Blow-up

In the late 1960s, a photographer roams the streets of the London in his Rolls Royce, stopping here and there to take pictures. Then goes to his studio, where models await him, then is off again. On the way he Read more

Love and novelty

What do we fall in love with? Personality? A face? A body? Can we isolate these parts of us from each other? And what is it that we consider self? ‘I cannot recognize the person I fell in love with. She changed so much’. Does this make any sense? May our personalities change so much that we become ‘other’ person? And what if we remain the same person but physically change so much others do not recognize us? Are we the same individual or not?

How does the process of growing tired of someone work? We constantly get tired of objects and covet new ones. Are individuals like objects? But, isn´t it that we may fall in love with each other because we are not objects? If we are not objects, how can we get tired of seeing the same face every morning, by our side, when we wake up? Where do we set up the tipping point, by which the feeling of happiness aroused by the presence of the loved one turns into fatigue? And, beyond this point, are we really able to go back in time, towards the moment it all started? ‘I love you more each day’. Can this really go on forever? Isn´t the contrary more likely, though?

What would we be willing to do to make our loved one to keep those feelings alive, as if in the very beginning? Up to which point could we change so he / she experienced it as a fresh start, a whole new story but with the same characters? Could we be willing to change phisically? Is this too much? Actually, we see this around us on a daily basis, and for the same reasons (many people voluntarily undergo painful physical transformations in an attempt to retain his / her love).

Why couldn´t desire for the same body stay with us forever? ‘I´ll love you forever’, we say. Why not ‘I´ll desire you forever’?

Find these captivating and disturbing questions in the astounding South Korean movie Shi-Gan (Time), directed by Kim Ki-Duk in 2006.

Photo: Hyeon-a Seong in Shi-Gan © Flixter.com

Tragedy and contempt

Paul loves Camille, but, somehow, he is not very keen or does not know how to let her wife know. They both are in bed, at night, in the dark. From time to time, Camille´s naked body gets illuminated by a brief flash of outside light. Camille asks: “Tu me trouves jolie?”. “Très”, he replies. She doubts. She wants him to reassure her. The camera caresses Camille´s back, butt and legs. She is gorgeous. We hear Georges Delerue´s melody in the background, or perhaps it is Paul and Camille´s whispering dialogue the one hidding behind the music. Paul Javel wants to be a ‘serious’ playwriter, but nevertheless has accepted to re-write the script for a movie now being shoot near Capri, directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a remake of Homer´s The Odyssey. The producer, Jeremy Prokosh, does not like the story as Homer wrote it, and he plans to do a “contemporary” film. As Ulysses in Homer´s epic, Paul will have to make a life choice, torn between being true to himself or engaging in a project he depises. However, he is more the antithesis of the Greek hero, as he is unable to make a clear decision regarding his work, his life and his wife. On the way, he risks losing Camille to the bon vivant Prokosh, as Ulysses faced the risk of losing Penelope to the suitors besetting her after he did not return from the war in Troy. Paul only feels contempt for Prokosh´ approach to the project, but accepts to get involved in it out of money. Camille´s love for Paul wears out. She starts treating him contemptuously. “Tu n´est pas un homme, Paul”, she scolds him. He tragically loses her, but eventually stays true to his “art”. Besides Homer´s The Odyssey, there is another classic literary parallel Jean-Luc Godard´s film Le Mépris (Contempt) apparently does not pay attention to, but which nevertheless resembles a great deal Paul and Camille´s tribulations, and that is the tragic story of Erec and Enide, written by Chrétien de Troyes in the twelfth century. While Erec sleeps, his wife Enide cries next to him, full with anger and contempt towards him, and herself as well. She recalls how her husband, her lord, is despised throughout the region for not embracing a career in arms and war, and staying home instead, totally devoted to loving her. Erec wakes up, and ask his wife why she is crying. Enide tells him the reason, how everyone mocks him for giving up the pursuit of glory as an armed knight, how everyone blames her for that, and the deep pain she feels because of it. Erec then decides to leave on a long armed quest. He will be a man, at last, but it will imply leaving her loved one behind, perhaps never to see her again. The choice between love and the search for one´s own place in the world will embody their tragic dilemma, as it constitutes Ulysses and Penelope´s, and Paul and Camille´s.

(This post is dedicated to Dhavar and his family, with my best wishes. A very good French movie does not change real life, but sometimes it may help endure it.)

Photo: Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard´s Le mépris, 1963.

Sorry Karl, I prefer Groucho

My coleague Kantor suggested some time ago we all should read Marx because he was both an outstanding writer and one of the greatests social scientists ever. Yes, indeed. I totally agree with him. In his amazing works, he portraits governments, progressive and conservative alike, as brutal opressors of the common fellow, who just struggles to lead a simple life and make ends meet, in marked contrast to the indecent life of sheer pleasure and luxury of the privileged classes. He also showed us the way to wipe up the long decadent traditions of the bourgeoisie, by way of completely devastating its parties, exhibitions and celebrations. No less important, he taught us how to undermine the authority of the repressive forces of the upper classes, such as priests, politicians and policemen, by continuously cheating and mocking the sacred symbols of their power. Consistent with his revolutionary ethics, his big plans to destroy the rotten culture and make room for something new used to end in caothic turmoil and anarchy, so we may well forgive him for his mistakes, like a little singing and dancing here and there.

Yes, a visionary figure who definitely showed us the way ahead, Marx… Groucho Marx.

Photo: Groucho Marx

Not so modern now

Watching Charles Chaplin´s Modern Times (1936), I wonder how accurately it reflects daily life in the thirties, at least for the average American people. Though it may not be the main argument of the movie -I think it points more toward the confussion and perplexity of the common folk in a whole new social and economic environment-, I guess it gives a rather precise portrait of the difficulties -stagnant unenployment, great numbers of working individuals living in sheer poverty, 12-hour workdays, repetitive tasks in the working line, a biased system of criminal justice- the working masses had to face back then. However, and contrary to what many collectivists would like us to believe, this is not the situation we witness today. At least in the Western world -obviously, in other regions things are quite different, but nevertheless their way out is just the same- knowledge is the main characteristic of labour markets. In developed economies -and let us not forget our modern socioeconomic systems necessarily grew out of the one Chaplin shows in his movie- aiming to produce high value goods and services, and whose markets strive to find out the tastes, needs and desires of a wide variety of consumers, independent enterpreneurs, individually taylored careers, and high skilled, flexible workers are needed in great numbers, and less so massive unskilled work. Paramount among other factors, this development has changed for good labour markets and industrial relations, often blurring distinctions between bosses and subordinates, thus making collectivist forces -trade unions, socialist parties, enemies of globalization, advocates of a much dreamed radically egalitarian paradise, and the like- look anachronistic and out of touch with reality, with all their rethoric of working classes vs. capitalistic tycoons and views of wage earners as common fellows crushed by the whimsical wishes of greedy proprietors. Very seldom tales of good and evil succeed in accounting for a complex world which is best described by its multiple shades of grey.

Photo: Charles Chaplin in the set of Modern Times, 1936 © Max M. Autrey

A great loss

Ingmar Bergman passed away yesterday at the age of 89 in the Swedish island of Faarö, where he spent his last years. Genious among the genious, every cinema lover should lament the loss of one of the best film directors and screenwriters ever.

Photo: Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman © Bettmann/Corbis