Dionysos

Today is yesterday's utopia - it has always been and still is. It's just sometimes difficult to determine whether today's date corresponds completely to the actuality of the calendar, which, like everything in human life, is nothing more than a social construct. What if humanity, for the first time in history, didn't change the calendar based on something that happened, but based on the decision that nothing else will happen... All proponents of conservative values and their liberal supporters in the form of descendants of the Party of Moderate Progress within the bounds of the law must be horrified by the realization that in the year 1973 utopian ideas such as climate justice, freedom of choice of sexual partner, sustainable development, or radical reduction of working hours and transformation of the form of work have become part of the most mainstream ideologically of late capitalism when companies compete in carbon neutrality and every corporation is the greatest ecologist, when political correctness demands that all genders be respected when we have Green Deals and capitalists themselves introduce home offices. Please, teach us all, voters of right-wing and reasonable moderate centers of the world, how foolish, utopian, and destructive it is to want an unconditional basic income, 4 working days a week, marriage for all, higher property taxes, communism... Similarly, the form of "mockumentary" recording of reality that never happened is now a classical repertoire of world cinema, which was bestowed upon the world by the French heritage of cinéma-verité with a touch of Chris Marker's political film essay (but less verbose and serious) and at times reminiscent of Peter Watkins' style.

A film about the decline of chivalry, symbolized by the downfall of some of its greatest legends: Arthur, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. In the opening passage, the true nature of the heroic deeds of these medieval heroes is revealed to us without hesitation – their battles are only futile bloodshed, and their noble goals (the Holy Grail) are merely false (because they do not exist) alibis for these atrocities. The film is about the demise of the chivalrous sense of nobility and duty, as the life of a true knight should be a generous service to his lord and duties. Lancelot fulfills his duty towards his lord at every moment, but the problem lies in the fact that he has multiple lords – his king, his virtuous lady, and his god. Lancelot, as a true knight, tries to fulfill his duty towards his lord at every moment, but he leaves it up to his decision, that is, his feelings, to determine which lord it will actually be. Instead of noble service to duty, there arises a tragic inner conflict between his passions and the sense of honor and commitment. Everything leads to the self-destruction of the knightly order, as best demonstrated by the death of Lancelot's best friend, Gawain. Symbolically, the final battle scene is a place of triumph for the infantry and archers...

The shortcomings of previous surrealist films have been overcome by Bokanowski: while before, in fragments of subconscious symbols, no meaning could be found (which is always foreign until the dream that Bokanowski films becomes your own - otherwise, you have to make your own film) and at best, there was only a mere external impression of the beauty of imaginary images. Here, thanks to the extended runtime, the original mixture of fragmented symbols is stretched, and as a result, each fragment is given enough space to develop its own point. The whole may still not have a single point, but now at least the individual paragraphs have their own points. Furthermore, Bokanowski already detaches himself from figurative representation in some places and interweaves his work with refreshing abstractions of light and shadow, which complement other more visual rather than film techniques: many sequences deliberately transform into a painterly product, linocut, or even a work at the intersection of book illustration and puppet film. However, he does not resign from cinematography - not only are the graphics set in motion, but also dreams, which, after all, are not static...

In the opening dream-like scene, festively dressed children run with red and black flags. In the following sequence, we observe a traditional folk holiday, some kind of local carnival. The relationship between these two scenes forms the essence of the main aspect of the film: the eternal folk/human desire for joy, pleasure, collective merriment, and entertainment was transformed into a specific historical form in 1936 through the republican revolution - the carnival of red flags, collectivism, land confiscation, and the abolition of the yoke of lords and the church. This folk desire for pleasure and freedom forms the essence of the collective unconscious of all truly human characters in the film and has its two main protagonists Vandale and Goya. Vandale as a witch (an ancient anthropological method in which mankind connected with that unconscious desire through forms of mysticism, etc.) and Goya as a surreal anarchist are symbols of different approaches to the same collective desire. Symbols of possible unity of the people and all progressive beings in the revolutionary act of the Republic. Against them, however, stands the exact opposite of humanity, inhumanity - the fascists are just mindless forces of torture, armies, and clergy (this motive was perfected by Picasso, not in the painting "Guernica," but in "Massacre in Korea" in 1951). This conflict between the human and the inhuman is at the core of the surrealist sequences in which Arrabal unmasks and ridicules the fetishes of alienated humanity, from the uniforms of macho idiots to the sacraments of the Catholic Church.

It is not completely a bad idea that the film was made as an adaptation of a play. The golden era of theater and tragedy, baroque and classicism, as if they spoke to us from the screen differently than through a baroque painting on the wall. Similarly, we can also find the protagonist of these bygone times here - a nobleman, or rather a noblewoman (Petra is from the von Kant family). Her behavior is thus a reproduction of the actions of these people: wealth and idleness (although verbally it is the opposite), arbitrary and also patrimonial, hence a personal relationship with the servants, detachment from her own children (boarding school), but also depth and tragic grandeur towards those she loves. Her demand for an equal amount of affection cannot be fulfilled by the worker Karin, who cannot give everything in their relationship because equality is necessary in a two-way relationship. In that, the main character is sincerely pitiful - as an aristocrat, she is able to give everything (and we should believe that in the film), but only if she wants to. The mirror of this relationship is the maid, Marlene, who carries an ambiguous message in the end.

My review contains a spoiler! The beginning of the 1960s and the golden years of the new wave still found Claude Chabrol in a phase where his films can be classified as "drama, in which someone (violently) dies," unlike later "thrilling murder thriller." Films about people vs. films about killers. The killer in this film appears more as a mysterious and dangerous agent of fate rather than the actual source of genre entertainment (thriller, crime) in the film. Moreover, he carries a metaphorical significance that adds value to the entire previous story. Although the story itself could stand on its own (if, like me, you love the overcrowded illuminated boulevards of Paris in the style of the nouvelle vague, and of course, also Parisians...), the death of the heroine tragically and cynically shows that there is no third alternative between superficial fleeting love (or longer-lasting love, but with a considerable amount of conformity) and true fateful love. And we have seen how the latter unfolds.

To perceive the film as a "direct" reaction to Cassavetes' Husbands certainly bears fruit but categorizing Wives as "direct cinema" seems a bit distorting to me - however, the film uses a simple 16mm camera, the absence of non-diegetic music, and similar "artistic" techniques and figures, primarily capturing the speech and dialogues of the characters. But why should it be a direct documentary approach and not a method of a certain film realism and a question of (mere) aesthetic choice by the director, is not entirely clear to me: the fact is that the film is fictional, just like any other fictional film. This is not meant as an insult to the film because it works very well in achieving its goal regardless of scholastic formal classification. The disorientation of established gender roles and life goals is convincingly captured in the main protagonists' personal experiences and issues, as well as in the social environment in which they are forced to live. /// The dialogues were created with the contribution (and improvisation) of the actresses in the main roles.

The oldest filmmaker of the New Wave guard was also the most politically conservative and the most conservative when it came to films. While others focused more on film, Rohmer was more theatrical - all of his films that I have seen so far were built on the foundations of intelligent and internally elaborate dialogues, which, along with very subtle changes in character behavior, push the plot forward. The film form always takes a back seat. Even in this film, if there were just a few more ellipses during transitions from one apartment (set) to another, one could instead speak of a theatrical production than a film in all its aspects. Moreover, this conservatism has another aspect - Rohmer's stories are timeless in certain ways. Their plots could take place at any time, and they explore human relationships more from within than from the outside (but, of course, it cannot be said that the exterior is not reflected at all because the demeanor of the female protagonist of this film would still have been shocking a quarter of a century ago). In any case, nothing other than the search for timelessness in human behavior can result from the transposition of old folk proverbs to the 20th century... In summary, those who seek a detailed portrayal of nuances of the human psyche will get a multi-layered and clever "film," while those who seek a film without quotation marks will tend to get a multi-layered and clever film production.

Perhaps in the distant or near future, it will be possible to rationalize love and human reproduction and fit them into an equation á la Heisenberg or Bohr, but until then, we are all condemned to be guided by our unconsciousness, especially sexual instinct - this time á la Sigmund Freud. Indeed, libido is truly the main driving force behind the motives of both main characters, although it manifests itself differently in each, and it is skillfully accompanied by another well-known psychiatric maxim in the style of "Tell me about your mother." From the subsequent ferment, two personalities emerged, from whose comparison it may seem that the rational and objective approach to the sexuality of the scientist-brother prevails rather than the sexual passion bordering on the obsession of the teacher-brother. Can this statement be made even after watching the final minutes of the film?

When the Italians made Once Upon a Time in the West at the same time, they managed to create possibly the best western, thus winning in the exclusively American discipline. In this case too (and once again Morricone was involved), the Italians came close to scoring on the opponent's field, but in the end, it was more like a draw. The story of a lone wolf fighting against the mafia machinery is dangerously reminiscent of the machinery of big fish in the world economy (the mafia family's meetings and decision-making are equivalent to the general meetings of a company, and even the business area is more or less the same, only the means are more straightforward) or heavyweights in world politics. The insignificant McCain will be crushed just like a Central European country in the same year, as we read in the newspaper headlines. Yet this is not a film parable, but a gangster film with suspenseful scenes (also thanks to the brilliant camera work of Erico Menczer) and above all charismatic actors. Moreover, Cassavetes was able to observe the performance of his colleague Falk during filming, whom he then cast in his best films.