One thing that old Ludwig Wittgenstein got profoundly right was the suggestion that the meaning of language is fixed by use. What this means is that words have no intrinsic meaning. They are not defined by the characteristics of the objects to which they refer, they do not even need to correspond to actual objects in the world in order to have meaning, nor do they need to have clearly fixed boundaries in order for them to be useful. Instead, words acquire their meaning through the social context in which they are used. As Wittgenstein put it “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him”. We could not understand him because we have only the faintest idea of what the inner and social life of a lion is like.
Juste Avant La Nuit (1971) – Yearning for Submission
When Hamlet says “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” he is not pre-empting the modern shift towards moral relativism. Instead he is reflecting on the capacity for human thought to render moral judgement almost completely inert. He is begging for ignorance. Cursing his intellectual nature. Wishing for simplicity. This anguished reaction against an intellectual temperament is central to Claude Chabrol’s Just Before Nightfall, a film that strives to answer the question ‘When is a murder not a murder?’.
Les Noces Rouges (1973) – Rumour and Calumny
It is surprising how much contemporary French cinema owes to Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Huis Clos (1944). One of Sartre’s more accessible pieces, No Exit is set in hell and features three utterly hateful and narcissistic characters slowly coming to realise that the ultimate torment is not only to be stuck in an unhappy relationship but to be stuck in that relationship because one lacks the ability to either leave it or change it for the better. The worst hells imaginable, suggests Sartre, are the ones that we create for ourselves out of our failings and cowardice. Since the New Wave, French cinema has been dominated by what is sometimes called the “film d’appartement”, a film that is character driven and relationship-focused and which draws its drama from putting a bunch of people into a closed space and allowing them to work out their problems. Claude Chabrol is no enemy to the ‘Film d’Appartement’ sub-genre. In fact, you could say that he is one of the masters of the form. His mastery comes from his willingness to not only put incredibly strange characters into his apartment, but also to allow his relationships to work themselves out naturally, regardless of how bizarre or brutal the eventual denouement. Wedding in Blood is an excellent example of Chabrol’s approach to script-writing as it is not only funny and fascinating, but also merciless in its desire to turn a cinematic social experiment into a work of satire.
District 9 (2009) – Stand By For Level 3
Summer 2009 saw the birth of an interesting piece of terminology. Reflecting the success of titles such as Iron Man (2008), Terminator Salvation (2009) and the Transformers series, “robots hitting each other” has become a short-hand way of referring to the kind of shallow and crassly commercial genre film-making that is currently dominating Hollywood release schedules. Films not merely unintelligent but actually hostile to thought. Films designed to eliminate critical distance through the sensorial onslaught of bloated running times packed with explosions, violence and spectacle. Films that are the cinematic equivalent to the US using loud music to drive Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican embassy during the invasion of Panama. Given a cultural climate in which Hollywood is essentially using psychological warfare against its own customers, it is only natural that many of us should yearn for something more. Ever since the first trailers dropped, Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 has presented itself as a summer film with that little something extra : Science fiction that rises above robots hitting each other to become genuinely thought provoking and intelligent. However, the reality of District 9 is that what ideas it has are used up in the first twenty minutes, after which the film collapses into a mire of clumsy metaphors, poorly written characters and the kind of plot you would find only in the most hollow-skulled of video games.
La Gueule Ouverte (1974) – Part of the Furniture
One of the things that is most fascinating about Pialat as a director is that though completely devoid of sentimentality, his work also shows a perpetual awareness of the temptations that it offers. This lack of sentimentality applies abstractly to broad topics such as childhood but also, more concretely, to his own life. It is said that The Mouth Agape is one of Pialat’s most ‘autobiographical’ works but this is not a particularly useful distinction to make with regards to Pialat’s work as so many of his films – including Nous Ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble (1972) and Loulou (1980) – are effectively just dramatisations of real events from his own life. A better way of thinking about La Gueule Ouverte is that it is one of his more intrusive works. It shines a light into places where we would rather not look. An unflattering and unsentimental light right onto the death of Pialat’s mother and the lives of both himself and his womanising father. It is a film about death without being about loss and a film about grief without being about sadness. It is, in a word, pitiless.
Passe Ton Bac D’Abord (1979) – The Ordered Nature of Chaotic Lives
For his fifth feature film, Maurice Pialat returned to northern France to take a second look at the disaffected youth that inspired him to make his first full-length film L’Enfance Nue (1968). A spiritual successor to that film, Graduate First initially comes across as a work that is almost free form. A work that takes its pseudo-documentary, cinema verite stylings to their logical conclusion by refusing to place a coherent narrative onto the lives of Pialat’s characters. However, as with Nous Ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble (1972), Passe Ton Bac D’Abord is a film that draws upon a deep, narrative structure that suggests that, while the lives of these young people may seem chaotic and random, these are the kinds of lives that people have always lived.
REVIEW – The House by the Cemetery (1981)
Videovista has my review of Lucio Fulci’s Quella Villa accanto al Cimitero.
What surprised me most about this film was how genuinely weird it was. By the early 1980s, the Italian film industry was doing a pretty god job of milking the ideas from successful genre films. In some cases, they even released unofficial sequels to American films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968) and even Terminator (1984) – more about which can be found in the interesting if rather bizarre videologs put out by The Cinema Snob – Fulci was very much a part of this tradition and The House by the Cemetery was a part of a series of zombie films he made. However, with little money and much repetition of subject matter, these Italian exploitation films had to find someway of getting themselves noticed and this seems to have spawned a culture of genre-bending where ideas were crammed together in interesting ways regardless of whether or not they made sense.
This hot house of creativity stands in stark contrast with the stagnant and moribund culture of gay indie cinema. As proof, Videovista has my review of Chip Hale’s Mulligans (2008). A review which marks round 273 in my on-going battle with TLA Releasing.
REVIEW – Genova (2008)
Videovista has my review of Michael Winterbottom’s Genova.
I was not entirely convinced by the film and I thought its ending was a real betrayal of the film’s otherwise interesting concept (family drifts apart after death of mother). It was interesting to watch and write about the film immediately after Pialat’s Nous Ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble as I think Pialat and Winterbottom depict their relationships in ways that are diametrically opposed : Pialat gives us the spectacular views in a mundane setting while Winterbottom gives us the trips to the supermarket in an exotic and alienating landscape.
REVIEW – Nous Ne Vieillirons Pas Ensemble (1972)
Videovista has my review of Maurice Pialat’s splendid We Won’t Grow Old Together.
I absolutely adored this film, so much so that I went out and purchased the rest of the Pialat films that Masters of Cinema/Eureka have released. Aside from the fantastic performances and the brutality of the relationship dynamic on display, I was also struck by how much Pialat’s style is reminiscent of that of Claude Chabrol. Keep an eye out for more Pialat pieces in the near future.
Podcast Round-Up
Over the past couple of months I have been making the most of the improved median ambient temperature and doing quite a bit of walking. Where before I might have taken the bus or the tube, I now walk. This left me with something of an entertainment shortfall as while it is easy to read a book on public transport, it is much harder to do so whilst walking. In fact, reading a book whilst walking through London is very much like eating a roast dinner whilst sitting on a public lavatory : A combination of activities that is neither intuitive nor particularly healthy. However, One thing that all of this walking has allowed me to do is increase the number of podcasts I listen to on a regular basis and I thought I might share some of my favourites in order to a) encourage people to listen to them and b) maybe illicit a few suggestions from the people who read this blog.
Ruthless Culture 