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gustavo-hernandez
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Persona (1966)
An indispensable Film.
Persona, released in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1996, raises, since the very first minutes, a concern about consciousness and willing muteness. In the film, the singer and actress Elisabeth Vogler decides to give up on talking during a representacion of Elektra, an Opera written by the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and composed by Richard Strauss. This way, the spectator is invited to juxtapose not only the musical piece with the movie, but also with the plays written by Euripides and Sophocles during the last decades of the fifth century of the ancient era.
The opera's premiere took place at the Semperoper in Desden, in 1909. The event, registered in the local media as an episode of dissent, was a renowned confrontation between the conservative and liberal intellectual elites of the pre-war period in Germany. The comments exceeded the merely musical appreciation issues and, in several times, were discussed as a moral concern. Elektra was an inconvenient and uncomfortable piece to watch for a part of the public of the first decades of the twentieth century, which may have had fresh in mind some distressing cases that would disrupt not only the european politics, but also one of its fundamental pillars: the institution of family. In the piece, the homicide of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus is device by Elektra and Orestes, both children of her with Agamemnon. The story was commonly referred as barbaric, primitive and unprincipled; but, at the same time, it was not far away from the reality of the european monarchs of the period, especially those related to the Habsburgs. Some events, such as the Mayerling case, may have given some signs of degeneration to the subjects about their own rulers and social institutions, calling also into question the foundation of their own social constructs.
At that time, It has been already three decades since the publication of The origin of the family, private property and the state, written by Friedrich Engels; an openly critical work which those institutions. In this text, Engels quotes Jakob Bachofen, a swiss philologist from the nineteenth century, who dedicated his studies to the ancient matriarchal societies and who also worked on the greek myth, but this time from the reading of the Oresteia of Aeschylus. He points that the privilege given to the father´s mourning, during the trial leaded by Apollo and Athena described in The Eumenides, is the transitional point from the matriarchal to the patriarchal society. The grief suffered by Clytemnestra, produced by the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia in hands of Agamemnon, is considered inferior to the one suffered by her daughter and son, who mourn their assassinated father. During the trial, due to the equality of votes emitted by the areopagus, Athena decides to absolve Orestes from the punishment of the matricide committed by him. "Father right has gained the day over mother right. The "gods of junior lineage", as they are described by the Erinyes themselves, are victorious over the Erinyes, and the latter allow themselves finally to be persuaded to assume a new office in the service of the new order", says Engels. Both, the interpretations of Engels and Hofmannsthal, will be a preamble of Freud's psychoanalysis theory, a direct critic to the main institutions of bourgeois western society. His ideas will be fundamental for the social movements of the second half of the twentieth century, releasing time of Persona.
The sixties were nested within a political and cultural revolution, which vitally demanded a structural change of the western world, through an overhaul of its main pillars. The french structuralism, based on the studies conducted by Claude Lévi-Strauss a decade before, pointed tacitly the margination of woman inside the patriarchal structure of western society, the repression of the Dionysian inside the bourgeois order, the consideration of language as origin of society and also its ambiguous quality, the crux of political accion, the undersides that compose identity and representation, inter alia. The disturbance caused by Strauss's Salome and Elektra could reflect the physiological constraint and decadence of western society, a determinant factor for the protest of the sixty-eight and the political relevance of Bergman's Film.
The figure of Alma, a nurse assigned to take care of Elisabeth Vogler, is intrinsically transgressive. Once back in the greek myth, the reader will come across the Erinyes, justice embodiments and guardians of the family order, who will pursue Orestes due to the committed matricide. They are personifications of the greek morality. Alma, an Erinyes, torments and harasses Elisabeth throughout her silence. What mutes sooner or later begins to take shape. Alma, empathetic and sensible to her patient´s calamities, shares a memory that inflicts on her a huge sufferment, becoming a detonating episode for the outpouring of frenzy between the two characters. Frank Gado, a Bergman´s film connoisseur, sees in this particular relationship an exploration on the architecture of schizophrenia. In this manner, Alma is the incarnation of the failed and unfinished Illusion, of a could-have-been, of an intimate hallucination. Thus, this bout could arouse the close relationship between isolation, psychosis and language.
In her poem The three oddest words, Wislawa Szymborska prompts a pertinent ambiguity: "When I pronounce the word silence, I destroy it". Elisabeth pronounces this word and seems to destroy something therewith. The provenance of her muteness, as described on the script itself, is due to the hopeless dream of being; not seeming to be, but being conscious and awake at every moment. The feeling of vertigo and the constant hunger to be unmasked, once and for all. A neighbouring position to death, but at the same time distant from invoking it. To hear the echo of Nietzsche in ineluctable. The impetuous project of the Transvaluation of values of the german philosopher, as epic as almost every utopia, finds its execution on pieces like Bergman´s Film and Hofmannsthal, Freud, Engels and Lévi-Strauss texts. They stand an invitation to query about our social constructs, to become detached from the illusions of language and to dispense ourselves.
Irrational Man (2015)
Confort narrative zone and any new proposal on Woody's Irrational Man
Woody, once again, seems to be in a comfort area, which we are all tired of. We have seen, with this time, three times the same movie. At the end, the only reflection one can make is that he is making of himself a cliché, from every point of view. I will disagree to call this sequences a Trilogy or something similar, but a creative stagnation. With Match Point we watch a dramatic and delicate movie that evokes directly Dostoievski's Crime and Punishment, being a bit dangerous since Dostoievski is an overused topic to make things look more obscure and deeper. We had a second experience on screen about the same topic with Cassandraá Dream, without any additional or richer analytical purpose. The fresh air came with a comedy that focuses on the good side of the story, not anymore on the disturbed mind. Still, everything started to be boring since then. Now, we had with Irrational Man, a very good cast on screen, however any new inflection. He is becoming in a suffocating agent.
I have to admit that Blue Jasmin and You Will Meet a Talk Dark Stranger were enjoyable since empathy attacks immediately the audience with this pathetic, bizarre and intimate protagonist. That could be an interesting narrative line to follow for Allen, so we still could believe that his sense of humor is accurate and binding, without dropping himself into this "philosophical lucubrations".
Les innocentes (2016)
Two very confronting feminine roles: the martyr and Marianne.
The frequent attention that WWII and its consequent problems has received on cinema is suffocating. Les Innocent, however, is one film that goes further, beyond the French Occupation, the megalomaniac character of the first half of 20th century political leaders, the dramatic tales of the Jews, the destruction and radicalism based on nationalisms, and so on. This time is all about a silent, intimate and confronting story developed in a polish convent. The role of woman in the war society has a special attention this time, from two different perspectives: the new free women that can decide her own destiny and find its best metaphor in the French Marianne; the second one, the centenary image of the catholic sacred women, the virgin.
These two characters, which embody very well some of the tensions that were deliberated during the world war period, find a perfect justification this time on the dialogues, silences and actions. The polish has been a traditional segregated population and, somehow, this nation has found its historical version on the figure of the European martyr. So, we have an intense, but predictable, argument between these two evocations of a women. Marianne is obviously characterized by a French woman, who is always willing to attend others, who finds its better version on a nurse. Her conflicts end up always with a condescending gesture. She is made to represent the good between an ocean of evil, but with the French usual hostility.
But the spectator loses its distance from the world context very easily, because of the intimate voice of the film. The virginal victims are in the middle of a complex scenario, in which violence is expressed on every little action. But this portray of the WWII has a common place that we, the occidental spectators, are very used to. The evil soviets, closer to madness than ever before, carriers of a voluptuous and dark behaviour. At this point, the idea is well exposed: Marianne rescues and supports the oppressed nations, the martyrs, by the horrible and destructive hands of Stalin. One more time, we see the same stereotype on the screen.
Nevertheless, it is important to say that beyond this argumentative political line, which is subtly exposed, there are very rich elements that make of this one a remarkable film. Not because of the predictable approach it has, but because of the portray of a very moving case which is worthy to be seen. The photography stablishes a constant dialogue with the interior dramas of the nuns. The sound has a very powerful role, which is complemented with the excellent acting skills of the women. It is poetical when it demands to be.
Julieta (2016)
A new Almodovar
First of all, it is accurate to point that Julieta is a violent story. But it is not the usual and predictable pathological violence that we are used to, nor a voluptuous show that pretends to confront us with our hypocrisy. It is a portray of silence, about everyone's fear of adulthood, in a relative hysterical way. And that is exactly what one could identify at first in this story: a variation of the traditional humid and effervescent Spanish or Latin-American melodrama. It seems to be an opportunity for an adult consideration, dry and out of proportion.
I belong to that audience which was educated, by the hand of the director, in the intensity of the stories made for women during the 90s and the last decade. We all were ladies in the corner of the cinema, accomplices of the tragedies that happened between high heels, pearls and sniffs of cocaine. Always intense, when everyone thought it was endless. But the impossible occurred and we got tired of Almodovar. With his last film I'm so excited the yawns appeared. We saw a tired and paranoiac Pedro, making those desperate attempts for recovering his own vitality. I didn't want to be part of the show, the spectacle of watching him, turned into a sad jester. I decided not to watch. The rumors and comments of my friends about the movie confirmed my choice to preserve his energy and delirium as a temple one could visit after lots of time or, maybe, never more.
I decided to keep a distance from him. When I pass through the pirate stands in the center of Bogotá, I recognize immediately the covers of his old movies, discolored by the sunlight and time. I never thought on recognize them, but, on the contrary, on reject them and turn my look, as soon as a I can, from them. It happened exactly the same with the piles of books of García Márquez, Cortazar and other rotten icons that were exhibited over the spread-out beanbags all over the seventh and sixteenth streets of my city. His films were a buried topic. After some days of no chatting, one of my best friends called me in order to invite me to a film. I was completely unprepared, even thoughtful about how much was about to be discussed about our recent lives. I got late, as always. Fortunately, she offered to buy a sandwich for me, because the rush did not give me enough time to take a proper lunch. We laughed about the stupid trailers and, suddenly, I realized that we were about to watch the new Almodovar film.
Emma Suárez is the face of a content violence, of a particular silence. Her wasted gestures, from time to time, are confronted to a famous Lucian Freud's portray that predicts something, like every wink from Almodovar does. Immediately, I remembered a review published in The Guardian about the exhibition Lucian Freud Portraits in the National Gallery, London, in which the journalist was aware of the disappearance of the limits of the forms in his late paintings. Then I understood that there was something out of control on what was pointed on Julieta, but that there was something of "late work" in Pedro's film as well. During the whole movie, I breathed a mature air which came from a story that took me to the limits of pain, feminity, silence and language. Silence was the original name of the movie, until it was known that Martin Scorsese's new film was planned to have exactly the same name. However, Julieta is not an invention, but a reference to three Alice Munro's short stories, which were gathered in one trilogy.
Nevertheless, beyond how appropriate and box-office earner for a film based on a Nobel Prize story could be, there is a meeting point that the spectator could feel honest in-between these two languages. Nobody, even during the interviews, refers to the movie as an adaptation. It is an essay, a night meditation, about the stories of Munro. However, it is not in this point where the new vitality of the director lies, but in the exercise of interpreting. ¿Who would have thought on Pedro Almodovar talking about dry dramas, without any tears and glow, ten years before? This work is achieved by the acting of Adriana Ugarte but, specially, of Emma Suárez.