, each married to their careers and to the accoutrements of life. They are, as far as they know, content. The only thorn in their side is Evi (Leni Tanzer), their young daughter, who frequently pretends to be ill or blind as a form of rebellion from their cold and oppressive existence.

The film is divided into three parts, each following them through one day, one in 1987, one in 1988 and the last in 1989. Georg and Anna awaken to the sounds of the news, always another international incident, which they blithely ignore. While Georg dresses, Anna goes to wake Evi up for school. They all breakfast together before climbing into the same small car to be individually dropped off by Georg on his way to work. Anna writes a letter to Georg’s parents, detailing how fine they all are and how it looks like Georg might get that promotion after all. Back home, they have dinner and berate Evi about her latest outburst. Then they go to bed.

Their second day, in 1988, is almost identical, though the seeds of discontent appear to be growing. The third day, in 1989, details their desperate attempt to escape from the shackles of routine and consumption. However, the odds are staked against them and success, at best, appears unlikely.

In Part One, the critique is strong and convincing. By watching these people going through their everyday activities, it becomes painfully clear how tedious our lives can be. Part Two follows them in another day – one that could have been the exact same day as all the shots are similar and all the actions familiar. While this may sound almost impossibly dull, Haneke lends these events his usual intellectual weight. The shots are usually fixed, with the camera kept tight on it’s subject, so that the sight of Georg tying his shoelaces becomes a mediation on the nature of time, routine and obsession, rather than conveying character or space. As is always the case with Haneke, the passing of time is captured by extremely long takes, which may become tests of endurance to the uninitiated, but remain powerfully expressive nonetheless.

The fact that Haneke not only refuses to cut away from these activities but also shows them twice allows him to create something of a dialogue with the audience. Open-minded audience members are encouraged to engage with the film. By making us watch everyday details, by confronting us with the mundane without any of the usual comforts such as an exciting story or interesting characters, Haneke gives us the space to think about how we lead our lives. The Seventh Continent is certainly conversational, although it is one that is fiercely chaired by Haneke. It makes for a tough watch, and Haneke is certainly a malicious filmmaker, but the result is fascinating and persuasive.

With Part Three, Haneke gives us an alternative to deadening routine and capitalist consumption. Though Georg and Anna may appear content with their lot in Parts One and Two, Haneke uses quiet, ambiguous moments in which a dinner guest and later Anna burst into tears, without any apparent reason. It seems that though, on the surface, everything is fine, once the characters find a moment to reflect, they see things the way they really are. They realize what they have lost and how unimportant the things that have distracted them really are. Part Three shows Georg, Anna and Evi, locked up in their apartment, quietly resolved to sort their lives out. Intended as an attempt to escape, what they end up doing is destructive rather than constructive and it is pursued with the same deadening sense of repetition and routine that had made their lives previously so insufferable. Ultimately, desolation closes this profound and unsettling mediation on the way we lead our lives and the weight of a soulless, mechanized world.

Fascinating as it is, The Seventh Continent is not without its flaws. Many shots do go on too long, becoming merely a measure of Haneke’s own self-indulgence. Part Two is largely a repetition of Part One and somewhat labours the point. As in the majority of Haneke’s work, screens - televisions, computers, windows – are ever present, with the unhappy news of foreign lands constantly being ignored by Georg and Anna, uncaring precisely because they are trapped with their own problems. Though it is an important point, Haneke’s presentation of it may only diminish what is a vital critique.

The film also uses some awkward symbolism. Early in the film, Evi pretends to have suddenly become blind while at school. Though one of her teachers quickly outsmarts her, the metaphor is loud and clear. Evi may be pretending to be blind, but her parents actually are blind, only they don’t know it. As a result, the film is a little hectoring. Haneke would go on to make Funny Games, one of the most pompous and wrong-headed diatribes in cinema, so a touch of the polemic should always be expected with Haneke.

The Seventh Continent is a rumination, an artistic expression of malaise in which it’s characters approach freedom with the same deadening ritual with which they approached their dead-end lives. Critics of the film have suggested that it is merely an intellectual whinge without any real substance or message and that Georg and Anna should just get over it. However, the film was based on an actual case in which an Austrian family committed group suicide. The Seventh Continent plays as an examination of discontent, it is not, no matter how hard Haneke would like you to believe, real life – although it was initially based on an actual murder case in Austria. Not everyone can shrug off his or her problems and the film is committed to showing that the way we live is not necessarily for everyone. As a presentation of the vacuous routines and the inescapable entrapment of a modern, urban society, it remains a powerful work.

The Seventh Continent, despite its flaws, is an essential film for anyone who wants something more from their cinema. Not only will it make you question the way you live your life, it will also chip away at your preconceptions about what cinema is – art, essay or entertainment. Bearing in mind that, with Hidden and The White Ribbon, Haneke was to learn how to be subtle, The Seventh Continent shows an artist who is in the process of becoming the great filmmaker that he is today (that foolish shot-for-shot American remake of Funny Games notwithstanding) and is a valuable film on many levels.

So give it a go and tell us what you think.

Next month: F For Fake

Monthly Film Challenge Part 2: Un Chien Andalou (1929)

So, from an innovative science-fiction/ documentary/ philosophical treatise to one of the best known of the Surrealists’ films, The Monthly Film Challenge turns to 1929’s Un Chien Andalou, a remarkably compact sixteen-minute experimental work from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Unlike La Jetée, Un Chien Andalou is a surprisingly simple work in terms of what it is trying to say. Basically it is the story of a couple’s strained sexual relations and their eventual break-up. Underneath this is a study of how bourgeoisie culture, traditions and education block the way towards true love. What is challenging about the film, however, is the way that the message is conveyed as opposed to the message itself. The aesthetics of Un Chien Andalou are essentially like those of a dream, where the traditional means of telling a story are avoided in order to create a work that may seem practically incomprehensible; and yet is surprisingly clear.

The protagonists of Un Chien Andalou are presented simply as Man (Pierre Batcheff) and Young Girl (Simone Mareuil), just as they are in Buñuel and Dalí’s other great early Surrealist work, L’Age d’or. The film is less interested in them as characters, instead studying them as symbols. Man and Young Girl are meant to stand for all young men and women. The film is essentially divided into four parts, the first three separated by an intertitle that may or may not have anything to do with the events onscreen. There is little point in moving through the film and providing an exact interpretation on what happens in each section, since anyone’s ideas are equally valid as long as they’ve seen the film, but it might instead be interesting to look at some of the ideas thrown up by each part and how they relate to one another.

The first part is entitled “Once Upon A Time” and is only about forty seconds in length and yet it is one of the most notorious scenes in cinema history. It features a graphic close-up of a woman’s eye being slit by a straight razor. The scene was intended to shock a complacent audience, warning them that they will have to do more than simply watch the film – they will have to engage with it. Buñuel, who played the barber in this scene, is not so much attacking the woman’s eye as attacking his audience’s traditional ways of seeing. Similarly, the scene’s title and the imagery of the cloud and the moon suggests a fairy tale feel and brings about certain expectations in its audience. These are subverted by the famous match-cut in which the image of a cloud passing over the moon is followed by an image of a razor passing over an eye. The mix of beauty and brutality knocks the viewer out of their comfort zone and the film’s willingness to trick forcibly reactivates their brain. The viewer must think about the film critically in order to work out what it is that the film is saying. As the opening of the film, this section attempts to put the viewer in the right frame of mind to watch what will then follow.

“Eight Years Later” marks the film’s shift into its second part. As is typical of the Surrealists, this intertitle makes no real narrative sense, suggesting that there is a narrative connection between the homicidal barber and the Man and Young Girl to whom we are about to be introduced. Although there is a symbolic, or possibly even a thematic, link between these people, the intertitle is essentially meaningless. This section is by far the longest in the film and it is full of incident. We are introduced to Man as he cycles shakily down a road, wearing a ridiculous frilly costume and a box tied around his neck. We are made to take notice of the frills and the box by some very deliberate close-ups, showing that Un Chien Andalou does indeed have a reasoning behind it and that the filmmakers are willing to use traditional film language to communicate it. The overall suggestion is that the Man is sexually immature and effeminate. The Young Girl is the opposite. She is sitting at home, clearly ill at ease, her sexual desire for the Man, indicated by intercutting shots of her with shots of the Man approaching, all the stronger because it has obviously never been fully consummated. Her frustration is obvious – she throws down a book she is reading which shows a sexless image of a woman in a bonnet working at a sewing machine. When she sees the Man fall off his bike, she is disappointed again – the Man lies prostrate on the ground, useless. The film is essentially about sexual immaturity and sexual frustration.

The Young Girl’s frustration is suggested further by the highly suggestive sequence in which another woman tries to prod a severed hand back to life. A crowd forms, horrified at this open display of sexuality and yet they cannot turn away. Eventually, a policeman breaks it up and places the severed hand back in its box. This is Buñuel’s critique of the repressive nature of a bourgeoisie society, which is equally horrified and fascinated by sexuality and which needs a police force to keep them a check. This woman is subsequently run over whilst in despair at her suppression, the crowd caring a lot less about her violent death than they did about her sexual openness. This idea of a bourgeoisie society that keeps sexuality chained down recurs later when the Man, in a fit of an animalistic sexual passion, attempts to devour the Young Girl, only to be first fended off by a tennis racket (a symbol of bourgeoisie leisure/distraction) and then held back by the weight of two bishops and two pianos with dead horses inside them. It is clear what Buñuel and Dalí think about what the bourgeois culture does to man’s natural sexuality. Similarly, though the Young Girl openly wishes that the Man would gain sexual competence and even an animal passion, when he finally does she is terrified by him, suggesting that her attempted rejection of her bourgeoisie upbringing has failed. The film is full of suggestive and surreal imagery, which I won’t go through since the joy of this film is that it is entirely up to you.

The second part of the film is revealed to be largely the Young Girl’s dream – one that begins with her mourning the death of her sexual desire in the image of the second woman being run over by a car but which turns into a bourgeoisie nightmare of uncontrolled sexual passion. Though it can be understood in narrative terms as a dream, it charts the inner landscape of the Young Girl, laying bare her thoughts and feelings in terms to her sexuality and her thwarted relationship with the Man.

The third part of the film, beginning with the intertitle “Toward Three in the Morning”, charts the man’s inner landscape as he lies in bed and reflects on his own upbringing. A second man arrives and berates the Man for his frilly clothes and his sexual incompetence. He punishes the Man by making him face the wall – a typical school punishment, which, like a stream of consciousness, reminds the Man of his schooldays, the site of his education and the beginning of the repression of his sexual drive. This second man is revealed to be his younger, more sexually free self – as indicated by an image of his hands gleefully shaking a cocktail shaker, revealing his lack of concern over masturbation where before an image of masturbation was horrible and eerie, suggestive of self-mutilation such as the image of a hand infested with insects. In the end, the Man kills his younger self when two schoolbooks he is holding turn into guns. A comical funeral is held for the Man’s younger self.

The Young Girl’s own sexual death is considered next, when she sees a Death’s Head moth, familiar from The Silence of the Lambs. That the repressive nature of the Man might be the death of her is suggested when the Man removes his own mouth in order to resemble the Death’s Head moth. Reacting against this, the Young Girl uses her mouth to assert her own sexuality with a series of sexually suggestive gestures, from putting on lipstick to sticking her tongue out. Ultimately, she rejects the Man and leaves the apartment.

The fourth part of the film is not marked by an intertitle but instead by a surprising shift in space. The Young Girl leaves the apartment and is somehow now on a beach. Here, she meets a version of the Man that she prefers. Stripes have stood for a sexual maturity throughout the film, especially when the Young Girl trades the Man’s plain tie for a striped one just before his passionate outburst. Here, the Man is wearing stripes but he is also wearing typically bourgeoisie clothes as well, suggesting a compromise between sexual passion and social strictures that she can accept. He is initially troubled, holding up his watch as if he is aware that their days are numbered. She is not bothered and they embrace. However, their journey across the beach seems rocky and with his final intertitle, “In Spring”, which does the same to the viewer’s expectations as “Once Upon A Time” did earlier, Buñuel reveals that this marriage of convenience can only lead to death.

Though not thematically complex, the joy of watching Un Chien Andalou comes from the ability to decide what to take from it yourself. Technically, the film is brimming with invention and it is an exciting film to watch for the amount of ideas that it throws around. It has a conventional message – true love is thwarted by our repressive society – but it is far from conventional in how it presents this message. Just like La Jetée, it packs a lot into its short running time and it is one of the most innovative and important films ever made.

So give the film a go and tell us what you think. 

Next month: The Seventh Continent

Or see Part 1 of the Monthly Film Challenge: La Jetée

Monthly Film Challenge: La Jetée (1962)

This is the first of a monthly series of articles that will look at some of the more difficult films available. The series will be a challenge to those who think they know cinema – people who have seen A bout de soufflé and Tokyo Story and get both. The challenge will be to watch the film featured and then read the article and then watch it again – usually the first viewing will be unsuccessful, something I can vouch for by my own experience. These films are nearly impossible to come to cold, and the article is designed to assist. However, these articles are not intended to be the last word on these films, most of which are much too complex to be accurately considered in so brief a time. They are merely meant to be an examination or rumination on these films that are too often ignored or turned off halfway through. The opinions of anyone who watches the film all the way through is equally valuable and welcome. They are difficult films but they remain films that no one who claims to really know cinema can ignore. First up is a relatively less difficult film, Chris Marker’s 1962 classic La Jetée. Please note that there will be spoilers as I will be looking at the film as a whole.

First, let’s begin with what is generally known about La Jetée, a brilliant blend of the science fiction and essay film. It is a film composed almost entirely of still images, as admittedly is all of cinema. Terry Gilliam remade it in Hollywood as Twelve Monkeys and its influence was most recently visible in blockbusters such as Source Code and Looper. Recently, Sight and Sound placed it as the joint 50^th greatest film of all time. It is 29 minutes long.

The plot is as follows: World War III has devastated the world. The survivors live underground where they are under the control of a group of mad scientists who are experimenting with time travel in an effort to save the present with the help of the past and future. One man (Davos Hanich), who has a particular strong memory of a woman (Hélène Chatelain) from the past, proves the most capable of time travel as a result. When he is finally sent back, he falls in love with the woman, but when he attempts to escape the scientists tragedy strikes.

La Jetée is a masterpiece of science fiction, being both palpably otherworldly yet brimming with ideas about the real world. Chiefly, the film is about the nature of memory and of the cinema. The film’s still images present the idea of film at its most stripped down. The film conveys movement and action by increasing the tempo of the editing and by presenting out-of-focus snaps in place of more obviously framed and constructed photographs. The fact that the still images come to feel like a film reveals the mechanics and artifice of the cinema and how easily it plays on our minds. One later sequence in which the time travelling man witnesses the woman he loves waking up is most fascinating and requires a separate paragraph.

In this scene, Marker skilfully fades still images into each other, creating the impression of movement where there isn’t any, revealing that cinema, for all its drama and power, is merely the fact of two images melding into each other and creating the impression of continuous movement. However, there is much more to this revelatory scene that an exposé of the artifice of cinema. Throughout the film, Marker frequently equates images with memories. At the beginning of the film, the beautifully dispassionate voiceover of James Kirk (in the English version, Jean Négroni in the French original) explains, “This is the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood. The violent scene which upset him and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later happened on the main pier at Orly, Paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of World War III.” The use of the words ‘image’ and ‘scene’ where references to memory would be less incongruous consciously reference the cinema and its effect on our minds. The man is marked, hence, by an image/memory and it is precisely this ‘marking’ that allows the man to time travel, a strong image making for a strong memory. This is captured perfectly in the scene in which the woman wakes up. Here, the still images of the woman waking morph into the impression of movement, a strong static image being relived through memory.

When the devastation of Paris is revealed, the very nature of the black-and-white still photography used gives the scene the impression of authenticity, recalling real war-time photography. Marker reveals how easy it is to be taken in by images and how much trust we attach to them. The shift to the underground is matched by a shift into unnatural images as the film moves into science fiction, apparently leaving reality behind. When the man first travels through time, his movement into the past is marked again by a return to natural imagery, a peacetime landscape and a peacetime bedroom. The film comments on how the very realness of the images is what makes them all the more false in the context of Marker’s science fiction, creating the impression of a return to the past without the audience having moved anywhere. While Marker plays with the falsity of his images, his priority, however, is revealing the corrosive effect of images.

This is clear from the opening, describing a man ‘marked by an image.’ In the underground, the lead scientist always wears big goggles, that recall two camera lenses, and the man cannot time travel without a large eyemask. Memories affects human beings as images do, entering through the eyes and corroding and altering the mind. The scientists’ experiments have caused death and madness – with Marker showing one victim of madness lit from beneath, his hollow eye sockets lost in deep shadows, an eviscerated skull. The lead scientist with his camera/goggles may be using the camera as a defence against corrosive imagery or as a new way of seeing. Time travel destroys most human minds as it destroys the ability to distinguish between images/memories and reality, past and present. The man can only time travel because his memory from the time is such a strong image. Similarly, the sequence where the man first finds himself in what might be a museum is ambiguous. He is either travelling through time and through his own memories, the decay of the statues reflecting the passage of time and/or the vagueness of his memories. Later, in a second museum sequence, we will briefly see the man and the woman framed behind borders and set behind glasses just like the exhibits – as if they too are only items for a time since passed. The march of time is both inescapable and unknowable.

This is ultimately the conclusion of the film. The man travels into the future, which is better protected than the past – no memory brings him there. In the future, the man wears sunglasses constantly, as protection from or the result of strong imagery – an image that is not a memory becoming a present that is not a reality. Similarly, when the people from the future appear to him, Marker using scratches and blotches on the film stock to represent the fact they have traversed the fabric of time without the help of the image/memory but by destroying it. The people of the future are able to do this because of some unknowable technology, but the man’s own denial of time meets with a much more tragic outcome. The man returns to the pier at Orly in the end to re-live this childhood moment, to become a part of the image/memory of the girl that has obsessed him for years. However, re-living a moment of time is forbidden to him and his entry is brutally cut short. He is shot down as he runs to the end of pier, which reflects either the end of time or the jumping of point from which he will escape time. The march of time must go on and the man learns that there is “no way out of time.”

Ultimately, La Jetée may be a rumination on aging and the passing of time. The man wants more than anything to return to a site of childhood fascination and innocence. The child is there to be wowed by the airplanes and is instead wowed by a woman. The violent event that so “marked” this child reflects the onset of maturity, its destructive qualities emphasised by the immediately following devastation of Paris: “And soon afterwards, Paris was blown up.” The man’s attempt to return to his childhood and to “that face which was to be a unique image of peacetime [read childhood] to carry with him through the whole wartime [read life]” is fundamentally a denial of time and reality. The man’s death is ultimately the result of his inability to move beyond childhood, to accept the inevitability of aging and death.

So give the film a go and tell us what you think.

See also: Part 2 of the Monthly Film Challenge: Un Chien Andalou