Dancer and Rashomon

Dancer in the Dark was all kinds of emotionally potent for me. Rashomon, on the other hand, had me going on like Spock. Not unemotional, per se, but so matter-of-fact that to get to the heavy stuff was the easy part. Sifting nature and truth together until I hit on something that sounded plausible was very doable.

Dancer, though, requires a few different modes of thought to digest it properly. In order to be emotionally moved by it the first time you see it, you've got to forgive a few weak links in the story (Come on, was telling Gene he might go blind really going to make it happen sooner? Why keep it a secret from the authorities?) and follow the characters along until you start to care about them. In Selma's case,  you're apt to care a lot. She's just so plucky and adorable, and at the same time so naive and dim-witted that your first instinct as a compassionate human being is to put out your hand and save that idiot child from hurting herself and the ones she cares about, simply because she's stubborn and self-sacrificing. The scene where Kathy and Jeff watch Selma stumble her way to the railroad tracks (nearly getting hit twice on the way) is so hard-hitting because you look at Jeff, who's maybe a little dim himself, and Kathy, who is really just a stellar friend (Even when she "gives up" on Selma she's back to work the night shift with her a few hours later. Do friends like that even exist?? Somebody take my nightshifts with me!!) and you watch them get sucker punched with the very emotions you're experiencing as a viewer: horror, pain, disbelief. 

While the screaming and laughing (or intentional lack of it) was shocking in Rashomon, it wasn't as emotionally cutting as Dancer because we didn't feel we personally knew the characters. They were actors, players on a stage, and this was intentional for the "crime drama" part of the film that appealed to thousands. The actors in Dancer, however, feel real. You're there with them while they're whispering secrets to each other, you get glimpses of their raw moments, when they descend into that awful mental state that creeps over you and whispers, I don't know if I can do this. Of course, Selma never goes very far down that path. She never gives in to despair, except perhaps at the very end when her singing doesn't produce the color and mental other-where-ness that her previous songs did.

Why was Dancer so emotionally raw, yet filmed as a documentary and presented as a musical? The three styles of film work together fluidly in some places, awkwardly in others. Is this intentional, to illustrate that Selma's defense mechanism--dancing and song--wasn't completely effective? I'd like to think this, but I'm also leaning too towards the simple fact that art is rarely perfect, and it could be a hiccup in von Trier's design. Still, even musicals don't go so far as to hang their adorable main characters. The day is usually saved. In Dancer, it isn't. It just gets worse and worse. What does this mean in the conversation of institutions and the individual? Of course, usually the individual doesn't deal with real life by imagining vivid musical numbers and withholding life-saving evidence. (I'd also like to point out that the second lawyer was willing to be paid the exact amount Selma saved for Gene's surgery, when earlier she begged that that amount be enough for the doctor. What, doctors aren't institutionalized? I beg to differ. So are lawyers. But she still could have pleaded for pro bono. The weak links in this story are irritating.) If again we want to excuse this, von Trier could be trying to present the court system as a life-or-death situation in some cases, where prejudice is stronger than evidence.

Curious to see what people ask about in the forum this week. Still irritated with Dancer. It looks like Rashomon has my top billing for our international film list.

Bjork and "Dancer in the Dark"

This one took me a few days to digest in my head.

I remember a conversation in class we had last fall that centered around the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" I remember being annoyed. It's an open-ended, rhetorical question. The only conceivable answer that even resembles an ending to that argument is that it happens. It exists. Bad things happen, and sometimes to good people. We can only agree to acknowledge the question.

What are we even doing with a question like that? But it applies to Dancer interestingly. Selma is a good person, most people could agree. She seems to have some set of morals that make her believe that protecting others goes before protecting herself, which is a little odd, if you think about it.

In certain lights, Dancer is emotionally manipulative, almost to Hollywood-like extent. Selma's flaws only make her more endearing: she's a little awkward, she daydreams, she's too kind, she's going blind, she lies to protect other people. This is almost a problem. She's adorable. She's so cute and determined and good that once I get over being traumatized by her death I'll be disgusted.

But only for a little bit. I can see that this is one of those films that you absolutely love or absolutely hate. I for one was a goner from the minute Selma started singing Rodgers and Hammerstein (The Sound of Music is a family favorite). I mentioned in the forum that I liked the Dogme45-esque style of filming with a handheld camera. The only scenes that aren't shaky and jerky in this way are Selma's trances/musical numbers. Now, Bjork's got a trippy, gorgeous voice. But the musical numbers, while kind of amusing, were at the same time mildly uncomfortable, unsettling, wrong. We're watching Selma's coping mechanism as it appears in her head. We see what she sees (except, of course, as she goes blind, the viewer can still see. That would have been interesting, to go blind as Selma did). But the rest of the film is so steeped in realism, the musical numbers just come out of nowhere, making you kind of reel back, confused. And it takes us a fourth of the way through the film to even get to one, whereas a traditional musical would have belted out a song or two in the first ten minutes.

Selma defends herself emotionally with her musicals. Does she do the same with her blindness? Is she in the right because she's making a sacrifice for her son, even though it will cost him his mother? As to "Why musicals?", maybe the film is making a point about musicals' ability to transport you far away from reality in exchange for handing over your disbelief and just 'going with it.' The Sound of Music is a three hour movie, but it doesn't feel that way (at least, not to me) because by the time you're in the gazebo with the Captain and Maria listening to them sing about love, you're pretty invested. Music is how the von Trapp family deals. It's how Selma deals, too. But as for society as a whole, for institutions, why aren't musicals as comforting? Is it because musicals are too mushy, or because society's too cold?

True/Perspectives

I enjoyed this one. Stylistically, some of the same symbols were present in True as Lola: the phone, screaming (with or without reason), voice-over narration, the complications of love/relationships, running, the sense of being/seeing an individual surrounded by a city of people.

I love the questions at work here. Is she really breaking up with him? Is their relationship growing, staying, or dying? How did they get to here from there? Is it bad, is it good, what makes it bad or good?

Like Lola, True plays tricks with perspectives. Lola is a play on the "what if"/domino effect--if this happens, then this will happen, then this... True works with fewer dominoes but with an even more personal effect. Thomas thinks, for a few moments, that his love is leaving him, and it influences his reflections on their relationship up to that point. Would he have thought differently about their past if Francine's lines had been focused on a different theme? I wonder what the ramifications of this tiny event will be, now that Thomas has had a moment in which he's thought of his life with her, all the points that have led them to the present. Interestingly he doesn't go through all the bad points, all the reasons she could be leaving him, but instead starts from the beginning and bounces from cause to effect. Her screaming, finding the Conservatory, their budding and growing relationship, the bumps along the way. It's not an emotional breakdown, but a pained, retrospective walk through the past. What keeps people together? Love? The perception of love?

The "truth" is another point I'm having trouble really finding a sticking point to in this one. Does Thomas finally realize the truth when he "sees" Francine at the end, when her lines have forced him to see their relationship clearly?

Run Lola Run: The What If Question

Really loved this film! I was a little surprised that parts of the soundtrack were English songs. Was this film predominantly German, or was it supposed to be more international? 

Unlike Rashomon, I didn't get the feeling that the three stories were telling different versions of the truth. Instead, I thought that each story was a refusal by first Lola and then Manni to let their lives end without their questions being answered. Both of them weren't totally satisfied in the relationship--in Lola's story she was unsure of Manni's love (or at least the absolute truth of it) and in Manni's story he was doubtful that Lola loved him enough to be of lasting impact on her life. I really liked this bit--what kind of person do you have to be, what niche do you have to fill in somebody's life to matter in the big scheme of things? Over a span of a lifetime, who matters? The people you love? The people who love you?

 away

I'm having trouble pinning down "truth" in Lola. Is truth something that happens by chance, as events happen by chance? Is truth irrelevant, because the domino effect is random?

Also, what's with Lola's screaming? Not to say that all of us wouldn't mind screaming in frustration sometimes...but for Lola, when she screams, things happen in her favor.

Red symbolism? Lola's hair, the first bag, the phone... 

I also really liked the fact that Manni and Lola's criminal actions weren't judged by the movie, but left up to us to decipher. Did the third story work out in their favor because Lola won the money fairly and because Manni took the money without violence from the homeless man? The nuns and the story of the woman (who in one story had her child taken and in another won the lottery) who became religious brings the question of religious crime and punishment into play.

Truth and Sin in "Rashomon"

Rashomon: a city gate, and a crime worse than famine or war.

Before I even watch the film, here's my initial question: how is the individual going to be addressed from a country that is traditionally based on the society instead of the individual?

Very interesting. It seems that individual goodness is the focus here, as well as the lies men tell to protect themselves and the sin behind those lies. All four storytellers tell a version of the same story to protect themselves from shame, guilt, or trouble. Finally, one man tells the truth, and the priest is spurred into believing him because he's willing to adopt an abandoned child. Is it really the truth? Who is really the good person, here? Is there one? Which truth is the real truth? Although I doubt that if we knew, it would change anything. The ambiguity is what throws the matter of truth into light.

I like how the judge or official hearing the case is never shown, and therefore the only people the stories are being told to are us, the viewers, and the man at the gate who scoffs at goodness and truth and takes the baby's kimono because someone else would have if he didn't. What if Kurosawa meant for the man to act as a sort of antithesis to the audience, most of whom would believe (at least somewhat) in the goodness of humanity, and the black and white nature of truth? Really truth is much more vague, and goodness much harder to achieve when nobody is watching, and you can lie to yourself about what really happened...

Favorite Quotes:
"Maybe good is just make-believe."
"What should a poor, helpless woman like me do?"
"This time, I finally lose my faith in the human soul. It's worse than bandits, the plague, famine, fire, or war."
"A bandit calling another a bandit. Now that's selfish."

Questions:
Lots of rolling around in the grass and leaves in this film. Dramatics of the 1950s Japanese cinema?
Crying and laughing were very exaggerated and therefore chilling. Intentional?
The medium: are we supposed to have a suspension of disbelief here? Or should we doubt the man's story simply because he's dead and can't tell it? Gotta say, the actress speaking the dead man's words was great: very creepy.

The 400 Blows

The ending is my favorite part of The 400 Blows. Antoine runs away from his problems the entire film, until he escapes actual imprisonment and runs until he can't run any further, literally, to the sea, where he wanted to be in the first place. Then you watch him stare into the camera, "at" you. There's sort of a "now what?" moment--he's got his entire life ahead of him, adulthood only beginning.

This is the film it would have been nice to see as an early adolescent--thirteen or fourteen. On one level, it deals with one of the biggest dilemmas early teenagers are faced with: seeing oneself as an adult and being treated like a child, and the resulting consequences. Antoine reacts by acting out in ways that get increasingly more criminal (all the way from passing pinups in school to running away from a juvenile delinquent institution).

I like the relationship between René and Antoine, and the honest depiction of dysfunctional family life--especially how it can be hidden away in plain sight, with the kids as the ones to suffer for it.

Setting was interesting here: inside their apartment, Antoine and his parents are squished so close together than there's hardly room to breathe, let alone get along. The classroom is also crowded. The journey to the JD institute is very dark. It's only outside that Antoine and René can run effortlessly through the streets like they own them, plus that scene at the end where Antoine runs to the ocean. The camera is further away too, so that the viewer can breathe and watch them run. Is the only solution to run?

What's with the scene about the gym class? And the candle with Balzac? Some weird, author-worship? The Michelin guide?

My final preliminary thoughts are about Antoine's guilt/innocence. The tricky part of this is that he's both guilty and innocent. "Maybe it's genetic," his English teacher said, but that's irrelevant. He's a boy acting out, but no matter if his parents were the King and Queen of England, he would have acted out just the same. He causes trouble in a good-natured (if self serving) way, and then gets himself into more trouble trying to get out of trouble, until the entire situation is one that Antoine can't control. I also think he's a romantic, which didn't practically help him in this case (running away to sleep in a printing factory, escaping to see the ocean). Are we supposed to grow out of romanticism, then? Or get smarter about it?

Speaking of smart, interesting that Antoine's mother tells him that everyone needs to learn to write, but she doesn't seem to care about math or science. Afterwards, Antoine meanders vaguely in the direction of being a writer (Balzac, the typewriter). Is he seeking her approval?

Trust, Doubt, the Individual in "Balloon" and "Angry Men"

Inside a locked room, twelve men seem to be having a lot of deceptively deep conversation; man to man, as it were. Outside, exposed to the entire city of Paris, Pascal only says a few words to the balloon, (other than "You must obey me and be good," and "Balloon, come here! Balloon, stay there!") and the other dialogue is scarce.

It's almost as if anything "real" that you would want to speak of would have to be said in private, in a locked room, among equals. But then, maybe this isn't right either; children have a lot of truth to say about life around them, even if they don't have the language to express it. Are they prevented from expressing truths by authoritarian adults? Teachers, parents, persons of authority who have a mentality that youth can't have an opinion because they haven't got the experience to back it up.

Well. If the world worked that way, we'd end up with silent adults with a lot of experience, but no idea how to translate that experience into solving modern problems. Oh, wait.

Rose and Lamorisse seem to be on similar wavelengths about children. How do these thoughts relate? Maybe they're both commenting on authority, but I also think that compassion and respect are a factor, too. Perhaps Angry Men and Red Balloon are warning viewers (readers) that disincluding people different from you is dangerous, that being a callous 'adult' with a mind melded for use by the institution is dangerous. Personally, it's kind of mind-numbing to think that we all have a say in the construction of humanity. That's a lot of responsibility. As a young(er) person, a woman, insert-minority-demographic-here, would I have been trusted, in the 1950s, to carry that weight?

To move across even shakier ground, why or why not? Because men (up to that point) had ruled the world? Because white, savy, successful/business-owning men had ruled the world? Is it other people we don't trust, or is it that we don't like change? Doubt is a strong emotion in Angry Men, and an underlying question in Balloon; in both stories there is the story arc of the individual versus society, and how powerful (dangerous? wonderful? both?) that situation can be. Justice is, after all, carried out in Angry Men*, and even though Pascal's balloon has died, he's comforted by the entire balloon population of Paris rising (literally) with him. Are these events made to make a pleasant-ending story, or were they purposeful in saying something more along the lines of, "This individual made a stand. It worked out/didn't work out, but the standing up part was a great thing."?

* IMHO, I think it's still possible the boy could have killed his father. However, I agree with the jurors' logic about the old man and old woman; they weren't reliable witnesses, and this could be enough to set the boy free in a court of law. I think Rose wanted us to root for the boy as an abused underdog--well, fine, but logically, he had as much evidence against him as for him by the end of the play.

Red Balloon: Second Thoughts

A late return to The Red Balloon after a trip to NYC for a couple days to play tourist. It's funny how things follow you; check out what I found in The Strand bookstore (where, by the way, I could wander for years).

A children's book copy of "The Red Balloon"

This copy was published in 1956, at the same time the film was released. Inside is essentially a children's lit version of the film, accompanied by black and white photographs of Pascal (surprise! The boy has a name!) and his balloon.

Meanwhile, class conversation seems to be meandering over a few different things: the individual versus authority, the child versus the adult, as well as broader thoughts like childhood, conformity, and innocence, and where these ideals come from.

I'm starting to think that, instead of being a purely independent entity, Pascal's balloon is a projection of him. Partially this is me trying to rationalize. I don't want to label the balloon as purely an imaginary friend and be done with it, but i'd like to add that idea to what Alexandria and others were writing about: the balloon representing Pascal's innocence, or the essence of his childhood. Childhood has a tendency to be bright, curious, teasing, and innocently rebellious by turns, which the balloon is, and Pascal is not. Pascal goes to school, takes the bus, goes to church. The balloon merely follows, remaining outside. 

Perhaps the outside setting represents the only space where the balloon can exist: as soon as it goes inside, the schoolboys riot and the mother throws it out the window. Can childhood exist inside an institution, inside a rigid post-war society? Evidently not, if the balloon is an indication.

Somehow I think the setting really gets at the culture of Parisian city life that would be spoiled by a shot of the Eiffel Tower or L'Arc de Triomphe. I can't exactly put my finger on why. Is it because the film is concerned with everyday people and humanity, not France or any other nation as a whole? Is it because children aren't concerned with these symbols of authority, of politics? Is that why children are "dangerous"? Maybe the society of adults in The Red Balloon are trying to create order in a world where order is hard to find, where chaos is frightening, where the future is in the promise of ordered children, so orderly children is what they must have. Compressing ideals and habits and ambitions into young minds seems to be a good place to start, to build the foundation of a safe, orderly (if grey) world. Is that why the balloon is a threat? To be different, bright, curious, and playful would be a nuisance to the mission.

But the balloon's death isn't brought about by the institution, is it? Rather, it is destroyed by fellow children. You could say that the boys are a product of society, and therefore society is the one to blame, but I'm leaning more towards the destructive tendencies of humans as a species, the ability we have to crush each other's dreams without even knowing why. Are mavericks so threatening? Is the individual that powerful?

I ended up with more questions than answers, but after two days of being swallowed up by New York City crowds, I think they were the right ones.

The Red Balloon: First Impressions

One of the things that I love about old films is their sense of self-awareness. Right in the beginning, the credits give thanks to "The children of Ménilmontant and the balloons of the Parisian region." How cute is that?

In the first shot, we can see the silhouette of the little boy enter the scene between two large buildings, in front of a Parisian landscape. Immediately it becomes clear that he's a small figure in a big place.

The balloon is the biggest splotch of color so far. The boy wears grey, and the adults at the bus stop wear blue, brown, grey, and black. The bus driver doesn't let the boy onto the bus. Why? Is his big red balloon distracting? Is it a metaphor? Adults versus children? The guy at the school looks suspicious of the balloon... what's with these people? The balloon is obviously already precious to the boy. Is he the one that tied it to the lamppost? Did he find it by chance? He got up there pretty easily.

After school, more color. Some of the children have color on--a couple wear red, one has a yellow scarf, some wear green, but most of them remain in understated, drab colors.

Now we get to the magical realism parts. The balloon, driven out by the boy's grandmother? when he gets home, hangs out and waits for him, and is chided by the boy, "Balloon, you must obey me and be good!" After this line, the balloon begins to take on anthropomorphic qualities. It can fly by itself and seems to want to cause trouble.

Why is the boy getting in trouble for the balloon's antics? Do the adults not believe, as the boy does, that the balloon is a creature in itself?
What does the color red have to do with anything?
While nobody takes much notice of the boy with the balloon, when it follows the headmaster guy it becomes a spectacle, and people laugh.

Does this kid take different routes to and from school every day? That bazaar is kind of cool, though. Is the balloon checking itself out? I like the painting of the little girl with the hoop and red dress. Remark on children's different methods of play throughout history?

Oh, a romance. A little girl, a blue balloon.
That balloon is not welcome in church. Again with the huge building, tiny person with a tiny balloon.

Interesting how out of context, the scene of the other boys with the balloon would be unremarkable, even pleasant, but now that we're attached to the balloon as a character, we're concerned for it. Also interesting is the background of the thin alleyways and slum (?) neighborhoods of Paris. Definitely not a Hollywood backdrop.

THAT WAS TERRIBLE, THEY KILLED IT. And suddenly all the balloons in Paris (including a blue, white, and red trio) appear together against the sky, which hasn't been shown before, and carry the boy away. Is it me, or does the little boy look like a man suspended in the air? Is that just because they couldn't have the child actor up there for safety reasons, or is that supposed to be noticeable?

Lots of questions, looking forward to the discussion on this.