tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101913352024-03-18T16:34:00.322+02:00Antti Alanen: Film DiaryAntti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.comBlogger5739125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-26453549680084387332024-03-09T09:11:00.006+02:002024-03-13T21:28:35.139+02:00Mark Rothko (exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2024) <div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZttoItPMrwIwFB2FQTXDTFVHa3xD4ROamukmgHZBBP7SqEsJmKJpLYCHaeHFX_9UTE2Cb4nsCSBiJY-SOCTSfSXGxQtT3_pUIaxGXKr7uTzUt5QJ3ooGvNZDSqFNFy_OafGuPz7nH-0HM7sGFmguQqHiBY3-SyqflmJVVzZ8T7xW4RQayibr_/s811/Mark%20Rothko%20poster.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="811" data-original-width="590" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZttoItPMrwIwFB2FQTXDTFVHa3xD4ROamukmgHZBBP7SqEsJmKJpLYCHaeHFX_9UTE2Cb4nsCSBiJY-SOCTSfSXGxQtT3_pUIaxGXKr7uTzUt5QJ3ooGvNZDSqFNFy_OafGuPz7nH-0HM7sGFmguQqHiBY3-SyqflmJVVzZ8T7xW4RQayibr_/w291-h400/Mark%20Rothko%20poster.jpg" width="291" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rétrospective de Mark Rothko à la Fondation Louis Vuitton, 18 Oct 2023 - 2 April 2024. The official poster featuring Mark Rothko: No. 14 (US 1960). Huile sur toile, 290,8 x 268,3 cm. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CR 679).</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikOUHfJ_WDUFsxRvljZthWk5A1T5WurbJGDnuIypK7DxsM3Rgej-cE_AZ6aAfCjAT3fx3dKbVlzGhAgcwtkfjvvTsKupC5ss3_T6orSqswOYaZPcsbldinhCil5sfFkyeqWyfHQjgdiLPpVUWbjVLBBMSC2GiGjyiqfpVcEarxB4LIOetAp9oW/s728/Catalogue%20Mark%20Rothko.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="667" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikOUHfJ_WDUFsxRvljZthWk5A1T5WurbJGDnuIypK7DxsM3Rgej-cE_AZ6aAfCjAT3fx3dKbVlzGhAgcwtkfjvvTsKupC5ss3_T6orSqswOYaZPcsbldinhCil5sfFkyeqWyfHQjgdiLPpVUWbjVLBBMSC2GiGjyiqfpVcEarxB4LIOetAp9oW/w366-h400/Catalogue%20Mark%20Rothko.jpg" width="366" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Catalogue: Suzanne Pagé & Christopher Rothko: Mark Rothko. Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod / Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2023. ISBN 978 2 85088 929 5. 316 pp. Hard cover. 29 x 31. Two language editions: French and English. Featuring the 115 works from institutional and private collections in the exhibition. The cover image (partly covered by a loose paper folder): Mark Rothko: No. 14 (US 1960). Huile sur toile, 290,8 x 268,3 cm. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CR 679).</td></tr></tbody></table>
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<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2UNahYuYbkqEu0ZFdZGzCqqPlHG6hI-D_Cm270IbMUYuoYgukv9pc-c0PbuiACAbufonF-xjfT3X9iP21QHXOSDA8ZbBXKLUI0InVT2rbwiYCZafvlfXV2gh3VaEtpwue6ob47qWH6DzFbACPEXhHgGM67XAM7t7aL5DsZemYN-FrtnQZdtC/s390/Fondation%20Louis%20Vuitton.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="228" data-original-width="390" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2UNahYuYbkqEu0ZFdZGzCqqPlHG6hI-D_Cm270IbMUYuoYgukv9pc-c0PbuiACAbufonF-xjfT3X9iP21QHXOSDA8ZbBXKLUI0InVT2rbwiYCZafvlfXV2gh3VaEtpwue6ob47qWH6DzFbACPEXhHgGM67XAM7t7aL5DsZemYN-FrtnQZdtC/w400-h234/Fondation%20Louis%20Vuitton.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 Av. du Mahatma Gandhi, 75116 Paris, Jardin d'acclimatisation de Paris, Bois de Boulogne. Architecte: Frank Gehry. Ouverture: octobre 2014. Propriétaire: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION:</div><div><br /></div><div>" <i>The Fondation Louis Vuitton presents the first retrospective in France dedicated to Mark Rothko (1903-1970) since the exhibition held at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1999. The retrospective brings together some 115 works from the largest international institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Tate in London and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and from international private collections, including the artist's family collection.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Displayed chronologically across all of the Fondation’s spaces, the exhibition traces the artist’s entire career: from his earliest figurative paintings to the abstract works that he is most known for today</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>“I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Mark Rothko</div><div><br /></div><div>" <i>The exhibition opens with intimate scenes and urban landscapes – such as visions of the New York subway – that dominate Rothko’s output in the 1930s, before his transition to a repertoire inspired by ancient myths and surrealism which Rothko uses to express the tragic dimension of the human condition during the War.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>From 1946, Rothko makes an important shift towards abstract expressionism. The first phase of this switch is that of Multi-forms, where chromatic masses are suspended in a kind of equilibrium on the canvas. Gradually, these decrease in number, and the spatial organization of his painting evolves rapidly towards Rothko’s “classic” works of the 1950s, where rectangular shapes overlap according to a binary or ternary rhythm, characterized by shades of yellow, red, ochre, orange, but also blue, white… </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In 1958, Rothko is commissioned to produce a set of wall paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant designed by Philip Johnson for the Seagram Building in New York – the construction of which is overseen by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Rothko later decides not to deliver the paintings and keeps the entire series. Eleven years later, in 1969, the artist donates nine of these paintings – which differ from the previous ones on account of their deep red hues – to the Tate Gallery, which dedicates a room in its collections exclusively to Rothko. this series is exceptionally presented in the Fondation exhibition.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In 1960, the Phillips Collection dedicates a permanent room – the first “Rothko Room” – to the artist. The room is designed in close collaboration with him and is also featured in the exhibition. In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organizes the first major retrospective, an exhibition that subsequently travels to several European cities (London, Basel, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, and Paris). In the 1960s, Rothko accepts other new commissions, most notably the chapel John and Dominique de Menil in Houston, which is inaugurated in 1971 and named the Rothko Chapel. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>While Rothko favors darker tones and muted contrasts since the late 1950s, the artist never completely abandons his palette of bright colors, as evidenced by several paintings from 1967 and by the last red painting left unfinished in his studio. Even in the case of the 1969-1970 Black and Grey series, a simplistic interpretation of the work, associating grey and black with depression and suicide, is best avoided.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>These works are displayed in the tallest room in the Frank Gehry building, alongside Alberto Giacometti’s large-scale sculptural figures, creating an environment that is close to what Rothko had in mind for a UNESCO commission that was never realized.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The permanence of Rothko’s questioning, his desire for wordless dialogue with the viewer, and his refusal to be seen as a “colorist” are all elements allowing a new interpretation of his multifaceted work in this exhibition</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>CURATORS:</div><div>Suzanne Pagé and Christopher Rothko </div><div>with François Michaud</div><div>and Ludovic Delalande, Claudia Buizza, Magdalena Gemra, Cordélia de Brosses.</div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: This is my first visit to a Mark Rothko monograph exhibition. I saw the collective Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2016 and there for the first time experienced the overwhelming presence of Rothko's magnificent paintings live, so different from examining illustrations.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>This is also my first visit to Fondation Louis Vuitton. The Frank Gehry architecture is great art in itself, the Le Frank provides excellent gastronomy, and the book store is well stocked. Located at the lovely Bois de Boulogne, easily accessible by metro line number 1.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thinking about great artists after WWII, this experience confirms my feeling that Mark Rothko is my favourite, particularly his periods since the year 1950.</div><div><br /></div><div>Seemingly about nothing, they are about everything, Simple yet unfathomable. The full richness of the painting is revealed only in a live encounter. A colour, in illustrations seemingly pure, is revealed in real contact in dozens, maybe hundreds of shades, gradings and variations.</div><div><br /></div><div>I congratulate the museum for the hanging that is also art in itself. The paintings hang slightly lower than normally. The lighting is subtle, almost dim, but just right. There is no glass. We see and almost feel the naked skin of the oil paint.</div><div><br /></div><div>The year 1950 is the turning-point. There is a new glow, a new radiation, like a light from beyond. Lux aeterna. Transcendence. The paintings are all about transcendence.</div><div><br /></div><div>The light shines through all the colours. When Rothko turns to grey, dark, almost black and full black paintings, the light is still there.</div><div><br /></div><div>The nothingness, the emptiness, the void has many meanings. There is the legacy of Kasimir Malevich's <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-centenary-of-black-square-by.html">The Black Square</a>, the zero point of painting.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is no explanation, or there are many. Death, including spiritual death, is one of them. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am thinking about the Biblical image ban. Thou shalt not make an image. Abstract Expressionism obeys the image ban, because there is no representation, the art is not figurative.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am thinking about what happened in the 1940s and what happened to art. If there is poetry after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, it can look like this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Outside the numbered galleries there is one more, the last stage, about <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-prohibition-of-image-my-lecture-at.html">the Rothko Chapel</a>, conveyed by a miniature and other representations. Having prepared everything for the Chapel, Rothko took his own life in 1970.</div><div><br /></div><div>Seen today, Mark Rothko appears as a counterforce to the deluge of images.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE GALLERIES:<br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE GALLERIES:</div><div><br /></div><div>1 Urban scenes, subways, and portraits</div><div>Mythology and Neo-Surrealism</div><div><br /></div><div>2 Multiforms and early "classic" paintings</div><div><br /></div><div>3 Open space</div><div><br /></div><div>4 The 1950s</div><div><br /></div><div>5 Seagram murals</div><div><br /></div><div>6 Blackforms</div><div><br /></div><div>7 The Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection</div><div><br /></div><div>8 Open space</div><div><br /></div><div>9 The 1960s</div><div><br /></div><div>10 Black and Gray, Giacometti</div><div><br /></div><div>11 And Still, Color</div><div><br /></div><div>HORS NUMÉROS Maquette of the Rothko Chapel</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-31955750833976793942024-03-02T11:00:00.360+02:002024-03-09T07:53:19.222+02:00Madame de Sévigné<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjimyqHL_ZZjbn-4MdmYBeQXwy6jdU1-2k3a-YjkbgtER_i_dMEJnOa9xJ-PlqSfPZ2URiB8YW7E1rZuBDL6AVNAZ5sQUVsMvK3OOmhlbxopLja0WAVLNdDxisspvyjh-j_yq5KNeqmpy3uGEYfXUjj8BO3Swm5PWUoI08hTP4VmeKt8upntaxD/s1023/madame-de-sevigne.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="767" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjimyqHL_ZZjbn-4MdmYBeQXwy6jdU1-2k3a-YjkbgtER_i_dMEJnOa9xJ-PlqSfPZ2URiB8YW7E1rZuBDL6AVNAZ5sQUVsMvK3OOmhlbxopLja0WAVLNdDxisspvyjh-j_yq5KNeqmpy3uGEYfXUjj8BO3Swm5PWUoI08hTP4VmeKt8upntaxD/w300-h400/madame-de-sevigne.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Isabelle Brocard: Madame de Sévigné (FR 2024) avec Ana Girardot (Françoise de Sévigné, fille de Madame de Sévigné) et Karin Viard (Marie de Sévigné, Madame de Sévigné).</td></tr></tbody></table>
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FR 2024. Sociétés de production : The Film ; coproduit par Orange Studio, France 3 Cinéma, Ad Vitam et Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma. Production : Michaël Gentile<div><div> Réalisation : Isabelle Brocard</div><div><div>Scénario : Isabelle Brocard et Yves Thomas</div><div>Photographie : Georges Lechaptois. Format : couleur — 2,39:1 — son 5.1</div><div>Costumes : Anaïs Romand</div><div>Musique : Florencia Di Concilio</div><div>Montage : Camille Delprat et Géraldine Mangenot</div><div> Distribution</div><div>Karin Viard : Marie de Sévigné (Madame de Sévigné)</div><div>Ana Girardot : Françoise de Sévigné, fille de Madame de Sévigné</div><div>Cédric Kahn : Monsieur de Grignan</div><div>Noémie Lvovsky : Madame de La Fayette</div><div>Robin Renucci : Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld</div><div>Cyrille Mairesse : la petite personne</div><div>Antoine Prud'homme de la Boussinière : Charles de Sévigné</div><div>Alain Libolt : le cardinal de Retz</div><div>Laurent Grévill : Bussy Rabutin<br />Benjamin Wangermee : Louis XIV</div><div>Niseema Theillaud : Mademoiselle de Scudery</div><div>Garance Desmichelle : Marie Thérèse d'Autriche<br /> Loc: " Plusieurs scènes du film ont été tournées au château de Grignan dans la Drôme. D'autres séquences ont également été tournées au château de Suze-la-Rousse ainsi qu'à Cornillon-sur-l'Oule, au Château de Fléchères dans l'Ain (salon de Madame de La Fayette), en région parisienne, dans les Hauts-de-France et en Bourgogne. " (Wikipédia)</div><div><div> Langue originale : français</div><div> Genre : drame historique</div><div> Durée : 92 minutes</div></div><div> Dates de sortie : France : 26 août 2023 (Festival du film francophone d'Angoulême)3 ; 28 février 2024 (sortie nationale). Sociétés de distribution : Orange Studio / Ad Vitam (France), A-Z Films (Québec)</div><div> Viewed at UGC Odéon, Salle 1, 124 bd Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 2 March 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>A novel to the film: écrit par Isabelle Brocard, illustrations de Violette Vaisse : Madame de Sévigné , ou l'excessive tendresse. Éditions Fayard, 2024 <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXEQuhn6HZ6xrq5dAM8A47-99XPhsO3Pa6Sxv0X2Kd3-BAul2hiyT1JXNTfhyphenhyphenjJRJY22VucrhydzExK-dN42-bg2SgPIA0osfcV9nU8CqdXwnT5vrfqpm0Q06F6IwZqmByOHrwFLakqB23DptXUvUClyxodVYSwc3D65HEP1o4ieJ-pVzbrmv/s562/Brocard,%20Madame%20de%20Sevigne%20kirja.jpg" style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="395" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIXEQuhn6HZ6xrq5dAM8A47-99XPhsO3Pa6Sxv0X2Kd3-BAul2hiyT1JXNTfhyphenhyphenjJRJY22VucrhydzExK-dN42-bg2SgPIA0osfcV9nU8CqdXwnT5vrfqpm0Q06F6IwZqmByOHrwFLakqB23DptXUvUClyxodVYSwc3D65HEP1o4ieJ-pVzbrmv/w281-h400/Brocard,%20Madame%20de%20Sevigne%20kirja.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Unifrance synopsis: " <i>In France, at the court of Louis XIV, the Marquise de Sévigné wants to raise her daughter in her own image: a brilliant and independent woman driven by the arts and literature. But, as soon as her daughter marries, she cuts ties with her mother and, to the Marquise’s despair, she takes pleasure in the everyday activities of a housewife. Away from each other, they start writing ardent letters. Mother and daughter will experience the torments of a singular and devastating passion. From this wreck, the most famous letters of French literature will be born...</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: The correspondence of Marie de Sévigne is a classic of world literature. In Gallimard's Collection <a href="https://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Bibliotheque-de-la-Pleiade/Correspondance16">Bibliothèque de la Pléiade</a> it has been published in three volumes edited by Roger Duchêne: « <i>On ne peut contester à Marie de Rabutin Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696), le titre de plus célèbre épistolière de France. Ses lettres écrites d'un ton libre et d'un style inventif nous introduisent dans sa familiarité et dans celle de son siècle. Si les lettres à sa fille, Mme de Grignan, nous la montrent mère passionnément attentive, on ne peut négliger le rôle qu'elle joue de témoin, souvent spirituel et amusé – mais aussi depuis l'affaire Fouquet, parfois inquiet et réprobateur –, des petits et grands événements du règne de Louis XIV</i>. » (Jacques Prévot.) In Finnish there is a compact selection, Kirjeitä tyttärelle vuosilta 1671-1694 (transl. Toini Kaukonen, WSOY 1953) and a more extensive one, Markiisitar de Sévignén kirjeet 1648-1696 (ed. Riikka-Maria Rosenberg and Ulla Tuomarla, 432 pages, Teos 2020).</div><div><br /></div><div>The letters open a view to the life at the court, the lifestyle of the aristocracy during le Grand Siècle. It is an age of Absolutism, Feudalism, wars and taxes, terrible epidemics, love and gambling. Freedom does not exist. The favours of the Sun King, Louis XIV, are the key to everything. This is the age of la Fronde, a series of brutal civil wars, with the end result of Absolutism fortified. It is an age of high culture, and La Rochefoucauld (Maximes) and Madame de La Fayette (La Princesse de Clèves) belong to Madame de Sévigné's circle of friends. It is also an age of corruption, social injustice and discrimination of women. Madame de Sévigné secured a position of independence by the early death of her husband ("at last I know where he spends his nights") and her knowhow in securing the rights of inheritance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Madame de Sévigné's letters were not meant for publication, but when they were, posthumously starting in 1725, they became a model for a new literary genre, the epistolary novel (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Goethe). An elegant touch, sharp wit, tough realism, a sense of play and a love of writing in itself are among the lasting values.</div><div><br /></div><div>Isabelle Brocard's attractive film opens Madame de Sévigné's world to us in authentic, natural locations, ravishing costumes and subtle performances by Karin Viard as the mother Marie and Ana Girardot as the daughter Françoise, who always address each other as "vous". <br /><br />The psychological intensity of the drama is based on the mother - daughter relationship. It is a saga of "l'excessive tendresse", the story of a domineering mother who wants to protect her daughter from becoming a courtesan in the court of the Sun King. She interrupts her in flagrante with Louis XIV at a fabulous costume party in the royal garden complete with fireworks - an intervention that will be never forgiven by either party - and remote controls her as much as she can. Françoise accuses her mother for having destroyed her life. Looking back, Madame de Sévigné sees a life that is "vide - triste - maltraité - abusé". She finds solace in nature, wading in the water.</div><div><br /></div><div>We experience the full scale of a woman's life from costume elegance to the agony of giving birth. Intrigues of family fortunes are literally planned like moves on a chessboard. The act of writing appears as a visual element, a trend in current cinema, for instance in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/04/hemingway-13-2021.html">Hemingway</a> by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.</div><div><br /></div><div>The visual design by Anaïs Romand and the music score express the baroque world, with inspiration from Nicholas Poussin. Georges Lechaptois shoots the movie in subdued colours. Florencia Di Concilio creates a lovely original score, blending seamlessly with vintage Couperin and Lully tunes. Lavish costumes designed by Anaïs Romand are integral to the experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA AND ISABELLE BROCARD'S INTERVIEW FROM THE PRESS KIT:</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA AND ISABELLE BROCARD'S INTERVIEW FROM THE PRESS KIT:</div><div><br /></div><div>Genèse et développement</div><div><br /></div><div>Le film est basé sur la correspondance qu'a entretenue Madame de Sévigné avec sa fille Françoise, comtesse de Grignan, et dont les lettres font partie des œuvres les plus étudiées de la littérature française.</div><div><br /></div><div>Le film raconte comment Madame de Sévigné a insisté pour que sa fille ne devienne pas une simple courtisane, l’empêchant de devenir la maîtresse du roi Louis XIV, et les répercussions que cela a engendré.</div><div><br /></div><div>Il montre par ailleurs l'influence que ses lettres vont avoir dans la vie de la célèbre écrivaine. Selon l'actrice Karine Viard. le film décrit notamment :</div><div><br /></div><div>« comment une femme comme Madame de Sévigné, une marquise donc, devient écrivaine à travers les lettres qu'elle écrit à sa fille, qui sont pleines de poésie, de lyrisme, de fougue. C'est l'éclosion d'une écrivaine, l'affirmation d'une femme et tout cela est très contemporain. »</div><div><br /></div><div>Dans la même lignée, la réalisatrice Isabelle Brocard confirme que l'objectif du film était également de questionner l'époque actuelle à travers la vie de cette célèbre épistolière :</div><div><br /></div><div>« L'idée n'était pas du tout de faire un film d'époque pour s'empêtrer dans quelque chose qui aurait un peu senti la naphtaline. Non, au contraire, c'est vraiment faire résonner des questions modernes, c'est à dire l'indépendance des femmes, la possibilité qu'elles ont ou pas de choisir cette indépendance. »</div><div><br /></div><div>Attribution des rôles</div><div><br /></div><div>Dans le film, Madame de Sévigné est interprétée par l'actrice Karin Viard. Interviewée à ce sujet, l'actrice indique avoir été emballée par le rôle. Elle déclare : « C'était une femme féministe à un siècle où les femmes n'avaient aucune liberté ». Elle ajoute:</div><div><br /></div><div>« J'aime cette femme pour son féminisme, sa modernité. C'est quelqu'un qui se bat pour son indépendance et a une fille qui est tout son contraire. Elle est sous l'emprise d'un homme plutôt dépensier, coureur de jupons et elle pense qu'elle n'a pas le choix en tant que femme que de le supporter. »</div><div><br /></div><div>La fille de Madame de Sévigné, Françoise, est incarnée par Ana Girardot, tandis que Noémie Lvovsky joue le rôle de Madame de La Fayette.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tournage</div><div><br /></div><div>Plusieurs scènes du film ont été tournées au château de Grignan dans la Drôme, où la marquise de Sévigné s'est rendue à plusieurs occasions afin de voir sa fille Françoise, qui était mariée à François Adhémar de Monteil de Grignan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Selon la réalisatrice Isabelle Brocard, ce choix s'explique cependant plus par l'ambiance particulière du château que par la volonté de replacer les acteurs dans le décor d'origine. Elle explique :</div><div><br /></div><div>« Le château de Grignan a été complètement reconstruit, un peu à l'identique au xxe siècle donc ce n'était pas une histoire d'âme ou d'autre chose. C'était plutôt la lumière du sud, cette espèce de minéralité de ce château. Il y avait quelque chose, qui, pour moi, devait se raconter là. »</div><div><br /></div><div>D'autres séquences ont également été tournées au châteaude Suze-la-Rousse ainsi qu'à Cornillon-sur-l'Oule, au Château de Fléchères dans l'Ain (salon de Madame de La Fayette), en région parisienne, dans les Hauts-de-France et en Bourgogne.<br /><br /><div>FROM THE PRESS KIT</div><div>ENTRETIEN AVEC ISABELLE BROCHARD</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Racontez-nous la genèse du film</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>La singularité du rapport mère-fille m’a toujours interrogée dans ce qu’il a de primitif, de constitutif de l’identité et de destructeur. J’ai lu des ouvrages passionnants sur le sujet, notamment Entre mère et fille : un ravage de Marie-Magdeleine Lessana. Elle y revisite le destin de couples mères-filles célèbres- Marlène Dietrich et sa fille, Camille Claudel et sa mère… - et consacre son premier chapitre à Madame de Sévigné et Madame de Grignan avec un discours très à charge contre la première. Ce chapitre m’a tout de suite interpellée : d’abord parce que, contrairement à l’auteur, je trouvais que la mère et la fille alimentaient toutes les deux cette aliénation réciproque ; ensuite, parce que me sautait aux yeux le poids de la difficulté d’être femme dans cette histoire. Les contraintes qui pèsent sur le corps, le destin, la liberté des femmes, sont en partie à l’origine de cette relation ravageante, et c’est encore le cas aujourd’hui évidemment. J’ai eu le désir de parler du présent à travers l’acuité de ce siècle passionnant qu’est le XVIIème sur la question des femmes.</div><div>Je me suis évidemment plongée dans « Les Lettres », et c’était comme si une voix incroyablement spirituelle et séduisante venait me parler aujourd’hui de ce lien brûlant, torturé, essentiel qui se noue entre mère et fille. C’était là, sans fards et sans psychologie : une blessure aussi vive qu’il y a trois- cent-cinquante ans. J’ai eu envie de l’explorer ; l’incarner… </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Vous en offrez une lecture très différente de celle que l’on propose habituellement</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oui, on voit généralement Les Lettres de Madame de Sévigné comme un témoignage sur l’époque. </div><div>On salue le style de l’écrivain, à la fois très libre et en même temps nourri par l’éducation reçue par son auteure. On s’amuse des commérages qui circulent à la cour et dans les salons. Moi-même, qui ai pourtant fait des études de lettres et enseigné comme professeur quelques années, j’étais un peu passée à côté. Ce film est, je l’espère, l’occasion de les lire ou relire : elles sont tellement modernes.</div><div> </div><div><b>Dès le début du film, Madame de Sévigné envisage un destin pour sa fille : une vie flamboyante et indépendante</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ce destin, elle l’imagine à la hauteur de l’amour qu’elle lui porte ; un accomplissement de ce qu’elle croit qu’elle est. Sa fille est belle et intelligente, elle pense qu’elle va pouvoir lui obtenir une place à la cour qu’elle-même n’a pas réussi à avoir. Elle veut son bonheur mais dans une projection d’ellemême. Madame de Sévigné vit à un moment de l’Histoire où une forme d’indépendance et de liberté s’invente pour les femmes - je parle évidemment des femmes de l’aristocratie. C’est l’époque des Précieuses, des salons, de la Fronde à laquelle elles ont beaucoup participé. Elle n’imagine pas que cette évolution de la condition féminine va être progressivement muselée au fur et à mesure que s’annonce le début du XVIIIème. Et elle n’imagine pas non plus que sa fille puisse avoir d’autres aspirations qu’elle. </div><div>Ce sont deux projections tellement contemporaines. Quelle mère, dans les années soixante-dix, pouvait envisager que l’égalité hommes-femmes ne serait pas définitivement acquise lorsque sa fille serait adulte ? En 2017, on s’est rendu compte qu’on était loin du compte. Quelle mère ne souhaite pas aujourd’hui que sa fille soit autonome ? Il y a pourtant des femmes qui veulent d’abord être amoureuses, mère, avant d’être indépendantes…. C‘est là la modernité incroyable de l’histoire de Madame de Sévigné et de sa fille.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Dès sa présentation à la cour, la future Madame de Grignan s’attire les faveurs du roi. Un évènement auquel Madame de Sévigné met tout de suite un terme, quitte à faire tomber mère et fille en disgrâce. Il faut un sacré aplomb pour s’opposer ainsi à son monarque</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Madame de Sévigné fait preuve d’une audace insensée : il y a pire état pour une femme à l’époque que d’être la maîtresse du roi mais elle ne veut pas de ça pour sa fille. Quant à Françoise, elle est prise entre deux mouvements ; elle est dans cette zone dangereuse où elle n’a pas vraiment envie de ce que fait le roi mais où elle ne lui dit pas « non » non plus ; on comprend qu’à son âge, elle ne sait pas encore gérer sa beauté et le désir des hommes, particulièrement celui d’un personnage aussi important que le roi : se sentir désirée par lui est valorisant, troublant. On devine déjà sa vulnérabilité.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>En mariant sa fille à Grignan, deux fois veuf, Madame de Sévigné songe à nouveau qu’elle offre à sa fille l’assurance de l’indépendance. Après deux enfants, lui dit-elle, il est temps de songer à sa beauté, à sa santé et à un retour à Paris</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Elle a fait un mauvais calcul avec ce mariage en se laissant éblouir par la vieille noblesse que représente Grignan sans mesurer qu’il est très endetté. Sans enfant de sa deuxième femme, il a une dot à rembourser -c’est la loi à l’époque-, sans compter les frais qui incombent à sa charge en Provence. Et elle refait un autre mauvais calcul en pensant que sa fille, une fois mère, va cesser toute relation conjugale avec son mari, comme elle-même l’a fait avec Monsieur de Sévigné après avoir eu deux enfants. Ses exhortations à la rappeler près d’elle ne sont pas seulement liée à la passion qu’elle voue à Françoise : les femmes risquaient la mort à chaque grossesse et Madame de Sévigné s’inquiète réellement pour la vie de sa fille. </div><div>Mais Madame de Grignan ne veut pas être indépendante, elle a besoin qu’on s’occupe d’elle, elle est incapable de vivre autrement. Pourtant, si elle préfère être dépendante de Grignan, c’est aussi que s’en distancier signifierait pour elle d’être encore plus dépendante de sa mère. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Comment décrire cette relation emplie de déception, d’incompréhension et de provocations entre les deux femmes ; à sa façon, Madame de Grignan n’hésite pas à provoquer Madame de Sévigné : elle fait circuler ses lettres, court les routes de Provence avec son mari, multiplie les grossesses</b>…</div><div><br /></div><div>C’est comme s’il y avait une troisième femme entre la mère et la fille – une femme fantasmée qui ne peut pas exister et les dévore toutes les deux jusqu’à les rendre malades. Ni l’une ni l’autre ne sont libres : elles sont enfermées dans leur relation et très égocentrées. Madame de Grignan pourrait tout à fait se séparer de sa mère : elle préfère adopter une posture de victime permanente, accuser, culpabiliser, demander de l’aide parfois…. Madame de Sévigné pourrait écouter son amie Madame de La Fayette qui la conjure de prendre ses distances et de cesser d’empiéter sur la vie de sa fille... L’une et l’autre en sont incapables. Elles s’aiment, et c’est ce qui est terrible. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Un amour obsessionnel chez Madame de Sévigné, encore aggravé par l’absence et la distance</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Il fallait au moins trois semaines pour rejoindre la Provence en partant de Paris. Le rapport au temps est un bon exhausteur de névrose… Ce qui est passionnant, c’est qu’il permet à Madame de Sévigné d’écrire un chef d’œuvre sur le cadavre de cette relation. Derrière l’autopsie de ce rapport mèrefille, le film raconte la naissance d’un écrivain.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>L’éclosion de l’auteure se nourrit de scènes terribles : cette petite personne que Madame de Sévigné prend sous son aile en Bretagne, qu’elle instruit, modèle comme si elle était un substitut de sa fille, et qu’elle finit par sacrifier devant la jalousie de Madame de Grignan</b>…</div><div><br /></div><div>Cette petite personne est très importante : elle témoigne mieux que personne de la situation des femmes au XVIIème siècle. Etant de petite noblesse mais pauvre, elle sait qu’elle ne peut aspirer à aucune forme d’indépendance, qu’elle ne trouvera sa liberté qu’en elle-même et que l’opportunité que lui offre Madame de Sévigné de s’instruire un peu est précieuse, inespérée. La liberté n’existe pas au XVIIème siècle. Et les conversations qu’entretiennent La Rochefoucauld, Madame de La Fayette et leurs amis ne traitent que de cela. L’indépendance ? Peut-être, à condition d’être riche. La liberté ? Non. C’est Cyrille Mairesse, déjà vue dans Les Chatouilles, d’Andréa Bescond et Éric Metayer, qui interprète ce beau personnage. Elle n’avait pas quinze ans quand on a tourné le film et déjà une maturité exceptionnelle.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Il y a aussi cette scène où la maladie de Madame de Grignan devient prétexte à la retenir en otage… La passion obsessionnelle de Madame de Sévigné n’a pas de limites</b>…</div><div><br /></div><div>La folie de sa fille n’en a pas non plus. Historiquement, on sait qu’elle a traversé une période d’anorexie mentale alors qu’elle vivait seule avec sa mère. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>La maladie est un terrain que vous aimez creuser. Il en était déjà question dans Ma compagne de nuit, votre premier long métrage, et dans vos précédents documentaires</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>En démarrant l’écriture de Madame de Sévigné, j’ai pensé : « Enfin un film qui ne traite pas de ce sujet ! ». Mais, vous avez raison, le troisième personnage est à nouveau la maladie ou tout du moins la névrose ; l'obsession. Pourtant, je n’ai jamais voulu être à charge contre Madame de Sévigné parce que je trouve qu’à un moment, elle réussit à se sauver en s’abandonnant de manière quasi viscérale à l’écriture. Elle lâche prise et devient véritablement un écrivain. Les faits me donnent raison : Madame de Sévigné est morte à Grignan ; la relation avec sa fille s’est probablement apaisée et elle a sans doute accepté que sa fille soit différente d’elle et de ce qu’elle aurait voulu qu’elle soit. Et elle est devenue, malgré elle, un immense écrivain.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Sans occulter les difficultés des femmes dans le mariage ou face à la cour, vous ne chargez pas les hommes. Charles, le fils de Madame de Sévigné, Bussy Rabutin, La Rochefoucauld …sont éminemment sympathiques</b>… </div><div><br /></div><div>Il n’était surtout pas question de les charger. Même le roi est dans son rôle de roi. En revanche, je tenais à ce qu’on comprenne à quel point la question de l’indépendance et de la liberté des femmes, et la toxicité des rapports entre Madame de Sévigné et de Madame de Grignan s’inscrivaient dans un schéma paternaliste dont tous et toutes subissent les conséquences. Grignan porte ça. Françoise finit par échapper à sa mère au prix d’une vie soumise à un mari qu’elle aime mais sur lequel elle n’a pas de prise.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Dans cette galerie masculine, Charles est le plus novateur</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Il est solaire, léger, tendre. Autant Madame de Sévigné est une mère terrible avec sa fille, autant elle est heureuse avec lui. Charles est l’un des personnages les plus libres du film. Il se lasse et se moque de cette société de cour où il faut plaire, dépenser, être en vue, tout cela dans un contexte de violence sociale. Il n’a plus envie de faire des ronds de jambes pour obtenir une charge et choisit de partir vivre en Bretagne. C’est vraiment un jeune homme d’aujourd’hui. Antoine Prudhomme de la Boussinière, qui l’interprète vient du théâtre. C’est son premier rôle au cinéma.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>En dehors des lettres, de quelles sources disposiez-vous pour l’écriture</b> ? </div><div><br /></div><div>Je me suis beaucoup appuyée sur la biographie de Roger Duchêne, considéré comme le spécialiste de Madame de Sévigné et auquel on doit l’édition des volumes de la Pléiade consacré aux lettres. J’avais évidemment beaucoup d’éléments autobiographiques, beaucoup aussi de courriers de ses amies et de ses proches – Madame de La Fayette, Bussy Rabutin… Parallèlement, j’ai lu un certain nombre d’ouvrages publiés ces dernières années qui donnent un nouvel éclairage sur la deuxième moitié du XVIIème siècle et sur Louis XIV. On commence à reconnaître que ce n’était pas une période aussi flamboyante que ce que le cinéma a voulu nous raconter. C’était beaucoup de guerres, d’épidémies terribles, d’impôts imposés par la brutalité d’un roi expansionniste et je trouvais important de le montrer, avec mes petits moyens, en arrière-plan -un labyrinthe pour évoquer une scène de cour, quelques cadavres pour parler de la révolte des bonnets rouges. Mais mon matériau de base est resté les lettres. Elles m’ont vraiment inspirée même si le film n’est biographiquement pas complètement exact.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Les volumes de la Pléiade en rassemblent plus de sept-cent-soixante. Comment choisir</b> ? </div><div><br /></div><div>C’était tout l’enjeu. Déjà j’ai principalement puisé dans les lettres qui recouvrent la période que le film raconte, une grosse dizaine d’années, ensuite, à force de les lire, de prendre des notes, certaines d’entre elles s’imposaient naturellement pour nourrir les dialogues ou pour exister en tant que telles. Il fallait raconter l’émergence de l’écriture. Le titre du film arrive assez tard, manuscrit, en même temps que la première lettre à sa fille. Karin connaissait les lettres par cœur parce que je voulais que, dans un premier temps, les lettres surgissent à voix haute, de manière organique, nécessaire. Puis, plus on avance dans le film plus j’ai recours à une voix off. Dans tous les cas, je n’ai pas réécrit les lettres de Madame de Sévigné, j’ai pris des libertés dans l’ordre où je plaçais les phrases, j’ai parfois utilisé plusieurs lettres pour en faire une.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Vous cosignez le scénario avec Yves Thomas</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yves est intervenu après que j’ai écrit une première version. C’est difficile de trouver un bon partenaire d’écriture. J’aime sa grande exigence, sa simplicité qui ne s’embarrasse pas de susceptibilité. On se challenge mutuellement. Il m’aide à retourner sans cesse à l’essence de ce que je veux raconter, à aller plus loin, sans facilités. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Aviez-vous déjà des acteurs en tête à ce stade</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Bizarrement, plus qu’à des comédiens, ce sont plutôt à des décors et à des paysages que je pense au début de l’écriture. Je visualise tout de suite les lieux où va se dérouler mon histoire : le château de Courances, pas très loin de chez moi, où nous avons tourné les scènes du Marais à Paris, celles en Bretagne et en Bourgogne ; le château de Grignan, un château départemental très singulier où mère et fille ont vécu, et les bords de Loire…</div><div><br /></div><div><b>C’est Karin Viard qui interprètete Madame de Sévigné</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Je ne voyais pas quelle autre comédienne pour l’interpréter. Elle était la seule à posséder à la fois l’âge du personnage, sa flamboyance, et l’énergie pour la rendre sympathique, y compris lorsque Madame de Sévigné témoigne d’une certaine froideur. Madame de Sévigné était connue pour sa séduction et la vivacité de son esprit : Karin a tout cela, plus un côté très contemporain qui m’intéressait. Elle est arrivée tôt sur le projet et s’est véritablement emparée du rôle, d’abord avec des questions sur les relations mères-filles, puis dans un second temps, sur les thèmes du féminisme, de la place de la femme, son indépendance. Karin, tout comme Ana Girardot, est une énorme bosseuse. Elle travaille énormément en amont. Sur le plateau, elle habite le personnage ; elle s’efface tout en apportant beaucoup d’elle-même, avec un très grand naturel.</div><div>Ana Girardot est également venue rapidement dans le casting : Madame de Grignan ne pouvait pas avoir une beauté froide. Il fallait qu’elle soit très belle tout en ayant quelque chose de très sensuel, presque félin. Elle se sentait très concernée par le sujet en tant que fille mais aussi parce qu’elle venait d’être mère. Dans le film, elle passe de jeune fille à femme et mère de plusieurs enfants, elle devait pourvoir apporter encore beaucoup d’adolescence et de fraicheur dans son jeu avant d’évoluer vers cette femme dure et brisée de la fin.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pourquoi avoir choisi deux réalisateurs -Noémie Lvovsky et Cédric Kahn- pour les rôles de Madame de La Fayette et de Grignan</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Leur double casquette m’importait peu. J’avais très envie de tourner avec Noémie. Son côté madone, sa beauté enveloppante et douce correspondait à l’image que je me faisais de Madame de La Fayette. On a envie d’être avec elle, on sent son intelligence. Et, à diriger, elle est exceptionnelle. </div><div>Grignan était difficile à trouver – il devait avoir à peu près l’âge de Karin tout en faisant couple avec Ana de manière évidente alors qu’ils ont vingt ans d’écart. Cédric apportait une forme de complexité : c’est un homme séduisant, il a une belle voix et, en même temps, on peut penser qu’il est un peu macho, un peu bourru, violent. Cela permet de comprendre pourquoi Madame de Grignan en est amoureuse et pourquoi il lui arrive aussi d’être malheureuse. Cédric apporte cela, il a cette épaisseur...</div><div>C’était intéressant de déplacer ces acteurs très modernes qui n’avaient jamais- sauf Noémie- « tourné » de films d’époque. On est au XVIIème siècle mais leur naturel nous incite à penser qu’ils nous parlent d’aujourd’hui. Cédric a été très cash. « Je ne suis pas comédien, on me prend pour ce que je suis », m’a-t-il tout de suite dit. Je l’emmenais ailleurs et il était un peu déstabilisé à l’idée de porter une perruque. Finalement, il s’est trouvé très heureux dans ces vêtements d’homme très confortables du XVIIème.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Comment travaille-t-on en avec des personnalités aussi contrastées</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Je parle beaucoup en tête à tête avec eux. J’ai gardé de mon expérience d’enseignante ce truc qui consiste à s’adapter au tempérament de chaque comédien comme je m’adaptais autrefois à celui de chacun de mes élèves. Je regarde les films qu’ils ont fait, comment ils fonctionnent, leurs forces, leurs failles aussi. Cela me donne des clés pour les diriger. Je savais ainsi que Karin déteste consacrer des heures à être habillée et maquillée : ça l’oppresse, il faut que ça aille vite, donc on fait avec. Par contre, elle se préoccupe peu de la façon dont elle va être éclairée ou de la place de la caméra, non pas que cela ne l’intéresse pas mais elle n’est dans le contrôle de son image elle est d’abord dans le jeu. Je voulais Madame de Sévigné séduisante mais aussi qu’elle ait son âge. Je trouve que Karin en fait une femme d’autant plus belle et forte qu’elle assume son âge. </div><div>C’était un tournage dur pour elle. Nous avons parfois tourné de nuit, il faisait froid et, malgré les efforts d’Anaïs Romand, la costumière, pour adapter les costumes avec des baleines souples en latex et les rendre un peu moins inconfortables, c’était une torture pour elle. Ana, au contraire, s’est beaucoup servie du maintien et même de la douleur qu’ils imposaient. </div><div>Sur le plateau, je répète peu et fais peu de prises mais je laisse toujours aux comédiens le temps de jouer. Je ne coupe jamais une scène et j’aime rester longtemps sur un personnage.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Aviez-vous des références cinématographiques ou picturales à l’esprit</b> ? </div><div><br /></div><div>Parmi elles, il y a Jane Campion, une cinéaste dont j’admire profondément les films, et tout particulièrement Bright Star qui réussit à rendre la littérature si présente. C’était l’un des enjeux de Madame de Sévigné : faire de la littérature un personnage.</div><div>J’ai visionné beaucoup de films d’époque pour le traitement des décors et des costumes- des films anglo-saxons, surtout. En France, je trouve les films historiques toujours un peu froids à cet égard. On n’a pas envie d’habiter là où vivent les personnages. Les Anglo-saxons savent rendre tout plus chaleureux, plus beau, plus riche. Ils ont- ce que nous n’avons pas en France parce que c’est trop cher - quelqu’un pour chapeauter la direction artistique. Anaïs Romand qui est arrivée très tôt sur la production, qui a un talent fou et connaît parfaitement le XVIIème siècle, a un peu joué ce rôle. Avec elle et Georges Lechaptois, nous nous sommes inspirés entre autres des tableaux de Nicolas Poussin.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>C’est la première fois que vous collaborez avec Georges Lechaptois</b> …</div><div><br /></div><div>Je ne le connaissais pas, j’aimais beaucoup le travail qu’il fait sur les films de Rebecca Zlotowski et j’ai beaucoup apprécié l’homme. Lui comme moi avons eu un parcours lent. Venant du Chili, il a dû recommencer sa carrière à zéro en France et j’ai senti qu’il était impressionné par la ténacité dont j’avais, moi aussi, fait preuve pour mener à bien ce projet - dix ans tout de même ! Georges est quelqu’un qui se met au service du récit. On s’est parfaitement entendus : nous partagions les mêmes goûts cinématographiques. Nous nous accordions sur le désir d’une lumière chaude, de couleurs un peu saturées, de clairs obscurs, de mouvements lents ; que ce soit vivant, très organique</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Le film accorde beaucoup de place aux extérieurs</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>C’est la grande modernité de l’écrivain qu’est Madame de Sévigné : elle est, avant Rousseau, un écrivain de l’extérieur. Dans les lettres qu’elle envoie de Bretagne à Madame de Grignan, elle ne cesse d’évoquer les paysages dans lesquels elle se promène, où elle s’endort parfois, où elle prend froid. Elle parle de son rapport aux arbres, aux saisons. Et puis c’était intéressant de montrer qu’elle écrit partout. </div><div>J’ai mis beaucoup de moi dans ce lien qu’elle a avec la nature. Par-delà cette confidence personnelle, faire vivre des extérieurs dans un film historique m’offrait à nouveau une forme de modernité. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Un mot sur le montage</b> ? </div><div><br /></div><div>Il faudrait deux chapitres au moins puisqu’il s’est déroulé avec deux monteuses - Camille Delprat et Géraldine Mangenot - et en deux étapes. On a commencé à monter dès la fin du tournage - trop tôt peut-être - et abouti à une première version, belle, assez classique, mais qui ne correspondait pas à mon désir initial. Camille Delprat, retenue ailleurs, Géraldine Mangenot a pris le relais. Géraldine m’a longuement fait parler de mes intentions puis m’a gentiment mise à la porte de la salle de montage durant quelques jours. A mon retour, elle avait monté dix minutes et j’ai senti qu’on y était : on était enfin dans ce mouvement que je cherchais. </div><div>Sans tout remettre en cause, elle avait réussi à trouver les à-coups du film. Restait une interrogation essentielle à laquelle je n’avais pas assez </div><div>réfléchi : comment inscrire ces lettres dans le montage ? Je savais lesquelles je voulais montrer, j’avais des plans de la main de Madame de Sévigné écrivant mais ça ne pouvait pas être que cela : à un moment du film il n’est plus seulement question d’écriture mais de littérature, on devait sentir que cette dernière prenait toute la place, d’où l’envie que les lettres occupent progressivement tout l’écran. Un processus de recherche passionnant. Avec ces deux étapes, je retrouvais la liberté de l’écriture : pouvoir mettre de côté, reprendre… </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Comment la musique de Florencia Di Concilio s’est-elle intégrée dans cette double séquence de montage</b> ? </div><div><br /></div><div>Là encore, ce second temps de montage a été une chance. Dès notre première rencontre, je lui avais confié mon désir d’une musique plutôt intimiste, ne mimant pas l’époque mais pouvant se mêler naturellement avec des musiques intradiégiétique, donc d’époque. Il y avait aussi l’idée qu’un instrument soit associé à la mère et un autre à la fille. La musique qu’elle a composée pour le premier montage, principalement violoncelle et piano, était très belle mais ne sonnait pas « juste » simplement parce que le film ne fonctionnait pas. Au lieu de me lâcher, Florencia, humainement formidable et qui n’a peur de rien, m’a juste dit : « Pas de problème, je refais tout. » Elle avait un engagement ailleurs ce qui m’a permis de chercher, sur ses conseils, des musiques qui me semblaient justes pour le film alors que nous entamions le second montage. C’est ainsi que cette flûte traversière et cette guitare se sont imposées comme une évidence -des vieilles tarentelles d’époque, des morceaux de tango argentin moins classiques, et même une musique d’inspiration japonaise ont servi de référence. Florencia s’est emparée de ces inspirations et a créé cette BO que je trouve à la fois très belle et subtile. On avait le film, elle pouvait en trouver la musique. </div><div><br /></div><div>MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ</div><div><br /></div><div>Marie de Rabutin Chantal est née en 1626 dans le quartier du Marais, à Paris. Fille unique, orpheline de père et de mère à cinq ans, elle a pourtant une enfance heureuse et elle reçoit une éducation très complète pour l'époque. En 1644, elle est mariée à Henri de Sévigné. Le couple est beau, brillant, mondain. Ils ont deux enfants, Françoise-Marguerite en 1646 et Charles en 1648. Entre les deux époux il y a rapidement plus d’estime que d’amour. Marie passe beaucoup de temps seule en Bretagne avec ses enfants tandis qu’Henri a des maîtresses dont la célèbre Ninon de Lenclos puis Mme de Gondran pour laquelle il sera bêtement tué au cours d’un duel. </div><div><br /></div><div>À 25 ans, Marie de Sévigné est veuve, une position sociale qui lui permet de jouir d’une grande indépendance. Elle s’efforce de restaurer la fortune de son mari, fréquente les salons littéraires, devient l’amie de personnalités importantes comme Melle de Scudéry, Mme de La Fayette, Nicolas Fouquet, etc. Entre 1663 et 1668, elle et sa fille sont invitées plusieurs fois à des ballets de cour et à des fêtes. La beauté de Françoise impressionne et la rumeur veut que le Roi envisage d’en faire sa maîtresse. Est-ce à cause de cela que Françoise sera difficile à marier ? Est-ce à cause de la proximité de Mme de Sévigné avec d’anciens frondeurs comme le cardinal de Retz ? De son amitié avec Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, son lointain cousin, embastillé puis exilé pour avoir écrit une satire des mœurs de l’aristocratie ? Sans doute un peu tout cela. </div><div><br /></div><div>Plusieurs projets de mariage avortent et ce n’est qu’en 1669 que Françoise épouse le comte de Grignan, déjà veuf deux fois et nettement plus âgé qu’elle. Dans ce mariage elle apporte l'argent, lui le nom… Très rapidement le comte est nommé Lieutenant Général de Provence par le Roi et il doit aller occuper cette charge prestigieuse mais très lourde. Il veut évidemment que sa femme l’accompagne et c’est le début d’une série de longues séparations entre la mère et la fille qui donneront lieu à une correspondance de plus de mille lettres. </div><div><br /></div><div>Seules les lettres de la mère seront conservées et publiées au début du XVIIIe siècle. Une partie des lettres de Mme de Sévigné avait été recopiée et publiée sans autorisation, Pauline de Simiane, la dernière descendante de Marie de Sévigné s’obligera donc à faire établir une édition contrôlée et censurée des lettres de sa grand-mère à sa mère. Après édition, les lettres seront brûlées.</div><div><br /></div><div>ISABELLE BROCARD</div><div><br /></div><div>Venant de l’écriture de scénario, et après avoir été enseignante pendant quelques années, Isabelle Brocard écrit et réalise des films documentaires et de fiction. Elle y explore des relations humaines complexes, des histoires de rupture et de transmission. Son premier long-métrage, Ma Compagne de Nuit, en 2011, met en scène Emmanuelle Béart et Hafsia Herzi dans un drame âpre et sensible. En 2018 elle achève Des trous dans les murs et un câlin sur l’épaule gauche un documentaire de création sur des enfants qui accompagnent un parent malade ou en fin de vie. Avec Madame de Sévigné, elle invite Karin Viard et Ana Girardot à incarner le duo mère fille le plus célèbre de la littérature française. </div><div><br /></div><div>LISTE ARTISTIQUE</div><div><br /></div><div>Marie de Sévigné</div><div>Françoise de Sévigné</div><div>Monsieur de Grignan</div><div>Madame de La Fayette</div><div>Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld</div><div>La petite personne </div><div>Charles de Sévigné</div><div>Le cardinal de Retz </div><div>Bussy Rabutin </div><div>Karin VIARD</div><div>Ana GIRARDOT</div><div>Cédric KAHN</div><div>Noémie LVOVSKY</div><div>Robin RENUCCI </div><div>Cyrille MAIRESSE</div><div>Antoine PRUD’HOMME DE LA BOUSSINIERE</div><div>Alain LIBOLT</div><div>Laurent GREVILL</div><div><br /></div><div>LISTE TECHNIQUE</div><div>Réalisation <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Isabelle BROCARD</div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Scénario et dialogues<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Isabelle BROCARD et Yves THOMAS</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Directeur de la photographie <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Georges LECHAPTOIS</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Direction artistique et création de costumes<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Anaïs ROMAND</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Chef décorateur<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Laurent OTT</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1er assistant réalisatrice<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Julie RICHARD</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Directrice de casting <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Tatiana VIALLE</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Directeur de production<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Philippe REY</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Montage<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Camille DELPRAT et Géraldine MANGENOT</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Prise de son et montage son<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Philippe DESCHAMPS </span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mixage<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Xavier THIEULIN</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Musique originale<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Florencia DI CONCILIO</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Production<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>THE FILM</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Producteur<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Michael GENTILE</span></div><div>Production associée<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>ARTURO MIO </div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Une coproduction <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>THE FILM, AD VITAM, ORANGE STUDIO, AUVERGNE-</span></div><div>RHÔNE-ALPES CINÉMA, FRANCE 3 CINÉMA Avec la participation de <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>CANAL +, CINÉ +, FRANCE TÉLÉVISIONS</div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>En association avec <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>COFIMAGE 33, LA BANQUE POSTALE IMAGE 15, </span></div><div>CINECAP 5, CINEMAGE 16</div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Avec la participation de<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>LA RÉGION AUVERGNE-RHÔNE-ALPES et du CNC</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Avec le soutien de <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>LA RÉGION ÎLE-DE-FRANCE, en partenariat avec le CNC</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Distribution salles France <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>AD VITAM – ORANGE STUDIO</span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ventes internationales<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>ORANGE STUDIO</span></div>
</div></div></div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-8488399952052722582024-03-02T07:26:00.060+02:002024-03-18T11:18:52.373+02:00David Bordwell remembered <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-nRJn08zX2i1bVsvvvpcfuk9RfPVeJ-P6ddkIcH51WXnJ0ILHkIJ42yWSl8UK1yJqxE510siPZb_4_zqxCNW0-NglmfOaLCDeZh89UAgJ79JaVszx_733LfSvi8uPJlCwMRVuVZWc4Gv-PBYyHX8q7JCmWCNlxNv6JVLl6yfMj8jK2063Nc5/s137/2024%20Bordwell.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="137" data-original-width="100" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3-nRJn08zX2i1bVsvvvpcfuk9RfPVeJ-P6ddkIcH51WXnJ0ILHkIJ42yWSl8UK1yJqxE510siPZb_4_zqxCNW0-NglmfOaLCDeZh89UAgJ79JaVszx_733LfSvi8uPJlCwMRVuVZWc4Gv-PBYyHX8q7JCmWCNlxNv6JVLl6yfMj8jK2063Nc5/w292-h400/2024%20Bordwell.jpg" width="292" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Bordwell (1947-2024), a central figure in film culture. His blog mugshot.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />Professor Emeritus David Bordwell died at home on 29 February 2024 from a lung disease, lucid to the end. His wife Kristin Thompson was with him. Born on 23 July 1947, he was a global figure and benign presence, respected across the international film scene, both in academia and among cinephiles, also film-makers, some of whom were his students. He was the Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<div><br /></div><div>Bordwell and Thompson wrote the major textbooks Film Art (1979 - 13th edition by 2024) and Film History (1994 - 4th edition 2018), whose value for global academic film studies is incalculable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bordwell practised close reading in his monographs on Dreyer, Ozu and Eisenstein. These works have lasting value thanks to their solid research.</div><div><br /></div><div>Written with Thompson and Janet Staiger, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production (1985) was another foundational work, as was Narration in the Fiction Film, published in the same year, pursuing cognitive theory and historical poetics in film studies. Together with Thompson, he developed an approach called neoformalism, based on theories of Russian formalists and emphasizing a cognitivist perspective. Poetics of Cinema (2008), its title honouring a major work by Russian Formalists, was a showcase of Bordwell's range.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bordwell did not suffer fools gladly and criticized speculative trends of 1970s film studies in Making Meaning (1989) and Post-Theory (1996, with Noël Carroll).</div><div><br /></div><div>An example of his global range and passions was Planet Hong Kong (2000, second edition 2011), another groundwork of film history.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2006 Bordwell and Thompson established an influential blog, <a href="https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/">Observations on Film Art</a>, with lots of new research and valuable contributions. From the blog it is also possible to access pdf editions of their out-of-print work.</div><div><br /></div><div>But they also published new work as online books, such as <a href="https://www.davidbordwell.net/books/nolan-labyrinth-of-linkages-davidbordwell-190211.pdf">Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages</a> (e-book, second edition, 2019). </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.davidbordwell.net/books/pandoras-digital-box-davidbordwell-120716.pdf">Pandora's Digital Box</a> (e-book 2012) is the best book I have read on the cinema's digital turn.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bordwell's last books belong to his best. Reinventing Hollywood (2017) and Perplexing Plots (2023) are inspiring and illuminating works about Hollywood storytelling and detective fiction, relaxedly authoritative, based on a lifetime of passionate commitment to cinematic narrative. In detective fiction, Bordwell discovered audacious and innovative approaches to storytelling, unsung in the criticism of modern / modernist literature. David was happy to read <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/02/08/a-craving-for-crime-perplexing-plots-david-bordwell/">Geoffrey O'Brien's laudatio of Perplexing Plots in the 8 February 2024 issue of The New York Review of Books</a> and to learn that his book had been nominated as a candidate for the 2024 Edgar Awards.</div><div><br /></div><div>Based in academia, Bordwell was also intimately familiar with the world of film archives, a frequent presence at film festivals and an ardent film buff, never losing his boyish enthusiasm. A born teacher, his inspiration to an ever-growing chain of generations of students was infectious. In close reading, his approach was exemplary, his empirical toughness and logical clarity a model even for those tempted by a wider license of interpretation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bordwell and Thompson celebrated their wide circle of international friends in joyous annual holiday letters. We miss the happy explorer, always curious, eager to make new discoveries. In the first row of Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato his spirit will be with us.</div><div><br /><a href="https://commarts.wisc.edu/2024/03/remembering-professor-emeritus-david-bordwell/">University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1 March 2024</a>.</div><div><a href="https://criticafterdark.blogspot.com/2024/03/david-bordwell-1947-2024.html">Noel Vera</a>, 1 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.indiewire.com/news/obituary/david-bordwell-dead-film-scholar-1234959386/">Christian Blauvelt (Indiewire)</a>, 1 March 2024 .<br /><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/1b49wpu/david_bordwell_1947_2024_the_man_who_laid_the/">r/blankies, evandav13 (Reddit)</a>, 1 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/obituaries-people-news/david-bordwell-dead-film-scholar-1235928350/">Diego Ramos Bechara (Variety), 2 March 2024</a>.</div><div><a href="https://www.morirenvenecia.com.ar/2024/03/adios-david-bordwell-insuperable.html">Carolina Giudici (Morir en Venecia)</a>, 2 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www-nrc-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/2024/03/02/legendarisch-filmwetenschapper-david-bordwell-ging-het-niet-om-politiek-of-psychologie-maar-om-film-alleen-a4191862?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc">Dana Linssen (NRC)</a>, 2 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://offscreen.com/notes/view/david-bordwell-1947-feb-29-2024">Off Screen</a>, 2 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/david-bordwell-99559564">Michael Sicinsci (Patreon)</a>, 2 March 2024.</div><div><a href="https://mikemirasol.com/2024/03/02/farewell-david-bordwell/">Michael Mirasol (The Flipcritic)</a>, 2 March 2024.</div><div><a href="https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2024/03/02/">David Cairns (Shadowplay)</a>, 2 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2024/03/03/gone-but-far-from-forgotten/">Kristin Thompson</a>, 3 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/eye-on-the-screen-david-bordwell-1947-2024">Matt Zoller Seitz (RogerEbert.com)</a>, 3 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.jolie-bobine.fr/eye-on-the-screen-david-bordwell-1947-2024-mzs">Jolie Bobine</a>, 3 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://montagesmagazine.com/2024/03/mesmerised-by-the-movies-an-interview-with-david-bordwell/">Dag Sødtholt</a> (Montages Magazine), 4 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8404-remembering-david-bordwell">David Hudson</a>, 5 March 2024.</div><div><a href="https://medium.com/@guruannamalai29/eye-on-the-screen-david-bordwell-1947-2024-1ec25d291329">Moviemaniyack (Medium)</a>, 4 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.filmmuseum.at/jart/prj3/filmmuseum/main.jart?rel=de&content-id=1466964387637&news_id=1709636537314">Österreichisches Filmmuseum</a> (ES), 6 March 2024 .<br /><a href="http://www.giornatedelcinemamuto.it/en/le-giornate-del-cinema-muto-piangono-la-scomparsa-dello-storico-e-teorico-del-cinema-david-bordwell/">Le Giornate del Cinema Muto</a>, 6 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.newcityfilm.com/2024/03/07/talking-screens-march-8-14-2024-rip-david-bordwell/">Ray Pride</a>, 7 March 2024 .</div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/movies/david-bordwell-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1">Michael S. Rosenwald</a>, 8 March 2024.</div><div><a href="https://www.locarnofestival.ch/news/2024/03/remembering-david-bordwell.html">Locarno Film Festival: Christopher Small, Kevin B. Lee, Giona A. Nazzaro</a>, 8 March 2024.</div><div><a href="https://itpworld.online/2024/03/11/some-thoughts-on-the-film-studies-legacy-of-david-bordwell/">Roy Stafford</a>, 11 March 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1i9dTwqSPkJ52OK83TfHkjNERdiiJ9Rwf9oR5_TOlI_m8ikBnFN2EKhm_iBmOkszJ5dislDnqRf2hxtsqtzBrLHIYoT_FQs5mcB6P8hjCubSPGEDM3n73PmmX_k8Y3RV_q7meo_sZmME3DLdDfaf-QAWyqefdk60_w8Y_tXdMtOkLL8-pVxY/s2304/2004.09.19.%20Matti%20Lukkarila%20IMGP1708.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1728" data-original-width="2304" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1i9dTwqSPkJ52OK83TfHkjNERdiiJ9Rwf9oR5_TOlI_m8ikBnFN2EKhm_iBmOkszJ5dislDnqRf2hxtsqtzBrLHIYoT_FQs5mcB6P8hjCubSPGEDM3n73PmmX_k8Y3RV_q7meo_sZmME3DLdDfaf-QAWyqefdk60_w8Y_tXdMtOkLL8-pVxY/s320/2004.09.19.%20Matti%20Lukkarila%20IMGP1708.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Bordwell in Helsinki, 19 Sep 2004. Pia Tikka, AA, DB. Photo: Matti Lukkarila.</td></tr></tbody></table>
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</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTS0I5seEcJ1R50HWNZFHRGWhSU1QVGYzKXt85-vDqFRvkgulzmvcVG9d8bkPsk2U2K4zJJ7AEuxLDCtdg9qFIOsL7Qg-YLqlqtepm20tAT_rmnNtdQfGY1YcZZCY3o24hJV7AccxdnmhaWt8YEvmSaIepW2Z-ly5AmA735atXvfF-fHq1XlK/s2304/2004.09.19.%20Matti%20Lukkarila%20IMGP1711.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1728" data-original-width="2304" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnTS0I5seEcJ1R50HWNZFHRGWhSU1QVGYzKXt85-vDqFRvkgulzmvcVG9d8bkPsk2U2K4zJJ7AEuxLDCtdg9qFIOsL7Qg-YLqlqtepm20tAT_rmnNtdQfGY1YcZZCY3o24hJV7AccxdnmhaWt8YEvmSaIepW2Z-ly5AmA735atXvfF-fHq1XlK/w400-h300/2004.09.19.%20Matti%20Lukkarila%20IMGP1711.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Bordwell in Helsinki, 19 Sep 2004. Matti Lukkarila, AA, DB, Henry Bacon (1957-2022), Sirpa Hintikka (U.S. Embassy).</td></tr></tbody></table>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-68843894883144430082024-02-24T17:40:00.317+02:002024-02-28T10:51:51.736+02:00Autobiography<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQpeZosI7RP9VOxtQ15Z1XdUgQv_VMyU6eBVBecJJ3GhlUeUnpm_ZAOsJsBbWkH1RN4219xssRX_xtjiuKX5wxi_Quq6r22jnqbELecuZW24QbBEUsJddMIgk4bm35YCgjNkDHBWTtqXUBspz9xf2JkKClwi9GQZHJCRD1vPInmxx0dATjjvN/s1024/Autobiography%20good.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQpeZosI7RP9VOxtQ15Z1XdUgQv_VMyU6eBVBecJJ3GhlUeUnpm_ZAOsJsBbWkH1RN4219xssRX_xtjiuKX5wxi_Quq6r22jnqbELecuZW24QbBEUsJddMIgk4bm35YCgjNkDHBWTtqXUBspz9xf2JkKClwi9GQZHJCRD1vPInmxx0dATjjvN/w300-h400/Autobiography%20good.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Makbul Mubarak: Autobiography (Indonesia 2022) starring Kevin Ardilova (Muhammad Rakib) and <span style="text-align: left;">Arswendy Bening Swara (Purnawinata)</span>.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br /><div>Le Pion du général / Autobiography [Swedish title].</div><div> 2022. Country:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Indonesia, France, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Philippines, Qatar. Production: KawanKawan Media (Yulia Evina Bhara), In Vivo Films, Potocol, Staron Film, Cinematografica Philippines, NiKo Film, FOCUSED equipment, Partisipasi Indonesia</div><div> Director:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Makbul Mubarak</div><div>Screenplay:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Makbul Mubarak</div><div>Cinematographer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Wojciech Staroń</div><div>Production Designer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sigit D. Pratama</div><div>Music: Bani Haykal</div><div>Sound:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>L. H. Aim Adinegara, Waldir Xavier, Rémi Crouzet, Jean-Guy Veran, Hadrianus Eko</div><div></div><div>Editor:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Carlo Francisco Manatad</div><div> Cast / Pemeran (Indonesian Wikipedia):</div><div><div>Kevin Ardilova / sebagai Muhammad Rakib</div><div>Arswendy Bening Swara / sebagai Purnawinata</div><div>Yusuf Mahardika / sebagai Agus Muwardi</div><div>Lukman Sardi / sebagai Soewito</div><div>Yudi Ahmad Tajudin / sebagai Nala</div><div>Rukman Rosadi / sebagai Amir</div><div>Haru Sandra / sebagai Andri</div><div>Mardiko Agus Nugroho / sebagai Sersan</div><div>Kun Baehaqi Almas / sebagai pegawai pemerintahan</div><div>Achmad Agus Budi / sebagai Haris</div><div>Gondo Lifenya Kusuma Dewi / sebagai Irma</div><div>Ibnu Widodo / sebagai Galih</div><div>Gunawan Maryanto / sebagai kuli bangunan 1</div><div>Reza Fahri / sebagai kuli bangunan 2</div><div>Arya Sweta / sebagai kuli bangunan 3</div><div>Ganesya / sebagai kuli bangunan 4</div><div>Iwan Siswoyo / sebagai Hendrik</div><div>Dewi Qurrota'ayun / sebagai perawat</div><div>Doris Khoirum Sasna Bakhtiar / sebagai Juan</div><div>Muhammad Fauzi / sebagai Imam</div><div>Watie Wibowo / sebagai istri Purna</div><div>Siti Fauziah / sebagai penjual kartu ponsel</div></div><div> Loc: Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia.</div><div> Language:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Indonesian.</div><div> The original title of the film is in English. The opening and final credits are only in English, the main title card only in French.</div><div><div> 115 min</div><div> Festival premiere: Venice, Horizons program, 2 Sep 2022 - FIPRESCI Award for Best Film in sections outside main competition. World sales: Alpha Violet.</div><div> Indonesian premiere: 19 Jan 2023.</div><div> Finnish festival premiere: Helsinki Cine Aasia, 17 March 2023.</div><div> Indonesian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards (2024).</div><div> French premiere: 21 Feb 2024, distributed by Alpha Violet, sous-titres francais Mimi Bonnetto, Anouk --- (name flashed by too fast).</div><div> Viewed at Arlequin, Salle 3, 76 rue de Rennes, 75006 Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Saint-Sulpice, 24 Feb 2024.</div><div> </div><div>ARLEQUIN INTRODUCTION</div></div><div>" <i>Le jeune Rakib travaille comme seul employé de maison dans le manoir de Purna, un général à la retraite, aussi craint que respecté, et dont la famille est servie par celle de Rakib depuis des générations. Lorsque Purna se présente aux élections de la mairie locale, Rakib découvre un mentor et un père de substitution qu’il défendra à tout prix, jusqu’à ce qu’il soit déchiré entre la loyauté et la justice…</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div>SYNOPSIS (VENICE)</div><div>" <i>With his father in prison and his brother abroad for work, young Rakib works as the lone housekeeper in an empty mansion belonging to Purna, a retired general whose family Rakib’s clan have served for centuries in a rural Indonesian town. After Purna returns home to start his mayoral election campaign, Rakib bonds with the older man, who becomes a close mentor and father figure, and finds his calling as Purna’s assistant in work and life. When Purna’s election poster is found vandalised one day, Rakib doesn’t hesitate to track down the culprit, kicking off an escalating chain of violence...</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div>DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT (VENICE)</div><div>" <i>Throughout three decades of Indonesia’s military dictatorship from the mid-Sixties to the late-Nineties, my father worked as a civil servant under the regime. I grew up discerning his loyalty to the state as something that seemed inherent to my family’s life. I learnt, by observing him, that loyalty is what makes a person honorable: a principle that I considered to be very true and, at that point in time, satisfyingly rewarding. However, as I grew up, a question began to haunt me: is loyalty still honorable if and when it is pledged to something monstrous? If we annul our loyalty to them, would this be considered a betrayal? Or a fight for justice? And therefore, would this make us a good or a bad person? Autobiography is an emotional inquiry into my adolescence, my country, and to the values that I was raised with—which are still being taught everywhere even to this day, twenty-four years after the collapse of the dictatorship. In a society with such a repressed history, what does it take to be able to call oneself ‘a good person’?</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div>Motto: "How far does loyalty go?"</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: In his debut feature film, Makbul Mubarak starts gently observing everyday life on East Java, Indonesia, and from seemingly small pieces we figure out key issues of the society in general. Better access to electricity is needed, therefore a power plant would be essential, but issues of land ownership are controversial. </div><div><br /></div><div>Upon retirement, Purna, a general, returns to his childhood home. He commands respect and cuts a towering figure in the upcoming elections where hydropower will be the greatest issue.</div><div><br /></div><div>The teenager Rakib becomes his housekeeper and assistant, and Purna becomes his mentor and father figure since the real father sits in prison. Purna teaches Rakib to shoot, and they play chess together.</div><div><br /></div><div>Purna is touchy about his election campaign posters, and when he over-reacts in the most horrible way to a transgression of Agib, Rakib's friend, Rakib wants to distance himself, resign and even escape, but Purna does not let him go. Purna's vicinity turns oppressive, and Rakib reaches the limit. The outcome is unorthodox and gives food for thought.</div><div><br /></div><div>Symbolically, Autobiography is a <i>Vatermord </i>saga, told in an original way. The story is illuminating about the history of violence in Indonesia. Indonesia is famous as the site of one of the most brutal massacres of the 20th century, when the Free World toppled Sukarno, the leader of the fight for Indonesian independence against Dutch colonialism, and we murdered maybe millions of his followers to protect our financial interests. The story has been covered in films ranging from The Year of Living Dangerously to Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence).</div><div><br /></div><div>The sense of place is quietly compelling and essential to the fabula. The final funeral sequence is unexpected and unsettling, and the final song is deeply moving. I would love to find the soundtrack.</div><div><br /></div><div>FROM INDONESIAN WIKIPEDIA:</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>FROM INDONESIAN WIKIPEDIA:</div><div><br /></div><div>Wikipedia Ensiklopedia Bebas</div><div>Dari Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia, ensiklopedia bebas</div><div>Autobiography (film)</div><div><br /></div><div>Sutradara<span style="white-space: pre;"> / </span>Makbul Mubarak</div><div>Produser<span style="white-space: pre;"> / </span>Yulia Evina Bhara</div><div>Ditulis oleh / Makbul Mubarak</div><div>Penata musik<span style="white-space: pre;"> / </span>Bani Haykal</div><div>Sinematografer<span style="white-space: pre;"> / </span>Wojciech Staroń</div><div>Penyunting<span style="white-space: pre;"> / </span>Carlo Francisco Manatad</div><div>Perusahaan</div><div>produksi<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div>KawanKawan Media</div><div>Tanggal rilis<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div>2 September 2022 (Venesia)</div><div>29 November 2022 (JAFF)</div><div>19 Januari 2023 (Indonesia)</div><div>13 April 2023 (Prime Video)</div><div>Durasi<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>115 menit</div><div>Negara<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Indonesia</div><div>Bahasa<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bahasa Indonesia</div><div><br /></div><div>Autobiography adalah film drama cerita seru Indonesia tahun 2022 yang disutradarai oleh Makbul Mubarak, sekaligus debutnya dalam penyutradaraan film panjang. Film produksi KawanKawan Media ini dibintangi oleh Kevin Ardilova, Arswendy Bening Swara, dan Yusuf Mahardika. Autobiography tayang perdana secara internasional di Festival Film Venesia pada 2 September 2022. Selain itu, film ini diputar pada sejumlah festival film dunia, seperti Festival Film Internasional Toronto, Festival Film Internasional Busan, dan Festival Film Internasional Stockholm.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sinopsis</div><div>Rakib bekerja menjaga rumah kosong milik seorang pensiunan bernama Purna. Suatu hari, Purna pulang kampung untuk mencalonkan diri menjadi bupati di daerah kampungnya. Rumah yang Rakib jaga kini tidak lagi kosong. Setiap hari, ia menemani Purna ketika melaksanakan sejumlah kegiatan sebagai calon bupati, termasuk berkampanye dan memasang spanduk. Rakib melihat sosok seorang ayah yang ia dambakan dalam diri Purna, hingga sebuah kejadian tak terduga mengubah semua pandangannya tersebut.</div><div><br /></div><div>Produksi</div><div>Pengembangan dan penulisan</div><div>Naskah film Autobiography dikembangkan sejak 2017. Proyek film ini pertama kali dipresentasikan pada Torino Film Lab 2017.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pendanaan utama Autobiography diperoleh dari Locarno Film Festival yang mendapat sebesar 50.000 CHF atau sekitar Rp734.000.000.[butuh rujukan] Film ini juga mendapat dukungan dari sejumlah program pendanaan dan produksi dari berbagai negara, di antaranya Singapura, Polandia, Jepang, Thailand, Jerman, Perancis, dan Filipina. Film ini juga merupakan salah satu dari 22 penerima bantuan pemerintah Kementerian Pariwisata dan Ekonomi Kreatif Republik Indonesia untuk promosi film sebesar Rp 1,5 miliar dalam lingkup program Pemulihan Ekonomi Nasional (PEN) akibat pandemi Covid-19 di Indonesia.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sutradara film, Makbul Mubarak, mengungkapkan titel Autobiography berangkat dari relasi personal Makbul dengan ayahnya saat ia masih kanak-kanak.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pengambilan gambar</div><div>Pengambilan gambar Autobiography dilakukan utamanya di Bojonegoro, Jawa Timur, lebih tepatnya di Kecamatan Gondang. Selain itu, pengambilan gambar juga dilakukan di beberapa kecamatan lainnya di Bojonegoro, seperti Baureno, Dander, Sekar dan Temayang.</div><div><br /></div><div>Proses syuting film ini memakan selama 40 hari, mulai dari 25 Mei – 1 Juli 2021. Karena pengambilan gambar dilakukan di tengah masa pandemi COVID-19, seluruh kru dan pemain yang terlibat melakukan uji usap. Kru film yang menjadi tim kamera berasal dari Polandia.</div><div><br /></div><div>Penyuntingan</div><div>Proses editing untuk film ini melibatkan sejumlah kru film asal Filipina.</div><div><br /></div><div>Penayangan</div><div>Autobiography tayang perdana di Festival Film Internasional Venice ke-79 dalam seksi Horizon pada tahun 2022, yang menjadikannya satu-satunya film Indonesia yang berpartisipasi. Selain di Venesia, Autobiography juga diputar di sejumlah festival film bergengsi dunia, seperti Festival Film Internasional Toronto, Festival Film Internasional Busan, Festival Film Internasional Stockholm, dan Festival Film Internasional QCinema.[butuh rujukan]</div><div>Film ini tayang perdana di layar bioskop Indonesia pada 19 Januari 2023.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-47553351063969926802024-02-24T14:00:00.268+02:002024-02-27T13:13:31.243+02:00Die Theorie von Allem / The Universal Theory <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoh8j2Smp5rnoH__E0WImaO1J8nLyFMINu4whUrVCtmCrF4hmR9XjGEKh19412c4GV-Nz3kpcrubxcVtSDYo8xyvI7no2NW0qGWYxJ2teTEYu6ECXS1HZkXvTJ-WLAy53xQUNjQhGJzB-4prK8H1A8cFovrXtotESuW8X1JZy1N_PAp6ZqiMUY/s640/Theorie%20von%20Allem,%20Die.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoh8j2Smp5rnoH__E0WImaO1J8nLyFMINu4whUrVCtmCrF4hmR9XjGEKh19412c4GV-Nz3kpcrubxcVtSDYo8xyvI7no2NW0qGWYxJ2teTEYu6ECXS1HZkXvTJ-WLAy53xQUNjQhGJzB-4prK8H1A8cFovrXtotESuW8X1JZy1N_PAp6ZqiMUY/w299-h400/Theorie%20von%20Allem,%20Die.jpg" width="299" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Timm Kröger: Die Theorie von Allem / The Universal Theory (DE/AT/CH 2023). </td></tr></tbody></table>
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<div><div>Universal Theory (French title) / Universalteorin.</div><div> Germany, Austria, Switzerland 2023. Production: Ma.ja.de Fiction (Heino Deckert, Tina Börner), The Barricades (Viktoria Stolpe, Timm Kröger), Panama Film (Lixi Frank, David Bohun), Catpics (Sarah Born, Rajko Jazbec, Dario Schoch)</div><div> Director:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Timm Kröger</div><div>Screenplay: Roderick Warich, Timm Kröger</div><div>Cinematographer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Roland Stuprich - black and white in scope</div><div>Production Designer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Cosima Vellenzer</div><div>Costume Designer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Pola Kardum</div><div>Visual Effects:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kariem Saleh, Adrian Meyer</div><div></div><div>Music:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Diego Ramos Rodríguez</div><div>Sound:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer, Dominik Leube</div><div>Editor:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jann Anderegg</div><div> Cast (from Wikipedia):</div><div>Jan Bülow as Johannes Leinert</div><div>Olivia Ross as Karin Hönig</div><div>Hanns Zischler as Dr. Julius Strathen</div><div>Gottfried Breitfuss as Professor Blumberg</div><div>David Bennent as Kommissar Arnold</div><div>Philippe Graber as Kommissar Amrein</div><div>Ladina Carla von Frisching as Susi (adult)</div><div>Imogen Kogge as Anna Leinert</div><div>Emanuel Waldburg-Zeil as Johnny</div><div>Vivienne Bayley as Susi (child)</div><div>Dirk Böhling as Moderator</div><div>Paul Wolff-Plottegg as Dr. Martin Koch</div><div>Peter Hottinger as Empfangschef</div><div>Dana Herfurth as Minna</div><div>Joey Zimmermann as Polizeibeamter</div><div>Eva Maria Jost as Anna Leinert (child)</div><div>Jonathan Wirtz as Johannes (child)</div><div> Loc: the ski resort of St. Jakob in Defereggen - Österreich (Osttirol und Niederösterreich) und Deutschland (Thüringen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Berlin-Brandenburg). Drehort war unter anderem das Südbahnhotel. - 10.1. - 21.2.2022.</div><div> Language:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>German, French, Schweizerdeutsch, Italian</div></div><div><div> 118’</div></div><div> Festival premiere: 3 September 2023 Venice</div><div> German premiere: 26 October 2023</div><div> Sortie en France: le 21 février 2024</div><div> Viewed at UGC Danton, Salle 3, 99 bd Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 75006 Paris, 24 Feb 2024</div><div><br /></div><div>UGC synopsis: " <i>1962 : lors d’un congrès de physique dans les Alpes suisses, le jeune Johannes défend une théorie sur l’existence de mondes parallèles. Mais personne n’y croit, pas même son tuteur. Les mystères s'accumulent pourtant...</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div>SYNOPSIS (VENICE 2023):</div><div>" <i>1962. Johannes Leinert, together with his doctoral advisor, travels to a physics congress in the Swiss Alps, where an Iranian scientist is set to reveal a “groundbreaking theory of quantum mechanics”. But when the physicists arrive at the five star hotel, the Iranian guest is nowhere to be found. In the absence of a new theory to be discussed, the physics community patiently turns to skiing. Johannes, however, remains at the hotel to work on his doctor’s thesis, but soon finds himself distracted, developing a special fascination with Karin, a young jazz pianist. Something about her seems strange, elusive. She seems to know things about him—things that he thought only he knew about. When one of the German physicists is found dead one morning, two inspectors arrive on the scene, investigating a homicide case. As increasingly bizarre cloud formations appear in the sky, the pianist disappears without a trace—and Johannes finds himself dragged into a sinister story of false memories, real nightmares, impossible love and a dark, roaring mystery hidden beneath the mountain</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>TIMM KRÖGER: DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT (VENICE 2023):</div><div>" <i>What attracted me was an amalgamated memory-image of cinema, by turns strange and entertaining—sort of as if Hitchcock and Lynch, and many others, known or forgotten, made love on the carpet of an old hotel lobby—where “utility music”, like Bernard Herrmann’s, somehow plays both to dramatic irony and genuine, heartfelt emotion. Is this the tragic tale of an undiscovered genius, or are we observing the paranoid delusions of an obsessed fool? This film invariably does both. Here, Schrödinger’s Cat is both brilliant and brain-dead at the same time. The story seems deeply rooted in the 20th century, that long, weird century which has still not managed to obliterate the old idea of the individual genius “guided by fate”. The opposing idea—to inhabit an indifferent, chaotic universe—remains unbearable until today. Which one is more accurate? The most productive thing resembling an answer, to me, can be found in the multiverse of cinema—and its ongoing ability to synthesize our collective dreams with the trappings of reality, to “shuffle the old cards in new ways”. Just like Johannes, we don’t know who wrote the strange music coming down the hall, but we sure recognize the melody</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>Plot (Wikipedia): " <i>In 1962, physicist Johannes travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Swiss Alps. It is there that he meets Karin, a jazz pianist, who is suspiciously knowledgeable about Johannes. A series of mysterious deaths occur at the mountainous site, and the two venture to uncover the secrets hidden below. The story includes an Iranian guest, a strange cloud formation in the sky and quantum mechanics</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>Timm Kröger (Presseheft): „<i>Auch die ‚alte‘ Form des Films, die Pasticheartigkeit, dieses Gefühl und diese etwas eigenwillige Textur irgendwo zwischen Zauberberg, Erich Kästner, Hitchcock und Tarkovsky“. „Abenteuerfilm trifft Film Noir trifft auf deutschen Bergfilm trifft auf etwas Nouvelle Vague. Ich wollte das Gefühl von basaler Kino-Vertrautheit, von etwas ‚Uraltem‘, das zuerst unmerklich, dann spürbar von etwas Unheimlicheren, Modernerem unterwandert wird</i>.“</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: I was entertained by this oddball mix of influences, from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain to Arnold Fanck's alpine cinema. Timm Kröger has a wide range of passions, and he puts everything into a power blender. The end result does not make sense, and there is a tinge of parody: is this about what generative IT might produce?</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a strangely exhilarating mood in the movie, but it is also about dark secrets. Inside the mountain is an abandoned Nazi era uranium mine with secret shafts, entrances and elevators. Werner Heisenberg, the father of the Nazi nuclear weapon project, is a presence in the epoch depicted.</div><div><br /></div><div>The film fails to meet expectations for an interesting mystery thriller relevant to quantum physics. It is as lightweight as can be, and the film itself shares the Schlemiel quality of its protagonist Johannes Leinert, lost in the world of science as well as romance.</div><div><br /></div><div>But a curious charm is undeniable. We are left figuring out which mysteries are real. And might we be witnessing a descent into madness. Not only of the protagonist, but the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM GERMAN WIKIPEDIA:</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM GERMAN WIKIPEDIA:</div><div><br /></div><div>SYNOPSIS FROM GERMAN WIKIPEDIA:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>" <i>Der Film beginnt mit einer Sequenz in Farbe: 1974 tritt der – im Vergleich zur Haupthandlung des Jahres 1962 – gealterte Protagonist in einer Talkshow auf. Er wird zu seinem phantastischen Roman befragt, von dem er beharrlich behauptet, dies sei Wirklichkeit. Er erntet Unverständnis und verlässt desillusioniert die Talkshow.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Die Haupthandlung setzt mit einer Zugfahrt in die Schweizer Alpen im Jahr 1962 ein, nun in schwarz-weiß: der junge Wissenschaftler Johannes Leinert reist mit seinem Doktorvater Julius Strathen zu einem physikalischen Kongress im Hotel Esplanade. Mit Spannung erwartet wird ein bahnbrechender Vortrag eines iranischen Wissenschaftlers zum Thema Quantenmechanik. Johannes selber schreibt an einer Doktorarbeit, in der er wagemutig bereits skizzenhaft eine „Theorie von Allem“ vor sich sieht. Es fehlt jedoch noch an Vielem. Sein Doktorvater hält nichts von seinen Versuchen.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Der Referent der Tagung verspätet sich. Die feine Gesellschaft versucht sich mit geistreichen Dinnerpartys und eleganten Ski-Ausflügen die Wartezeit zu vertreiben. Johannes macht dabei Bekanntschaft mit der Pianistin Karin Hönig. Die geheimnisvolle Frau scheint über ihn gut informiert zu sein. Einer der Physiker wird auf grausame Weise getötet. Dies ruft zwei Ermittler auf den Plan, die davon überzeugt sind, in einer Mordsache zu ermitteln.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Als eine bizarre Wolkenformation am Himmel erscheint, verschwindet Karin spurlos. Johannes vermutet des Rätsels Lösung in der Tiefe des Berges zu finden. Vor ihm haben schon ein Junge und ein Mädchen die unterirdischen Tunnel gefunden, in denen sich scheinbar Männer mit dunklen Mänteln und schwarzen Hüten aufhalten bzw. in ihnen auf seltsame Weise verschwinden. Früher wurde in den Stollen Uran abgebaut. Schließlich gelangt auch Johannes hinein. Er gelangt an einen mysteriösen Ort, an dem sich Übernatürliches abzuspielen scheint. In einer Art Showdown wird er von Karin getötet, die Teil der seltsamen Vorgänge zu sein scheint.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Die Handlung des Films geht jedoch weiter. Johannes reist ab und trifft zu Hause auf seine tot geglaubte Mutter - hatte er geträumt oder existieren verschiedene Realitäten? Seine Theorie findet in der Wissenschaft keinen Anklang, während er sein Leben lang daran glaubt, auf etwas gestoßen zu sein, sowohl theoretisch als auch in den Ereignissen um das Hotel Esplanade. Er kehrt schließlich in den Ort zurückt; das kleine Mädchen von einst ist eine junge Frau geworden; sie kann sich an die Ereignisse nicht erinnern oder hat sie verdrängt. Die beiden werden ein Paar, Eltern einer Tochter. Johannes verfolgt weiter seinen einmal eingeschlagenen Lebenspfad, hält alles andere hintanstellend an seiner Suche nach Hinweisen und Beweisen fest, sodass ihn seine Partnerin schließlich verlässt. Er stirbt als Alkoholkranker. Zuvor hatte er ein Grab mit dem Namen der geheimnisvollen Frau entdeckt, glaubte auf einem rauschenden Tonband ihr Klavierspiel herauszuhören</i>. "</div></div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-12210394066387731722024-02-24T11:00:00.275+02:002024-02-28T10:11:08.894+02:00One Life<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt59CldMsGE55x3Km7WgZbVfH1f3jmGC9p3_Q40K_x7JHYQ39daOrlxR4K8c3do15cqOaBW1zH1Bf2odi6AlbdFYRDY0VIz6naU2Yy6vdCIvfbsq8EyXpPcY5Q1vvWm6bjv37kLgueb7bTpd2gzNfvzwksNjRxB1Dc5V4k-ZWvv361VzNm1g-i/s806/One%20Life.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="609" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt59CldMsGE55x3Km7WgZbVfH1f3jmGC9p3_Q40K_x7JHYQ39daOrlxR4K8c3do15cqOaBW1zH1Bf2odi6AlbdFYRDY0VIz6naU2Yy6vdCIvfbsq8EyXpPcY5Q1vvWm6bjv37kLgueb7bTpd2gzNfvzwksNjRxB1Dc5V4k-ZWvv361VzNm1g-i/w303-h400/One%20Life.jpg" width="303" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Hawes: One Life (GB 2023) with Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />
Une vie / One Life (Finnish title) / One Life (Swedish title).<div><div> GB <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;">©</span> 2023 Willow Road Films / BBC Film. PC: See-Saw Films / BBC Film / MBK Productions / Cross City Films / FilmNation Entertainment / LipSync. P: Joanna Laurie, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Guy Heeley.</div><div> D: James Hawes. SC: Lucinda Coxon, Nick Drake - based on<span style="white-space: pre;"> the book </span>If It's Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton (2014) by Barbara Winton [his daughter]. Cin: Zac Nicholson. PD: Christina Moore. AD: Aline Leonello. Set Dec: Philippa Hart, Petra Vendelidesova, Klara Zimova. Cost: Joanna Eatwell. SFX: Chris Reynolds. M: Volker Bertelmann. S: Stephen Griffiths. ED: Lucia Zucchetti.</div></div><div><div> Cast:</div><div>Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton [Sir]</div><div>Johnny Flynn as young Nicholas Winton</div><div>Helena Bonham Carter as Babi Winton</div><div>Lena Olin as Grete Winton</div><div>Jonathan Pryce as Martin Blake</div><div>Ziggy Heath as young Martin Blake</div><div>Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner</div><div>Alex Sharp as Trevor Chadwick</div><div>Samantha Spiro as Esther Rantzen</div><div> Soundtrack: W. A. Mozart: "Donne mie, la fate a tanti" from Così fan tutte (1790), K. 588, act II.</div><div> In English, also German, Czech, French.</div><div> Loc: Prague, London, Aug-Oct 2022.</div><div> In memory of Barbara Winton (1953-2022).</div><div> 109 min, [Finnish duration announced 102 min]</div></div><div> Festival premiere: 9 Sep 2023 Toronto</div><div> UK premiere: 1 Jan 2024.</div><div> Sortie en France: 21 février 2024, released by SND Films, sous-titres francais Maï Boiron.<br /> Finnish premiere: 22 March 2024, released by Nordisk Film.</div><div> Viewed at UGC Danton, Salle 1, 99 bd Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 75006 Paris, 24 Feb 2024</div><div><br /></div><div>UGC synopsis: " <i>Prague, 1938. Alors que la ville est sur le point de tomber aux mains des nazis, Nicholas Winton organise des convois vers l’Angleterre, où 669 enfants juifs trouveront refuge. Cette histoire vraie, restée méconnue pendant des décennies, est dévoilée au monde entier en 1988</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>Wikipedia synopsis: " <i>When 29-year-old London stockbroker Nicholas Winton visits Czechoslovakia in 1938, just weeks after the Munich Agreement was signed, he encounters families in Prague who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria. They are living in poor conditions, with little or no shelter or food and in fear of the invasion of the Nazis. Winton is introduced to Doreen Warriner, head of the Prague office of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC). Horrified by the conditions in the refugee camps, Winton decides to save Jewish children himself. Actively supported by his mother Babette, herself a German-Jewish migrant who has since converted to the Church of England, he overcomes bureaucratic hurdles, collects donations and looks for foster families for the children brought to England. Many of them are Jews who are at imminent risk of deportation. A race against time begins as it is unclear how long the borders will remain open before the inevitable Nazi invasion. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Fifty years later, in 1988, Winton, now in his 70s, cleans up some of the clutter in his office, which his wife Grete asked him to do. He finds his old documents in which he recorded his work for the BCRC, with photos and lists of the children they wanted to bring to safety. Winton still blames himself for not being able to save more. At lunch with his old friend Martin, Winton thinks about what he should do with all the documents. He is considering donating them to a Holocaust museum, but at the same time he wants to draw some attention to the current plight of refugees, so he does not do it. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" The documents end up in the hands of the That's Life! production team, a TV show produced by the BBC with presenter Esther Rantzen. Winton is invited onto the show and asked to sit in the audience. That's Life surprises Winton by inviting some of the children he helped save onto the show to meet him</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>"Save one life, save the world" (motto).</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: The story of Kindertransport, a historical drama, a period play, a true story, more than a thriller, another great performance by Anthony Hopkins.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nicholas Winton (1909-2015 - he died at age 106) does not want to be celebrated as a hero because in his own eyes he is not one and because everything is teamwork. He did save lives, but more should have been done. In the world he sees around him 50 years later, even more should be saved, and he devotes his life to humanitarian aid. His disappointment is profound.</div><div><br /></div><div>A sense of understated but overwhelming regret lifts One Life above the regular trend of "Shoah business".</div><div><br /></div><div>The fabula starts in the year 1938, the year of the Munich Agreement. I saw recently the brilliant American documentary film <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/06/crisis-film-of-nazi-way-2019.html">Crisis</a>, released in March 1939, about this. Western powers wash their hands and let Hitler have his way with Czechoslovakia and later Poland. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am also thinking about two of the greatest films I have seen in recent years: The U.S. and the Holocaust (by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein), and its "sequel", The Corridors of Power (by Dror Moreh). Today I am thinking about the terrorized children of Gaza in a cruel and disgraceful twist of history.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>James Hawes is not a master of suspense. One Life is laid back, conventional, powerfully emotional in its restraint, despite a syrupy score, I cried through the later part of the picture, together with Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>PS 27 Feb 2024. Lingering image: the photo of the little girl Lenka Weiss with eyes that have seen too much, holding an orphan baby with no name. Both lost forever in the Prague turmoil.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another lingering image: the "Ein Volk - ein Reich - ein Führer" travel plan for 1938-1948 - the whole Europe in Nazi domination. </div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-22397395510705444632024-02-23T21:00:00.003+02:002024-02-26T10:21:05.934+02:00Judith Godrèche: "I speak, I speak, but you are not listening" (her speech at the 2024 César Awards)<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYkLai5K6oiLwImjrz2PNvDqSxVSKdgEo61Xv7qEfa5K_bdAkP6i38Iyhx6YA475QrM_hYzxFv3R02CNMRdTUCiMsRlomRORhmAqnL6R9eLU4MLoa5NLn4d-uL0yiJ-IepowS8lG6rp-7Ae110ZZ4hxsoGbwaJDJg5Y6ptMlVy-o0SJ6HLH67Q/s1138/2024-02-23%20Judith%20Godreche,%20Cesars.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1138" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYkLai5K6oiLwImjrz2PNvDqSxVSKdgEo61Xv7qEfa5K_bdAkP6i38Iyhx6YA475QrM_hYzxFv3R02CNMRdTUCiMsRlomRORhmAqnL6R9eLU4MLoa5NLn4d-uL0yiJ-IepowS8lG6rp-7Ae110ZZ4hxsoGbwaJDJg5Y6ptMlVy-o0SJ6HLH67Q/w400-h229/2024-02-23%20Judith%20Godreche,%20Cesars.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Judith Godrèche accepts the standing ovation of the French film world at the Césars ceremony on Friday, 23 February 2024. Since December 2023, Godrèche has been speaking out, not for the first time, but with a new sense of urgency that brings the French Me Too process to the next level. Her speech is one of the greatest in (film) history. My screenshot from the official <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9h5ntR9Ks&t=2s">Canal+ video on YouTube</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>C’est compliqué de me retrouver devant vous tous ce soir.</div><div>Vous êtes si nombreux.</div><div>Mais, dans le fond, j’imagine qu’il fallait que ça arrive.</div><div>Nos visages face à face, les yeux dans les yeux.</div><div>Beaucoup d’entre vous m’ont vue grandir.</div><div>C’est impressionnant, ça marque.</div><div>Dans le fond, je n’ai rien connu d’autre que le cinéma.</div><div><br /></div><div>Alors, pour me rassurer, en chemin, je me suis inventé une petite berceuse.</div><div><br /></div><div>« <i>Mes bras serrés, c’est vous, toutes les petites filles dans le silence,</i></div><div><i>Mon cou, ma nuque penchée, c’est vous, tous les enfants dans le silence,</i></div><div><i>Mes jambes bancales, c’est vous, les jeunes hommes qui n’ont pas pu se défendre.</i></div><div><i>Ma bouche tremblante mais qui sourit aussi, c’est vous, mes sœurs inconnues</i>. »</div><div><br /></div><div>Après tout, moi aussi, je suis une foule.</div><div>Une foule face à vous.</div><div>Une foule qui vous regarde dans les yeux ce soir.</div><div>C’est un drôle de moment pour nous, non ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Une revenante des Amériques vient donner des coups de pied dans la porte blindée.</div><div>Qui l’eût cru ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Depuis quelque temps, la parole se délie, l’image de nos pères idéalisés s’écorche, le pouvoir semble presque tanguer, serait-il possible que nous puissions regarder la vérité en face ?</div><div>Prendre nos responsabilités ? Etre les acteurs, les actrices d’un univers qui se remet en question ?</div><div>Depuis quelque temps, je parle, je parle, mais je ne vous entends pas, ou à peine. Où êtes-vous ? Que dites-vous ? Un chuchotement. Un demi-mot.</div><div><br /></div><div>« <i>Ça serait déjà ça</i> », dit le Petit Chaperon rouge.</div><div><br /></div><div>Je sais que ça fait peur.</div><div>Perdre des subventions.</div><div>Perdre des rôles.</div><div>Perdre son travail.</div><div>Moi aussi.</div><div>Moi aussi, j’ai peur.</div><div><br /></div><div>J’ai arrêté l’école à 15 ans, j’ai pas le bac, rien.</div><div>Ça serait compliqué d’être blacklistée de tout.</div><div>Ça serait pas drôle.</div><div>Errer dans les rues de Paris dans mon costume de hamster.</div><div>Me rêvant une Icon of French Cinema…</div><div><br /></div><div>Dans ma rébellion, je pensais à ces termes qu’on utilise sur un plateau. Silence.</div><div>Moteur demandé.</div><div>Ça fait maintenant trente ans que le silence est mon moteur.</div><div>J’imagine pourtant l’incroyable mélodie que nous pourrions composer ensemble.</div><div>Faite de vérité.</div><div>Ça ne ferait pas si mal. Je vous promets.</div><div>Juste une égratignure sur la carcasse de notre curieuse famille.</div><div>C’est tellement rien comparé à un coup de poing dans le nez.</div><div><br /></div><div>A une enfant prise d’assaut comme une ville assiégée par un adulte tout-puissant, sous le regard silencieux d’une équipe.</div><div>A un réalisateur qui, tout en chuchotant, m’entraîne sur son lit sous prétexte de devoir comprendre qui je suis vraiment.</div><div>C’est tellement rien comparé à quarante-cinq prises, avec deux mains dégueulasses sur mes seins de 15 ans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Le cinéma est fait de notre désir de vérité.</div><div>Les films nous regardent autant que nous les regardons.</div><div>Il est également fait de notre besoin d’humanité. Non ?</div><div>Alors, pourquoi ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Pourquoi accepter que cet art que nous aimons tant, cet art qui nous lie soit utilisé comme une couverture pour un trafic illicite de jeunes filles ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Parce que vous savez que cette solitude, c’est la mienne mais également celle de milliers dans notre société.</div><div>Elle est entre vos mains.</div><div>Nous sommes sur le devant de la scène.</div><div>A l’aube d’un jour nouveau.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nous pouvons décider que des hommes accusés de viol ne puissent pas faire la pluie et le beau temps dans le cinéma.</div><div>Ça, ça donne le ton, comme on dit.</div><div>On ne peut pas ignorer la vérité parce qu’il ne s’agit pas de notre enfant, de notre fils, notre fille.</div><div><br /></div><div>On ne peut pas être à un tel niveau d’impunité, de déni et de privilège qui fait que la morale nous passe par-dessus la tête.</div><div>Nous devons donner l’exemple.</div><div>Nous aussi.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ne croyez pas que je vous parle de mon passé, de mon passé qui ne passe pas.</div><div>Mon passé, c’est aussi le présent des deux mille personnes qui m’ont envoyé leur témoignage en quatre jours… C’est aussi l’avenir de tous ceux qui n’ont pas encore eu la force de devenir leur propre témoin.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vous savez, pour se croire, faut-il encore être cru.</div><div>Le monde nous regarde, nous voyageons avec nos films, nous avons la chance d’être dans un pays où il paraît que la liberté existe.</div><div>Alors, avec la même force morale que nous utilisons pour créer,</div><div>Ayons le courage de dire tout haut ce que nous savons tout bas.</div><div><br /></div><div>N’incarnons pas des héroïnes à l’écran, pour nous retrouver cachées dans les bois dans la vraie vie ; n’incarnons pas des héros révolutionnaires ou humanistes, pour nous lever le matin en sachant qu’un réalisateur a abusé une jeune actrice, et ne rien dire.</div><div><br /></div><div>Merci de m’avoir donné la possibilité de mettre ma cape ce soir et de vous envahir un peu.</div><div><br /></div><div>Il faut se méfier des petites filles.</div><div>Elles touchent le fond de la piscine, se cognent, se blessent, mais rebondissent.</div><div>Les petites filles sont des punks qui reviennent déguisées en hamster.</div><div>Et, pour rêver à une possible révolution,</div><div>Elles aiment se repasser ce dialogue de Céline et Julie vont en bateau :</div><div><br /></div><div>Céline : « <i>Il était une fois</i>.</div><div>Julie : <i>Il était deux fois. Il était trois fois</i>.</div><div>Céline : <i>Il était que, cette fois, ça ne se passera pas comme ça, pas comme les autres fois</i>. »</div><div><br /><div>Transcription from Le Monde, 23 Feb 2024.</div><div>https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2024/02/23/judith-godreche-aux-cesars-je-parle-mais-je-ne-vous-entends-pas-ou-etes-vous-que-dites-vous_6218232_3246.html</div></div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-47088075933532611722024-02-17T18:30:00.319+02:002024-02-23T09:49:36.352+02:00All of Us Strangers<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA46REruj4SNptxXF3bxtd_vvhZaPRnw06wjV0DoPe5X3XwtzrCm1pJQCXM4ohAssYTH06S-AKUf0_11Th-rhaYP6WPYT3-KVMS6nRx9g7D-9ymjroz9CIVyhbYciHN0tuy4Js7PYFNCWg8kCtmq1TOz_V6y-Jc4uoV7N3HKEaXIFeCIAUCp1G/s1500/All%20of%20Us%20Strangers.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1050" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA46REruj4SNptxXF3bxtd_vvhZaPRnw06wjV0DoPe5X3XwtzrCm1pJQCXM4ohAssYTH06S-AKUf0_11Th-rhaYP6WPYT3-KVMS6nRx9g7D-9ymjroz9CIVyhbYciHN0tuy4Js7PYFNCWg8kCtmq1TOz_V6y-Jc4uoV7N3HKEaXIFeCIAUCp1G/w280-h400/All%20of%20Us%20Strangers.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrew Haigh: All of Us Strangers (GB/US 2023) starring Paul Mescal (Harry) and Andrew Scott (Adam).</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />All of Us Strangers [Finnish and Swedish title] / Sans jamais nous connaître.<div> GB/US 2023. PC: Blueprint Pictures / Film4 / Searchlight Pictures / TSG Entertainment. P: Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin, Sarah Harvey.</div><div> D+SC: Andrew Haigh - based on the novel Ijintachi to no natsu / Strangers (1987) by Taichi Yamada. Cin: Jamie Ramsay - Super 35 mm - colour - 1:2,39 - master format: 4K - release format: D-Cinema. PD: Sarah Finlay. AD: Bill Brown, Luke Deering. Set dec: Lauren Doss, Marian Murray. Cost: Sarah Blenkinsop. Makeup: Zoe Clare Brown, Nicola Buck. SFX: Scott McIntyre. VFX: Simon Hughes - Goldcrest VFX - Union VFX. M: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. S: Joakim Sundström - Dolby Digital. ED: Jonathan Alberts. Casting: Kahleen Crawford.</div><div> Soundtrack: Frankie Goes to Hollywood: "The Power of Love" (Holly Johnson, Peter Gill, Mark O'Toole, Brian Nash, 1984) ; Pet Shop Boys: "Always on My Mind" (1987) originally written by Wayne Carson, Mark James, Johnny Christopher (1972) ; The Housemartins: "Build" (Paul Heaton, San Cullimore, 1987).</div><div> C: Andrew Scott (Adam), Paul Mescal (Harry), Carter John Grout (Young Adam), Jamie Bell (Dad), Claire Foy (Mum), Ami Tredrea (Waitress).</div><div> Loc: London ; Sanderstead, South Croydon ; Insignia Point, Stratford, Newham ; The Vauxhall Tavern</div><div> 105 min</div><div> Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Telluride.</div><div> US premiere: 22 Dec 2023.</div><div> UK premiere: 26 Jan 2024.</div><div> French premiere: 14 Feb 2024, released by Walt Disney Company France, sous-titres francais: Sylvestre Melninger.</div><div> Finnish premiere: 8 March 2024, released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland.</div><div> Viewed at MK2 Odéon côté St Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 113 bd Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris, 17 Feb 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bilge Ebiri (Telluride Film Festival 2023): " <i>Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal), the sole inhabitants of a large, brand new apartment building, meet one night after a fire alarm echoes through the halls. Adam is a struggling screenwriter attempting to work on a story about his suburban childhood, and his encounter with Harry sends him back to his hometown, where he finds his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy)—preserved at the age they were when he saw them last. Is this a ghost story, or a dream, or something else? Andrew Haigh (LEAN ON PETE, 45 YEARS) has created a quietly expressive and affecting story, plunging us into the tactile and sensuous pleasures of an intoxicating world, one caught between memory and the present, between regret and possibility. –BE (U.K., 2023, 105m) In person: Andrew Haigh</i> "</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Synopsis from the production notes. " <i>One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: Andrew Haigh's intensely lyrical vision of urban solitude, contrasting London's tower brutalism with Croydon's suburban hometown nostalgia. Train ride passages between them emerge as refrains in this surprising poetic journey into memory and imagination.</div><div><br /></div><div>Based on a Japanese ghost story by Taichi Yamada, Haigh explores a homosexual romance in the present, while processing the trauma of becoming orphaned in the 1980s. Revenants from the past and the present appear as contemporary reality in the world of the lonesome Adam (Andrew Scott). </div><div><br /></div><div>Jamie Ramsay shoots the film impressively, drawing advantage from the refined warmth and nuance of photochemical 35 mm film and the grandeur of vision of the scope frame. There is a cosmic sense in the movie, a celestial presence of the stars in the sky and the red moon. The general ambience is warm and tender.</div><div><br /></div><div>Adam's relationships with his parents and his lover Harry appear as real during the film, and only afterwards do we understand that they were ghosts. Everything in the movie is subjective. The whole thing takes place in Adam's consciousness. It is a voyage in his inner world.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is a tale of a double healing process from profound shocks: the death of Adam's parents in a car accident, and the death of Harry in a drug-and-alcohol overdose. In dreams, Adam walks with them until he is able to come to terms with overwhelming loss and grief.</div><div><br /></div><div>Music from the 1980s in all-important. The main theme tune is Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "The Power Of Love". "Always On My Mind" is the song that connects Adam with his parents. Adam is playing the Pet Shop Boys interpretation, but the parents sing along, familiar with the original versions of Brenda Lee and Elvis Presley.</div><div><br /></div><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:</div><div><br /></div><div>" <i>ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from esteemed British filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete, 45 Years, Weekend). The hauntingly poignant and hypnotic story of loss and love (and everything in between), is inspired by the novel Strangers by venerable Japanese author Taichi Yamada. First penned in 1987 and translated into English in 2003, Haigh’s adapted screenplay gives it a contemporary and personal touch. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In June of 2017, Graham Broadbent and Sarah Harvey of Blueprint first pitched their creative vision for the film to Yamada and his family. Says Harvey, "It was important for all of us to invest in the emotional core of the story, perhaps more so than the traditional ghost elements of the story.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Following this, Blueprint proceeded to look for the perfect writer/director to adapt the material. They immediately sent the book to Haigh, with whom they had wanted to work with for some time. They felt he had the right sensibility – he had shown a great aptitude for nuanced character work in his films Weekend and 45 Years, as well as TV s ‘The North Water’. “ Sarah and I tried to match talent to material to see if we could find some thread,” says Broadbent. “Andrew had never done anything in this area before, but he responded to the book and I was beautifully surprised, because I’d wanted to make a film with him for ages.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Recalls Haigh, “What I loved about the novel was its central conceit: what if you met your parents again long after they were gone, only now they’re the same age as you? It seemed such an emotional way to explore the nature of family. That became my starting point.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>By late 2017 – and with Yamada’s blessing – he along with Blueprint pitched the project to Daniel Battsek and Ollie Madden at Film4, who came on board and funded the development. </i></div><div><i>Haigh placed the story in a world more recognizable to his own. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Adapting the book was a long and sometimes painful process,” Haigh admits. “I wanted to pick away at my own past as Adam does in the film. I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80s. I wanted to move away from the traditional ghost story of the novel and find something more psychological, almost metaphysical.” Haigh has masterfully stuck to his word, transcending the tropes of a ‘ghost story’. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“We really needed an auteur who had a clarity of vision to adapt the story,” says Broadbent. “He had a very clear vision of what he was trying to say, the themes that he was exploring, and that doesn’t always happen.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Yamada and his family were incredibly respectful of Haigh’s vision, which changed the central character of the story to a gay man, and when they ultimately read the script, they gave their blessing to make the film. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>***</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Creating the World(s) </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>“ I could see all the good things, in life I’ve never had” </i><i>- Patsy Cline </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child) </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>Though ALL OF US STRANGERS is set in a singular time frame and era, the sequences when Adam returns to his childhood home to see his parents take place in a 1980s version of our world, as though stepping into a dream, a hazy, nostalgia-induced memory. To enforce the notion of realism and play up Haigh’s personal connection to the story, some of these scenes were shot in his actual childhood home. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“When I thought of a childhood home, it was my own, and as we were preparing to shoot, I went back to the area I grew up, just outside of Croydon,” Haigh explains. I hadn’t been there for forty years, not since I moved away when I was ten. Perhaps foolishly, I decided it might be a good idea to try and film in the house where we used to live. ” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>While there are inevitable changes to the house Haigh once knew (not least due to a few changes of ownership), the director admits that dressing the new set didn’t require as much work as he envisaged. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“The guy that lives in the house now hadn’t decorated it for thirty years. So much of it was still the same. It was like stepping into a half-remembered memory. It was the strangest of feelings.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>According to Scott, Haigh appeared unnervingly calm while on location at his old abode. “It’s an incredibly brave thing to do, because of course it’s going to trigger lots of personal feelings,” he recognizes. “But he never makes it about himself, he makes you feel like it’s your story.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Bell also felt there was an added sensitivity working in his director’s own childhood home, and a certain respect that was required from all involved. He says, “It’s kind of hallowed turf, in a way. We’ve all been very respectful in terms of what this means for him.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>When it came to the set, the integral work done by the production team – which includes production designer Sarah Finlay (45 Years), costume designer Sarah Blenkinsop (The Lobster), and Hair & Makeup Designer Zoe Clare Brown (Star Wars: Episode VII) – helped enforce a true sense of authenticity. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“When I went into Adam’s childhood bedroom, there were so many things in there that I had in my own childhood bedroom. I was taking pictures of them and sending them to my siblings going, ‘oh my God, do you remember this?’ It’s very beautifully reproduced and well-researched,” Scott recalls. </i></div><div><i>Foy also recognized many things from her own youth during the making of ALL OF US STRANGERS. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“There must have only been one shop,” she jokes. “There were so many things that I was like, ‘we had those sheets. We had that lampshade. I think we had that rug. ’It was very surreal and it made me think a lot about what my children are going to say about our homes in forty years ’time.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Hair & Makeup designer Zoe Clare Brown’s task was to make both Foy and Bell appear as though they stepped straight out of the 1980’s. “But Andrew [Haigh] didn’t want to go overtly 80s in a clichéd way,” she says. “He wanted to reign it in.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>For Brown, Haigh’s meticulous eye and care made it a fulfilling collaboration. She adds, “In the way that he was emotionally and personally connected, it made me want to be part of it – because it was such a personal journey for him.” </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>“ Standing on his own, why did he bother? Should have slept alone” </i><i>– Blur </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><i><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Death of a Party </i></span></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>The romantic parallel journey of ALL OF US STRANGERS takes place in a more familiar, contemporary London. Scenes there range from the towering, modern apartment block where both Adam and Paul live, to the nightclub, which hosts an impactful and beautifully rendered portion of the film, shot on location at the iconic queer London institution: the Vauxhall Tavern. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The isolation of the former set where Adam lives adds not only to the themes of loneliness that are prevalent, but to an otherworldly feeling which plays up to the supernatural element of the story. Producers Harvey and Broadbent do admit, however, that securing a building wasn’t the most straightforward of tasks. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“It was really tricky to find the tower block,” Harvey explains. “It’s such a key part of the story as it really symbolizes the character’s isolation, and feeling very disconnected from the world, so we all had a real vision in mind.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Production ultimately opted to build a set instead, which came with additional positives, as Broadbent explains. “The decision was made to build the tower block in a studio, and that gave us increased flexibility: you can move the walls, you can move the cameras, you can move around. We spent a lot of time in that apartment.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In the olden days, production might have put green screens outside that apartment, to drop in an outside environment plausible as the view – but the crew had a new technique for this: a myriad of extraordinary TV screens. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>He continues, “We filmed what the view would actually be from the apartment to put it onto these five hundred LED screens, and it meant whichever way you shot within the apartment, the outside view was plausible and interesting. It was rolling footage because it had to move, it couldn’t be static. It allowed us to create very real environments from a stage.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Though this technology added a sense of realism, Haigh also needed the tower block set to inform the somewhat eery tonality. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“I wanted the environment in which Adam lives to reflect his state of mind,” Haigh explains, “a manifestation of his aloneness.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“It almost feels apocalyptic,” Mescal adds. “It mirrors the isolation of the world to a certain extent: you’ve got these corporate towers, and these cities that are rapidly eroding, and you feel like little ants in this massive tower. If you’re not inclined to go out and mix with the world, you can very easily find a place that isolates you. That’s what the tower represents, it feels cold and soulless. And in the face of all that, these two characters still manage to find a connection which I think is really uplifting.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The off-realism feeling, the ever-so-slightly otherworldly atmosphere, was something that was also informed by production designer Sarah Finlay, as she cites a rather renowned artist that gave her some inspiration. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“There was a Francis Bacon exhibition in London and the paintings were really strong, timeless, and there’s something about floating in time and space, about a lot of those images which ties in really well with this script,” she says. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Away from the 27th floor of this tower block, and back on lower ground, the production team were thrilled that the nightclub sequences were filmed at the Vauxhall Tavern venue. An institution in the gay community, it allowed the actors and filmmakers to utilize the building’s natural spirit, entrenched in local history and culture, to make for one of the film’s memorable sequences as Adam and Harry head out into the world, together. </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>Navigating the Profound </i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i>“Little things I should have said or done, I never took the time” </i><i>– The Pet Shop Boys </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Always On My Mind </i></div><div><i> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </i></div><div><i>The distinctive tonality of ALL OF US STRANGERS at times takes on a sort of ethereal quality. It is also grounded by the way in which it tackles the human experience. Its many layers and textures carry a profound, emotional undercurrent. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Haigh creates a tone rich with nostalgia and yearning, a powerful emotional pull for Adam. </i></div><div><i>“Adam is yearning to see his parents again, aching to be known by them,” says Haigh. “Perhaps finding them again will bring comfort and closure after the terrible loss. But it’s no easy task, nostalgia can often hide a different truth, and his parents were a product of the time they lived. Adam must also confront his fragile sense of self, battered by growing up gay in the 80s and 90s. Two traumas perhaps, closely entwined, stopping him from finding peace.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Says Haigh, “I wanted the film to have the texture of the past, which is one of the reasons we pushed to shoot on 35mm film. I wanted the film to feel, if not quite like a dream, then like the moment just before you fall asleep or the moment you wake from a dream, not quite sure what’s real. A more liminal space.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Rather than play up to the supernatural elements, Haigh instead wanted to focus on the notion of memory and how it works. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Memories define us; they define what we become, our character, both for good and bad. I dug deep into my memories of growing up. It was a painful but cathartic experiment. ’ He continues, “Adam gets to be a child again. I think everybody can relate to that idea of wanting to go back and redefine what your relationship is with your parents. I wanted it to be cathartic for Adam but a complicated catharsis. I want the audience to feel a similar thing.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>He adds, “In many ways, the film is about how you integrate emotional pain into your life. That pain will never vanish, it will always find a hiding place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move forward.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Bell admits that the shoot really moved him, and that it left a lasting impact on him as a parent. “Adam’s parents went out one night and they didn’t come home. Life is so unpredictable,” he says. “I just hope that that’s the thing that resonates with people, when kids are young it’s so precious and time really flies by so quickly. Such a clichéd thing to say, but it would be great if people went home and hugged their kids.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Conversely, it was also the sense of normalcy that really appealed to Bell and helped him find a connection to the scenes. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“We’re not doing your usual tropes of a horror story or a ghost story,” he explains. “We are technically apparitions, but we are just living in the moment. We are not considering that this has a finite time on it. We’re not considerate of the rules on what it means to be dead. I don’t think we’re ever really discussing the logistics of what that means, necessarily, and that’s what I loved about it.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Scott says, smiling, “It was a very emotional shoot. I really connect to a lot of it personally, being a gay person myself, and those experiences of hoping that your family will stay with you when you tell them who you are. I think that’s something not just gay people experience – everybody wants to feel connected to their family.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“In some ways, it’s all about love and connection,” says producer Broadbent. “Familial love and romantic love. What would you want to tell your parents about your life if you could revisit them – or what would you tell them right now? And in romantic relationships, it’s the push and pull of love, and how you explore that, and what we are to each other. Those are central strands in this film.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Watching Adam and Harry connect feels very authentic, real and passionate. They fancy each other,” Mescal explains. “They’re both fundamentally very good people. They both feel very isolated, and the film’s essentially about finding connection. But then I think it supersedes that, and they find true connection in a world that feels impersonal, or cold. It’s harder and harder to find the connections that we see Adam and Harry have in the film.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>He continues, “It’s very emotional. You’re dealing with two men who want to feel connected to the world and people around them, and are struggling with seizing that connection. And that’s a very easy thing to relate to, and empathize with those characters.” Scott also examines the romantic narrative, and what brings these two lost souls into each other’s lives. “Harry is a very different character than Adam,” he says. “I think they’re both very vulnerable. I think it’s one of those things where they immediately see and then love each other. One of the challenges for Paul and I was how do you play chemistry without giving away too much biography? Because the characters have to maintain a sort of element of mystery. So we played it for love first, it’s a very beautiful thing to get to play on camera.” Scott continues, “I like complicated emotion that you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s a bit like melancholy as an emotion, it’s both sad and oddly joyful at exactly the same time, and I love those kinds of emotions that seem to be battling each other, but work as a whole as well.” </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“I’ve made enough films now to know that people respond to things differently, but what I want to do is provoke questions, provoke emotion,” says Haigh. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“All of us have been children, and most will lose our parents. Many of us will be parents ourselves and have kids who will grow into adults in the blink of an eye. Many of us will find and lose and hopefully find love again, even if it doesn’t last an eternity.” Haigh continues, “And all of us understand the complexity and importance of these relationships, and hopefully, when you leave the cinema, what you feel more than anything, is the power of love.”</i> "</div></div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-40281985339282868522024-02-17T15:15:00.455+02:002024-02-23T09:50:41.325+02:00La Bête / The Beast (2024)<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsHnuEgneosCXtB_APPy7S1f_KIdvesxbDozNQLRQHplzJ9nwmT091HtxNKP-_lB1VNBpRJ7hkM8j-fBpaSZzkz397jQtwK1lwZdpC5opWosUEe_Hm_bbFopKN-1kWbQ58Ns5hzWrK881Qc2WLR37G5PWCdxwRiw9gqzkIOLoDF_wHgmjuzsu_/s1024/B%C3%AAte,%20La%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsHnuEgneosCXtB_APPy7S1f_KIdvesxbDozNQLRQHplzJ9nwmT091HtxNKP-_lB1VNBpRJ7hkM8j-fBpaSZzkz397jQtwK1lwZdpC5opWosUEe_Hm_bbFopKN-1kWbQ58Ns5hzWrK881Qc2WLR37G5PWCdxwRiw9gqzkIOLoDF_wHgmjuzsu_/w300-h400/B%C3%AAte,%20La%202024.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bertrand Bonello: La Bête / The Beast (FR/CA 2024) avec Léa Seydoux (Gabrielle Monnier).</td></tr></tbody></table>
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<div><div>Venezia 80 Competition</div><div>FR/CA 2024. </div><div>Production: Arte France Cinéma, Les Films du Bélier (Justin Taurand), My New Picture (Bertrand Bonello), Sons Of Manual (Nancy Grant, Xavier Dolan)</div><div>Director: Bertrand Bonello</div><div>Screenplay: Bertrand Bonello - d'après un traitement de Bertrand Bonello, Benjamin Charbit et Guillaume Bréaud - librement adapté de "La Bête dans la jungle" d' Henry James - the short story "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903).</div><div>Cinematographer: Josée Deshaies - the Paris 1910 story shot on 35 mm - 1,85 and 1,37 - colour - released on DCP</div><div>Production Designer: Katia Wyszkop</div><div>Costume Designer: Pauline Jacquard</div><div>Music: Bertrand Bonello, Anna Bonello</div><div>Sound: Nicolas Cantin, Clément Laforce, Jean-Pierre Laforce</div><div>Editor: Anita Roth</div><div><div>Main Cast: Léa Seydoux (Gabrielle Monnier), George MacKay (Louis Lewanski).</div><div>Xavier Dolan (système intelligence artificielle) voice</div><div>Bertrand Bonello (réalisateur fond vert) voice</div><div>Language: French, English</div></div><div>Running Time: 146'<br /> Dédié à Gaspard Ulliel.</div><div> À la place du générique de fin, un QR code à scanner avec son smartphone est affiché à l'écran pendant une minute. Il renvoie sur une vidéo MP4 de huit minutes et demie contenant le générique de fin avec une scène d'une trentaine de secondes. (As formulated in Wikipédia).</div><div> Festival premiere: 3 Sep 2023 Venice </div><div> French premiere: 7 Feb 2024, released by Ad Vitam, sous-titres par Hiventy.</div><div> Viewed at UGC Odéon 5, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon,124 bd St-Germain, 75006 Paris, 17 Feb 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>SYNOPSIS (VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023)</div><div>" <i>In a near future where artificial intelligence8 reigns supreme, human emotions have become a threat. To get rid of them, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis, her great love. But she’s overcome by fear, a premonition that catastrophe is on the way</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT (VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2023)</div><div>" <i>First, I wanted to paint a portrait of a woman and deal head-on with love and melodrama. Then to confront it with genre cinema, since to me romance and genre seem to respond to each other. My desire was to interweave the intimate and the spectacular, classicism and modernity, the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible. To speak, perhaps, of the most heartbreaking of feelings, the fear of love. It’s also a portrait of a woman that almost becomes a documentary about an actress</i>. "</div></div><div><br /></div><div>AA: The Beast is Bertrand Bonello's dystopian time play, a time machine voyage in three time periods: the past (Paris in 1910), the present (Los Angeles in 2014), and the future (2044).</div><div><br /></div><div>Featuring two protagonists in each story, all interpreted by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay. They are different persons, yet connected in a way that has affinities with the Buddhist sense of reincarnation familiar from Celine Song's <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/past-lives.html">Past Lives</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only the Paris 1910 story is directly based on Henry James's story "The Beast in the Jungle". But its concept of a premonition of some future catastrophe reverberates throughout: the Great Flood of Paris in 1910, an earthquake in Los Angeles, and Artificial Intelligence in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also Henry James's deepest subject, that the hidden beast is our fear of love, is present in all stories.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Beast is a Léa Seydoux vehicle, evoking Josef Sternberg's Marlene Dietrich cycle. Sternberg's Galatea finally took over and left Pygmalion behind. Nothing of the kind happens here, but The Beast sometimes looks like a Léa Seydoux showcase and vanity project. Her fabulous beauty is revealed in numerous avatara (incarnations of star divinity).</div><div><br /></div><div>The Beast is star-driven to an extent that brings to mind another film in today's repertory: <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/poor-things-in-presence-of-yorgos.html">Poor Things</a>, in which Yorgos Lanthimos lets Emma Stone go wild in a rip-roaring rampage of Victorian / timeless emancipation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet one more point of comparison might be Orlando.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bertrand Bonello has switched the roles in Henry James's story. In it, the male is the one with the hidden fear, and the female the one with the deep understanding. Bonello must know what he is doing, but in the original the female has supreme gravity.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like Léa Seydoux, also George MacKay displays extreme versatility in the film, ranging from a distinguished flâneur in Belle Époque Paris to a marginalized incel lost in darkest social media jungle - the dark internet - in nocturnal Los Angeles. From reverence to rape. Femicide belongs to Bonello's dystopian themes.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Beast is very heterogenous. A smörgåsbord. Another fine mess? It gives a lot to think about.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm grateful that it made me to read for the first time <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/poor-things-in-presence-of-yorgos.html">Henry James's short story "The Beast in the Jungle"</a> from 1903. It is among his greatest and most personal works. </div><div><br /></div><div>In 1897, a great change took place in the work of Henry James. He started to dictate, and his books grew in volume. Many find that the quality suffered, but for me, it only became different. I read much of "The Beast in the Jungle" aloud, and it was more powerful that way. It was a revelation for me to listen on Yle Radio 1 Erja Manto reading Marcel Proust's complete In Search of Lost Time and discover that those page-long meandering sentences felt more alive and made more sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't mind that Bonello's film has so little to do with Henry James. His way is the right way, because I find Henry James essentially unfilmable. What matters most in his work is inseparable from language. His work is language-driven.</div><div><br /></div><div>Robin Wood wrote for the BFI Modern Classics series a great monograph on Iain Softley's The Wings of the Dove and had royal fun with critics raving about it as an adaptation without obviously ever having read the novel.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course James Ivory and Jane Campion have made quality films based on Henry James... but they are not necessary. For me, there is one masterpiece in the cinematic Henry James legacy: William Wyler's The Heiress. Also Martin Gabel's The Lost Moment, based on The Aspern Papers, has true cinematic energy. I have not yet seen Francois Truffaut's The Green Room, partly also influenced by "The Beast in the Jungle".</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't believe anything you can find in the internet about the Henry James story. It is a multi-layered, complex hall of reflections. It is about a life-long friendship that is more meaningful than many love affairs. It is about meeting someone who is not quite the significant other, yet even more clairvoyant. A tender challenger for a lifetime. It is a tantalizing story about passing by. About the mystery of life, of self-knowledge inseparable from dialogue. The indeterminate, searching quality is the essence. </div><div><br /></div><div>The word "queer" appears four times. The meaning is different from today's, yet the modern sense is not necessarily wrong. The point is that it does not matter. It is not about a love that does not dare speak its name. It is about a true affinity of spirits that can be greater than love.</div><div><br /></div><div>FROM THE PRESS KIT: ENTRETIEN AVEC BERTRAND BONELLO</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>FROM THE PRESS KIT: ENTRETIEN AVEC BERTRAND BONELLO </div><div><div><br /></div><div><b>Par quoi commenceriez-vous pour nous parler de La Bête</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Par le présent du film. Par 2044. Le film est une quasi-dystopie. Je dis quasi parce que jour après jour, j’ai l’impression que nous nous approchons des constats qu’il pose. </div><div>Je voulais qu’il s’agisse d’un futur assez proche pour que le spectateur le trouve imaginable. Qu’il le touche presque du doigt et qu’il puisse s’y projeter.</div><div><br /></div><div>On peut résumer le film d’une manière très simple. À une époque où l’Intelligence Artificielle a réglé tous les problèmes de l’humanité en prenant le pouvoir, une femme intelligente doit faire un choix entre trouver un travail intéressant ou garder ses affects. Et donc possiblement vivre l’amour dont elle rêve.</div><div>Pour se débarrasser de ses affects, elle doit replonger dans ses vies antérieures pour nettoyer les traumatismes anciens qui contaminent son inconscient. Et elle va se confronter à une histoire d’amour qui traverse les vies et les époques, ce qui va évidemment la perturber dans son choix. </div><div><br /></div><div>Le travail ou les affects… </div><div>C’est un dilemme atroce, vers lequel nous nous dirigeons peut-être, dans une société de plus en plus contrôlée, et dont l’absence grandissante de rapport au secret rime avec absence de liberté, mais qui m’a permis de développer un récit et une réflexion sur une histoire des sentiments. </div><div>Le présent du film étant devenu quasi invivable malgré – ou à cause de - l’absence de problèmes, le passé devient le refuge. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Le film est très contemporain à ce sujet. On a pu voir il y a peu de nombreux articles liés à la peur du développement de l’Intelligence Artificielle. Aux dangers. A l’éthique, à la morale, à un basculement du monde qui terrifie</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oui, je ne pensais pas en l’écrivant que tout cela serait si proche. Peut-être en fait que la date de 2044 que j’ai choisie est déjà trop lointaine ! C’est l’endroit évidemment le plus politique du film. Quand je vois que le professeur Geoffrey Hinton, un pionnier de l’IA, dit regretter son invention et avoir créé un monstre… Je le cite : </div><div>« <i>Les futures versions de cette technologie pourraient être un risque pour l’humanité</i> » </div><div><br /></div><div>C’est aussi ce que dit le film, d’une autre manière, avec un autre postulat. La catastrophe, c’est qu’il n’y a plus de catastrophe. </div><div>C’est un mouvement vers la disparition de l’individu et de la singularité. </div><div>Si on fait disparaître la peur, on fait aussi disparaitre la sensation d’être vivant. Alors oui, il y a une froideur et une solitude dans le film en 2044, mais qui m’apparaît malheureusement au plus proche du réel. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>C’est la première fois que vous œuvrez dans la science-fiction. Comment avez-vous procédé et quelles difficultés particulières avez-vous rencontrées à cet égard</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Cela s’est avéré d’autant moins simple que je ne suis pas, comme spectateur ou lecteur, un spécialiste du genre. Mais j’avais quand même quelques repères solides. Je voulais donc pour cette dystopie une date proche. </div><div>Je voulais visuellement éviter les deux voies majeures, qui sont soit un ultra-technologisme, qui peut impressionner mais qui est souvent voué à se périmer, soit une vision postapocalyptique où tout n’est que ruines. </div><div>J’ai préféré procéder par soustraction, en enlevant des choses. En effaçant des parties des décors, en vidant la ville, en changeant l’univers sonore plus que l’architecture, en mettant des animaux dans Paris, en enlevant les réseaux sociaux ou internet. En rendant les rapports entre les gens plus désincarnés que virtuels. </div><div><br /></div><div>Il n’y a aucun futurisme extravagant. L’évolution du monde est beaucoup plus comportementale et idéologique. C’est un monde rempli d’une nouvelle sérénité, apaisante en apparence, mais terrifiante dans le fond.</div><div><br /></div><div>Un récit de science-fiction repose toujours sur un postulat de départ et la manière de rendre celui-ci clair au spectateur est de l’exposer très tôt et très directement. C’est pourquoi intervient rapidement la scène où le personnage de Gabrielle participe à une sorte d’entretien d’embauche en répondant à des questions posées par une voix off (celle du cinéaste Xavier Dolan, par ailleurs co-producteur). </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pourriez-vous nous parler de ce que vous appelez une « histoire des sentiments »</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>On pourrait dire qu’en 1910, les sentiments sont exprimés. En 2014, ils sont refoulés. En 2044, ils sont supprimés. </div><div><br /></div><div>Le film épouse un certain code du mélodrame, à savoir le ratage amoureux. </div><div>En 1910, les deux personnages se ratent parce que Gabrielle ne cède pas. Elle a peur d’aimer et ils en meurent. </div><div>Elle se refuse à lui et un siècle plus tard, en 2014, Louis est obsédé par l’idée qu’aucune femme ne l’a aimé. C’est comme si on retrouvait le même personnage sans qu’il le sache, cent ans plus tard. Il transforme cet échec en désir de tuer, parce que l’époque, les États-Unis, fabriquent ce genre de personnage. Mais c’est bien de peur qu’il s’agit et c’est ce qu’elle perçoit chez lui. Gabrielle le regarde avant tout comme un enfant perdu. C’est pourquoi elle est prête à lui ouvrir la porte alors que lui-même refuse d’entrer… Elle voit en lui quelque chose que lui-même ne voit pas, tout comme un siècle plus tôt, c’est lui qui voyait en elle quelque chose qu’elle ne voyait pas. Elle espère sauver quelque chose chez lui. Mais cette fois c’est lui qui ne cède pas. Ils en meurent à nouveau. </div><div><br /></div><div>En 2044, elle comprend que la peur qu’elle ressent depuis toujours n’est rien d’autre que la peur d’aimer. Mais c’est trop tard. </div><div><br /></div><div>Chez Gabrielle, l’expérience de la purification fabrique de la mémoire. Elle peut donc agir en 2044 avec tous les souvenirs qu’elle a traversés. </div><div>Chez Louis, l’expérience fabrique de l’amnésie émotionnelle. Il met donc fin à tout.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Au départ de La Bête on trouve une célèbre nouvelle d’Henry James, La Bête dans la jungle, laquelle a déjà fait l’objet d’un certain nombre d’adaptations au théâtre et au cinéma. Non seulement votre film en dépasse le cadre, mais il en inverse les données initiales : chez vous, c’est le personnage féminin et non pas le personnage masculin qui pressent qu’un jour, quelque chose d’à la fois grand et terrible va surgir dans sa vie</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Si j’ai procédé à une inversion concernant les personnages, c’est qu’un des désirs à l’origine de ce film était qu’il ait une femme en son centre : je voulais que La Bête soit à la fois un film sur une femme et sur l’actrice qui l’incarne. </div><div><br /></div><div>La Bête dans la jungle est un texte qui me bouleverse depuis longtemps. Mais je n’en ai pris que l’argument, celui de la bête cachée, de la peur d’aimer. La Bête en est une adaptation plus que libre… La plupart des dialogues qu’on entend dans la longue scène de bal au début viennent de James. </div><div>Ce sont des répliques que je trouve magnifiques. Le film se détache ensuite de la nouvelle, pour se déployer sur trois périodes distinctes, 1910, 2014 et 2044. </div><div><br /></div><div>Chacune d’elles a sa propre dynamique, son enjeu, sa terreur, sa gestion du sentiment, et ensemble, elles fabriquent un seul et unique récit amoureux, traversé par un rapport à la mémoire, tout ceci sur fond de catastrophe permanente.</div><div>À chaque fois, la catastrophe personnelle est liée à une catastrophe générale : la crue à Paris en 1910, une sorte d’amnésie comportementale liée aux réseaux sociaux et à Internet en 2014, et la catastrophe pire encore d’un monde sans catastrophe en 2044. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pourquoi ces trois années, 1910, 2014 et 2044</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>1910 est une année un peu postérieure à celle où se déroule la nouvelle : je l’ai choisie à cause de la crue historique survenue à Paris cette année-là. Et puis, c’est encore une période lumineuse, avant l’effondrement qui arrive quelques années plus tard.</div><div>On a tourné cette partie en 35 mm. Non pas par nostalgie, mais pour lui donner un côté plus doux et charnel. Que les autres époques portent évidemment moins en elles. </div><div><br /></div><div>Si 2014 est un peu antérieur à aujourd’hui, c’est que le personnage de Louis, inspiré d’un serial-killer qui a réellement existé, devait appartenir à l’ère pré-#metoo. Les textes des vidéos datent vraiment de 2014. Louis est un pur produit de cette Amérique.</div><div><br /></div><div>Los Angeles, dans le film, est quasiment circonscrit à une maison terrifiante, une boite de nuit et un écran d’ordinateur. Une ville monstre représentée comme une boite mentale avec toutes ses névroses, sa folie, ses désirs. Il y a un enjeu de mise en scène dans ce minimalisme, qui est de retranscrire un monde terrifiant qui nous échappe, en créant de la peur chez un personnage.</div><div><br /></div><div>Quant à 2044, c’est demain. Je voulais que les constats des catastrophes passées nous concernent directement. Et c’est tous les jours un plus le cas. Y compris dans notre rapport aux affects. Les affects sont de plus en plus malmenés. </div><div><br /></div><div>Au-delà des personnages, des motifs se retrouvent dans toutes les parties, ils évoluent. </div><div>La voyance, les poupées, les pigeons… </div><div><br /></div><div><b>La Bête est un film à la fois simple et complexe</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Il peut paraître complexe dans sa structure mais les concepts sont simples. Je trouve par ailleurs que la complexité est une chose magnifique, qui tend à disparaître. </div><div>Et en même temps, je n’ai jamais fait un film aussi simple et aussi direct dans ses émotions. La peur, la solitude, l’amour… Sur le rapport des personnages à l’amour.</div><div>Si Gabrielle ne cesse d’avoir peur, elle a aussi en permanence l’impression que cette peur est importante pour elle.</div><div>Parce que cette bête, c’est simplement cette peur d’aimer, de s’abandonner, de s’abimer, de perdre pied, d’être dévasté… Que l’on peut tous connaître. </div><div>Et cette peur infuse sur toutes les époques. </div><div><br /></div><div>Le film a beau se dérouler sur trois périodes, avec trois univers et six personnages, il ne raconte qu’une seule histoire.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>C’est la première fois qu’une femme occupe à ce point la place centrale d’un de vos films</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Oui, en effet. L’Apollonide était un portrait de groupe. Là, il y avait avant tout le désir de dessiner un portrait de femme et de traiter de manière frontale l’amour et le mélodrame. Puis de le confronter au cinéma de genre, tant le romantisme et le genre me semblent se répondre. Mon désir était d’entrelacer l’intime et le spectaculaire, le classicisme et la modernité, le connu et l’inconnu, le visible et l’invisible. Pour parler peutêtre du plus déchirant des sentiments, la peur d’aimer. </div><div>C’est aussi un portrait de femme qui devient quasiment un documentaire sur une actrice. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Qu’est-ce que vous aimez particulièrement chez Léa Seydoux</b> ?</div><div><br /></div><div>C’est la troisième fois que l’on se retrouve, mais la première pour un personnage central. Je ne voyais pas d’autre actrice capable d’interpréter le personnage de Gabrielle sur trois époques. Léa Seydoux a un côté intemporel ET moderne. </div><div>C’est rare. Sa beauté est très différente dans les trois périodes du film. </div><div>Je la connais bien et depuis longtemps, mais quand la caméra la regarde, il est impossible de savoir ce qu’elle pense. Elle possède un mystère.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dans sa façon d’aborder le travail, Léa n’a rien d’une actrice académique. Elle n’éprouve pas nécessairement le désir d’être très préparée ou de tout savoir de son personnage ni même du script. On pourrait même dire qu’elle cultive une certaine incertitude ou un flottement, mais ce flottement lui profite, il lui permet de se laisser guider, de s’abandonner et de faire surgir des choses. Aussi, une chose importante pour moi, elle a une très belle voix. Un phrasé magnifique, que ce soit en français ou en anglais. Elle habite les répliques aussi bien que les silences. Pour tout cela, et d’autres raisons encore, elle me fait parfois penser à Catherine Deneuve. </div><div><br /></div><div>Léa est tellement souvent seule dans le film – personnellement mais aussi physiquement, dans les plans ou les scènes – que le film devient aussi une sorte de documentaire sur elle. Elle est très seule à Los Angeles, souvent devant son ordinateur. Très seule en 2044, où toutes les interactions avec les autres sont uniquement des voix dans l’espace, désincarnées. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Il est connu qu’au départ, La Bête était écrit pour un acteur dont vous étiez proche, et à qui le film aujourd’hui est dédié, Gaspard Ulliel</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Quand Gaspard est mort, nous étions en pleine préparation. Très vite, nous avons eu la conviction qu’il ne fallait pas renoncer au film, doublée de celle de ne pas prendre un acteur français. Je ne voulais pas que celui-ci puisse être exposé à la comparaison. Sans attendre, nous nous sommes mis en quête d’un acteur anglo-saxon. C’est assez tard que j’ai rencontré Georges MacKay. J’ai pris l’Eurostar, je l’ai vu pour des essais, et au bout de cinq minutes j’ai su que c’était lui. Je trouve cet acteur prodigieux. Il a un nombre de nuances incroyable. Ce qu’il a à faire dans le film est très difficile. Et on ne voit jamais par où ça passe. Je l’ai fait venir à Paris pour faire des essais avec Léa et j’ai su en les voyant côte à côte que je tenais le couple de La Bête.</div><div><br /></div><div>Il y a presque autant de différences entre leurs personnages dans le film qu’il y en a entre Georges et Léa comme acteurs. Selon les époques, Gabrielle ne change pas tellement, alors que Louis change beaucoup : il est presque méconnaissable dans la partie qui se passe en 2014. Et si Léa refuse d’en savoir trop sur son personnage, Georges, lui, n’a cessé de me poser des questions. Il voulait tout savoir, tout connaître de Louis. Je lui ai donc écrit de longues lettres à ce sujet. On dit toujours que les acteurs anglais sont d’énormes travailleurs. J’en ai eu la confirmation. Avant La Bête, George ne parlait pas du tout français. Dans le film, une partie de ses dialogues sont en français. Or il ne se contente pas de s’appuyer sur la phonétique, il joue vraiment.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Le film est un vrai voyage</b>… </div><div><br /></div><div>Oui, et pas uniquement dans le temps. Un voyage mental, physique, émotionnel, sensoriel. Un voyage de 2h25. Il faut du temps pour les voyages. Sinon, on ne voit rien, on ne ressent rien. Il s’agit certes d’un seul film, mais qui contient trois univers. Il faut les installer, comprendre leurs ambiances, introduire les personnages, les situations. Il faut prendre le temps pour la scène du bal, expliquer les conventions. </div><div>Et puis, j’ai l’impression que le rapport à la durée des films a vraiment changé. </div><div>A une époque où le cinéma en salle est malmené, il faut créer un désir de la salle et donc un désir de l’expérience. C’est aussi ce que j’ai essayé de faire. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Ouvert par une audace – la scène sur fond vert où vous dirigez Léa Seydoux – La Bête se clôt par une autre, un générique consistant seulement en un QR Code que le spectateur est invité à scanner</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Il me semblait qu’avec un tel prologue, 1910 résonnerait différemment. Ce prologue contamine le début du film. Ce début est aussi une manière très simple de dire : le sujet de mon film, c’est elle.</div><div><br /></div><div>Quant au QR Code, il est très cohérent avec le film. En général, un générique est un moment d’émotion, avec de la musique, les noms qui défilent, les spectateurs qui se lèvent les uns après les autres et s’apprêtent à retrouver la lumière du dehors. Ici nous sommes dans un monde où les affects</div><div>ont été bannis, il est donc logique qu’ils le soient aussi du générique. Seule Gabrielle est encore capable de ressentir. Ça la rend encore plus seule, je trouve. </div><div><br /></div><div>Recueilli par Emmanuel Burdeau</div><div><br /></div><div>BERTRAND BONELLO</div><div><br /></div><div>Bertrand Bonello est né en 1968, à Nice. Il alterne musique et cinéma. En 1996, il réalise un documentaire de création : Qui je suis, d’après Pier Paolo Pasolini. Son premier long métrage, Quelque chose d’organique (1998), est présenté au Festival de Berlin (Panorama). Le pornographe (2001) avec Jean-Pierre Léaud est invité à la Semaine de la Critique à Cannes et obtient le prix FIPRESCI. En 2003, Tiresia est sélectionné en Compétition au Festival de Cannes. La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs montre De la guerre en 2008. L’Apollonide - Souvenirs de la maison close (2011) est en Compétition au Festival de Cannes et reçoit huit nominations aux César. Saint Laurent (2014), également en Compétition à Cannes, représente la France aux Oscars et obtient dix nominations aux César. La même année, Bertrand Bonello organise une exposition au Centre Pompidou et sort un album, Accidents. Il continue régulièrement à réaliser des films courts ou musicaux : Cindy, the Doll is Mine (2005), en Sélection Officielle à Cannes, My New Picture (2007), Where the Boys Are (2010), Ingrid Caven, musique et voix (2012), tous présentés à Locarno ; Sarah Winchester, opéra fantôme (2016), créé pour la 3e scène de l’Opéra de Paris. En 2016 sort Nocturama, son septième long métrage. En 2019, la Quinzaine des Réalisateurs sélectionne Zombi Child. Coma est présenté en compétition à la Berlinale 2022 dans la sélection Encounters. Il est récompensé du prix FIPRESCI.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-9900031021767274002024-02-17T15:00:00.005+02:002024-03-07T15:46:29.515+02:00Henry James: The Beast in the Jungle (1903) short story<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHatmBocOAEJa6btYGCPakD2m6uc2YH7XGEhQj_XvTAC16z-HB-8qnWevnuAKK54CKbFbHJHJSmAKR2sNwq-b-RInxPhCnapkR4kaOIdZD_RX9l9yaKPLtwbCJ_7nF3zQQO5wl7fjsdogiA6z1Jzke1py5MD9vwComxdJg1I9hd6n6UEWGD59/s2026/1990%20Beno%C3%AEt%20Jacquot,%20La%20Bete%20dans%20le%20jungle,%20Positif.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1178" data-original-width="2026" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHatmBocOAEJa6btYGCPakD2m6uc2YH7XGEhQj_XvTAC16z-HB-8qnWevnuAKK54CKbFbHJHJSmAKR2sNwq-b-RInxPhCnapkR4kaOIdZD_RX9l9yaKPLtwbCJ_7nF3zQQO5wl7fjsdogiA6z1Jzke1py5MD9vwComxdJg1I9hd6n6UEWGD59/w400-h233/1990%20Beno%C3%AEt%20Jacquot,%20La%20Bete%20dans%20le%20jungle,%20Positif.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Benoît Jacquot: La Bête dans le jungle (FR 1990) avec Sami Frey (John Marcher) et Delphine Seyrig (Catherine Bartram), enregistrant le spectacle d'Alfredo Arias d'après Henry James.</td></tr></tbody></table>
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HENRY JAMES<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE </div><div><br /></div><div>Originally published as part of the collection The Better Sort. London: Methuen / New York City: Charles Scribner's Sons, GB/US 1903.</div><div>From The Project Gutenberg ebook, 1997.</div><div>Project Gutenberg™ terms: please see at the end of this file.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER I</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention--spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, of whom he was one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon. There had been after luncheon much dispersal, all in the interest of the original motive, a view of Weatherend itself and the fine things, intrinsic features, pictures, heirlooms, treasures of all the arts, that made the place almost famous; and the great rooms were so numerous that guests could wander at their will, hang back from the principal group and in cases where they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves up to mysterious appreciations and measurements. There were persons to be observed, singly or in couples, bending toward objects in out-of-the-way corners with their hands on their knees and their heads nodding quite as with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When they were two they either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of even deeper import, so that there were aspects of the occasion that gave it for Marcher much the air of the "look round," previous to a sale highly advertised, that excites or quenches, as may be, the dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisition at Weatherend would have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself, among such suggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence of those who knew too much and by that of those who knew nothing. The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them, though this impulse was not, as happened, like the gloating of some of his companions, to be compared to the movements of a dog sniffing a cupboard. It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have been calculated.</div><div><br /></div><div>CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP BREAK</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP BREAK</div><div><br /></div><div>It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the sequel of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn't know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was also somehow aware--yet without a direct sign from her--that the young woman herself hadn't lost the thread. She hadn't lost it, but she wouldn't give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forth of his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more, things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had no importance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much; the answer to which, however, was that in such a life as they all appeared to be leading for the moment one could but take things as they came. He was satisfied, without in the least being able to say why, that this young lady might roughly have ranked in the house as a poor relation; satisfied also that she was not there on a brief visit, but was more or less a part of the establishment--almost a working, a remunerated part. Didn't she enjoy at periods a protection that she paid for by helping, among other services, to show the place and explain it, deal with the tiresome people, answer questions about the dates of the building, the styles of the furniture, the authorship of the pictures, the favourite haunts of the ghost? It wasn't that she looked as if you could have given her shillings--it was impossible to look less so. Yet when she finally drifted toward him, distinctly handsome, though ever so much older--older than when he had seen her before--it might have been as an effect of her guessing that he had, within the couple of hours, devoted more imagination to her than to all the others put together, and had thereby penetrated to a kind of truth that the others were too stupid for. She _was_ there on harder terms than any one; she was there as a consequence of things suffered, one way and another, in the interval of years; and she remembered him very much as she was remembered--only a good deal better.</div><div><br /></div><div>By the time they at last thus came to speech they were alone in one of the rooms--remarkable for a fine portrait over the chimney-place--out of which their friends had passed, and the charm of it was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged with each other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was in other things too--partly in there being scarce a spot at Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to keep the whole thing down, just take her mild attention for a part of her general business. As soon as he heard her voice, however, the gap was filled up and the missing link supplied; the slight irony he divined in her attitude lost its advantage. He almost jumped at it to get there before her. "I met you years and years ago in Rome. I remember all about it." She confessed to disappointment--she had been so sure he didn't; and to prove how well he did he began to pour forth the particular recollections that popped up as he called for them. Her face and her voice, all at his service now, worked the miracle--the impression operating like the torch of a lamplighter who touches into flame, one by one, a long row of gas-jets. Marcher flattered himself the illumination was brilliant, yet he was really still more pleased on her showing him, with amusement, that in his haste to make everything right he had got most things rather wrong. It hadn't been at Rome--it had been at Naples; and it hadn't been eight years before--it had been more nearly ten. She hadn't been, either, with her uncle and aunt, but with her mother and brother; in addition to which it was not with the Pembles _he_ had been, but with the Boyers, coming down in their company from Rome--a point on which she insisted, a little</div><div>to his confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. The Boyers she had known, but didn't know the Pembles, though she had heard of them, and it was the people he was with who had made them acquainted. The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round them with such violence as to drive them for refuge into an excavation--this incident had not occurred at the Palace of the Caesars, but at Pompeii, on an occasion when they had been present there at an important find.</div><div><br /></div><div>He accepted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the moral of them was, she pointed out, that he _really_ didn't remember the least thing about her; and he only felt it as a drawback that when all was made strictly historic there didn't appear much of anything left. They lingered together still, she neglecting her office--for from the moment he was so clever she had no proper right to him--and both neglecting the house, just waiting as to see if a memory or two more wouldn't again breathe on them. It hadn't taken them many minutes, after all, to put down on the table, like the cards of a pack, those that constituted their respective hands; only what came out was that the pack was unfortunately not perfect--that the past, invoked, invited, encouraged, could give them, naturally, no more than it had. It had made them anciently meet--her at twenty, him at twenty-five; but nothing was so strange, they seemed to say to each other, as that, while so occupied, it hadn't done a little more for them. They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed; the present would have been so much better if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn't been so stupidly meagre. There weren't, apparently, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried--too deeply (didn't it seem?) to sprout after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service--saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. _Then_ they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why--since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people—their reunion had been so long averted. They didn't use that name for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession that they didn't quite want it to be a failure. Their attempted supposition of reasons for their not having met but showed how little they knew of each other. There came in fact a moment when Marcher felt a positive pang. It was vain to pretend she was an old friend, for all the communities were wanting, in spite of which it was as an old friend that he saw she would have suited him. He had new ones enough—was surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn't have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind _had_ originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination--as against time--for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else failing, she herself decided to take up the case and, as it were, save the situation. He felt as soon as she spoke that she had been consciously keeping back what she said and hoping to get on without it; a scruple in her that immensely touched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was able to measure it. What she brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air and supplied the link--the link it was so odd he should frivolously have managed to lose.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You know you told me something I've never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since; it was that tremendously hot day when we went to Sorrento, across the bay, for the breeze. What I allude to was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awning of the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgotten?"</div><div><br /></div><div>He had forgotten, and was even more surprised than ashamed. But the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any "sweet" speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile "offer." So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention. "I try to think--but I give it up. Yet I remember the Sorrento day."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm not very sure you do," May Bartram after a moment said; "and I'm not very sure I ought to want you to. It's dreadful to bring a person back at any time to what he was ten years before. If you've lived away from it," she smiled, "so much the better."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ah if _you_ haven't why should I?" he asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"From what _I_ was. I was of course an ass," Marcher went on; "but I would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than--from the moment you have something in your mind--not know anything."</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to be that sort--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I haven't."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd remember. Not indeed that _I_ in the least connect with my impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you foolish," she explained, "the thing I speak of wouldn't so have remained with me. It was about yourself." She waited as if it might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt her ships. "Has it ever happened?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with recognition.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you mean I told you--?" But he faltered, lest what came to him shouldn't be right, lest he should only give himself away.</div><div><br /></div><div>"It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn't forget--that is if one remembered you at all. That's why I ask you," she smiled, "if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel it hadn't been, much as it had been a surprise. After the first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. No wonder they couldn't have met as if nothing had happened. "I judge," he finally said, "that I know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my confidence."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is it because you've taken so many others as well?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then."</div><div><br /></div><div>"So that I'm the only person who knows?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"The only person in the world."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," she quickly replied, "I myself have never spoken. I've never, never repeated of you what you told me." She looked at him so that he perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt. "And I never will."</div><div><br /></div><div>She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question was a new luxury to him--that is from the moment she was in possession. If she didn't take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn't at present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. "Please don't then. We're just right as it is."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then you do still feel in the same way?"</div><div><br /></div><div>It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really interested, though it all kept coming as a perfect surprise. He had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he seemed to see as he looked at her--she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he had told her--what had it been but to ask something of her? something that she had given, in her charity, without his having, by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how he had figured to her. "What, exactly, was the account I gave--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you call that very simple?" John Marcher asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>She thought a moment. "It was perhaps because I seemed, as you spoke, to understand it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You do understand it?" he eagerly asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>Again she kept her kind eyes on him. "You still have the belief?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh!" he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Whatever it's to be," she clearly made out, "it hasn't yet come."</div><div><br /></div><div>He shook his head in complete surrender now. "It hasn't yet come. Only, you know, it isn't anything I'm to do, to achieve in the world, to be distinguished or admired for. I'm not such an ass as _that_. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's to be something you're merely to suffer?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, say to wait for--to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape themselves."</div><div><br /></div><div>She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be that of mockery. "Isn't what you describe perhaps but the expectation—or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many people--of falling in love?"</div><div><br /></div><div>John Marcher thought. "Did you ask me that before?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No--I wasn't so free-and-easy then. But it's what strikes me now."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Of course," he said after a moment, "it strikes you. Of course it strikes _me_. Of course what's in store for me may be no more than that. The only thing is," he went on, "that I think if it had been that I should by this time know."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you mean because you've _been_ in love?" And then as he but looked at her in silence: "You've been in love, and it hasn't meant such a cataclysm, hasn't proved the great affair?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Here I am, you see. It hasn't been overwhelming."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that--I've taken it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was miserable," he explained. "But it wasn't strange. It wasn't what my affair's to be."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You want something all to yourself--something that nobody else knows or _has_ known?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"It isn't a question of what I 'want'--God knows I don't want anything. It's only a question of the apprehension that haunts me--that I live with day by day."</div><div><br /></div><div>He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it further impose itself. If she hadn't been interested before she'd have been interested now.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is it a sense of coming violence?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. "I don't think of it as--when it does come--necessarily violent. I only think of it as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it simply as _the_ thing. _The_ thing will of itself appear natural."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then how will it appear strange?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Marcher bethought himself. "It won't--to _me_."</div><div><br /></div><div>"To whom then?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," he replied, smiling at last, "say to you."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh then I'm to be present?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why you are present--since you know."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I see." She turned it over. "But I mean at the catastrophe."</div><div><br /></div><div>At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. "It will only depend on yourself--if you'll watch with me."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Are you afraid?" she asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't leave me now," he went on.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Are you afraid?" she repeated.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you think me simply out of my mind?" he pursued instead of answering. "Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No," said May Bartram. "I understand you. I believe you."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You mean you feel how my obsession--poor old thing--may correspond to some possible reality?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"To some possible reality."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then you _will_ watch with me?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. "Are you afraid?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Did I tell you I was--at Naples?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No, you said nothing about it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then I don't know. And I should like to know," said John Marcher. "You'll tell me yourself whether you think so. If you'll watch with me you'll see."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Very good then." They had been moving by this time across the room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the full wind-up of their understanding. "I'll watch with you," said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER II</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The fact that she "knew"--knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayed him--had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that followed their afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for meeting multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions was the death of the ancient lady her great-aunt, under whose wing, since losing her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter, and who, though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the property, had succeeded--thanks to a high tone and a high temper--in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house. The deposition of this personage arrived but with her death, which, followed by many changes, made in particular a difference for the young woman in whom Marcher's expert attention had recognized from the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn't bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bartram's now finding herself able to set up a small home in London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that luxury just possible, under her aunt's extremely complicated will, and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These friends had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with Miss Bartram some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, on these latter occasions, to the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum, where, among vivid reminders, they talked of Italy at large—not now attempting to recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and their ignorance. That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher's sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.</div><div><br /></div><div>They were literally afloat together; for our gentleman this was marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried treasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands dug up this little hoard, brought to light--that is to within reach of the dim day constituted by their discretions and privacies--the object of value the hiding-place of which he had, after putting it into the ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare luck of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him indifferent to any other question; he would doubtless have devoted more time to the odd accident of his lapse of memory if he hadn't been moved to devote so much to the sweetness, the comfort, as he felt, for the future, that this accident itself had helped to keep fresh. It had never entered into his plan that any one should "know", and mainly for the reason that it wasn't in him to tell any one. That would have been impossible, for nothing but the amusement of a cold world would have waited on it. Since, however, a mysterious fate had opened his mouth betimes, in spite of him, he would count that a compensation and profit by it to the utmost. That the right person _should_ know tempered the asperity of his secret more even than his shyness had permitted him to imagine; and May Bartram was clearly right, because--well, because there she was. Her knowledge simply settled it; he would have been sure enough by this time had she been wrong. There was that in his situation, no doubt, that disposed him too much to see her as a mere confidant, taking all her light for him from the fact—the fact only--of her interest in his predicament; from her mercy, sympathy, seriousness, her consent not to regard him as the funniest of the funny. Aware, in fine, that her price for him was just in her giving him this constant sense of his being admirably spared, he was careful to remember that she had also a life of her own, with things that might happen to _her_, things that in friendship one should likewise take account of. Something fairly remarkable came to pass with him, for that matter, in this connexion--something represented by a certain passage of his consciousness, in the suddenest way, from one extreme to the other.</div><div><br /></div><div>He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. He hadn't disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were forsooth "unsettled." If they were as unsettled as he was--he who had never been settled for an hour in his life--they would know what it meant. Yet it wasn't, all the same, for him to make them, and he listened to them civilly enough. This was why he had such good--though possibly such rather colourless--manners; this was why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as decently--as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely--unselfish. Our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite sufficiently to measure his present danger of letting it lapse, against which he promised himself to be much on his guard. He was quite ready, none the less, to be selfish just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him. "Just a little," in a word, was just as much as Miss Bartram, taking one day with another, would let him. He never would be in the least coercive, and would keep well before him the lines on which consideration for her--the very highest--ought to proceed. He would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her requirements, her peculiarities--he went so far as to give them the latitude of that name--would come into their intercourse. All this naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for granted. There was nothing more to be done about that. It simply existed; had sprung into being with her first penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, his apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt. Such was the image under which he had ended by figuring his life.</div><div><br /></div><div>They had at first, none the less, in the scattered hours spent together, made no allusion to that view of it; which was a sign he was handsomely alert to give that he didn't expect, that he in fact didn't care, always to be talking about it. Such a feature in one's outlook was really like a hump on one's back. The difference it made every minute of the day existed quite independently of discussion. One discussed of course _like_ a hunchback, for there was always, if nothing else, the hunchback face. That remained, and she was watching him; but people watched best, as a general thing, in silence, so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil. Yet he didn't want, at the same time, to be tense and solemn; tense and solemn was what he imagined he too much showed for with other people. The thing to be, with the one person who knew, was easy and natural--to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid it, to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it, and to keep it, in any case, familiar, facetious even, rather than pedantic and portentous. Some such consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this circumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acquiring a house in London. It was the first allusion they had yet again made, needing any other hitherto so little; but when she replied, after having given him the news, that she was by no means satisfied with such a trifle as the climax to so special a suspense, she almost set him wondering if she hadn't even a larger conception of singularity for him than he had for himself. He was at all events destined to become aware little by little, as time went by, that she was all the while looking at his life, judging it, measuring it, in the light of the thing she knew, which grew to be at last, with the consecration of the years, never mentioned between them save as "the real truth" about him. That had always been his own form of reference to it, but she adopted the form so quietly that, looking back at the end of a period, he knew there was no moment at which it was traceable that she had, as he might say, got inside his idea, or exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still more beautifully believing him.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the most harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run--since it covered so much ground--was his easiest description of their friendship. He had a screw loose for her but she liked him in spite of it and was practically, against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated but fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably occupied. The rest of the world of course thought him queer, but she, she only, knew how, and above all why, queer; which was precisely what enabled her to dispose the concealing veil in the right folds. She took his gaiety from him--since it had to pass with them for gaiety--as she took everything else; but she certainly so far justified by her unerring touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincing her. _She_ at least never spoke of the secret of his life except as "the real truth about you," and she had in fact a wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own life too. That was in fine how he so constantly felt her as allowing for him; he couldn't on the whole call it anything else. He allowed for himself, but she, exactly, allowed still more; partly because, better placed for a sight of the matter, she traced his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into which he could scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that, he knew how he looked as well; he knew each of the things of importance he was insidiously kept from doing, but she could add up the amount they made, understand how much, with a lighter weight on his spirit, he might have done, and thereby establish how, clever as he was, he fell short. Above all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he went through--those of his little office under Government, those of caring for his modest patrimony, for his library, for his garden in the country, for the people in London whose invitations he accepted and repaid--and the detachment that reigned beneath them and that made of all behaviour, all that could in the least be called behaviour, a long act of dissimulation. What it had come to was that he wore a mask painted with the social simper, out of the eye-holes of which there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features. This the stupid world, even after years, had never more than half discovered. It was only May Bartram who had, and she achieved, by an art indescribable, the feat of at once--or perhaps it was only alternately--meeting the eyes from in front and mingling her own vision, as from over his shoulder, with their peep through the apertures.</div><div><br /></div><div>So while they grew older together she did watch with him, and so she let this association give shape and colour to her own existence. Beneath _her_ forms as well detachment had learned to sit, and behaviour had become for her, in the social sense, a false account of herself. There was but one account of her that would have been true all the while and that she could give straight to nobody, least of all to John Marcher. Her whole attitude was a virtual statement, but the perception of that only seemed called to take its place for him as one of the many things necessarily crowded out of his consciousness. If she had moreover, like himself, to make sacrifices to their real truth, it was to be granted that her compensation might have affected her as more prompt and more natural. They had long periods, in this London time, during which, when they were together, a stranger might have listened to them without in the least pricking up his ears; on the other hand the real truth was equally liable at any moment to rise to the surface, and the auditor would then have wondered indeed what they were talking about. They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces. Yet there were still moments when the situation turned almost fresh--usually under the effect of some expression drawn from herself. Her expressions doubtless repeated themselves, but her intervals were generous. "What saves us, you know, is that we answer so completely to so usual an appearance: that of the man and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit--or almost--as to be at last indispensable." That for instance was a remark she had frequently enough had occasion to make, though she had given it at different times different developments. What we are especially concerned with is the turn it happened to take from her one afternoon when he had come to see her in honour of her birthday. This anniversary had fallen on a Sunday, at a season of thick fog and general outward gloom; but he had brought her his customary offering, having known her now long enough to have established a hundred small traditions. It was one of his proofs to himself, the present he made her on her birthday, that he hadn't sunk into real selfishness. It was mostly nothing more than a small trinket, but it was always fine of its kind, and he was regularly careful to pay for it more than he thought he could afford. "Our habit saves you, at least, don't you see? because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other men. What's the most inveterate mark of men in general? Why the capacity to spend endless time with dull women—to spend it I won't say without being bored, but without minding that they are, without being driven off at a tangent by it; which comes to the same thing. I'm your dull woman, a part of the daily bread for which you pray at church. That covers your tracks more than anything."</div><div><br /></div><div>"And what covers yours?" asked Marcher, whom his dull woman could mostly to this extent amuse. "I see of course what you mean by your saving me, in this way and that, so far as other people are concerned--I've seen it all along. Only what is it that saves _you_? I often think, you know, of that."</div><div><br /></div><div>She looked as if she sometimes thought of that too, but rather in a different way. "Where other people, you mean, are concerned?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, you're really so in with me, you know--as a sort of result of my being so in with yourself. I mean of my having such an immense regard for you, being so tremendously mindful of all you've done for me. I sometimes ask myself if it's quite fair. Fair I mean to have so involved and--since one may say it--interested you. I almost feel as if you hadn't really had time to do anything else."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Anything else but be interested?" she asked. "Ah what else does one ever want to be? If I've been 'watching' with you, as we long ago agreed I was to do, watching's always in itself an absorption."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh certainly," John Marcher said, "if you hadn't had your curiosity--! Only doesn't it sometimes come to you as time goes on that your curiosity isn't being particularly repaid?"</div><div><br /></div><div>May Bartram had a pause. "Do you ask that, by any chance, because you feel at all that yours isn't? I mean because you have to wait so long."</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh he understood what she meant! "For the thing to happen that never does happen? For the Beast to jump out? No, I'm just where I was about it. It isn't a matter as to which I can _choose_, I can decide for a change. It isn't one as to which there _can_ be a change. It's in the lap of the gods. One's in the hands of one's law--there one is. As to the form the law will take, the way it will operate, that's its own affair."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes," Miss Bartram replied; "of course one's fate's coming, of course it _has_ come in its own form and its own way, all the while. Only, you know, the form and the way in your case were to have been--well, something so exceptional and, as one may say, so particularly _your_ own."</div><div><br /></div><div>Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. "You say 'were to _have_ been,' as if in your heart you had begun to doubt."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh!" she vaguely protested.</div><div><br /></div><div>"As if you believed," he went on, "that nothing will now take place."</div><div><br /></div><div>She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. "You're far from my thought."</div><div><br /></div><div>He continued to look at her. "What then is the matter with you?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," she said after another wait, "the matter with me is simply that I'm more sure than ever my curiosity, as you call it, will be but too well repaid."</div><div><br /></div><div>They were frankly grave now; he had got up from his seat, had turned once more about the little drawing-room to which, year after year, he brought his inevitable topic; in which he had, as he might have said, tasted their intimate community with every sauce, where every object was as familiar to him as the things of his own house and the very carpets were worn with his fitful walk very much as the desks in old counting-houses are worn by the elbows of generations of clerks. The generations of his nervous moods had been at work there, and the place was the written history of his whole middle life. Under the impression of what his friend had just said he knew himself, for some reason, more aware of these things; which made him, after a moment, stop again before her. "Is it possibly that you've grown afraid?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Afraid?" He thought, as she repeated the word, that his question had made her, a little, change colour; so that, lest he should have touched on a truth, he explained very kindly: "You remember that that was what you asked _me_ long ago--that first day at Weatherend."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh yes, and you told me you didn't know--that I was to see for myself. We've said little about it since, even in so long a time."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Precisely," Marcher interposed--"quite as if it were too delicate a matter for us to make free with. Quite as if we might find, on pressure, that I _am_ afraid. For then," he said, "we shouldn't, should we? quite know what to do."</div><div><br /></div><div>She had for the time no answer to this question. "There have been days when I thought you were. Only, of course," she added, "there have been days when we have thought almost anything."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Everything. Oh!" Marcher softly groaned, as with a gasp, half spent, at the face, more uncovered just then than it had been for a long while, of the imagination always with them. It had always had it's incalculable moments of glaring out, quite as with the very eyes of the very Beast, and, used as he was to them, they could still draw from him the tribute of a sigh that rose from the depths of his being. All they had thought, first and last, rolled over him; the past seemed to have been reduced to mere barren speculation. This in fact was what the place had just struck him as so full of--the simplification of everything but the state of suspense. That remained only by seeming to hang in the void surrounding it. Even his original fear, if fear it as had been, had lost itself in the desert. "I judge, however," he continued, "that you see I'm not afraid now."</div><div><br /></div><div>"What I see, as I make it out, is that you've achieved something almost unprecedented in the way of getting used to danger. Living with it so long and so closely you've lost your sense of it; you know it's there, but you're indifferent, and you cease even, as of old, to have to whistle in the dark. Considering what the danger is," May Bartram wound up, "I'm bound to say I don't think your attitude could well be surpassed."</div><div><br /></div><div>John Marcher faintly smiled. "It's heroic?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Certainly--call it that."</div><div><br /></div><div>It was what he would have liked indeed to call it. "I _am_ then a man of courage?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's what you were to show me."</div><div><br /></div><div>He still, however, wondered. "But doesn't the man of courage know what he's afraid of--or not afraid of? I don't know _that_, you see. I don't focus it. I can't name it. I only know I'm exposed."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes, but exposed--how shall I say?--so directly. So intimately. That's surely enough."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Enough to make you feel then--as what we may call the end and the upshot of our watch--that I'm not afraid?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You're not afraid. But it isn't," she said, "the end of our watch. That is it isn't the end of yours. You've everything still to see."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then why haven't you?" he asked. He had had, all along, to-day, the sense of her keeping something back, and he still had it. As this was his first impression of that it quite made a date. The case was the more marked as she didn't at first answer; which in turn made him go on. "You know something I don't." Then his voice, for that of a man of courage, trembled a little. "You know what's to happen." Her silence, with the face she showed, was almost a confession--it made him sure. "You know, and you're afraid to tell me. It's so bad that you're afraid I'll find out."</div><div><br /></div><div>All this might be true, for she did look as if, unexpectedly to her, he had crossed some mystic line that she had secretly drawn round her. Yet she might, after all, not have worried; and the real climax was that he himself, at all events, needn't. "You'll never find out."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER III</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It was all to have made, none the less, as I have said, a date; which came out in the fact that again and again, even after long intervals, other things that passed between them were in relation to this hour but the character of recalls and results. Its immediate effect had been indeed rather to lighten insistence--almost to provoke a reaction; as if their topic had dropped by its own weight and as if moreover, for that matter, Marcher had been visited by one of his occasional warnings against egotism. He had kept up, he felt, and very decently on the whole, his consciousness of the importance of not being selfish, and it was true that he had never sinned in that direction without promptly enough trying to press the scales the other way. He often repaired his fault, the season permitting, by inviting his friend to accompany him to the opera; and it not infrequently thus happened that, to show he didn't wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, he was the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the month. It even happened that, seeing her home at such times, he occasionally went in with her to finish, as he called it, the evening, and, the better to make his point, sat down to the frugal but always careful little supper that awaited his pleasure. His point was made, he thought, by his not eternally insisting with her on himself; made for instance, at such hours, when it befell that, her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over passages of the opera together. It chanced to be on one of these occasions, however, that he reminded her of her not having answered a certain question he had put to her during the talk that had taken place between them on her last birthday. "What is it that saves _you_?"--saved her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, by doing, in the most important particular, what most men do--find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman no better than himself--how had she escaped it, and how could the alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed, have failed to make her rather positively talked about?</div><div><br /></div><div>"I never said," May Bartram replied, "that it hadn't made me a good deal talked about."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ah well then you're not 'saved.'"</div><div><br /></div><div>"It hasn't been a question for me. If you've had your woman I've had," she said, "my man."</div><div><br /></div><div>"And you mean that makes you all right?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh it was always as if there were so much to say!</div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't know why it shouldn't make me--humanly, which is what we're speaking of--as right as it makes you."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I see," Marcher returned. "'Humanly,' no doubt, as showing that you're living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my secret."</div><div><br /></div><div>May Bartram smiled. "I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not living for you. It's my intimacy with you that's in question."</div><div><br /></div><div>He laughed as he saw what she meant. "Yes, but since, as you say, I'm only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you're--aren't you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I _am_, as I understand you, you're not compromised. Is that it?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She had another of her waits, but she spoke clearly enough. "That's it. It's all that concerns me--to help you to pass for a man like another."</div><div><br /></div><div>He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. "How kind, how beautiful, you are to me! How shall I ever repay you?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She had her last grave pause, as if there might be a choice of ways. But she chose. "By going on as you are."</div><div><br /></div><div>It was into this going on as he was that they relapsed, and really for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn't dare to express--a charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. It had come up for him then that she "knew" something and that what she knew was bad--too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher's special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn't much affected by the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could "know," after all, any better than he did. She had no source of knowledge he hadn't equally--except of course that she might have finer nerves. That was what women had where they were interested; they made out things, where people were concerned, that the people often couldn't have made out for themselves. Their nerves, their sensibility, their imagination, were conductors and revealers, and the beauty of May Bartram was in particular that she had given herself so to his case. He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had never felt before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe--some catastrophe that yet wouldn't at all be the catastrophe: partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an appearance of uncertainty in her health, co-incident and equally new. It was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is a reference, it was characteristic that his complications, such as they were, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him, even to the point of making him ask himself if he were, by any chance, of a truth, within sight or sound, within touch or reach, within the immediate jurisdiction, of the thing that waited.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to him her fear of a deep disorder in her blood, he felt somehow the shadow of a change and the chill of a shock. He immediately began to imagine aggravations and disasters, and above all to think of her peril as the direct menace for himself of personal privation. This indeed gave him one of those partial recoveries of equanimity that were agreeable to him--it showed him that what was still first in his mind was the loss she herself might suffer. "What if she should have to die before knowing, before seeing--?" It would have been brutal, in the early stages of her trouble, to put that question to her; but it had immediately sounded for him to his own concern, and the possibility was what most made him sorry for her. If she did "know," moreover, in the sense of her having had some--what should he think?--mystical irresistible light, this would make the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She had been living to see what would _be_ to be seen, and it would quite lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity; yet, make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse of the period, more and more disconcerted. It lapsed for him with a strange steady sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him, independently of the threat of much inconvenience, almost the only positive surprise his career, if career it could be called, had yet offered him. She kept the house as she had never done; he had to go to her to see her--she could meet him nowhere now, though there was scarce a corner of their loved old London in which she hadn't in the past, at one time or another, done so; and he found her always seated by her fire in the deep old-fashioned chair she was less and less able to leave. He had been struck one day, after an absence exceeding his usual measure, with her suddenly looking much older to him than he had ever thought of her being; then he recognised that the suddenness was all on his side--he had just simply and suddenly noticed. She looked older because inevitably, after so many years, she _was_ old, or almost; which was of course true in still greater measure of her companion. If she was old, or almost, John Marcher assuredly was, and yet it was her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truth home to him. His surprises began here; when once they had begun they multiplied; they came rather with a rush: it was as if, in the oddest way in the world, they had all been kept back, sown in a thick cluster, for the late afternoon of life, the time at which for people in general the unexpected has died out.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of them was that he should have caught himself--for he _had_ so done--_really_ wondering if the great accident would take form now as nothing more than his being condemned to see this charming woman, this admirable friend, pass away from him. He had never so unreservedly qualified her as while confronted in thought with such a possibility; in spite of which there was small doubt for him that as an answer to his long riddle the mere effacement of even so fine a feature of his situation would be an abject anticlimax. It would represent, as connected with his past attitude, a drop of dignity under the shadow of which his existence could only become the most grotesques of failures. He had been far from holding it a failure--long as he had waited for the appearance that was to make it a success. He had waited for quite another thing, not for such a thing as that. The breath of his good faith came short, however, as he recognised how long he had waited, or how long at least his companion had. That she, at all events, might be recorded as having waited in vain--this affected him sharply, and all the more because of his at first having done little more than amuse himself with the idea. It grew more grave as the gravity of her condition grew, and the state of mind it produced in him, which he himself ended by watching as if it had been some definite disfigurement of his outer person, may pass for another of his surprises. This conjoined itself still with another, the really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared. What did everything mean--what, that is, did _she_ mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all—unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction; he had never till within these last few months been so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him had time, whether _he_ struck himself as having it or not. That at last, at last, he certainly hadn't it, to speak of, or had it but in the scantiest measure--such, soon enough, as things went with him, became the inference with which his old obsession had to reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more confirmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long shadow in which he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no margin left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its unlooked-for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He didn't care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy or what monstrosity he might yet be associated--since he wasn't after all too utterly old to suffer--if it would only be decently proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left--that he shouldn't have been "sold."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER IV</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Then it was that, one afternoon, while the spring of the year was young and new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of these alarms. He had gone in late to see her, but evening hadn't settled and she was presented to him in that long fresh light of waning April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greyest hours of autumn. The week had been warm, the spring was supposed to have begun early, and May Bartram sat, for the first time in the year, without a fire; a fact that, to Marcher's sense, gave the scene of which she formed part a smooth and ultimate look, an air of knowing, in its immaculate order and cold meaningless cheer, that it would never see a fire again. Her own aspect--he could scarce have said why--intensified this note. Almost as white as wax, with the marks and signs in her face as numerous and as fine as if they had been etched by a needle, with soft white draperies relieved by a faded green scarf on the delicate tone of which the years had further refined, she was the picture of a serene and exquisite but impenetrable sphinx, whose head, or indeed all whose person, might have been powdered with silver. She was a sphinx, yet with her white petals and green fronds she might have been a lily too--only an artificial lily, wonderfully imitated and constantly kept, without dust or stain, though not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint creases, under some clear glass bell. The perfection of household care, of high polish and finish, always reigned in her rooms, but they now looked most as if everything had been wound up, tucked in, put away, so that she might sit with folded hands and with nothing more to do. She was "out of it," to Marcher's vision; her work was over; she communicated with him as across some gulf or from some island of rest that she had already reached, and it made him feel strangely abandoned. Was it--or rather wasn't it—that if for so long she had been watching with him the answer to their question must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with this in saying to her, many months before, that she even then knew something she was keeping from him. It was a point he had never since ventured to press, vaguely fearing as he did that it might become a difference, perhaps a disagreement, between them. He had in this later time turned nervous, which was what he in all the other years had never been; and the oddity was that his nervousness should have waited till he had begun to doubt, should have held off so long as he was sure. There was something, it seemed to him, that the wrong word would bring down on his head, something that would so at least ease off his tension. But he wanted not to speak the wrong word; that would make everything ugly. He wanted the knowledge he lacked to drop on him, if drop it could, by its own august weight. If she was to forsake him it was surely for her to take leave. This was why he didn't directly ask her again what she knew; but it was also why, approaching the matter from another side, he said to her in the course of his visit: "What do you regard as the very worst that at this time of day _can_ happen to me?"</div><div><br /></div><div>He had asked her that in the past often enough; they had, with the odd irregular rhythm of their intensities and avoidances, exchanged ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool intervals, washed like figures traced in sea-sand. It had ever been the mark of their talk that the oldest allusions in it required but a little dismissal and reaction to come out again, sounding for the hour as new. She could thus at present meet his enquiry quite freshly and patiently. "Oh yes, I've repeatedly thought, only it always seemed to me of old that I couldn't quite make up my mind. I thought of dreadful things, between which it was difficult to choose; and so must you have done."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Rather! I feel now as if I had scarce done anything else. I appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of nothing but dreadful things. A great many of them I've at different times named to you, but there were others I couldn't name."</div><div><br /></div><div>"They were too, too dreadful?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Too, too dreadful--some of them."</div><div><br /></div><div>She looked at him a minute, and there came to him as he met it, an inconsequent sense that her eyes, when one got their full clearness, were still as beautiful as they had been in youth, only beautiful with a strange cold light--a light that somehow was a part of the effect, if it wasn't rather a part of the cause, of the pale hard sweetness of the season and the hour. "And yet," she said at last, "there are horrors we've mentioned."</div><div><br /></div><div>It deepened the strangeness to see her, as such a figure in such a picture, talk of "horrors," but she was to do in a few minutes something stranger yet--though even of this he was to take the full measure but afterwards--and the note of it already trembled. It was, for the matter of that, one of the signs that her eyes were having again the high flicker of their prime. He had to admit, however, what she said. "Oh yes, there were times when we did go far." He caught himself in the act of speaking as if it all were over. Well, he wished it were; and the consummation depended for him clearly more and more on his friend.</div><div><br /></div><div>But she had now a soft smile. "Oh far--!"</div><div><br /></div><div>It was oddly ironic. "Do you mean you're prepared to go further?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at him, yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. "Do you consider that we went far?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why I thought it the point you were just making--that we _had_ looked most things in the face."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Including each other?" She still smiled. "But you're quite right. We've had together great imaginations, often great fears; but some of them have been unspoken."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then the worst--we haven't faced that. I _could_ face it, I believe, if I knew what you think it. I feel," he explained, "as if I had lost my power to conceive such things." And he wondered if he looked as blank as he sounded. "It's spent."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then why do you assume," she asked, "that mine isn't?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Because you've given me signs to the contrary. It isn't a question for you of conceiving, imagining, comparing. It isn't a question now of choosing." At last he came out with it. "You know something I don't. You've shown me that before."</div><div><br /></div><div>These last words had affected her, he made out in a moment, exceedingly, and she spoke with firmness. "I've shown you, my dear, nothing."</div><div><br /></div><div>He shook his head. "You can't hide it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, oh!" May Bartram sounded over what she couldn't hide. It was almost a smothered groan.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You admitted it months ago, when I spoke of it to you as of something you were afraid I should find out. Your answer was that I couldn't, that I wouldn't, and I don't pretend I have. But you had something therefore in mind, and I see now how it must have been, how it still is, the possibility that, of all possibilities, has settled itself for you as the worst. This," he went on, "is why I appeal to you. I'm only afraid of ignorance to-day--I'm not afraid of knowledge." And then as for a while she said nothing: "What makes me sure is that I see in your face and feel here, in this air and amid these appearances, that you're out of it. You've done. You've had your experience. You leave me to my fate."</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decision to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with a small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. "It _would_ be the worst," she finally let herself say. "I mean the thing I've never said."</div><div><br /></div><div>It hushed him a moment. "More monstrous than all the monstrosities we've named?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"More monstrous. Isn't that what you sufficiently express," she asked, "in calling it the worst?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Marcher thought. "Assuredly--if you mean, as I do, something that includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It would if it _should_ happen," said May Bartram. "What we're speaking of, remember, is only my idea."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's your belief," Marcher returned. "That's enough for me. I feel your beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you give me no more light on it, you abandon me."</div><div><br /></div><div>"No, no!" she repeated. "I'm with you--don't you see?--still." And as to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair--a movement she seldom risked in these days--and showed herself, all draped and all soft, in her fairness and slimness. "I haven't forsaken you."</div><div><br /></div><div>It was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, and had the success of the impulse not, happily, been great, it would have touched him to pain more than to pleasure. But the cold charm in her eyes had spread, as she hovered before him, to all the rest of her person, so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth. He couldn't pity her for that; he could only take her as she showed—as capable even yet of helping him. It was as if, at the same time, her light might at any instant go out; wherefore he must make the most of it. There passed before him with intensity the three or four things he wanted most to know; but the question that came of itself to his lips really covered the others. "Then tell me if I shall consciously suffer."</div><div><br /></div><div>She promptly shook her head. "Never!"</div><div><br /></div><div>It confirmed the authority he imputed to her, and it produced on him an extraordinary effect. "Well, what's better than that? Do you call that the worst?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You think nothing is better?" she asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>She seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered, though still with the dawn of a prospect of relief. "Why not, if one doesn't _know_?" After which, as their eyes, over his question, met in a silence, the dawn deepened, and something to his purpose came prodigiously out of her very face. His own, as he took it in, suddenly flushed to the forehead, and he gasped with the force of a perception to which, on the instant, everything fitted. The sound of his gasp filled the air; then he became articulate. "I see--if I don't suffer!"</div><div><br /></div><div>In her own look, however, was doubt. "You see what?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why what you mean--what you've always meant."</div><div><br /></div><div>She again shook her head. "What I mean isn't what I've always meant. It's different."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's something new?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She hung back from it a little. "Something new. It's not what you think. I see what you think."</div><div><br /></div><div>His divination drew breath then; only her correction might be wrong. "It isn't that I _am_ a blockhead?" he asked between faintness and grimness. "It isn't that it's all a mistake?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"A mistake?" she pityingly echoed. _That_ possibility, for her, he saw, would be monstrous; and if she guaranteed him the immunity from pain it would accordingly not be what she had in mind. "Oh no," she declared; "it's nothing of that sort. You've been right."</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet he couldn't help asking himself if she weren't, thus pressed, speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should be most in a hole if his history should prove all a platitude. "Are you telling me the truth, so that I shan't have been a bigger idiot than I can bear to know? I _haven't_ lived with a vain imagination, in the most besotted illusion? I haven't waited but to see the door shut in my face?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She shook her head again. "However the case stands _that_ isn't the truth. Whatever the reality, it _is_ a reality. The door isn't shut. The door's open," said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then something's to come?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him. "It's never too late." She had, with her gliding step, diminished the distance between them, and she stood nearer to him, close to him, a minute, as if still charged with the unspoken. Her movement might have been for some finer emphasis of what she was at once hesitating and deciding to say. He had been standing by the chimney-piece, fireless and sparely adorned, a small perfect old French clock and two morsels of rosy Dresden constituting all its furniture; and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him waiting, grasped it a little as for support and encouragement. She only kept him waiting, however; that is he only waited. It had become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid to him that she had something more to give him; her wasted face delicately shone with it--it glittered almost as with the white lustre of silver in her expression. She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the less, was that what he had expected failed to come to him. Something else took place instead, which seemed to consist at first in the mere closing of her eyes. She gave way at the same instant to a slow fine shudder, and though he remained staring--though he stared in fact but the harder--turned off and regained her chair. It was the end of what she had been intending, but it left him thinking only of that.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, you don't say--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk back strangely pale. "I'm afraid I'm too ill."</div><div><br /></div><div>Too ill to tell me?" it sprang up sharp to him, and almost to his lips, the fear she might die without giving him light. He checked himself in time from so expressing his question, but she answered as if she had heard the words.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't you know--now?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"'Now'--?" She had spoken as if some difference had been made within the moment. But her maid, quickly obedient to her bell, was already with them. "I know nothing." And he was afterwards to say to himself that he must have spoken with odious impatience, such an impatience as to show that, supremely disconcerted, he washed his hands of the whole question.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh!" said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Are you in pain?" he asked as the woman went to her.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No," said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her maid, who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her room, fixed on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her; in spite of which, however, he showed once more his mystification.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What then has happened?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She was once more, with her companion's help, on her feet, and, feeling withdrawal imposed on him, he had blankly found his hat and gloves and had reached the door. Yet he waited for her answer. "What _was_ to," she said.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER V</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>He came back the next day, but she was then unable to see him, and as it was literally the first time this had occurred in the long stretch of their acquaintance he turned away, defeated and sore, almost angry—or feeling at least that such a break in their custom was really the beginning of the end--and wandered alone with his thoughts, especially with the one he was least able to keep down. She was dying and he would lose her; she was dying and his life would end. He stopped in the Park, into which he had passed, and stared before him at his recurrent doubt. Away from her the doubt pressed again; in her presence he had believed her, but as he felt his forlornness he threw himself into the explanation that, nearest at hand, had most of a miserable warmth for him and least of a cold torment. She had deceived him to save him--to put him off with something in which he should be able to rest. What could the thing that was to happen to him be, after all, but just this thing that had began to happen? Her dying, her death, his consequent solitude--that was what he had figured as the Beast in the Jungle, that was what had been in the lap of the gods. He had had her word for it as he left her--what else on earth could she have meant? It wasn't a thing of a monstrous order; not a fate rare and distinguished; not a stroke of fortune that overwhelmed and immortalised; it had only the stamp of the common doom. But poor Marcher at this hour judged the common doom sufficient. It would serve his turn, and even as the consummation of infinite waiting he would bend his pride to accept it. He sat down on a bench in the twilight. He hadn't been a fool. Something had _been_, as she had said, to come. Before he rose indeed it had quite struck him that the final fact really matched with the long avenue through which he had had to reach it. As sharing his suspense and as giving herself all, giving her life, to bring it to an end, she had come with him every step of the way. He had lived by her aid, and to leave her behind would be cruelly, damnably to miss her. What could be more overwhelming than that?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, he was to know within the week, for though she kept him a while at bay, left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each of which he asked about her only again to have to turn away, she ended his trial by receiving him where she had always received him. Yet she had been brought out at some hazard into the presence of so many of the things that were, consciously, vainly, half their past, and there was scant service left in the gentleness of her mere desire, all too visible, to check his obsession and wind up his long trouble. That was clearly what she wanted; the one thing more for her own peace while she could still put out her hand. He was so affected by her state that, once seated by her chair, he was moved to let everything go; it was she herself therefore who brought him back, took up again, before she dismissed him, her last word of the other time. She showed how she wished to leave their business in order. "I'm not sure you understood. You've nothing to wait for more. It _has_ come."</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh how he looked at her! "Really?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Really."</div><div><br /></div><div>"The thing that, as you said, _was_ to?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"The thing that we began in our youth to watch for."</div><div><br /></div><div>Face to face with her once more he believed her; it was a claim to which he had so abjectly little to oppose. "You mean that it has come as a positive definite occurrence, with a name and a date?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Positive. Definite. I don't know about the 'name,' but, oh with a date!"</div><div><br /></div><div>He found himself again too helplessly at sea. "But come in the night--come and passed me by?"</div><div><br /></div><div>May Bartram had her strange faint smile. "Oh no, it hasn't passed you</div><div>by!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"But if I haven't been aware of it and it hasn't touched me--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ah your not being aware of it"--and she seemed to hesitate an instant to deal with this--"your not being aware of it is the strangeness in the strangeness. It's the wonder _of_ the wonder." She spoke as with the softness almost of a sick child, yet now at last, at the end of all, with the perfect straightness of a sibyl. She visibly knew that she knew, and the effect on him was of something co-ordinate, in its high character, with the law that had ruled him. It was the true voice of the law; so on her lips would the law itself have sounded. "It _has_ touched you," she went on. "It has done its office. It has made you all its own."</div><div><br /></div><div>"So utterly without my knowing it?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"So utterly without your knowing it." His hand, as he leaned to her, was on the arm of her chair, and, dimly smiling always now, she placed her own on it. "It's enough if _I_ know it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh!" he confusedly breathed, as she herself of late so often had done.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What I long ago said is true. You'll never know now, and I think you ought to be content. You've _had_ it," said May Bartram.</div><div><br /></div><div>"But had what?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why what was to have marked you out. The proof of your law. It has acted. I'm too glad," she then bravely added, "to have been able to see what it's _not_."</div><div><br /></div><div>He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it was all beyond him, and that _she_ was too, he would still have sharply challenged her hadn't he so felt it an abuse of her weakness to do more than take devoutly what she gave him, take it hushed as to a revelation. If he did speak, it was out of the foreknowledge of his loneliness to come. "If you're glad of what it's 'not' it might then have been worse?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She turned her eyes away, she looked straight before her; with which after a moment: "Well, you know our fears."</div><div><br /></div><div>He wondered. "It's something then we never feared?"</div><div><br /></div><div>On this slowly she turned to him. "Did we ever dream, with all our dreams, that we should sit and talk of it thus?"</div><div><br /></div><div>He tried for a little to make out that they had; but it was as if their dreams, numberless enough, were in solution in some thick cold mist through which thought lost itself. "It might have been that we couldn't talk."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well"--she did her best for him--"not from this side. This, you see," she said, "is the _other_ side."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I think," poor Marcher returned, "that all sides are the same to me." Then, however, as she gently shook her head in correction: "We mightn't, as it were, have got across--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"To where we are--no. We're _here_"--she made her weak emphasis.</div><div><br /></div><div>"And much good does it do us!" was her friend's frank comment.</div><div><br /></div><div>"It does us the good it can. It does us the good that _it_ isn't here. It's past. It's behind," said May Bartram. "Before--" but her voice dropped.</div><div><br /></div><div>He had got up, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his yearning. She after all told him nothing but that his light had failed--which he knew well enough without her. "Before--?" he blankly echoed.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Before you see, it was always to _come_. That kept it present."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh I don't care what comes now! Besides," Marcher added, "it seems to me I liked it better present, as you say, than I can like it absent with _your_ absence."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh mine!"--and her pale hands made light of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>"With the absence of everything." He had a dreadful sense of standing there before her for--so far as anything but this proved, this bottomless drop was concerned--the last time of their life. It rested on him with a weight he felt he could scarce bear, and this weight it apparently was that still pressed out what remained in him of speakable protest. "I believe you; but I can't begin to pretend I understand. _Nothing_, for me, is past; nothing _will_ pass till I pass myself, which I pray my stars may be as soon as possible. Say, however," he added, "that I've eaten my cake, as you contend, to the last crumb--how can the thing I've never felt at all be the thing I was marked out to feel?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She met him perhaps less directly, but she met him unperturbed. "You take your 'feelings' for granted. You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"How in the world--when what is such knowledge but suffering?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She looked up at him a while in silence. "No--you don't understand."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I suffer," said John Marcher.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't, don't!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"How can I help at least _that_?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"_Don't_!" May Bartram repeated.</div><div><br /></div><div>She spoke it in a tone so special, in spite of her weakness, that he stared an instant--stared as if some light, hitherto hidden, had shimmered across his vision. Darkness again closed over it, but the gleam had already become for him an idea. "Because I haven't the right--?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't _know_--when you needn't," she mercifully urged. "You needn't—for we shouldn't."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Shouldn't?" If he could but know what she meant!</div><div><br /></div><div>"No-- it's too much."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Too much?" he still asked but with a mystification that was the next moment of a sudden to give way. Her words, if they meant something, affected him in this light--the light also of her wasted face--as meaning _all_, and the sense of what knowledge had been for herself came over him with a rush which broke through into a question. "Is it of that then you're dying?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She but watched him, gravely at first, as to see, with this, where he was, and she might have seen something or feared something that moved her sympathy. "I would live for you still--if I could." Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying. "But I can't!" she said as she raised them again to take leave of him.</div><div><br /></div><div>She couldn't indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom. They had parted for ever in that strange talk; access to her chamber of pain, rigidly guarded, was almost wholly forbidden him; he was feeling now moreover, in the face of doctors, nurses, the two or three relatives attracted doubtless by the presumption of what she had to "leave," how few were the rights, as they were called in such cases, that he had to put forward, and how odd it might even seem that their intimacy shouldn't have given him more of them. The stupidest fourth cousin had more, even though she had been nothing in such a person's life. She had been a feature of features in _his_, for what else was it to have been so indispensable? Strange beyond saying were the ways of existence, baffling for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of producible claim. A woman might have been, as it were, everything to him, and it might yet present him, in no connexion that any one seemed held to recognise. If this was the case in these closing weeks it was the case more sharply on the occasion of the last offices rendered, in the great grey London cemetery, to what had been mortal, to what had been precious, in his friend. The concourse at her grave was not numerous, but he saw himself treated as scarce more nearly concerned with it than if there had been a thousand others. He was in short from this moment face to face with the fact that he was to profit extraordinarily little by the interest May Bartram had taken in him. He couldn't quite have said what he expected, but he hadn't surely expected this approach to a double privation. Not only had her interest failed him, but he seemed to feel himself unattended--and for a reason he couldn't seize--by the distinction, the dignity, the propriety, if nothing else, of the man markedly bereaved. It was as if, in the view of society he had not _been_ markedly bereaved, as if there still failed some sign or proof of it, and as if none the less his character could never be affirmed nor the deficiency ever made up. There were moments as the weeks went by when he would have liked, by some almost aggressive act, to take his stand on the intimacy of his loss, in order that it _might_ be questioned and his retort, to the relief of his spirit, so recorded; but the moments of an irritation more helpless followed fast on these, the moments during which, turning things over with a good conscience but with a bare horizon, he found himself wondering if he oughtn't to have begun, so to speak, further back.</div><div><br /></div><div>He found himself wondering indeed at many things, and this last speculation had others to keep it company. What could he have done, after all, in her lifetime, without giving them both, as it were, away? He couldn't have made known she was watching him, for that would have published the superstition of the Beast. This was what closed his mouth now--now that the Jungle had been thrashed to vacancy and that the Beast had stolen away. It sounded too foolish and too flat; the difference for him in this particular, the extinction in his life of the element of suspense, was such as in fact to surprise him. He could scarce have said what the effect resembled; the abrupt cessation, the positive prohibition, of music perhaps, more than anything else, in some place all adjusted and all accustomed to sonority and to attention. If he could at any rate have conceived lifting the veil from his image at some moment of the past (what had he done, after all, if not lift it to _her_?) so to do this to-day, to talk to people at large of the Jungle cleared and confide to them that he now felt it as safe, would have been not only to see them listen as to a goodwife's tale, but really to hear himself tell one. What it presently came to in truth was that poor Marcher waded through his beaten grass, where no life stirred, where no breath sounded, where no evil eye seemed to gleam from a possible lair, very much as if vaguely looking for the Beast, and still more as if acutely missing it. He walked about in an existence that had grown strangely more spacious, and, stopping fitfully in places where the undergrowth of life struck him as closer, asked himself yearningly, wondered secretly and sorely, if it would have lurked here or there. It would have at all events sprung; what was at least complete was his belief in the truth itself of the assurance given him. The change from his old sense to his new was absolute and final: what was to happen had so absolutely and finally happened that he was as little able to know a fear for his future as to know a hope; so absent in short was any question of anything still to come. He was to live entirely with the other question, that of his unidentified past, that of his having to see his fortune impenetrably muffled and masked.</div><div><br /></div><div>The torment of this vision became then his occupation; he couldn't perhaps have consented to live but for the possibility of guessing. She had told him, his friend, not to guess; she had forbidden him, so far as he might, to know, and she had even in a sort denied the power in him to learn: which were so many things, precisely, to deprive him of rest. It wasn't that he wanted, he argued for fairness, that anything past and done should repeat itself; it was only that he shouldn't, as an anticlimax, have been taken sleeping so sound as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the lost stuff of consciousness. He declared to himself at moments that he would either win it back or have done with consciousness for ever; he made this idea his one motive in fine, made it so much his passion that none other, to compare with it, seemed ever to have touched him. The lost stuff of consciousness became thus for him as a strayed or stolen child to an unappeasable father; he hunted it up and down very much as if he were knocking at doors and enquiring of the police. This was the spirit in which, inevitably, he set himself to travel; he started on a journey that was to be as long as he could make it; it danced before him that, as the other side of the globe couldn't possibly have less to say to him, it might, by a possibility of suggestion, have more. Before he quitted London, however, he made a pilgrimage to May Bartram's grave, took his way to it through the endless avenues of the grim suburban necropolis, sought it out in the wilderness of tombs, and, though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell, found himself, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long intensities. He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet powerless to penetrate the darkness of death; fixing with his eyes her inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact of the secret they kept, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and if the face of the tomb did become a face for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn't know him. He gave them a last long look, but no palest light broke.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>CHAPTER VI</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>He stayed away, after this, for a year; he visited the depths of Asia, spending himself on scenes of romantic interest, of superlative sanctity; but what was present to him everywhere was that for a man who had known what _he_ had known the world was vulgar and vain. The state of mind in which he had lived for so many years shone out to him, in reflexion, as a light that coloured and refined, a light beside which the glow of the East was garish cheap and thin. The terrible truth was that he had lost--with everything else--a distinction as well; the things he saw couldn't help being common when he had become common to look at them. He was simply now one of them himself--he was in the dust, without a peg for the sense of difference; and there were hours when, before the temples of gods and the sepulchres of kings, his spirit turned for nobleness of association to the barely discriminated slab in the London suburb. That had become for him, and more intensely with time and distance, his one witness of a past glory. It was all that was left to him for proof or pride, yet the past glories of Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thought of it. Small wonder then that he came back to it on the morrow of his return. He was drawn there this time as irresistibly as the other, yet with a confidence, almost, that was doubtless the effect of the many months that had elapsed. He had lived, in spite of himself, into his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had wandered, as might be said, from the circumference to the centre of his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his extinction; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all meagre and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had in their time fought twenty duels or been loved by ten princesses. They indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself; which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to renew the wonder by getting back, as he might put it, into his own presence. That had quickened his steps and checked his delay. If his visit was prompt it was because he had been separated so long from the part of himself that alone he now valued.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's accordingly not false to say that he reached his goal with a certain elation and stood there again with a certain assurance. The creature beneath the sod knew of his rare experience, so that, strangely now, the place had lost for him its mere blankness of expression. It met him in mildness--not, as before, in mockery; it wore for him the air of conscious greeting that we find, after absence, in things that have closely belonged to us and which seem to confess of themselves to the connexion. The plot of ground, the graven tablet, the tended flowers affected him so as belonging to him that he resembled for the hour a contented landlord reviewing a piece of property. Whatever had happened--well, had happened. He had not come back this time with the vanity of that question, his former worrying "What, _what_?" now practically so spent. Yet he would none the less never again so cut himself off from the spot; he would come back to it every month, for if he did nothing else by its aid he at least held up his head. It thus grew for him, in the oddest way, a positive resource; he carried out his idea of periodical returns, which took their place at last among the most inveterate of his habits. What it all amounted to, oddly enough, was that in his finally so simplified world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live. It was as if, being nothing anywhere else for any one, nothing even for himself, he were just everything here, and if not for a crowd of witnesses or indeed for any witness but John Marcher, then by clear right of the register that he could scan like an open page. The open page was the tomb of his friend, and there were the facts of the past, there the truth of his life, there the backward reaches in which he could lose himself. He did this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; and to wander, which was more extraordinary yet, round and round a third presence—not wandering she, but stationary, still, whose eyes, turning with his revolution, never ceased to follow him, and whose seat was his point, so to speak, of orientation. Thus in short he settled to live--feeding all on the sense that he once _had_ lived, and dependent on it not alone for a support but for an identity.</div><div><br /></div><div>It sufficed him in its way for months and the year elapsed; it would doubtless even have carried him further but for an accident, superficially slight, which moved him, quite in another direction, with a force beyond any of his impressions of Egypt or of India. It was a thing of the merest chance--the turn, as he afterwards felt, of a hair, though he was indeed to live to believe that if light hadn't come to him in this particular fashion it would still have come in another. He was to live to believe this, I say, though he was not to live, I may not less definitely mention, to do much else. We allow him at any rate the benefit of the conviction, struggling up for him at the end, that, whatever might have happened or not happened, he would have come round of himself to the light. The incident of an autumn day had put the match to the train laid from of old by his misery. With the light before him he knew that even of late his ache had only been smothered. It was strangely drugged, but it throbbed; at the touch it began to bleed. And the touch, in the event, was the face of a fellow-mortal. This face, one grey afternoon when the leaves were thick in the alleys, looked into Marcher's own, at the cemetery, with an expression like the cut of a blade. He felt it, that is, so deep down that he winced at the steady thrust. The person who so mutely assaulted him was a figure he had noticed, on reaching his own goal, absorbed by a grave a short distance away, a grave apparently fresh, so that the emotion of the visitor would probably match it for frankness. This fact alone forbade further attention, though during the time he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his neighbour, a middle-aged man apparently, in mourning, whose bowed back, among the clustered monuments and mortuary yews, was constantly presented. Marcher's theory that these were elements in contact with which he himself revived, had suffered, on this occasion, it may be granted, a marked, an excessive check. The autumn day was dire for him as none had recently been, and he rested with a heaviness he had not yet known on the low stone table that bore May Bartram's name. He rested without power to move, as if some spring in him, some spell vouchsafed, had suddenly been broken for ever. If he could have done that moment as he wanted he would simply have stretched himself on the slab that was ready to take him, treating it as a place prepared to receive his last sleep. What in all the wide world had he now to keep awake for? He stared before him with the question, and it was then that, as one of the cemetery walks passed near him, he caught the shock of the face.</div><div><br /></div><div>His neighbour at the other grave had withdrawn, as he himself, with force enough in him, would have done by now, and was advancing along the path on his way to one of the gates. This brought him close, and his pace, was slow, so that--and all the more as there was a kind of hunger in his look--the two men were for a minute directly confronted. Marcher knew him at once for one of the deeply stricken--a perception so sharp that nothing else in the picture comparatively lived, neither his dress, his age, nor his presumable character and class; nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features that he showed. He _showed_ them--that was the point; he was moved, as he passed, by some impulse that was either a signal for sympathy or, more possibly, a challenge to an opposed sorrow. He might already have been aware of our friend, might at some previous hour have noticed in him the smooth habit of the scene, with which the state of his own senses so scantly consorted, and might thereby have been stirred as by an overt discord. What Marcher was at all events conscious of was in the first place that the image of scarred passion presented to him was conscious too--of something that profaned the air; and in the second that, roused, startled, shocked, he was yet the next moment looking after it, as it went, with envy. The most extraordinary thing that had happened to him--though he had given that name to other matters as well--took place, after his immediate vague stare, as a consequence of this impression. The stranger passed, but the raw glare of his grief remained, making our friend wonder in pity what wrong, what wound it expressed, what injury not to be healed. What had the man _had_, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?</div><div><br /></div><div>Something--and this reached him with a pang--that _he_, John Marcher, hadn't; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher's arid end. No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant; he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been _his_ deep ravage? The extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden rush of the result of this question. The sight that had just met his eyes named to him, as in letters of quick flame, something he had utterly, insanely missed, and what he had missed made these things a train of fire, made them mark themselves in an anguish of inward throbs. He had seen _outside_ of his life, not learned it within, the way a woman was mourned when she had been loved for herself: such was the force of his conviction of the meaning of the stranger's face, which still flared for him as a smoky torch. It hadn't come to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience; it had brushed him, jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of chance, the insolence of accident. Now that the illumination had begun, however, it blazed to the zenith, and what he presently stood there gazing at was the sounded void of his life. He gazed, he drew breath, in pain; he turned in his dismay, and, turning, he had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his story. The name on the table smote him as the passage of his neighbour had done, and what it said to him, full in the face, was that she was what he had missed. This was the awful thought, the answer to all the past, the vision at the dread clearness of which he turned as cold as the stone beneath him. Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance--he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, _the_ man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke--that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So _she_ had seen it while he didn't, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One's doom, however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him.</div><div><br /></div><div>The escape would have been to love her; then, _then_ he would have lived. _She_ had lived--who could say now with what passion?--since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use. Her spoken words came back to him--the chain stretched and stretched. The Beast had lurked indeed, and the Beast, at its hour, had sprung; it had sprung in that twilight of the cold April when, pale, ill, wasted, but all beautiful, and perhaps even then recoverable, she had risen from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess. It had sprung as he didn't guess; it had sprung as she hopelessly turned from him, and the mark, by the time he left her, had fallen where it _was_ to fall. He had justified his fear and achieved his fate; he had failed, with the last exactitude, of all he was to fail of; and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn't know. This horror of waking--_this_ was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none the less, he tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had something of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened--it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the tomb.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE </div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><br /></div><div>To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.</div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><br /></div><div>Title: The Beast in the Jungle</div><div>Author: Henry James</div><div>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Beast in the Jungle</div><div> </div><div>This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.</div><div><br /></div><div>Release date: November 1, 1997 [eBook #1093]</div><div>Most recently updated: December 31, 2020</div><div>Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email</div><div>ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-78719552487220236532024-02-17T11:15:00.451+02:002024-03-09T07:41:50.897+02:00Anatomie d'une chûte / Anatomy of a Fall<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikv1u184oUmiP6WpD2R1jtDv_x5PxWVCgWC2WmvwO4d9Rwqqp1Vza20dXjhZvpRpM7Q27XlCIrOb7rrcKf49rAgHPk1hF9AEb2KYeNZWhTRdN91ybFMU2M4mVDYhIpwLUStUNHM5MPxKCzVNNpwBtOV8XNfssetxyrCSAl6bvkzhHBEDyBRpiQ/s2731/Anatomie%20d'une%20ch%C3%BBte.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2731" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikv1u184oUmiP6WpD2R1jtDv_x5PxWVCgWC2WmvwO4d9Rwqqp1Vza20dXjhZvpRpM7Q27XlCIrOb7rrcKf49rAgHPk1hF9AEb2KYeNZWhTRdN91ybFMU2M4mVDYhIpwLUStUNHM5MPxKCzVNNpwBtOV8XNfssetxyrCSAl6bvkzhHBEDyBRpiQ/w281-h400/Anatomie%20d'une%20ch%C3%BBte.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Justine Triet: Anatomie d'une chûte / Anatomy of a Fall (FR 2023).</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />Putoamisen anatomia / Fritt fall.</div><div> FR 2023. PC: Les Films Pelléas, Les Films de Pierre. Co-PC: France 2 Cinéma, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma. P: Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion. Ass. P: Philippe Martin.</div><div> D: Justine Triet. SC: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari. DP: Simon Beaufils - colour - 1.85. PD: Emmanuelle Duplay. Cost: Isabelle Pannetier. S: Julien Sicart, Fanny Martin, Jeanne Delplancq, Olivier Goinard - 5.1. ED: Laurent Sénéchal.<br /><div> Ass D: Benjamin Papin. Assoc P: Philippe Martin. Prod. Manager: Julien Flick. Continuity supervisor: Clémentine Schaeffer. Casting : Cynthia Arra. Loc. Manager: Benjamin Goumard.</div><div> CAST:</div></div><div>Sandra Hüller / Sandra Voyter</div><div>Swann Arlaud / Maître Vincent Renzi, lawyer, Sandra's ex</div><div>Milo Machado Graner / Daniel Maleski, the son of Sandra and Samuel</div><div>Antoine Reinartz / l'avocat général / the prosecutor</div><div>Samuel Theis / Samuel Maleski</div><div>Jehnny Beth / Marge Berger, Daniel's companion</div><div>Saadia Bentaïeb / Maître Nour Boudaoud, Sandra's second lawyer</div><div>Camille Rutherford / Zoé Solidor, student</div><div>Anne Rotger / la présidente du tribunal / the judge</div><div>Sophie Fillières / Monica </div><div> Messi / Snoop, Daniel's guardian dog</div><div><div>Nesrine Slaoui : la journaliste de BFM TV</div><div>Antoine Buéno : Balard, un expert</div><div>Wajdi Mouawad : Jammal, le psychiatre</div><div>Sacha Wolff : le chef de l'enquête</div><div>Kareen Guiock : la présentatrice de télévision</div><div>Arthur Harari : le critique littéraire</div></div><div> Loc (France): Wikipédia: Le tournage a lieu en mars et avril 2022 en Savoie dans la vallée de la Maurienne (à Villarembert, à Fontcouverte-la-Toussuire, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne et Saint-Léger), en Isère (à Montbonnot-Saint-Martin et Grenoble) et en Charente-Maritime, notamment au palais de justice de Saintes en avril-mai 2022. - IMDb: Les Crevasses, Villarembert, Savoie, France. - Saintes, Charente-Maritime - Grenoble, Isère. 3 March - 26 April 2022.</div><div> In French, also in English, and additionally in German.</div><div> Sous-titres francais: Anaïs Duchert.</div><div></div><div> 151 min</div><div> Festival premiere: 21 May 2023 Cannes. International Sales: mk2 films </div><div> Paris premiere: 14 June 2023</div><div> French premiere (wide): 23 Aug 2023. Visa number : 155.638. French Distribution: Le Pacte</div><div> Finnish premiere: 9 Feb 2023.</div><div> Viewed at MK2 Odéon Côté St Michel, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 7 rue Hautefeuille, 75006 Paris, 17 Feb 2024</div><div><div><div><br /></div></div></div><div><div>Press kit: " <i>For the past year, Sandra, a German writer, her French husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he committed suicide or was killed. Samuel's death is treated as suspicious, presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. Little by little the trial becomes not just an investigation of the circumstances of Samuel's death, but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel's conflicted relationship</i>. "</div><div><br /></div></div><div>AA: The Shining in the French Alps.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anatomy of a Fall is another great French courtroom drama within a year, following Alice Diop's <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/saint-omer.html">Saint Omer</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>It also belongs to the cinema's all-time best courtroom dramas. The title evokes an eminent predecessor, Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, but Justine Triet is not following models. One of the rewards of the movie is the account of the French practice of law and justice, different from the American one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anatomy of a Fall is a good trial drama and police procedural. Most profoundly, it is an anatomy of a marriage. At the heart of the mystery is the fact that an outsider can never truly understand what goes on in a relationship.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is also a good thriller, suspenseful to the end about finding out who is guilty. For Justine Triet, in the tradition of F. M. Dostoevsky, the question "who is guilty?" has two levels. If the name of the guilty one is known, the true question still remains.</div><div><br /></div><div>Exceptional performances, by Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner especially, keep growing in memory. The sense of place in the location shooting in Savoie is essential to the fabula in many ways. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am thinking about The Shining, another unhappy family trio in a fabulous snowbound mountain landscape. The male protagonist's hellish writer's block is the main link. Otherwise it's as different as can be. </div><div><br /></div><div>The husband is French, the wife is German, and their main language - "the middle ground" - is English. Both are writers, professionals of language. Language is all important, especially the mother tongue, the original language of love. My personal conviction is that in a love affair across language barriers, both should learn the other's native language. It comes from beyond consciousness. It is beyond words. In today's world, all of us who are not native speakers, speak bad / mediocre English that fails to convey our true self, including me here. We are different beings, our true self is only revealed in our native language. Anatomy of a Fall is also about the fall of language.</div><div><br /></div><div>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRESS KIT: INTERVIEW WITH JUSTINE TRIET:</div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span>BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRESS KIT: INTERVIEW WITH JUSTINE TRIET:</div><div> </div><div><b>What was the starting point for Anatomy of a Fall</b>? </div><div> </div><div>My intention was to create a film that portrays the downfall of a couple's relationship. The concept was to depict the physical and emotional descent of a body in a technical manner, symbolizing the decline of their love story. </div><div> </div><div>This couple has a son who discovers their tumultuous relationship during a trial that scrutinizes every aspect of their past. As the trial unfolds, the boy transitions from a state of complete trust in his mother to one of doubt, marking a crucial turning point in his life. The film follows this transformation closely. In my previous films, children were present but silent, merely existing in the background. However, in this film, I wanted to incorporate the child's perspective into the narrative and juxtapose it with Sandra's, the main character, for a more balanced portrayal of the events. </div><div> </div><div>The film took on the form of an extended interrogation, with scenes shifting from the couple's home to the courtroom, where characters are incessantly questioned. I aimed to bring a sense of realism, approaching a documentary style both in the writing and the cinematography. However, I also wanted to delve deeper into the intricacies of the story and evoke a range of emotions in the audience. In pursuit of this goal, I opted for greater simplicity: the absence of additional music and a raw, unembellished tone that sets this film apart from my earlier works. </div><div> </div><div><b>The film begins with a disorienting shot of a ball rolling down a flight of stairs… </b></div><div> </div><div>This obsession with falling is a recurring motif throughout the film, initially in a literal sense. I've long been fascinated with the sensation of "body weight" and what it feels like to fall, which was sparked by the opening credits of Mad Men, where a man keeps falling. In my film, we constantly ascend and descend stairs, observing the fall from various angles to unravel how it happened. I wanted to approach the film from a side angle, which is why we introduced the ball as a symbol of the fall, caught by a dog who looks at Sandra, the central character, and sets the stage for the two and a half hour exploration of her story. </div><div> </div><div><b>The battle of the couple with a child is at the center of the film</b>… </div><div> </div><div>At the heart of the film is the battle between a couple with a child, delving into the complexities of time-sharing in a relationship. It's a theme that, in my opinion, isn't often explored in cinema and raises important questions about reciprocity, trust, and the dynamics of a partnership. </div><div> </div><div>Sandra Voyter, a successful writer, and her husband, a teacher who also writes while homeschooling their son, challenge the traditional couple schema by reversing their roles. Sandra's pursuit of her freedom and will creates an imbalance, leading to an exploration of equality in a relationship that is both powerful and questionable. The film invites us to question our preconceived notions of democracy in a relationship and how it can be derailed by dictatorial impulses and a dimension of rivalry. Despite their struggles, the couple's idealism and refusal to resign themselves to a less-than-perfect situation is admirable. Even in their arguments, which are actually negotiations, they continue to be honest with each other, revealing a deep love that persists despite their challenges. </div><div> </div><div><b>You co-wrote with Arthur Harari. The script is not adapted from a real story, yet it is full of details, especially legal details, that seem more real than life. Did you call on experts</b>? </div><div> </div><div>Yes, Arthur and I co-wrote the film together, really sharing the work. And we received valuable guidance from a criminal lawyer named Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse. We consulted with him frequently to ensure accuracy in the technical aspects of the story, as well as to gain a better understanding of how French court hearings are conducted. What surprised us was the somewhat disorganized nature of trials in France, which differed greatly from the more structured approach seen in the United States. This allowed me to create a distinctly French film and take a different approach from the more spectacle-driven American courtroom dramas. The decision to present uninterrupted blocks of hearings was a natural one. During post-production, I spent considerable time working with my editor, Laurent Sénéchal, to slow down the pace, keep shots imperfect, and maintain a slightly shaky, raw feel to the film. I didn't want it to be too polished or predictable. In the end, I discovered a new formal pleasure in making this film. </div><div> </div><div><b>And you wrote specifically with Sandra Hüller in mind, didn't you</b>? </div><div> </div><div>I was eager to collaborate with her again, following our work on Sibyl. I wrote the script with her in mind, and that was one of the initial things that sparked my interest. This liberated woman, who was judged for her sexuality, her career, and her motherhood: I believed Sandra would bring complexity and depth to the character, without making it a mere "message". As soon as we started to shoot, I was struck by her conviction and authenticity. She infused every line with a sense of reality that emanated from within her. Sometimes, she even challenged my writing and pushed me to revise certain scenes. She has a palpable presence, and her interpretation of the role left a lasting imprint on the film. By the end of the shoot, I felt as though she had given a part of herself to the project, and that what we captured was a one-of-a-kind performance. </div><div> </div><div><b>The use of different languages - French, English, and German - adds a layer of complexity to Sandra's character and creates a sense of opacity</b>… </div><div> </div><div>It also maintains a distance between her and the audience as a foreigner on trial in France, who must navigate her way through the languages of her husband and son. Sandra is a complex character with many layers, which the trial will explore. I was particularly interested in portraying the life of a couple who do not speak the same language. This made their negotiation even more concrete, with the idea of a third language serving as neutral ground. </div><div> </div><div><b>And did you have Samuel Theis in mind since day one</b>? </div><div> </div><div>No, I saw a lot of actors for the role but, believe it or not, the character was already named Samuel! Even though he doesn't have many scenes, he's essential to the story and had to capture our attention immediately. I have to admit, I find him very attractive, with a captivating voice and a soft exterior that hides a deeper, denser layer. I wanted to film him because he has a certain thickness that I love in actors - both physical and internal layers that make for a compelling performance. </div><div> </div><div><b>And Milo Machado Graner, who plays the child, was he hard to find</b>? </div><div> </div><div>Yes, it was a lengthy process. Cynthia Arra — my long-time collaborator when I work with my actors — and I spent four months casting visually impaired children, but we couldn't find the right one. So, we expanded the search to sighted children for another three months before we finally found Milo. Jill Gagé, a casting assistant, discovered him, and he immediately impressed us with his natural talent. Milo dedicated himself to intensive piano lessons, and together with Cynthia, we consulted with experts in visual impairment to determine the appropriate level of impairment for the character. We decided to go with a mild level of visual impairment, with high myopia that didn't affect peripheral vision. Milo is an incredibly gifted child with exceptional intellectual and emotional capacities and a subtle sense of melancholy. </div><div> </div><div><b>It's clear that there's a real love of language and verbal sparring in the courtroom scenes, and Antoine Reinartz has a lot to do with that. How did you come to cast him in the role</b>? </div><div> </div><div>I chose him because of the modernity he brought to the character. He adds an otherness to the film and brings the contemporary world into it, which breaks the dusty solemnity of the trial. Although he plays the villain, he portrays a very seductive, devious, and flamboyant character. He speaks on behalf of the deceased, whom we hardly ever see, and must make him endearing to both the jurors and the audience. Antoine brings an arena dimension to the court and portrays the civilized violence of the prosecution. </div><div> </div><div><b>On the contrary, Swann Arlaud plays a rather fragile character, sensitive, on the defensive</b>... </div><div> </div><div>Yes, I didn't want to stage a cockfight between them. Vincent's character is not portrayed as a bar virtuoso, he is good but not idealized. Swann brings a nuanced performance, an apprehension, because he knows his client and feels more in danger. I found it interesting that he is a kind of doppelgänger of Samuel, that the two share some similarities. It's clear that Sandra and Swann knew each other years ago, and that there is still something between them that is not entirely extinguished. </div><div> </div><div>Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, our consulting lawyer, had advised us that when friends ask you to defend them, it’s always a trap. This idea of a trap, or at least a difficult or impossible distance to overcome, was important for the dynamic of this duo. It's clear that something else is going on, and Sandra probably needs that support. Swann is great at bringing all these dimensions to life without dialogue. It’s just there, palpable. </div><div> </div><div><b>The film has no flashbacks, with one very powerful exception: the argument scene</b>. </div><div> </div><div>From the beginning, I wanted to avoid using flashbacks in the film. I find them unnecessary, and more importantly, I wanted the focus to be on the spoken word. In a trial, truth is elusive, and there is a void that needs to be filled by the spoken word. We only allowed exceptions through the use of sound. And in reality, these exceptions are not flashbacks: in the scene of the argument, it is a sound recording that suddenly materializes on screen, creating a sense of presence. It creates a void and it's almost more powerful than the image, in my opinion: it's both pure presence and ghostly. </div><div> </div><div>There's also the scene where Daniel reenacts his dead father's words, but it belongs to a different category. This time we have the image, but it's an account of a memory, an invention, or at best, a testimony without proof, as pointed out by the public prosecutor. </div><div> </div><div>The courtroom is essentially where our history no longer belongs to us, where it's judged by others who have to piece it together from scattered and ambiguous elements. It becomes fiction, and that's precisely what interests me.<br /></div><div><br /></div>
SOUNDTRACK LISTING FROM IMDb:
<br /><br /><div>P.I.M.P.</div><div>Words and music by Mr. Porter (as Denaun M Porter), Brandon Parrott and 50 Cent (as Curtis Jackson)</div><div>Performed by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band</div><div>© Derty Werks / EMI April Music Inc / Hipgnosis SFH I Limited and Notting Hill Music and FBC Publishing (ASCAP)</div><div>administered by Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd</div><div>(p) 2016 Big Crown Records</div><div>By authorization of Big Crown Records, EMI Music Publishing France, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd</div><div><br /></div><div>Asturias (Leyenda)</div><div>Music by Isaac Albéniz</div><div>Performed by Milo Machado-Graner</div><div>(p) LFP-Les Films Pelléas - Les Films de Pierre</div><div><br /></div><div>Asturias (Leyenda)</div><div>Music by Isaac Albéniz</div><div>Performed by Miguel Baselga</div><div>(p) 2021 Bis Records AB</div><div>By authorization of Universal Production Music France</div><div><br /></div><div>Prélude en Mi Mineur Op. 28 No. 4</div><div>Music by Frédéric Chopin</div><div>Performed by Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner</div><div>Recorded and mixed by Bud at Studio de La Fugitive, Paris</div><div>(p) LFP-Les Films Pelléas - Les Films de Pierre</div><div><br /></div><div>Variations sur un Prélude</div><div>Music by Benoit Daniel based upon a theme by Frédéric Chopin</div><div>Performed by Benoit Daniel</div><div>Recorded and mixed by Bud at Studio de La Fugitive, Paris</div><div>© La Fugitive</div><div>(p) LFP-Les Films Pelléas - Les Films de Pierre</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-80739806132279160952024-02-12T15:15:00.338+02:002024-02-20T06:51:10.790+02:00Somewhere in the Night<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNZ8mslroHlEYybkqFpodaLtQFDFBNvPGRvolezIz1PgAE2mJCcB1iDGTGolJB81UBPPBda8XypLyFrauejf5N1jAGCz-DQtdD-KZm3oTVJCBgba2GkX4Nj-1dWYbY_hH7EBEmLaW0T5kpcTopn1Qya3cWPILNrG446BfBRP0ksN8GEQ8e-Ne/s596/1949%20Somewhere%20in%20the%20Night.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkNZ8mslroHlEYybkqFpodaLtQFDFBNvPGRvolezIz1PgAE2mJCcB1iDGTGolJB81UBPPBda8XypLyFrauejf5N1jAGCz-DQtdD-KZm3oTVJCBgba2GkX4Nj-1dWYbY_hH7EBEmLaW0T5kpcTopn1Qya3cWPILNrG446BfBRP0ksN8GEQ8e-Ne/w269-h400/1949%20Somewhere%20in%20the%20Night.png" width="269" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Somewhere in the Night (US 1949) avec John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><div>Quelque part dans la nuit / Takaa-ajettuna yössä / Jagad i natten.</div><div>01h48</div><div>De Mankiewicz, Joseph L.</div><div>Policier</div><div>Avec: John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan.<br /> UK premiere 19 May 1946.</div><div> Finnish premiere 7 Nov 1947.</div><div> French premiere 2 June 1948, re-release 22 May 2013.</div><div> Viewed at Cinéma Le Champo 1, 51 rue des Écoles, Quartier latin, Métro Cluny-La Sorbonne, 75005 Paris, version originale avec sous-titres français (n.c.), 12 Feb 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cinéma Le Champo: " <i>Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, George Taylor, soldat amnésique, tente de reconstituer son passé. Pour tout indice, il dispose de deux lettres : l'une signée par une femme, l'autre par un certain Larry Cravat. Aidé dans sa quête par Christy, une chanteuse, et Kendall, un policier, il apprend que Cravat est un détective véreux accusé de meurtre et part à sa recherche</i>. "<br /><br />AA: Joseph L. Mankiewicz debuts as a film director in the year 1946 with two films: Dragonwyck (10 April 1946) and Somewhere in the Night (19 May 1946). He is a Hollywood veteran, screenwriter for Paramount since 1929 and producer for MGM since 1934. At Fox, Mankiewicz starts as a writer in 1944 and makes 11 films as director in 1946-1952, including the masterpieces The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, All About Eve and 5 Fingers.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Somewhere in the Night is far from Mankiewicz's best work, not a good film, but an intriguing and rewarding one. It belongs to Mankiewicz's film noir cycle, with <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/1998/03/house-of-strangers.html">House of Strangers</a> (US 1949) and No Way Out (1950) and arguably Escape (GB 1948).</div><div><br /></div><div>The script is full of holes and feels like an amateur job despite the presence of talent such as Lee Strasberg and Mankiewicz himself. Major story elements remain unexplored.</div><div><br /></div><div>The film is not well cast. The performers of the leading roles could be replaced with puppets. But there are unforgettable presences among the supporting cast, especially Houseley Stevenson as the dockworker Michael Conroy who has been locked up in a mental hospital. The great Austrian man of the theatre in Hollywood exile, Fritz Kortner (1892-1970), creates a disturbing performance as Anzelmo aka Dr. Oracle, a fortune teller near Terminal Dock. Stevenson and Kortner convey a sense of existential agony otherwise missing from the performances.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite all the drawbacks, and despite not being a good film, Somewhere in the Night is essential film noir.</div><div><br /></div><div>Somewhere in the Night could be a good title for a study on film noir. The opening credit image is of the night sky.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is a story of amnesia, loss of identity, loss of memory and loss of language so thorough that in the beginning, George Taylor does not know what a tree is. The beginning of the movie is largely conveyed via inner monologue. The oneiric ambience of the subjective recitative is fuelled with ample doses of morphine to alleviate Taylor's unbearable pain.</div><div><br /></div><div>George Taylor is a convalescing U.S. Marine war invalid, a victim of a grenade detonated under him in the South Pacific, his body shattered and his face burned to oblivion. With plastic surgery, he has got a new face. He does not recognize himself in the mirror. Nobody recognizes him. This key theme remains underexplored.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like a somnambulist, George Taylor follows tiny clues remaining of his life, leading him into the middle of a criminal network in Los Angeles. We visit a dubious nightclub, meet a torch singer with a heart of gold, a femme fatale, a fake psychoanalyst-fortune teller, brutal thugs and other film noir cornerstones. Everyone seems to know something fatal about George, while he is reduced to playing blind man's bluff. His true identity, finally, is a surprise to everybody, including himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>A pioneering feature is an experimental use of first person camera, soon reused by Delmer Daves in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/1998/04/dark-passage.html">Dark Passage</a> (produced Oct 1946 - Jan 1947, premiere 6 Sep 1947) and made famous by Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake (US 1947). </div><div><br /></div><div>Fritz Lang in Ministry of Fear (US 1944) had shown that poetry could be created from material such as this, but the dialogue-bound Mankiewicz does not dare let the images fly like in a dream. In Dark Passage, the pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall demonstrated how much the cast can transform such a film.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still and all, Somewhere in the Night has its share of nightmare imagery. Norbert Brodine was one of Hollywood's great cinematographer veterans, and he found an approach of his own to film noir. He had already shot The House on 92nd Street and continued in noir with the unforgettable 13 Rue Madeleine, as well as Boomerang!, Kiss of Death, Road House and Thieves' Highway.</div><div><br /></div><div>Brodine was especially good in noir location shooting, inspired by neorealism. In Somewhere in the Night, IMDb lists the following Los Angeles locations: Union Station, Bunker Hill and Chinatown. I don't know whether Terminal Dock was shot on location. But it becomes real enough in the world of the movie.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The streets were dark with something more than night", wrote Raymond Chandler, and Mankiewicz and Brodine succeed in conveying that. Three years ago I participated in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/09/gerald-peary-contest-of-american-film.html">Gerald Peary's American Film Noir Poll on Facebook</a>. The definition of film noir is a matter of argument. Elated by the platform created by Peary, I was able to figure out my own view for the first time, based on a philosophy of history. The distinction of film noir for me is that it was powered by the Second World War, different from all other wars because of the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Film noir is a disturbing oneiric expression of its cosmic agony and existential fear.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-67713382207104184352024-02-10T15:00:00.219+02:002024-02-21T18:04:50.466+02:00Zielona granica / Green Border <div style="text-align: left;"><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6bZXd_lRMlxKzQ3eEbiBI3d8g3z9ZaW3aLqBl4JsNEmTG4Ux6GDbblapUxXKw4zMFuGV6VVjOOW4R4jAf698fKnViNcfghY9eJeWMoB7oxRuzRTmosyuh94CSzZn_QNBT_ZWUCJktnMV0jhzC-ERs0AqFDeJPVuohUknCsb64obg8OKQglXv/s449/Green%20Border.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="330" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB6bZXd_lRMlxKzQ3eEbiBI3d8g3z9ZaW3aLqBl4JsNEmTG4Ux6GDbblapUxXKw4zMFuGV6VVjOOW4R4jAf698fKnViNcfghY9eJeWMoB7oxRuzRTmosyuh94CSzZn_QNBT_ZWUCJktnMV0jhzC-ERs0AqFDeJPVuohUknCsb64obg8OKQglXv/w294-h400/Green%20Border.jpg" width="294" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agnieszka Holland: Zielona granica / Green Border (PL/FR/CZ/BE 2023).</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Venezia 80 Competition</div><div>2023</div><div>Director:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Agnieszka Holland</div><div>Production: Metro Films (Marcin Wierzchosławski), Astute Films (Fred Bernstein), Metro Lato (Agnieszka Holland), Blick Productions (Maria Blicharska-Lacroix, Damien McDonald), Marlene Film Production (Šárka Cimbalová), Beluga Tree (Diana Elbaum, David Ragonig), dFlights (Dominika Kulczyk), Downey Ink. (Mike Downey)</div><div>152’</div><div>Languages: Polish, Arabic, English, French</div><div>Countries: Poland, France, Czech Republic, Belgium</div><div>Cast: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok, Behi Djanati Atai, Mohamad Al Rashi, Dalia Naous</div><div>Screenplay: Maciej Pisuk, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko, Agnieszka Holland</div><div>Cinematographer: Tomasz Naumiuk</div><div>Editor: Pavel Hrdlička</div><div>Production Designer: Katarzyna Jędrzejczyk</div><div>Costume Designer:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Katarzyna Lewińska</div><div>Music: Frédéric Vercheval</div><div>Sound: Roman Dymny</div><div>In collaboration with (Direction): Kamila Tarabura, Katarzyna Warzecha</div><div> Song: "Mourir mille fois" (Youssoupha).</div><div> Sous-titres francais Isabelle Warolin (tbc).</div><div> Viewed at UGC Danton, 99, bd Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Métro Odéon, 75006 Paris, 10 Feb 2024</div><div><br /></div><div>SYNOPSIS (Venice Film Festival)</div><div>" <i>In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine. 30 years after Europa Europa, three-time Oscar Nominee Agnieszka Holland’s poignant new feature Zielona granica opens our eyes, speaks to the heart, and challenges us to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT</div><div>" <i>We live in a world where it takes great imagination and courage to face all the challenges of modern times. The social media revolution and artificial intelligence have made it increasingly difficult for genuine voices to be heard. In my opinion, there is no point in engaging in art if one doesn’t fight for that voice, if one doesn’t fight to ask questions about important, painful, sometimes unsolvable issues that put us before dramatic choices. This is exactly the situation that’s happening on the Polish-Belarusian border</i>. "<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>UGC opening announcements: </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Respecter:</b></div><div><b>- Sa place</b></div><div><b>- Ses voisins</b></div><div><b>- L'oeuvre</b></div><div><b>- L'environment</b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Vous êtes loin d'avoir tout vu</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: Having become a key director in prestige television drama including The Wire, Treme, and House of Cards, Agnieszka Holland continues directing high profile theatrical films. After major historical dramas about Stalinian imperialism (<a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2020/06/mr-jones-2019.html">Mr. Jones</a> / L'Ombre de Staline and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2020/06/sarlatan-charlatan.html">Šarlatán</a> / Le Procès de l'herboriste) she turns to the contemporary Putin-Lukashenko imperialism in Green Border, a devastating epic about the weaponization of the Syrian refugee crisis against the European Union.</div><div><br /></div><div>We meet a number of dramatis personae: smugglers, refugees, the border guard, the activists, and bystanders, some of which are committed to help (Julia), and others who refuse engagement.</div><div><br /></div><div>The movie starts in green with a view of the forest borderland, only to be reduced to black and white for the rest of the duration. This is fiction, but the often handheld cinematography aspires to the condition of candid camera.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a tale of immense complexity. To help the asylum seeker is a fundamental humanitarian duty, known since Hesiod as <i>philoxenia</i>. But the weaponization of refugees is a cruel trap designed by Putin and Lukashenko to destabilize the European Union.</div><div><br /></div><div>Holland tells the epic tale in unflinching scenes. Her approach is that of a matter-of-fact statement. Refugees being shuffled from Belarus to Poland and back again fifteen times, suffering from hunger and hypothermia in the forest. Children drowning in the mud. An old man beaten to death. The attitude of the border guards on both sides: callous, cynical, vicious and murderous. There is an absence of dignity.</div><div><br /></div><div>A light of hope emerges in the work of the activists, who cannot interfere but can provide humanitarian aid (food, drink, medication, clothing), documentation and support in asylum applications. Towards the end there is also a hopeful sequence with refugees joining Polish youngsters in singing "Mourir mille fois".</div><div><br /></div><div>In the end credits we learn that 30.000 refugees have died trying to reach Europe since the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2014. Two million Ukrainian refugees have been let to Poland without harassment. Putin is responsible for the Ukrainian crisis and has a major responsibility in the Syrian crisis. Since 2013, Putin is weaponizing refugees on the Finnish border, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Agnieszka Holland conveys unforgettably the humanitarian catastrophe that is about to grow tenfold and hundredfold.</div></div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-68305969952682943922024-02-02T10:30:00.248+02:002024-02-05T17:48:37.654+02:00Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise : Les derniers mois / The Last Months (exposition au Musée d'Orsay)<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEsispL6OaOacLAFUz9uJvvlZb9G9PsqaAbHlimRaClFq8pqhj_W3KQoHfgW1SCSQ3duRUmo-NXYBzmh1qZAulMlsv_IIP1B1Ysl-u7nhOMfP-SeGm8vzCNdna102AJF5_CzuCV4szP-KIECqV9AA1hkJW2OF7LNCCHH5CE_4HVuAQSRRpNHuV/s3508/1890%20Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Wheatfield_with_crows_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1669" data-original-width="3508" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEsispL6OaOacLAFUz9uJvvlZb9G9PsqaAbHlimRaClFq8pqhj_W3KQoHfgW1SCSQ3duRUmo-NXYBzmh1qZAulMlsv_IIP1B1Ysl-u7nhOMfP-SeGm8vzCNdna102AJF5_CzuCV4szP-KIECqV9AA1hkJW2OF7LNCCHH5CE_4HVuAQSRRpNHuV/w400-h190/1890%20Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Wheatfield_with_crows_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vincent Van Gogh: Champ de blé aux corbeaux / Wheatfield with Crows. FR 1890. Plaine d'Auvers-sur-Oise. Mardi 8 juillet 1890. Huile sur toile, 50,5 x 103 cm. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent Van Gogh Stichting). Cat. rais.: F779; JH2117. Please do click on the image to enlarge it to the full screen. Photo: Google Art Project.</td></tr></tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_1PYSUrFE36haNmhKxD8RIqEJOtrxWAoqWXiRC6YlquaebTJggag-CT77GQqqkEKb76_Cke7v8bMLtdQpQWhIXmYp-nkDdQE-KKkBl8VEi-z-UmZ3o0Nj27CT9eWCko31-FPh9X3MozKYtSJiWxLBBR1UkNpDlWgSCPXC5PF2OTD8wTrx0Bf/s1216/1890%20Van%20Gogh%20sinitaivas,%20viljapelto.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="1216" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_1PYSUrFE36haNmhKxD8RIqEJOtrxWAoqWXiRC6YlquaebTJggag-CT77GQqqkEKb76_Cke7v8bMLtdQpQWhIXmYp-nkDdQE-KKkBl8VEi-z-UmZ3o0Nj27CT9eWCko31-FPh9X3MozKYtSJiWxLBBR1UkNpDlWgSCPXC5PF2OTD8wTrx0Bf/w400-h158/1890%20Van%20Gogh%20sinitaivas,%20viljapelto.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vincent Van Gogh: Champ de blé sous des nuages d'orage / Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds. FR 1890. Plaine d'Auvers-sur-Oise. Mercredi 9 juillet 1890. Huile sur toile, 50,4 x 101,3 cm. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Stichting). Cat. rais.: F778; JH2097. Please do click on the image to enlarge it to the full screen. Photo: Musée d'Orsay.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />
Exposition au Musée d'Orsay<div>Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise : Les derniers mois
<br />Du 3 octobre 2023 au 4 février 2024</div><div>Visited on Friday, 2 February 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: There is a discouraging warning on the museum website: "<i>l'exposition Van Gogh est complète jusqu'à sa fermeture le dimanche 4 février</i>". Determined to make every effort, I come early, equip myself with morning papers from the Invalides newsstand and get ready to wait all day. The queue is very long, but I do get in in an hour.</div><div><br /></div><div>The exhibition is crowded. The experience is epic and reverential. Patience is needed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Artists have no use for labels. They only exist to be challenged. But critics and historians need them. Van Gogh started in the inspiration of the realism and naturalism of Courbet and Millet. He was passionate about the earth, the sky, the water and the people whose life was all hard work. When Van Gogh moved to France, impressionists and pointillists revealed new dimensions of colour and form. Beyond realism: a faithful rendition of external reality was heightened with an awareness of its perception. The creation transformed into a simultaneous quest of reflection and self-reflection.</div><div><br /></div><div>This unique exhibition is devoted solely to the last two months in Van Gogh's life. It evokes many thoughts and feelings, and it is a showcase of versatility in many of the artist's favourite subjects including portraits, self-portraits, peasants, flowers, gardens, orchards, wheat fields, stacks of grain, trees, night skies and thunderclouds.</div><div><br /></div><div>A change takes place towards the end of the chronology. Van Gogh elongates his paintings horizontally, starting to prefer the double square (<i>double carré</i>) format. Cineastes call this format CinemaScope. (See illustrations above).</div><div><br /></div><div>But a change even more profound takes place. If I would have to choose one word to describe the meaning of this show for me, it would be expressionism. Having started in realism and having upgraded his approach with impressionism, Van Gogh finally moves towards expressionism.</div><div><br /></div><div>He sees the world increasingly as an inner vision. His passion, his fury, his love, his agony. Portraits turn into self-portraits. Even landscapes become self-portraits. Van Gogh paints his inner world in the mirror of the outer world.</div><div><br /></div><div>His images are never purely subjective. Van Gogh keeps developing a double narrative. A passionate dialogue between the self and the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even from the realistic viewpoint he gets deeper. Beyond the appearances he sees more. In the age of nuclear physics and quantum physics we sense in Van Gogh's art an awareness of infinities both in the macrocosmos and the microcosmos. There is nothing solid in his vibrant brushstrokes. They express a universe full of life, electricity, particles and cosmic charges. Even in Van Gogh's flowers and still lives everything is in motion. <i>Panta rhei</i>.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>MUSÉE D'ORSAY INTRODUCTION</div><div><br /></div><div><div>" <i>Présentée au musée d’Orsay à l’automne 2023, cette exposition est la première consacrée aux œuvres produites par Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) durant les deux derniers mois de sa vie, à Auvers-sur-Oise, près de Paris. L’exposition constitue l’aboutissement d’années de recherches sur cette phase cruciale de la vie de l’artiste, et permettra au public de l’apprécier enfin à sa juste dimension. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Arrivé à Auvers-sur-Oise le 20 mai 1890, Vincent van Gogh y décède le 29 juillet à la suite d’une tentative de suicide. Bien que le peintre n’ait passé qu’un peu plus de deux mois à Auvers, cette période voit un renouveau artistique, avec un style et un développement propres, marqués par la tension psychique née de la nouvelle situation mais aussi par la création de quelques-uns de ses plus grands chefs-d’œuvre. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Durement éprouvé par les différentes crises subies à Arles puis dans l’asile de Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh se rapproche de Paris et de son frère Theo pour trouver un nouvel élan créatif. Le choix d’Auvers tient à la présence du Dr Gachet, médecin spécialisé dans le traitement de la mélancolie, et par ailleurs ami des impressionnistes, collectionneur et peintre amateur. Van Gogh s’installe au centre du village, dans l’auberge Ravoux, et explore tous les aspects du nouveau monde qui s’offre à lui, tout en luttant contre des inquiétudes multiples liées à ses crises, sa santé, ses relations avec son frère, sa place dans le monde de l’art. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Aucune exposition n’a encore été consacrée exclusivement à ce stade final, pourtant crucial, de sa carrière. En deux mois, le peintre a produit 74 tableaux et 33 dessins, parmi lesquels des œuvres iconiques : Le Docteur Paul Gachet, L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise, ou encore Champ de blé aux corbeaux. Riche d’une quarantaine de tableaux et d’une vingtaine de dessins, l’exposition mettra en lumière cette période dans un propos thématique : premiers paysages figurant le village, portraits, natures mortes, paysages de la campagne environnante. Elle présentera aussi une série, unique dans l’œuvre de Van Gogh, de tableaux d’un format allongé en double carré. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Cette exposition est organisée par l’Établissement public des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie de Paris et le musée Van Gogh d’Amsterdam qui la présentera du 12 mai au 3 septembre 2023, pour marquer son 50e anniversaire</i>. "</div></div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-69779827159469856032024-01-27T15:00:00.321+02:002024-02-20T19:52:08.489+02:00Pelle Hermanni ja hypnotisoija<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFjE8ANhtZKiQesTmGHV7-67MkxWTNtFp6ojeyIJAAvVkA7f3u09VmICxYnh0okjMU0I6FTiMiPodBf4sbam2TpcPUdicaoN_4WkrrPkbsb8GJoBBM7W94nAM7xgZothGd9C6xJBo2PYHWdxSSA00TalduD3HkV2ZVeMN7yRRmjYcfhaf0tfJ/s2835/Pelle%20Hermanni%20ja%20hypnotisoija.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1984" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAFjE8ANhtZKiQesTmGHV7-67MkxWTNtFp6ojeyIJAAvVkA7f3u09VmICxYnh0okjMU0I6FTiMiPodBf4sbam2TpcPUdicaoN_4WkrrPkbsb8GJoBBM7W94nAM7xgZothGd9C6xJBo2PYHWdxSSA00TalduD3HkV2ZVeMN7yRRmjYcfhaf0tfJ/w280-h400/Pelle%20Hermanni%20ja%20hypnotisoija.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Timo Koivusalo: Pelle Hermanni ja hypnotisoija (FI 2023) starring Vesa Vierikko.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br /><div>Clownen Herman och hypnotisören.</div><div> FI 2023. PC: Artista Filmi Oy. P: Timo Koivusalo. Co-P: Ari Tolppanen, Roosa Toivonen, Petri Kemppinen (Aurora Studios).</div><div> D+SC: Timo Koivusalo. Cin: Pertti Mutanen - colour - scope. AD: Markku Myllymäki. Cost: Elina Vättö. Makeup: Erja Mikkola. VFX: James Post Oy. M+cond.: Esa Nieminen. </div><div> "Pelle Hermanni" theme based on the Radetzky-Marsch (1848) by Johann Strauss (Vater) with new material written by Esa Nieminen. Perf. Kasperi Koskinen and Päivänkehrän koulun oppilaat. - "Nyt lähdetään" (Timo Koivusalo, Esa Nieminen). - "Pelle Hermannin huuliharppulaulu" (Timo Koivusalo).</div><div> S: Jyrki Luukko, Olli Pärnänen. Sound ED: Meguru Film Sound Oy. ED: Jyrki Luukko, Timo Koivusalo.</div><div> Based on the character created by Simo Ojanen for the children's series Sirkuspelle Hermanni at Yle TV2 Pikku Kakkonen 1978–1988, starring Veijo Pasanen (1930–1988). </div><div><div> CAST from Elonet:</div><div>Vesa Vierikko / Pelle Hermanni</div><div>Jari Salmi / tirehtööri Tilpehööri</div><div>Martti Suosalo / Maximilian</div><div>Iina Kuustonen / Viola</div><div>Tom Lindholm / Viktor</div><div>Minttu Mustakallio / Sylvia</div><div>Hannu-Pekka Björkman / sirkustirehtööri</div><div>Heikki Nousiainen / Kasperi</div><div>Tuija Piepponen / äitiliini</div><div>Milo Tamminen / Roni</div><div>Oona Hakanpää / Julia</div><div>Tommi Virhiä / Tilpehöörin vahtimestari</div><div>Miia Selin / tarkastaja</div><div>Juha Laitila / hypnotisoitava Tilpehöörin sirkuksessa</div><div> Sirkustaiteilijat / Aura Company: Emma Nivala, Markus Nivala, Antti Nerg, Lassi Tauriainen, Roni Heimo.</div><div> Varsinais-Suomen Rhönradvoimistelijat ry: Niina Viitala, Tiina Mäkelä, Alina Altis, Jenna Lähderanta.</div><div> Sirkus Hepokatin väki: Oskari Huhtanen, Eveliina Jääskeläinen, Anni Koskiniemi, Mari Koskiniemi, Telle Leppiniemi, Olli Mustaniemi, Jenna Pukkila, Veikko Pukkila, Terhi Räty, Johanna Santanen, Hannele Syrjälahti, Seppo Wallin, Siina Ventelä, Jarkko Viljanen.</div><div> Karukylän väki: vahtimestarin vaimo: Reetta Hulmi, surullinen tyttö Karukylässä: Tilli Vuorinen, sekä Lea Heino, Pertti Heino, Aarre Hulmi, Touko Hulmi, Mari Hyväri, Petri Hyväri, Irina Kaukinen, Kullervo Kauppi, Unto Kauppi, Seela Kimppa, Juha Kulmala, Pentti Laine, Sari Mäkinen, Sievi Sillanpää, Tiia Sillanpää.</div><div> Sirkusyleisö: Wivi Lönnin koulun oppilaat ja opettajat / Susanna Wilska, Tampere.</div><div> Sirkusorkesteri: Pertti Hurmalainen, Severi Koivusalo, Esa Nieminen, Heikki Markkula, Sauli Saarinen.</div></div><div> Lounatuulen päiväkodin väki, Pori.</div><div> Lapsikuoro: Päivänkehrän koulun oppilaat.</div><div> Acknowledgements: Sirkus Finlandia / Carl Jernström, Kalle Roos, Seppo Tauriainen, Tomi Tauriainen, Tero Juopperi, Terhi Eklund-Moilanen ja koko muu henkilökunta.</div><div> 77 min</div><div> Premiere: 22 Dec 2023 - distributed by SF Studios - Swedish subtitles by Michaela Palmberg and Heidi Nyblom Kuorikoski.</div><div> Viewed at Tennispalatsi 3, Helsinki, 27 Jan 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Synopsis from Filmikamari Pressit: " <i>Sirkuspelle Hermanni valloittaa valkokankaat jälleen!"</i></div><div><i> "Sirkus Hepokatin väki päättää järjestää Pelle Hermannille suuret yllätysjuhlat, mutta kukaan ei tunnu tietävän, milloin Hermannin syntymäpäivä oikein on. Hänelle ei ole koskaan järjestetty syntymäpäiviä. Syntymäpäiväjärjestelyt saavatkin yllättävän käänteen, kun kilpailevan sirkuksen häikäilemätön johtaja; tirehtööri Tilpehööri, tahtoo Pelle Hermannin oman sirkuksensa vetonaulaksi keinolla millä hyvänsä. Kun metkut Hermannin huijaamiseksi eivät ota onnistuakseen, päättää Tilpehööri ottaa järeämmät kepulikonstit käyttöönsä ja pian Hepokatissa alkaa tapahtua toinen toistaan kummempia asioita. Kuka kumma on kironnut sirkuksen ja miten Pelle Hermanni tähän kaikkeen oikein liittyy? Tämä kaikki selviää värikästä sirkuselämää sykkivässä koko perheen elokuvassa Pelle Hermanni ja hypnotisoija</i>. "</div><div><br /></div></div><div>AA: I liked Timo Koivusalo's first <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2022/08/pelle-hermanni-herman-clown-2022.html">Pelle Hermanni</a> movie when I saw it in the summer of 2022. Still based on a direct screenplay contribution by Simo Ojanen (1940-2021), the creator of the Pelle Hermanni concept, the film was dedicated to him. The warmth of the audience response was palpable. </div><div><br /></div><div>The new film [The Clown Herman and the Hypnotist would be the direct translation of its title] is even better. I have not seen a better Finnish film about the circus world. Koivusalo is at his best here, and I am a fan of his films, whether comedy, drama or epic.</div><div><br /></div><div>The clown is an endlessly puzzling figure for "children of all ages" and the greatest artists. Last October in Pordenone I saw the comedy retrospective curated by Ulrich Rüdel and Steve Massa with discoveries such as the magical <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/reves-de-clowns.html">Rêves de clowns</a> by René Hervouin and Blanche Vigier de Maisonneuve, featuring the Fratellini brothers. It made me think more deeply about the ancient and atavistic roots of the clown and the holy fool.</div><div><br /></div><div>Clowns' antics play with mental sanity in a way that is sometimes near madness, and Koivusalo understands this dimension well because among his qualifications is that of a psychiatric nurse.</div><div><br /></div><div>The plot of this film is about the search for Clown Herman's lost birth certificate without which he will be doomed to live his entire life without a birthday party at his Circus Hepokatti [Grasshopper].</div><div><br /></div><div>Obstacles along the way include a rivalling circus whose director Tilpehööri [Bric-a-Brac] is a master hypnotist, able to turn anybody into a sleepwalker. And also hypnotize members of Hepokatti to sabotage their own circus.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have today just viewed <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2024/01/wish-walt-disney-animation-studios.html">Wish</a>, the new Walt Disney animation, and I register a connection between the master manipulators Tilpehööri and King Magnifico, both about to turn the world into their own image.</div><div><br /></div><div>I risk being heavy-handed, but watching today's situation on subway trains and city streets with everyone lost in the virtual reality of mobile devices, I feel like Tilpehööri has already taken over.</div><div><br /></div><div>In comedy, Koivusalo sustains the right level of exaggeration. Iina Kuustonen has again the funniest part: her dialogue consists only of proverbs, which she never gets right. There are amusing ideas throughout. The hickup test. The talking dog who exposes Tilpehööri.</div><div><br /></div><div>The circus performances are outstanding, including in thrilling scenes of sabotage. The acrobats are real artists.</div><div><br /></div><div>In digital, it is nowadays possible to create a bright colour world without being jarring. It is pleasantly warm and sunny.</div><div><br /></div><div>Esa Nieminen succeeds with the score. It is genuinely appealing and amusing, and on the other hand oddly menacing in the ominous Karukylä music world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Musical comedy is the most difficult genre. Timo Koivusalo's cinema succeeds in being more than fun. His hallmarks include joy, tenderness, gentleness and a spirit of generosity. Good medicine in our age of divisiveness and hate speech.</div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-8338077990205638042024-01-27T12:20:00.312+02:002024-02-20T20:00:25.049+02:00Wish (Centenary of the Walt Disney Animation Studios)<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY1MJFzj9LGm8HqaLI0DHxv2en4Y4wU73yIvNKKZ_c2gWAW58eDb4f_-xfpVSBP2rrBC2ukBCr4H70QH81Y9JT1uBPrjk4GHbufQHO4qDv_2NknxCxj8-cRdJKc4gDIy93yukAVd06VxTaxVd6bpkzMGGoMqQDW_j5hHxOfT-Rzv0pRTqMge4P/s3543/Wish.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3543" data-original-width="2480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY1MJFzj9LGm8HqaLI0DHxv2en4Y4wU73yIvNKKZ_c2gWAW58eDb4f_-xfpVSBP2rrBC2ukBCr4H70QH81Y9JT1uBPrjk4GHbufQHO4qDv_2NknxCxj8-cRdJKc4gDIy93yukAVd06VxTaxVd6bpkzMGGoMqQDW_j5hHxOfT-Rzv0pRTqMge4P/w280-h400/Wish.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn: Wish (US 2023).</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />Centenary of the Walt Disney Animation Studios<br /><div><br /></div><div>Toive / Önskan.<div> US <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;">© </span> 2023 Disney Enterprises. PC: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios. P: Peter Del Vecho, Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster-Jones.</div><div> Animation (watercolour and computer animation).</div><div>D: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn. SC: Jennifer Lee & Allison Moore - story: Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn, Allison Moore - additional story material: Carlos López Estrada, Andrew Rothschild. <br /> CinemaScope 2.55:1. Digital 2K. In 3-D and 2-D.</div><div> Layout: Rob Dressel. PD: Michael Giaimo. Production Management, Art Department, Visual Effects Department, Animation Department, Sound Department, Music Department: all huge. M score: Dave Metzger. Songs: Julia Michaels, Benjamin Rice. ED: Jeff Draheim.</div><div> VOICE TALENT original / Finnish / character</div><div><div>Ariana DeBose / Silja Kutvonen / Asha</div><div>Chris Pine / Markus Niemi / Kuningas Magnifico</div><div>Alan Tudyk / Osku Ärilä / Valentino</div><div>Angelique Cabral / Maria Ylipää / Kuningatar Amaya</div><div>Victor Garber / Eero Saarinen / Sabino (Ashan isoisä)</div><div>Natasha Rothwell / Ushma Olava / Sakina (Ashan äiti)</div><div>Jennifer Kumiyama / Niina Lahtinen / Dahlia</div><div>Evan Peters / Aaro Wichmann / Simon</div><div>Harvey Guillén / Miiko Toiviainen / Gabo</div><div>Ramy Youssef / Leo Ikhilor / Safi</div><div>Niko Vargas / Ringa Aflatuni / Hal</div><div>Della Saba / Mirella Roininen / Bazeema</div><div>Jon Rudnitsky / Henri Piispanen / Dario</div></div><div> Finnish edition: dialogue and songs directed by Jukka Nylund. Translated by Aki Heinlahti.</div><div> 95 min</div><div> US premiere: 8 Nov 2023 (El Capitan, Hollywood)</div><div> US premiere: 22 Nov 2023 (wide)</div><div> Finnish premiere: 15 Dec 2023, released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland.</div><div> Finnish edition in 2-D viewed at Tennispalatsi 2, Helsinki, 27 Jan 2024</div><div><br /></div><div><div>IMDb: " <i>A young girl named Asha wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>IMDb: " <i>Dedicated to Burny Mattinson, a Disney legend who died on February 27, 2023, having worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios for over 70 years</i>. "</div></div><div><br /></div><div>AA: During the end credits stylish vignettes cover a magical history tour of the Disney Company celebrating its 100th anniversary.</div><div><br /></div><div>The jubileum film has been inspired by the studio anthem, "When You Wish Upon A Star", written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Pinocchio (1940).</div><div><br /></div><div>I appreciate in Wish the cosmic vision, the topical allegory of a narcissistic tyrant who wants to control even people's dreams and wishes, and the rebellious fighting spirit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Topical is also the focus on female agency. No more sleeping beauties waiting for the prince's kiss. The Walt Disney tribute at Pordenone's Le Giornate del Muto in October 2023 reminded us that Disney's first protagonist and dynamo was Alice in the Alice Comedies series, launched in October, 1923, produced by Margaret J. Winkler.</div><div><br /></div><div>The eternal dilemma of animation is that humans are less appealing than animals. (The very word "animation" seems to convey an animal affinity). A hundred years ago Walt Disney solved this by combining a live action Alice with Julius the Cat, the predecessor of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse, etc. From the beginning, Disney realized the appeal of round forms and figures. In Wish, there is a slight concession towards roundness in human figures.</div><div><br /></div><div>The art and craft is perfect, meeting all expectations. The achievement is nothing short of admirable. Released during the same season was another major animation, the new Hayao Miyazaki film <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/kimitachi-wa-do-ikiruka-boy-and-heron.html">The Boy and the Heron</a>. It is superior due to its compelling and engrossing personal vision. It is full of a genuine Miyazaki spirit.</div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>The first film I saw was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in its 1962 re-release (a Finnish voice version starring Eeva-Kaarina Volanen). The Hunting Instinct; Nikki, Wild Dog of the North; In Search of the Castaways; The Sword in the Stone and Mary Poppins were the first Disney films I caught during their first runs. I included many Disney movies in my film guides of 1000, then 1100 great films. My last project as programmer of the KAVI film archive was a comprehensive Walt Disney retrospective for Kino Regina in 2023-2024. We always had a happy collaboration with the Disney Company, memorably also in mounting a unique Film Concert Fantasia at the Helsinki Concert Hall with Disney's <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/search?q=swan+of+tuonela">The Swan of Tuonela</a> as a bonus, played live by Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had the honour to know <a href="https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentti_Hauhiala">Pentti Hauhiala</a>, possibly the greatest Disney collector in the Nordic countries. He loved all things Disney. He also remarked that after Walt's death, Disney animations started to lack a genuine Walt spirit.</div>
</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-87439354617102301612024-01-20T21:40:00.210+02:002024-01-30T10:04:50.303+02:00Tuomion saari / The Island of Doom<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EMaBBXEquBXCiTQC_1_TU6druDTQgdCiPbDQlNlGiYV357kuynsE9M2SiAn_laVxgnHSSImiKu35GndWxHu-yRFS8pvXBZaO8REGvO_u8O0jLMSSXX2Mp-fEgi9vULWN6bVIFx5pDjBKVtyOskJ5zr_Prx-G1GhUuBLBwSZdw7DEK08e7ZIN/s1920/Tuomion%20saari.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EMaBBXEquBXCiTQC_1_TU6druDTQgdCiPbDQlNlGiYV357kuynsE9M2SiAn_laVxgnHSSImiKu35GndWxHu-yRFS8pvXBZaO8REGvO_u8O0jLMSSXX2Mp-fEgi9vULWN6bVIFx5pDjBKVtyOskJ5zr_Prx-G1GhUuBLBwSZdw7DEK08e7ZIN/w360-h640/Tuomion%20saari.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keke Soikkeli: Tuomion saari / The Island of Doom (FI 2023) with Sonja Aiello, Konsta Hietanen, Markku Pulli, Elmeri Rantalainen, Emma Lahti, Jenni Rautiainen.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br /><div>FI 2023. PC: Same-eYes Production / Nordic Films. P: Jesse Tervolin, Keke Soikkeli.</div><div> D+SC: Keke Soikkeli. Cin+ED: Teemu Villikka. Makeup: Sara Niinimäki. SFX (blood effects): Marko Moilanen. M: Eetu Hämäläinen, Olli Rantanen.</div><div> C: Sonja Aiello (Miia), Markku Pulli (Teemu), Konsta Hietanen (Kimmo), Elmeri Rantalainen (Timo), Emma Lahti (Maija), Jenni Rautiainen (Laura), Heljä Lappi (Tiina), Tiia Weckström (Eetu's lover), Timo Dadu (boy's father), Linnea O. Leino (Ilona), Karo Auvinen (Rami), Viivi Mauno (Emma), Toni Lipsanen (Eetu / the killer), Viivi Schroderus (Tuuli / waitress).</div> 90 min<br /><div> Finnish premiere: 29 Dec 2023, distributed by Kuusan Kino Ky.</div><div> Viewed at Kinopalatsi 3, Helsinki, 20 Jan 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>English Wikipedia: " <i>Mia learns that her boyfriend Eetu is cheating on her and she goes to live with her friend Maija to recover from the shock. Maija decides to take Mia to a summer bar with her friends Rami, Laura and Kimmo, where Mia falls in love with the porter Teemu. At the bar, they try to think of some kind of pastime for Mia to get her mind off Eetu's infidelity and soon they come up with going to a remote lake island, which is called the "Island of Doom". There is an urban legend about the island, according to which a young boy guilty of murdering his baby sister was banished to the island by his father and left there to die. Mia agrees to this idea and the next day they go camping on the island. After spending the night there, Laura starts to get nervous about the atmosphere on the island, which the horror story left behind. The situation is not made easier by the fact that there is indeed a small abandoned cottage on the island, which would indicate that someone actually lived there. And when their boat disappears while they are trapped on the island, they soon begin to realize that what started out as a "horror story" has some kind of basis of truth</i>. "</div><div><br /></div></div><div><div>Filmikamari Pressit: " <i>Syrjäisellä seudulla sijaitsee saari, josta kerrotaan kauhutarinaa sinne aikanaan hirmutekonsa jälkeen karkotetusta lapsesta. Kukaan ei usko hänen selviytyneen edes ensimmäisen talven yli, mutta legendan mukaan saarelle menijät eivät vielä tänäkään päivänä sieltä palaa. Parikymppinen Mia on juuri kokenut järkytyksen ja pettymyksen parisuhteessaan ja kaipaa muuta ajateltavaa, joten kyseisen kauhutarinan kuultuaan hänen onnistuu houkutella muutama jännitystä elämään kaipaava ystävänsä mukaan tuulettumaan veneillen ja telttaillen sekä tutustuen saaren legendaan. Saarelle päästyään nuoret kohtaavat tuomionsa yksi kerrallaan</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: The last movie of my private "Saturday film festival" of four films in a row.</div><div><br /></div><div>The title of the horror film Tuomion saari means in literal translation "Doom Island". I rush to the screening from <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2024/01/stormskars-maja-stormskerry-maja.html">Stormskärs Maja</a> / Stormskerry Maja, also set on a tiny island. Maja's is an island of love. Tuomion saari is an island of death.</div><div><br /></div><div>The movie is a low budget regional independent production made outside regular financing structures, shot in Kouvola and Iitti.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>It is a genre movie, a splatter film and a slasher movie, with clear affinities with films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Halloween.</div><div><br /></div><div>One thing can be stated for certain: Tuomion saari is not sophisticated. The female characters' main characteristic is that they are oozing with sex. I hesitate to call this aspect male abuse of feminine glory. It seems that the female performers are themselves more than happy to flaunt their youthful attributes.</div><div><br /></div><div>The visitors to the doom island have all heard that nobody who visits it comes back alive. They do not believe in such nonsense and thus get to learn by experience. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's raw. It's crude. There is no excuse for stilted performances, but still there is a lesson in this movie. A horror film does not become better if it is produced on a huge budget, say, like Martin Scorsese's <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2010/05/shutter-island.html">Shutter Island</a>, which drowns under its own weight. Tuomion saari exudes unreconstructed genre energy.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to Stephen King in his magisterial study of horror fiction, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre_(book)">Danse Macabre</a>, it is all about our coming to terms with death and madness. His formative experience in his childhood was <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2014/04/creature-from-black-lagoon-3d-universal.html">Creature from the Black Lagoon</a>, and ever since, death for him has meant that the creature from the black lagoon comes to get you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite everything, Tuomion saari does deliver this essential, atavistic and primordial horror impact. The axe killer covered in sackcloth comes to get you. I have always refused to speak about "horror classics" because it is an oxymoron. "Horror" is the antithesis of "classic". Horror is meant to be upsetting in every way. Having said this, I wish Tuomion saari were a better film or even a good film.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are memorable images such as the wooden doll.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today I also saw another genre quickie, the medical drama <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2024/01/syke-elokuva-sarkynyt-sydan.html">Syke: Särkynyt sydän</a>. It is a parallel case: not a great film, but it also conveys something of the genre essence, perhaps somehow in a purer form because it is not refined. It is also about life and death. And madness and sanity.</div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-88485736390194019202024-01-20T18:30:00.519+02:002024-01-30T12:07:02.668+02:00Stormskärs Maja / Stormskerry Maja<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQizk2J28kA94Obyy3KGrbb6acKiQCrucAvS0vu2IHU2SCU_-GN3pCqLAhFyurns6mHyGI-Bk0YUg8a_o0hRMrI2_JMuJbEXG12CEDmpWWqATsGYUq3ubP-0CKu6O2Slmd2928r0qN4dNOR3EkQKQ_UR8kvAmFWzr-1hvmHBYnk6c0ZCj5vLu/s2835/Stormsk%C3%A4rs%20Maja.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1984" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQizk2J28kA94Obyy3KGrbb6acKiQCrucAvS0vu2IHU2SCU_-GN3pCqLAhFyurns6mHyGI-Bk0YUg8a_o0hRMrI2_JMuJbEXG12CEDmpWWqATsGYUq3ubP-0CKu6O2Slmd2928r0qN4dNOR3EkQKQ_UR8kvAmFWzr-1hvmHBYnk6c0ZCj5vLu/w280-h400/Stormsk%C3%A4rs%20Maja.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiina Lymi: Stormskärs Maja (FI 2023) with Linus Troedsson (Janne) and Amanda Jansson (Maja).</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br />
Myrskyluodon Maija.<div> FI 2024. PC: Solar Films Inc. Oy. P: Jukka Helle, Hanna Virolainen, Markus Selin. EX: Gustav Oldén.</div><div> D+SC: Tiina Lymi - based on the <a href="https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormsk%C3%A4rs-Maja">Stormskärs-Maja</a> series of novels by Anni Blomqvist: Vägen till Stormskäret (1968), Med havet som granne (1969), Maja (1970), I kamp med havet (1971) and Vägen från Stormskäret (1973). DP: Rauno Ronkainen. PD: Otso Linnalaakso. Cost: Auli Turtiainen. Makeup: Kaisa Pätilä. VFX: Viivi Veivo (VFX Helsinki Oy). M: Lauri Porra. Cond: Dalia Stasevska. Orchestra: Sinfonia Lahti. Theme tune (1976): Lasse Mårtenson. S: Kirka Sainio. ED: Joona Louhivuori. Sailing expertise: Storbåt Aura / Turun perinneveneyhdistys, Sonja / Kustavin Talonpoikaispurjehtijat ry.</div><div> C: Amanda Jansson (Maja), Linus Troedsson (Janne), Jonna Järnefelt (Maja's mother), Tobias Zilliacus (Maja's father), Amanda Kilpeläinen Arvidsson (Anna, Maja's sister), Desmond Eastwood (Wilson, British Navy officer), Tony Doyle (Harris, British Navy officer).</div><div> Loc: Åland, 2022-2023.</div><div> Language: Swedish.</div><div> 163 min<br /><div> Finnish premiere 19 Jan 2024, released by Nordisk Film with Finnish subtitles by Iira Tuominen.<br /> Viewed at Tennispalatsi Isense, Helsinki, 20 Jan 2024.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Previous adaptation: <a href="https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormsk%C3%A4rs_Maja_(TV-serie)">Stormskärs Maja 1-6</a> (TV series, FI 1976), D: Åke Lindman, SC: Benedict Zilliacus, M: Lasse Mårtenson, C: Rose-Marie Rosenback, Leif Sundberg.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Filmikamari Pressit: " <i>Myrskyluodon Maija on koskettava tarina vahvasta naisesta ja hänen kohtaamistaan haasteista myrskyisällä saarella. Elokuva perustuu Anni Blomqvistin samannimiseen romaaniin ja sijoittuu 1800-luvun Suomen rannikkoseudulle. Nuori 17-vuotias Maija avioituu vasten tahtoaan kalastajamies Jannen kanssa. Hänen elämänsä Myrskyluodolla on täynnä haasteita ja vastoinkäymisiä: kalastajan vaimona hän joutuu selviytymään miehensä pitkistä poissaoloista merellä ja huolehtimaan perheestään yksin. Maijasta on kuitenkin kasvanut lujatahtoinen ja itsenäinen nainen, joka ei pelkää tarttua toimeen karussa saaristossa. Maijalla ja Jannella on vahva yhteys, sekä ajan myötä syventynyt rakkaus. Janne tukee vaimonsa pyrkimyksiä ja ymmärtää, että perheen vahvuus syntyy yhteisistä ponnisteluista. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Myrskyluodon Maija on tarina tahdosta, voimasta ja rakkaudesta</i>. "</div></div><div><br /></div><div>AA: "Storm Cliff Women" is a formidable cycle of novels by a family of female authors from the municipality of Vårdö in the Åland archipelango, launched by Sally Salminen with Katrina in 1936, an international bestseller in some 20 languages. Her sister Aili Nordgren (née Salminen) also became a writer, famous for Väljer du stormen [If You Choose the Storm] among others. Also two of their brothers became writers. Their second cousin was Anni Blomqvist, whose most popular achievement was the Stormskärs-Maja series of five books. All five were born before Finland's independence, when even Åland belonged to the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Storm Cliff Women phenomenon in 1936 belonged to a new wave of young female protagonists in Finnish fiction, including Liisa Harju (in Hilja Valtonen's Nuoren opettajattaren varaventtiili), Ilona Ahlgren (in Hella Wuolijoki's Niskavuoren naiset), and Katri Ukonniemi (in Auni Nuolivaara's Paimen, piika ja emäntä). All were memorably filmed - <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2017/02/katrina.html">Katrina</a> in Sweden, directed by Gustaf Edgren in 1943. During wartime, filming on Åland was forbidden, and exteriors were filmed in the Stockholm archipelago. The new Stormskärs Maja is the first theatrical Storm Cliff movie shot on real Åland locations.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have loved the actor-director Tiina Lymi since her breakthrough role in Akvaariorakkautta and as a director since her short film <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/03/naisen-nimi-just-name.html">Naisen nimi</a>. Sharp wit, great sense of humour, perfect timing and talent in eliciting good performances were there from the beginning. I have had the privilege to interview her, and when I praised her <i>luonnontunne</i> (feeling for nature) she protested and declared that she does not even know what that is, being a city girl. But I found it in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2016/03/akkilahto.html">Äkkilähtö</a> and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2017/08/napapiirin-sankarit-3-lapland-odyssey-3.html">Napapiirin sankarit 3</a> in reverse, satirizing our estrangement from nature and in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2018/08/ilosia-aikoja-mielensapahoittaja.html">Ilosia aikoja, Mielensäpahoittaja</a> in paradox, the retro attitudes of the Curmudgeon appearing hip from an ecological viewpoint.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stormskärs Maja is Tiina Lymi's greatest film, and it has nature feeling galore. It starts as a vision of nature. The sky and the sea and the bare rock: this is the edge of Eternity. The young protagonists Maja and Janne appear as Adam and Eve, and their tiny rocky island as Paradise. "We were young, we minted gold", wrote Johannes Linnankoski in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/10191335/4218847337558400575">Song of the Scarlet Flower</a> about young lovers who have nothing, yet everything.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is hard work from morning till night, a constant combat with the elements. First they have only each other, soon there are five children. The tough conditions of life are conquered with a sunny disposition, a life-affirming stance and a joy of sex. Maja is a true woman of the sea, hardened and unafraid of ice swimming, indeed, envigorated and reborn in an ice bath. Maybe love is not all you need, but with love, you can better survive anything.</div><div><br /></div><div>The action takes place in 1840-1899, a period still dominated by <i>torpparilaitos</i>, where landowners had superior power and tenant farmers were dependent subordinates, just like Janne and Maja. (The situation changed only after the Civil War in 1918). But Janne and Maja take the first step to freedom by moving to the small island by themselves, and struggle towards freedom from there. Thereby they also escape pressure from their elders, including Maja's mother and sister. A Woman can be a wolf to a woman.</div><div><br /></div><div>Stormskärs Maja is the first theatrical film in which I see scenes from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_War#The_Oolannin_sota_song">Åland War</a> (in Finnish <i>Oolannin sota</i>, still famous from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3T8WmibAck">a popular song</a>). The war took place in 1854-1856 between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman-British-French alliance, and because Åland was the Westernmost outpost of the Russian Empire, a British Navy Division appears on Maja's Stormskär and occupies it during a full year.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maja helps Janne flee Russian draft. She keeps her family safe while British marines occupy the buildings. The Brits are immediately made to realize that transgression is out of the question. With chutzpah and willpower Maja also saves the family's only cow from being slaughtered for dinner. She deserves the respect of the officers and even provides nursing services when they are severely wounded in combat.</div><div><br /></div><div>The British occupation is an ordeal. There is also true tragedy for Maja: the mother's greatest tragedy when her son Mikael drowns, and the wife's greatest tragedy when Janne drowns in the ice. Maja still refuses to leave Stormskäret. She will now take care of Stormskäret by herself, with help from her children, who are growing up.</div><div><br /></div><div>She defies all obstacles: the class barrier, the gender barrier and the cultural barrier. Maja has grown up analphabete, but her children can by now read and write, and Maja learns with them. The gender barrier seems hard to overcome. 19th century women have not equal property and financial rights, but there is a way to arrange a loan from the mighty Saka (Carl-Kristian Rundman), and Maja gets unexpected support from Mrs. Saka (Andrea Björkholm) who is seen reading John Stuart Mill's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subjection_of_Women">The Subjection of Women</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The social charge in the novels of Sally Salminen and Aili Nordgren was frank. The writer sisters confronted oppression, exploitation and harassment in their novels, and their heroines were indefatigable fighters against injustice. This aspect was watered down in Gustaf Edgren's film adaptation. Stormskärs Maja belongs to the same tribe, but Anni Blomqvist was socially less engaged than her Storm Cliff predecessors. Nevertheless Stormskärs Maja is a mighty growing up saga of female independence, and in Tiina Lymi's adaptation, Amanda Jansson creates a terrific portrait of a fearless survivor and a woman full of love.</div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>Storm Cliff Women is an international trend in fiction, also in the cinema. Last October in Pordenone at the Giornate del Cinema Muto festival I saw no less than three such movies (<a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/film-concert-la-divine-croisiere-divine.html">La divine croisière</a>, <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/pecheur-dislande-iceland-fisherman.html">Pêcheur d'Islande</a> and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/vent-debout-headwind-2022-digital.html">Vent debout</a>), all French, all set in Brittany. Some of the earliest films relevant to the context were inspired by Alfred Tennyson's poem "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Arden">Enoch Arden</a>", including D. W. Griffith's After Many Years (US 1908, with Florence Lawrence) and Enoch Arden (US 1911, starring Linda Arvidson), remade for Griffith as <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2004/10/enoch-arden-william-christy-cabanne.html">Enoch Arden</a> (US 1915) by W. Christy Cabanne, with Lillian Gish. They etched the scene of a woman waiting for her lost husband's return from the sea into the cinema's most lasting imagery. In Stormskärs Maja, Tiina Lymi adds an original and powerful interpretation to this legacy.</div><div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>For the 11 Jan 2024 issue of the Kirkko ja Kaupunki newspaper of the Helsinki congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, Tiina Lymi has granted an interview about the spiritual message of Stormskärs Maja. The Lutheran church plays an important part in powering the people in their daily struggle with the elements. The marriage, the baptism and the funeral sequences are mounted with stark devotion. The sea voyage to the child's funeral catches the unfathomable sorrow of the berieved mother in a vision comparable with <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/05/albert-edelfelt-20222023-touring.html">Albert Edelfelt's painting "Ett barns likfärd"</a> / "Conveying the Child's Coffin" (1879). But Maja's sense of the sacred is bifurcated. Beyond the official creed of the Church there is still the ancient spirituality of magic, pantheism and premonitions. Maja is organically rooted in the deepest atavistic forces of the earth and the sea. During all seasons, summer and winter, she finds solace at the bottom of the sea.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-88430752315642793312024-01-20T16:50:00.238+02:002024-01-23T10:31:34.172+02:00Syke-elokuva: Särkynyt sydän<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMHCPjwxV9mpePAUoxfLIoolCo4PACG590H0GZy_w1c8u8-GNhD1iCyeuJUJ-gC-aB8NP_8vg1NXILnhg92sjQYnWw1368GwYuzZUs-YgE6KVbfwXjhF34K1ToqjjqEaZDnX0oYDYqF-u05ALeS6nqvLzuT569EHn4-45Dz97Zn0ws0F44Rwxe/s6035/Syke-elokuva%20S%C3%A4rkynyt%20syd%C3%A4n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6035" data-original-width="4200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMHCPjwxV9mpePAUoxfLIoolCo4PACG590H0GZy_w1c8u8-GNhD1iCyeuJUJ-gC-aB8NP_8vg1NXILnhg92sjQYnWw1368GwYuzZUs-YgE6KVbfwXjhF34K1ToqjjqEaZDnX0oYDYqF-u05ALeS6nqvLzuT569EHn4-45Dz97Zn0ws0F44Rwxe/w279-h400/Syke-elokuva%20S%C3%A4rkynyt%20syd%C3%A4n.jpg" width="279" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taavi Vartia: Syke-elokuva: Särkynyt sydän (FI 2023) with Jarkko Niemi (Petteri Holopainen), Lotta Kaihua (Heidi), Niina Koponen (Noora).</td></tr></tbody></table>
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Syke: Brustet hjärta.<div> D: Taavi Vartia. SC: Petja Peltomaa. DP: Jyri Hakala. AD: Inka Uusitalo-Matilainen. Cost: Henna-Riikka Taskinen. Makeup: Mari Vaalasranta. M: Karl Sinkkonen. ED: Jyrki Levä.<br /><div> 90 min<br /><div> Finnish premiere 25 Dec 2023, distributed by Nelonen Media with Swedish subtitles.</div><div> Viewed at Tennispalatsi 10, Helsinki, 20 Jan 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Syke franchise is known in Swedish as Puls and in English as Syke and Pulse.</div><div><br />Filmikamari Pressit: " <i>Rakastetun mutta omalaatuisen kirurgin Petteri Holopaisen elämä on mallillaan, mutta kun Syke-sairaalaan kiidätetään hänelle tärkeä potilas, mikään ei voi palata enää ennalleen. Holopainen kadottaa kaiken sen, mikä on hänelle tärkeää. Kun Holopaisen arkeen astelee tuttu ihminen menneisyydestä, Holopaisen on päätettävä, millä on vielä merkitystä</i>. "</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>AA: Syke (Pulse) is since 2014 a Finnish television phenomenon. The 15th season started last autumn. It is a multi-character study, and the cast covers much of the who's who of Finnish actors. The series creator is Petja Peltomaa, and Taavi Vartia has been the director of the recent seasons. The setting is the <i>traumaosasto</i> [trauma department] of the central hospital of a big city like Helsinki. The concept has similarities with ER (1994-2009) and belongs to a tradition of cinematic and televised medical drama series including Dr. Kildare, Medic, City Hospital, General Hospital, Ben Casey, Emergency!, M*A*S*H, Casualty and Charité.</div><div><br /></div><div>Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) celebrated the tactile quality of the TV image in medical drama. In closed-circuit instruction in surgery, medical students reported that "they seemed not to be watching an operation, but performing it". "They felt that they were holding the scalpel". "Thus the TV image, in fostering a passion for depth involvement in every aspect of experience, creates an obsession with bodily welfare. The sudden emergence of the TV medico and the hospital ward as a program to rival the western is perfectly natural".</div><div><br /></div><div>The original appeal of the medical drama lives on in phenomena like Syke. The vital ingredients are powerful and appealing: dealing with matters of life and death in a constant state of emergency. The source of tremendous drama is forever replenished. The sense of danger and violent injury is the same as in war films and brutal thrillers, but instead of killing people, the mission is saving people. Nothing can be more engrossing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of the Syke television franchise, two cinema spinoffs have been produced. I saw the first one, Syke: Hätätila (FI 2021, D: Tony Laine), which was distributed in English as Nurses - Dreadful Hospital Outage and remember the palpable gratification and intensity of the audience experience. This second spinoff (its Finnish title in literal translation: "Pulse: The Broken Heart") is the story of the surgeon Petteri Holopainen (Jarkko Niemi) whose wife Noora (Niina Koponen) dies in his hands on the operating table; only after the operation does he realize the patient's identity. He experiences a shock so severe that it takes him a year to recover. Meanwhile he becomes something like a sleepwalker and even a living dead. At home he speaks with Niina's ghost. He refuses to stay away from the hospital during his sick leave, yet also refuses to perform as a surgeon anymore. He is on the verge of getting fired. Colleagues seem to think that he should belong to a madhouse. But Petteri's contribution becomes crucial in solving a mysterious life-and-death emergency of two teenagers during Midsummer week, and the almost overwhelming challenge helps him get back on track again.</div><div><br /></div><div>The subjects are stronger than melodrama, but because they are treated in clinical fashion, there is a strange, paradoxical atmosphere. In Syke: Särkynyt sydän the dialogue is often formal and literate in a consciously anti-realistic way like in the Finnish Särkkä-Tulio-Donner-Kaurismäki tradition. Nobody speaks like that. Often the dialogue is near parody. The subjects are taken seriously but the attitude is only one step from comedy.</div><div><br /></div><div>The total impact is a bizarre combination of deadly earnest and a spoof attitude.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet Syke: Särkynyt sydän evokes genuine issues including the obscene income gap between surgeons and nurses (reportedly something like a half of Finland's hospital staff considers changing jobs), self-destructiveness among young people and the dangers of conversion drugs. Petteri with his shallow attitudes has to some extent been a sleepwalker even before his shock experience..</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-31702958048258326782024-01-20T13:20:00.311+02:002024-01-23T10:40:18.691+02:00The Old Oak<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia09ei7esj8pq2IfP-D4LAleoGs3IOJOyxAeiu8UwGfk6YVEkzMxoXrxBkFgx-ymxAYxmWCn9yPA8uQOJ5oXAhqHsGdQU-E9pZrwDM8Se5hxB9joGa5FBDbFJsc2H_pAyQDRArj5t9l4uEXYNpdocnNQT7y5QJ4RX64wgZQ-nyvAsBs1ARHXr8/s2835/The%20Old%20Oak.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1984" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia09ei7esj8pq2IfP-D4LAleoGs3IOJOyxAeiu8UwGfk6YVEkzMxoXrxBkFgx-ymxAYxmWCn9yPA8uQOJ5oXAhqHsGdQU-E9pZrwDM8Se5hxB9joGa5FBDbFJsc2H_pAyQDRArj5t9l4uEXYNpdocnNQT7y5QJ4RX64wgZQ-nyvAsBs1ARHXr8/w280-h400/The%20Old%20Oak.jpeg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ken Loach: The Old Oak (GB 2023), starring Ebla Mari (Yara, a Syrian refugee) and Dave Turner (TJ Ballantyne, owner of the pub The Old Oak).</td></tr></tbody></table>
<br /><div>The Old Oak / The Old Oak</div><div> BE/FR/GB 2023. PC: Sixteen Films / Why Not Productions / Les Films du Fleuve / BBC Film. P: Rebecca O'Brien.</div><div> D: Ken Loach. SC: Paul Laverty. DP: Robbie Ryan. M: George Fenton. ED: Jonathan Morris.</div><div> Loc: County Durham (Murton, Horden, Easington, Durham Cathedral).</div><div> 113 min</div><div> Festival premiere: 26 May 2023 Cannes</div><div> Finnish premiere 8 Dec 2023, released by Cinemanse Oy with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Ilse Rönnberg / Charlotte Elo. </div><div> Viewed at Tennispalatsi LUXE 6, Helsinki, 20 Jan 2024.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Filmikamari Pressit: " <i>The Old Oak sai ensi-iltansa Cannesin elokuvafestivaalin kilpasarjassa 2023. Ken Loachin omien sanojen mukaan hänen viimeinen elokuvansa tiivistää useasti palkitun ohjaajan koko pitkän uran kattavat yhteiskunnalliset teemat. Loachin ja käsikirjoittaja Paul Lavertyn testamentti on elokuvassa kirjailtu kaivostyöläisten banderolliin: yhteisöllisyyden voima, solidaarisuus ja vastarinta. "</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>" Kun entiseen kaivoskaupunkiin Englannissa majoitetaan syyrialaisia pakolaisia, kuihtuvan kylän ainoan jäljellä olevan pubin, The Old Oakin tuoppien ääressä alkavat tunteet kuohua. Sodan jaloista pakenevat tulijat nähdään uhkana paikallisille, joilla on yllin kyllin omiakin ongelmia. Valokuvaajan urasta haaveileva nuori Yara (Ebla Mari) kuitenkin ystävystyy pubin isännän TJ:n (Dave Turner) kanssa ja hitaasti erilaiset ihmiset alkavat löytää tiensä saman pöydän ääreen</i>. "</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The press kit: " <i>The Old Oak is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, it is the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline. TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) the landlord hangs on to The Old Oak by his fingertips, and his hold is endangered even more when The Old Oak becomes contested territory after the arrival of Syrian refugees who are placed in the village. In an unlikely friendship TJ encounters a young Syrian, Yara (Ebla Mari) with her camera. Can they find a way for the two communities to understand each other? So unfolds a deeply moving drama about loss, fear and the difficulty of finding hope</i>. "</div><div><br /></div><div>AA: We live in a period in which old masters are producing some of their best work. Think about the achievements last year by <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/perfect-days-in-presence-of-wim-wenders.html">Wim Wenders</a> and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/killers-of-flower-moon.html">Martin Scorsese</a>, for instance. Ken Loach stunned the world almost 60 years ago with Cathy Come Home and is still at the top of his game with topical, relevant and engrossing films such as <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/11/sorry-we-missed-you.html">Sorry We Missed You</a> and now The Old Oak. It is a masterpiece.</div><div><br /></div><div>Loach is working again with his trusted team of Rebecca O'Brien (producer), Paul Laverty (screenwriter), Robbie Ryan (cinematographer), George Fenton (score) and Jonathan Morris (editing). As usual, Loach shoots on location, this time in County Durham, North England, not far from Scotland. The milieu is a former flourishing mining community now struggling for its existence. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Old Oak pub sustains what is left of the community spirit. It was once the heart of "strength, solidarity, resistance", now degrading into suspicion, isolation, impotence and racism. A busload of Syrian refugees inflames the hatred of a vicious group, while other inhabitants display generosity to war victims who have lost everything.</div><div><br /></div><div>Upon her arrival, a racist young man breaks the camera of a young Syrian refugee, Yara. The camera is her only valuable possession, and the pub owner TJ Ballantyne, who would prefer to stay out of controversy, nevertheless helps Yara to have her camera fixed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Angry young racists cultivate vicious dogs, and those dogs attack and kill TJ's little dog Marra, his only friend. We learn from TJ that "<i>marra</i>" in northern English miners' language of the 19th century means "mate", "best friend", complementing each other and fitting together well. The death of Marra is a serious blow for TJ.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is starvation among the Englishmen and the Syrians. Inspired by slogans in the historical photographs in the back room - "They shall not starve", and "When you eat together, you stick together" - Yara and TJ decide to open the back room for community meals. The meals are free for all, and everyone is welcome. The project becomes a huge success and a turning-point in the community spirit. "Solidarity, not charity".</div><div><br /></div><div>The racist fringe sabotages this by rigging the plumbing. The damage is so devastating that the back room cannot be used anymore. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Among other things, The Old Oak is a wonderful contribution to the subject "cinema and photography". TJ shows Yara a historical photograph exhibition in the back room. Yara keeps photographing the life and the people of Durham and gains recognition and affection for her family. Yara has talent in portrait photography, because she is able to establish a connection of sympathy with her subjects. When her family learns of the death of their father in the brutal prison circumstances of Syria, a public display of condolences escalates on their doorstep. It grows into an epic display of the better angels of our nature.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>A memorable sequence is dedicated to a visit to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_Cathedral">Durham Cathedral</a>, familiar in the cinema from Harry Potter movies. TJ takes Yara there as they fetch a charity delivery. The sequence conveys powerfully the spirit of the sacred in the medieval monument of worship. It is an encounter of supreme respect between two religious worlds.</div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Shukran</i>" is "thank you" in Arabic, as Yara teaches TJ in The Old Oak. It is also what a grateful viewer would wish to tell to the film-makers:</div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Shukran!</i>"</div>
Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-23874176073313632412024-01-13T18:55:00.407+02:002024-01-23T10:46:06.069+02:00Mummola / Family Time<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkXAz994bN9_LPMyuZXN8zLUcZaBbIr0BSe6pmDLQM8z9oqcuoUmPtb5fAqiDcj2J1sutr3iPADMmMc6Sp-IWEPqmVppk2YfWaooKpyOYsgGjbvrKy5um_KeChFogXMQCgTbdbm3TotN8AYrd_kiJ8sd6fzhQmXtK3dB41WpLhI2b6fSQa7UCM/s2743/Mummola%20(DESKTOP-OVDUOJE's%20conflicted%20copy%202024-01-16).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2743" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkXAz994bN9_LPMyuZXN8zLUcZaBbIr0BSe6pmDLQM8z9oqcuoUmPtb5fAqiDcj2J1sutr3iPADMmMc6Sp-IWEPqmVppk2YfWaooKpyOYsgGjbvrKy5um_KeChFogXMQCgTbdbm3TotN8AYrd_kiJ8sd6fzhQmXtK3dB41WpLhI2b6fSQa7UCM/w280-h400/Mummola%20(DESKTOP-OVDUOJE's%20conflicted%20copy%202024-01-16).jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tia Kouvo: Mummola / Family Time (FI 2023). Facing: Ria Kataja (Susanna), Leena Uotila (Ella), Tom Wentzel (Lasse), Elina Knihtilä (Helena), Jarkko Pajunen (Risto). With their backs on us, the children are watching the grown-ups: Sakari Topi (Simo), Elli Paajanen (Hilla), Toomas Talikka (Kassu). Please click on the poster to enlarge it.</td></tr></tbody></table>
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Finnish Christmas movies are an annually growing phenomenon. There are fairy-tales, usually set in Lapland and featuring reindeer, Santa Claus, the Snow Queen and Moomins. There is the definitive Finnish anti-Christmas movie: Joulubileet by Jari Halonen. A current of its own is the Christmas celebration film among family or friends including <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2017/12/joulumaa.html">Joulumaa</a>, <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2020/03/taydellinen-joulu.html">Täydellinen joulu</a>, Kulkuset kulkuset and now Mummola, the debut feature film by <a href="https://yle.fi/a/74-20065048">Tia Kouvo</a>. whose eponymous short film <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/tampere-film-festival-national_7.html">Mummola (2018)</a> I saw five years ago at Tampere Film Festival.<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The annual Christmas get-together takes place at the grandmother's place (<i>mummola</i>). The grandmother is Ella (Leena Uotila) and the grandfather is Lasse (Tom Wentzel). Their grown-up daughters are there: Susanna (Ria Kataja) and Helena (Elina Knihtilä). Susanna arrives with her husband Risto (Jarkko Pajunen) and their two little children Simo and Hilla (Sakari Topi, Elli Paajanen). Helena is accompanied by her son Kassu (Toomas Talikka).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>The situation is intimate in the extreme, but it is tempered by the visual approach, a variation of the early cinema revival trend, familiar from Roy Andersson. As a rule, there is a long take and a long shot and no camera movement. Not quite <i>plan-séquence</i>, but not far either. Certain important scenes are shot with faces left outside the camera field or even with no human visibility. Only voices, or silences, convey what is going on. It is a distanciation effect to field off melodrama, but the camera neutrality and objectivity - even indifference - turn to serve a genuine emotional charge.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The viewpoint of the children is all-important. I bambini ci guardano. The grown-ups are accustomed to the "same procedure as every year". The children are the future, the embodiment of the Christmas spirit, the celebration is essentially for them, and little Hilla (Elli Paajanen) speaks up that what is happening is wrong and spoils the party for all. The emperor's new clothes. Significantly, the film ends with Hilla staying for a long while in grandfather's tool shed, his man cave.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The movie is divided into two parts. Part I is Christmas, Part II is after. In the second part we follow Susanna's promotion to a position of higher responsibility at a big Finnish retailing cooperative. We learn more about Helena's situation with her passive adult son Kassu who is dexterous with computers but lacks initiative. In the beginning of Part I, asked whether Kassu has a girlfriend, he counters: "it might as well be a boyfriend".</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The anthology piece of the movie is Susanna's inviting Risto to the garage for a child-free moment in the family car, speaking out about the state of the union. Nothing is wrong externally, but intimacy is missing, a topic painfully hard to discuss. The balance of gravity and comedy is perfect in the dialogue, performances and direction of this sequence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Speaking about topics hard to discuss, the veritable elephant in the room is the alcoholism of the grandfather Lasse. It is so extreme that he passes out and has to be carried to his bed in the middle of the party. As he wakes up in the morning, he instantly starts to drink again, and when Ella warns that he could die, Lasse states "if only".</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the second part we see Lasse sober for the only time. He is expecting a guest, Seppo (Matti Ristinen). They have been sailors together. Lasse is not only sober, he is nice and radiant and the consummate host.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Only after the screening it dawned on me what it was about. I have heard that all viewers have not grasped it even afterwards, a situation comparable with <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/05/ihmiset-suviyossa-people-in-summer.html">Ihmiset suviyössä</a> / People in the Summer Night which is possible to see without realizing what is troubling Nokia.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are many causes for alcoholism, and repressed homosexuality is one of them. Lasse is sincere when he declares that he truly loves Ella. But he has been a terrible husband, father and grandfather, ruined the childhood of his daughters and given them an awful role model as father and husband. In reaction, the daughters have grown self-sufficient in a way that may not leave airspace for husbands.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In Finnish fiction and cinema I detect a powerful current of matriarchy. I considered using the word "undercurrent", but the current is not really hidden at all. It is just taken for granted. It is fascinating that it is never discussed. Mummola is a new major showcase of matriarchy in Finnish fiction.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Excellent work by Tia Kouvo, cast and crew. The audience was quite obviously engaged and gratified.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-32832025483662449832024-01-13T16:20:00.109+02:002024-01-16T09:45:04.379+02:00Valoa valoa valoa<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xfJzcugIN2bJs5ISRltcLWgiFFRR57331gt2JeqkoMgmzUzzxhUXAOurw0RoxZloaEpnv5PxryXGX909znw6tbQfBZvfwkxZ3AZUkMLYXTHxriDJP9uyVa-qZmG6O5Z4hMApv0CziljbMmmEqOUsKPF9s8wtM2Jz1Pj8KW6c1ZsKe-k481j9/s2835/Valoa%20valoa%20valoa.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1984" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xfJzcugIN2bJs5ISRltcLWgiFFRR57331gt2JeqkoMgmzUzzxhUXAOurw0RoxZloaEpnv5PxryXGX909znw6tbQfBZvfwkxZ3AZUkMLYXTHxriDJP9uyVa-qZmG6O5Z4hMApv0CziljbMmmEqOUsKPF9s8wtM2Jz1Pj8KW6c1ZsKe-k481j9/w280-h400/Valoa%20valoa%20valoa.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inari Niemi: Valoa valoa valoa (FI 2023) with Anni Iikkanen (Mimi) and Rebekka Baer (Mariia).</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;">I have loved <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2012/01/good-reading-on-my-coffee-table.html">Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen's novel</a> Valoa valoa valoa (2011) ever since it was published and it has a place of honour in our home library. Set in 1986, the year of Chernobyl, it is a growing-up story of two 14 year old girls. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have liked the films of Inari Niemi, including <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2012/12/robin-2012.html">Robin - the Movie</a>, <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/02/kesakaverit-summertime.html">Kesäkaverit</a>, <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2017/12/joulumaa.html">Joulumaa</a> and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/09/yksittaistapaus-one-off-incident.html">Tyttöbileet</a>. But Valoa valoa valoa, based on a screenplay by Juuli Niemi, is on a new level of achievement. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The title has multiple meanings. It is about the light of the coming summer. It is also about a nuclear catastrophe that puts mankind in danger.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is the story of a first love, an experiment that brings "light light light" to one's whole life and illuminates one's entire being.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is a love that transcends class barriers. Mariia is from a well-to-do home. Mimi is from a broken home.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is a love that starts with a fatal misunderstanding. Mariia gets a false impression that Mimi is on drugs. The misunderstanding casts a shadow on Mimi's status at school and Mariia's home. Mariia never corrects the mistake, and the unhealed guilt disturbs her through life.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The love between the girls transcends convention. It liberates. Inari Niemi conveys this in lyrical, pantheistic images full of life force and a sense of nature. The movie does not feel like a literary adaptation. It breathes its own cinematic life. And what could be more cinematic than the motif of light, also in the sense of enlightenment: growing beyond one's prejudices, having the courage of one's convictions, open to all senses and possibilities of experience.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I thank Mox Mäkelä for recommending this movie. Last year was full of big changes in my life, and I missed valuable movies. I'm glad to have caught this one. Valoa valoa valoa goes up onto my list of the best films of 2023.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-31301011541051343982024-01-13T14:05:00.092+02:002024-01-15T21:33:50.326+02:00Huijarit<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqo6gmgYMYuNJj4qPUfwpR4KDbuoc05r885mhoHtvn3sk2rD-oeYdINI-_lgRZwjDPdZG1HW_g8340ugr_DzXm0NIr1OD5I2ttjlxTiqt_V2b-BzJqZzoZ-aaVBgw43InJsPIoWijRrrLtmdlENZq_OeTt9lBjXuOMH9IYeGLNcZu52teCym-/s2560/huijarit_juliste_scaled.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1792" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqo6gmgYMYuNJj4qPUfwpR4KDbuoc05r885mhoHtvn3sk2rD-oeYdINI-_lgRZwjDPdZG1HW_g8340ugr_DzXm0NIr1OD5I2ttjlxTiqt_V2b-BzJqZzoZ-aaVBgw43InJsPIoWijRrrLtmdlENZq_OeTt9lBjXuOMH9IYeGLNcZu52teCym-/w280-h400/huijarit_juliste_scaled.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rike Jokela: Huijarit (FI 2023).</td></tr></tbody></table>
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Huijarit is a piece of light entertainment, a humorous thriller-romance about a trio of swindlers always trying to cheat in matters ranging from small (how to steal a hotel breakfast) to big (how to run a fake wellness clinic).<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An impressive and distinctive leading performance by Tuulia Eloranta as the fake doctor Siru Paasio. Tommi Korpela is convincing as the main villain, Jukka Helasuo. Miitta Sorvali is great as the real doctor Eila who sees through Siru instantly. Pilvi Hämäläinen as Siru's sister Kati, the police detective who tries to guide Siru to the straight and narrow. Elsi Sloan, impressive in Sydänpeto, is striking again as Siru's non-binary ex, now her roommate.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The film evokes the 1980s trend of films where a repressed yuppie careerist meets a wild woman who changes his life, such as Something Wild, Blind Date, After Hours, and Desperately Seeking Susan.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But Huijarit is original and different as written by Anna Ruohonen, Lassi Vierikko, Juha Jokela and Rike Jokela, based on a story by Riina Hyytiä and Seppo Vesiluoma, and directed by Rike Jokela, an experienced television director now debuting in theatrical movie-making.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After the movie I was thinking that Finland used to be a country of honesty, where the word was the bond, but this is no longer self-evident. Huijarit is a sign of the times.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-25121088047534591682024-01-13T10:30:00.335+02:002024-02-20T10:56:06.726+02:00Napoleon <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDfAcGSuRibEKUNyDlKEFaHLiB1Y4QxMXPISBZLnRb98dvjtAU6hKPYEErsZtEpYp9mpVM2e2nUbOF9ouWSz5QC8GX_Z7ETGAvI3_tlL0qOFAPpQl_5nUwHEnL6nyA6Je88S6n6MiZbKKlB0mj5zoz2hs5mqRUEZxQ2nvT6ANbSDrNHmrb16ZC/s2835/Napoleon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1984" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDfAcGSuRibEKUNyDlKEFaHLiB1Y4QxMXPISBZLnRb98dvjtAU6hKPYEErsZtEpYp9mpVM2e2nUbOF9ouWSz5QC8GX_Z7ETGAvI3_tlL0qOFAPpQl_5nUwHEnL6nyA6Je88S6n6MiZbKKlB0mj5zoz2hs5mqRUEZxQ2nvT6ANbSDrNHmrb16ZC/w280-h400/Napoleon.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ridley Scott: Napoleon (2023) starring Joaquin Phoenix.</td></tr></tbody></table>
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Ridley Scott is at his best in Napoleon.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have been his fan since <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/1979/03/march-1979-tampere.html">The Duellists</a>. Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise for me belong to the essential achievements of world cinema. I was disappointed with <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/search?q=g.i.+jane">G.I. Jane</a>, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, A Good Year, Robin Hood and <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2012/06/prometheus-3d.html">Prometheus</a>, and ceased to even check Scott's new work. But I liked House of Gucci. Gladiator for me was impressive enough but suffered in comparison with The Fall of the Roman Empire on which it is based. Napoleon, instead, stands up to comparisons so well that I get curious to catch up with Scott's late period (The Martian, Alien: Covenant, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Napoléon vu par Abel Gance is the lasting masterpiece on the subject, amazing in its cinematic inventiveness which is not mere eye-popping brio but a perfect visual counterpart to the revolutionary subject. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Gance followed Napoléon's story only until the dawn of his Italian campaign in 1796. Ridley Scott covers the entire saga until the warlord's death on the isle of Elba in 1821. His grandiose ambition requires severe pruning and focusing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Scott's solution is dual. He covers Napoleon's major military turning-points with epic grandeur. But he gives full weight also to Napoleon's love story with Joséphine Bonaparte (de Beauharnais).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Major military sequences include the Siege of Toulon, the Battle of the Pyramids, the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Borodino and the Battle of Waterloo.* All different, all impressive. King Vidor and Sergei Bondarchuk excelled in the Austerlitz and Borodino sequences in their respective War and Peace adaptations. Bondarchuk's Borodino reconstruction in <a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/04/voyna-i-mir-war-and-peace-part-iii-year.html">War and Peace Part III: The Year 1812</a> (SU 1967) has been for me the most formidable battle sequence ever filmed. But Ridley Scott copes impressively, too. Waterloo is the ultimate climax of his movie, as it should be.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Focusing on the military, Scott ignores the meaning of the French Revolution: the message of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", the downfall of the ancient regime and the corrupt feudal system, and the rise of the victorious bourgeoisie, free speech and free enterprise. Huge social transformations such as le Code Napoléon (Code civil) are not mentioned even in passing. Scott does convey the backlash when the revolutionary general is crowned into Emperor, and the call of liberty is perverted into a call of Empire. Nevertheless, after mighty tides and ebbs, the world changes irrevocably to the one in which we live now.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As Napoléon, Joaquin Phoenix at first seems stuck in monotonous arrogance, but in Ridley Scott's telling, the encounter with Joséphine transforms him. At first he acts like a moron, even sexually, although the sexual charge between the two is instant and electrifying. Joséphine's indiscretions hurt Napoleon deeply, as does her inability to conceive. During their marriage, Napoléon matures emotionally, and Scott's movie is the one in which we see the emperor most often in tears.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Vanessa Kirby is moving and engaging as Joséphine. I understand that history-loving Frenchmen find it hard to relate to Ridley Scott's imagined Joséphine. Nevertheless, she is no token woman in a man's world, but a strong-willed and independent spirit on a wild ride through history. In Ridley Scott's interpretation, Napoléon chooses a woman equal in character and will-power. Let's register in this age of increasing attention to fair display of female agency that Ridley Scott has a very good record ever since Sigourney Weaver created a new kind of heroine as Ripley in Alien.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the Battle of Waterloo, Rupert Everett as Duke of Wellington is convincing as the Field Marshal who beats Napoléon. Memorable are also Paul Rhys as Talleyrand and Ben Miles as Caulaincourt.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Musically, Carl Davis's unforgettable solution for Gance's Napoléon was to combine heroic Beethoven (such as the Emperor concerto) with key revolutionary tunes like, inevitably, La Marseillaise. There is no Beethoven here; instead, lovely piano passages from Haydn. There is no Marseillaise either, but a selection Revolutionary songs like " Ah ! ça ira " (sung by Édith Piaf for Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté...) and " La Carmagnole ". The solution resembles that of Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov for War and Peace. No pomp and circumstance.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">* The catalogue of the battles sounds like a list of subway stations. Among them, Borodino has the distinction of being a Napoleonic battlefield with a subway station of its own.</div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10191335.post-58012559584250040672023-12-31T23:55:00.407+02:002024-01-16T09:51:36.887+02:00Senses of Cinema World Poll 2023: my favourites <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMb75v9buUl8qn1XrU0HglT09uHoDZod8vYArjurer-OViRHxHDN1wLZW5DRl1IsiAS0eUJu2CkVaczjXnRy3CC5u3Vaer49G8cTb5-dXSawpSja7dDOtVWetftBWHebVS2chuQ8D9ILAUEdmFh1doE6lRhQ6k1GZL-XfJ8eBvwKziDzzGe18g/s784/Perfect%20Days,%20Donata%20Wenders,%20Komorebi%20Dreams.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="784" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMb75v9buUl8qn1XrU0HglT09uHoDZod8vYArjurer-OViRHxHDN1wLZW5DRl1IsiAS0eUJu2CkVaczjXnRy3CC5u3Vaer49G8cTb5-dXSawpSja7dDOtVWetftBWHebVS2chuQ8D9ILAUEdmFh1doE6lRhQ6k1GZL-XfJ8eBvwKziDzzGe18g/w400-h300/Perfect%20Days,%20Donata%20Wenders,%20Komorebi%20Dreams.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donata Wenders: Komorebi Dreams. Her dream sequences appear in Wim Wenders: Perfect Days (2023). Wenders was at his best this year. From: <a href="https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/en/events/-/Donata-Wenders-Komorebi-Dreams-supported-by-The-Tokyo-Toilet-Art-Project-Master-Mind/0AC9F9BC/2023-12-22">Tokyo Art Beat, 22 Dec, 2023</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table>
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Antti Alanen<div>Senses of Cinema World Poll 2023</div><div>In viewing order. Seen in the cinema unless otherwise noted.</div><div><br /></div>I NEW<div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/01/all-beauty-and-bloodshed.html">All the Beauty and the Bloodshed</a> </b>(Laura Poitras, 2022)</div><div><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-fabelmans.html"><b>The Fabelmans</b></a> (Steven Spielberg, 2022)<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/03/walad-min-al-janna-boy-from-heaven.html">Walad min al janna</a></b> / Conspiracy in Cairo / Boy from Heaven (Tarik Saleh, 2022)</div><div><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/asteroid-city.html"><b>Asteroid City</b> </a>(Wes Anderson, 2023)</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/armageddon-time.html">Armageddon Time</a> </b>(James Gray, 2022) Sodankylä<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/tori-et-lokita-tori-and-lokita.html">Tori et Lokita</a> </b>/ Tori and Lokita (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, 2022) Sodankylä<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/saint-omer.html">Saint Omer</a> </b>(Alice Diop, 2022) Sodankylä</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/kievski-protses-kiev-trial-in-presence.html">Kievski protses</a></b> / The Kiev Trial (Sergei Loznitsa, 2022) Sodankylä</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/monica-in-south-seas.html">Monica in the South Seas</a> </b>(Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila, 2023) Sodankylä</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/universumin-kaiut-kaija-saariahon.html">Universumin kaiut - Kaija Saariahon musiikki</a></b> / Echoes of the Universe - The Music of Kaija Saariaho (Riitta Rask, 2023) Sodankylä - audio only outside the sold out cinema screening</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/kuolleet-lehdet-fallen-leaves-in.html">Kuolleet lehdet</a></b> / Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki, 2023) Sodankylä<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/barbie-2023.html">Barbie</a> </b>(Greta Gerwig, 2023) Barbenheimer day 21 July 2023<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/oppenheimer.html">Oppenheimer</a> </b>(Christopher Nolan, 2023) Barbenheimer day 21 July 2023 - film of the year<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/anselm-das-rauschen-der-zeit-anselm-3d.html">Anselm - Das Rauschen der Zeit</a></b> / Anselm (Wim Wenders, 2023) Telluride<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-holdovers-in-presence-of-alexander.html">The Holdovers</a> </b>(Alexander Payne, 2023) Telluride<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-pigeon-tunnel-in-presence-of-errol.html">The Pigeon Tunnel</a> </b>(Errol Morris, 2023) Telluride<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/perfect-days-in-presence-of-wim-wenders.html">Perfect Days</a> </b>(Wim Wenders, 2023) Telluride<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/past-lives.html">Past Lives</a> </b>(Celine Song, 2023) Love & Anarchy<br /><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/11/20-days-in-mariupol-29-dniv-u-mariupoli.html">20 dniv u Mariupoli</a></b> / 20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, 2023) Ukrainian Film Days<br /><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/11/banat-olfa-les-filles-dolfa-four.html">Banat Olfa</a></b> / Les Filles d'Olfa / Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2023) Love & Anarchy Campaign<br /><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/killers-of-flower-moon.html">Killers of the Flower Moon</a> </b>(Martin Scorsese, 2023)<br /><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/drive-my-car.html">Drive My Car</a> </b>(Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Yle Areena online<br /><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/kimitachi-wa-do-ikiruka-boy-and-heron.html"><b>Kimitachi wa do ikiruka</b></a> / The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)<br /><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/12/nelja-pienta-aikuista-four-little-adults.html"><b>Neljä pientä aikuista</b></a> / Four Little Adults (Selma Vilhunen, 2023)</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2024/01/valoa-valoa-valoa.html">Valoa valoa valoa</a></b> (Inari Niemi, 2023)<br /><div><br />
II STUDENT FILMS: AALTO ELO FILM SCHOOL 2023</div><div><b>The Hotel Room </b>suite of eight films: ASAP, Doggystyle, Wrist Shot, Hookup, Lollipop, The Piston, Satisfyer, and Glance (by Reeta Annala, Hannu-Pekka Peltomaa, Veera Lamminpää, Josefina Rautiainen, Gyöngyi Fazekas, 2023) total 68 min also edited to a short resume Huone 409 - siivottu sinua varten / 409 - Please Make Up My Room, but the full cycle is definitive for me<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>III GOLDEN OLDIES<br /><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/02/sois-belle-et-tais-toi-1981-be-pretty.html">Sois belle et tais-toi !</a></b> / Be Pretty and Shut Up (Delphine Seyrig, 1981) 2023 re-release, seen at Luminor Hôtel de Ville Paris</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/03/danza-macabra-danse-macabre-castle-of.html">Danza macabra</a> </b>/ Danse macabre (Antonio Margheriti, 1963) 2022 Lyre restoration, Toute la mémoire du monde</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/03/istoriya-grazhdanskoi-voiny-history-of.html">Istoriya grazhdanskoi voiny</a> </b>/ History of the Civil War (Dziga Vertov, 1921) 2021 restoration Nikolai Izvolov, Toute la mémoire du monde</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/morning-discussion-mary-sweeney.html">Mary Sweeney Morning Discussion</a></b>, 17 June 2023 Sodankylä, hosted by Otto Kylmälä</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/twin-peaks-s2e7-lonely-souls.html">Twin Peaks S2.E7 Lonely Souls</a> </b>(David Lynch, 1990) in the presence of Mary Sweeney, Sodankylä</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/yam-daabo-choice-2022-restoration-by.html">Yam daabo</a> </b>/ The Choice (Idrissa Ouédraogo, 1986) 2022 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/ceddo-outsiders-2023-restoration-janus.html">Ceddo</a> </b>/ The Outsiders (Ousmane Sembène, 1977) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/amok-1934-2023-restoration-pathe.html">Amok</a> </b>(Fedor Ozep, 1934) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/06/al-makhduun-dupes-2023-restoration-by.html">Al-makhdu'un</a> </b>/ The Dupes (Tewfik Saleh, 1972) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/gharibeh-va-meh-stranger-and-fog-2023.html">Gharibeh va meh</a> </b>/ The Stranger and the Fog (Bahram Beyzaie, 1974) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/cherike-ye-tara-ballad-of-tara-2022.html">Cherike-ye Tara</a> </b>/ The Ballad of Tara (Bahram Beyzaie, 1979) 2022 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/macario-2023-restoration-by-film.html">Macario</a> </b>(Roberto Gavaldón, 1960) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-straight-story-2023-restoration.html">The Straight Story</a> </b>(David Lynch 1999) 2023 restoration, Bologna</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/09/return-to-reason-2023-restoration.html">Man Ray: Return to Reason</a></b>. The 2023 restoration of Le Retour à la raison (1923), Emak Bakia (1926), L'Étoile de la mer (1928) and Les Mystères du château de Dé (1929). Love & Anarchy screener</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/laurel-hardy-year-one-newly-restored.html">Laurel & Hardy Year One</a></b>: The Newly Restored 1927 Silents (Flicker Alley 2023) blu-ray</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/reves-de-clowns.html">Rêves de clowns</a> </b>(René Hervouin, Blanche Vigier de Maisonneuve, 1924) Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/pierre-loti-2023-pordenone-compilation.html">Pierre Loti</a> </b>(early cinema compilation 1897-1923 by Elif Rongen Kaynakçi, 2023) Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/film-concert-merry-go-round-2023.html">Merry-Go-Round</a> </b>(Rupert Julian, [Erich von Stroheim], 1923) 2023 restoration, Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/amazonas-maior-rio-do-mundo-wonders-of.html">Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo</a> </b>(Silvino Simões dos Santos Silva, 1918) 2023 identification, Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/pecheur-dislande-iceland-fisherman.html">Pêcheur d'Islande</a> </b>/ The Iceland Fisherman (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1924) Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/die-strasse-street-premiere-of-2023.html">Die Strasse</a> </b>/ The Street (Karl Grune, 1923) 2023 restoration, Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/early-british-films-from-filmoteca-de.html">Early British Films from the Filmoteca de Catalunya, 1897-1909</a> </b>(2023 restoration) Pordenone</div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/film-concert-hindle-wakes-1927-score.html">Hindle Wakes</a> </b>(Maurice Elvey, 1927) Pordenone </div><div><b><a href="https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2023/10/der-berg-des-schicksals-peak-of-fate.html">Der Berg des Schicksals</a> </b>/ The Peak of Fate (Arnold Fanck, 1924) 2022 restoration, Pordenone </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>IV </div><div>The film year 2023 was better than 2022. Big films got bigger, others suffered. Film industry and film culture are in an existential crisis. Although big films were successful, there are not enough of them. Most streaming services suffered also. There was a revival of home formats such as blu-ray, in reaction to the dearth of quality on streamers. Film festivals thrived. After the pandemic, people enjoy the common experience of cinema-going.</div><div><br /></div>My life changed. In May I established an office of my own and started my independent working life as a historian, critic and teacher, also continuing as a member of the board of the Finnish Film Foundation (major funder of Finnish film production, distribution and exhibition). I am now also a FIAF Supporter.<div><br /></div><div>The topic of the year was generative IT, such as ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer), based on a large language model. Machine learning and data mining are transformative, indeed, and for their champions they change everything while for critics, they are a big bubble. A wise friend of mine finds both claims correct. In 1941-1954, the term "AI" ("artificial intelligence") was launched (first called "machine intelligence" by Alan Turing), but I avoid it. For me, intelligence, or at least intellect, is a defining feature of the human being, and probably to an unknown degree of animals. In the core is logos, a combination of consciousness, language and intention. In 1950, Alan Turing launched the concept "the imitation game". The Turing test is about a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human. My conviction is that the machine will never pass the Turing test. In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum built the first chatbot, and early enthusiasts thought that soon we will not distinguish the man from the machine. But Weizenbaum thought different, because in communication, we never fully know the other. More profoundly, we never fully know ourselves. We are secrets to each other and ourselves. Communication is always a journey to the infinities of the partners in dialogue. In the machine, there is imitation but no infinity. The imitation is based on pre-existing material. No true creativity can take place. Just an imitation game.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>The world is burning because of the climate change and the warmongers. Grave injustice is being committed to young generations. But I keep being an optimist on all counts. "Peace is a question of will. All conflicts can be settled, and there are no excuses for allowing them to become eternal. " Martti Ahtisaari (1937-2023) Nobel Lecture 2008</div><div><br /></div><div>Antti Alanen</div><div>Film historian, critic, teacher</div></div>Antti Alanenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05267725389217994597noreply@blogger.com0