rather have the blues

The intensity of the protagonist, Padrac, slips into horror. Even more serious, the musician becomes driven to war, almost losing his touch for depth. (Ironically, the Irish Civil War of 1923 was about to end. An end that had no involvement in this little backwood.) However, the beauty all around must not be lost. In fact, it is our focus which drives this film. (We have another long moment of nonsense, for the money. [ripping off knuckles]; along with a brilliant tonality.)     Early on, if you see the real matter: shadow, over the countryside. Many directions. A rainbow! Seagulls. A rich green turf…Domain! Then there are sheep! Many sheep. Steeples… Sea and mountain… Into prodigious areias, and their actions. Their hearts, aglow.    Padrac encounters the kid, Barry, during Padrac’s lost for his friend. Colm’s attack had left the protagonist in shock. However, at another moment  there was an attack by way of Barry, upon baby birds, with a nasty club. (His thought was, “He’d be after you…I can’t stand him… Some fancy colleen… “What means a man?”/ “That means a man?”/ “And then it’s not possible… The kid had been seen as a fool.”

   Padrac’s sister encounters Barry. He maintains that people go in a beautiful way… (Does that seem to be him?) How people go… It’s beautiful… (There is a moment of seeing the sea…)… Going to say… What I say… I was going to say something in common…/  “What do you mean? We don’t have anything in common.”/ Barry: “Don’t you think… Saying…that the shore is a treat… (So empty, but so needy.) A… was thinking of… in the future. Cut to the sister. She shakes her head. Cut to Barry: “Yeah… Yeah… Like the shore… sort of… (His body movement reaches for a true moment… There goes that dream… His body-language plays with his fingers…twisting…” I was going to build a place over there…”

(She smiles, “A good idea”.) He twists. She moves away. He looks around… takes off his hat. (Barry’s confusion brings to us the matter of needing others. For many, one can understand a horde. But a creature like the kid, who quickly hates the musician, and by way misses his real friend, there are great dangers. Many such careless blunders never reach wisdom. And yet it is there. Those who have the idea must do more. One’s needs might be from the past. One might be close. And currents to the rescue!)

Later, he looks around. Takes off his hat… Found dead in a ratty reservoir.One has to ease-up the horror, in order to reach the authority. Padrac, at home, with his donkey.The donkey is fine in the house, when the sister isn’t. Jenny, the donkey, makes a fine friend to snuggle. During a stupid race, between the two haters of power, the stage was set for a race between Jenny and Calm’s horse, which resulted in the death of Jenny. Padrac shook it off in a day. And yet he still has much to offer!The blue sea. Two birds by the sea. Laundry on the line. The third person, an old lady with a pipe. By the window. (Open your eyes. Open your heart. Magic is close.) Padrac lights the light. How the lights reflect on the window, as if a magical hope. (Light becomes a magical dance!) Fog… to be loved. The light becomes normal…   Once again the fire of the rock face. He feels hopelessness.

It needs to be repeated. Despite great filming, these actions had moved toward philosophy. (Coming to the gut.) As such, Denis had dared to visit the turf of novelist Marcel  Proust. From that vantage point, she would visit the old errors, so molten. Thereby, in the film, Both Sides of the Blade, we glimpse remarkably in intensity, hatred  and lostness. Thereby, we reach out to our film today, Stars at Noon. The end of planet Earth.

Trish, the protagonist, is not what we need; however, she stands as a flowing horror. Could her fear stage a comeback? Otherwise, why would an American woman move to a place like Nicaragua, and its military nonsense. Her mission of humanitarian good is clearly bogus. Her long involvement in foolish danger is more to the point. (Recall, many years ago, Denis produced a TV show called, U. S. GO HOME.)

Irony helps. “No meat today. Sorry, miss.”

Hands appear. All it takes is a little concentration. Perhaps more than a little.

She is trying to get out money from a money machine.

The plague. Truly everywhere.

More fucking. “If you get more skinny, I don’t want you no more.”

He: “You’re not a journalist.”/ Trish: “Yes, I am.” (Wanting to be valid, but way over her head. And yet the sensibility beckons. She being, at a loss. Balance needed. Balance refused.)

There is no serious traction in this work.

Visual marvels. Wasted.

   An Englishman, Daniel, is looking for something in the jungle. Trish stages a long and rocky interplay with him. But Daniel is a different equation.(He has the lack of a mouse.)  One could say, he’s a perfect gentleman. But  a perfect gentleman is not good enough.

Trish: “You have the good manners that eventually you get killed for. I can tell you my motives. I wanted to know the exact dimensions of hell.” (A stupid priority. Also stupid: “We’re all for sale.”)

Her silhouette. The two twists of them, covering a universe. “How can one be more than a disaster?” (Many fingers in the dark.) “You’re just a mist… only mist…” (Much more than that!)

Daniel: “I never really miss anybody… I feel I’m in danger of throwing my life away…”

Trish: “See how fast the tropics sap you?” (Now excuses, as you hope.)

Covid-19. It will be something else.

   Trish: “And if you could just get me to Costa Rica, I promise you I’ll get my act together.” (Things aren’t as simple here as you hope… She becomes morose… Quickly, however, she puts out to Daniel a bogus threat, to get something going. The land of fakes. The land of shallows, oversimplified, flimsy, insubstantial, empty. “I can’t see a thing…” Daniel chuckles, as often done.

Trish marches like a soldier, but she doesn’t know what courage is.

Daniel thinks that there are people here with principles. Yes and no.

Trish: “I think maybe I’ve made a big mistake.”

No milk today.

Trish kisses an old man she knows. The old man is rich and powerful. She asks for money for Costa Rica. The answer was, “no.”

On the road, Daniel, driving to Costa Rica, with Trish. At the border: “We can just  wait here for a moment.” Pan to the gringos of chaos.

Now the work becomes a dream of Trish’s best shot. Can surrealism do the trick? Find the best direction. Find a way to the cosmos itself. It’s available.

Our protagonist starts with a dark night and two cars parked closely. Each driver has been butchered. Planet Earth is not one of the better planets.

Finding something better. An enigma.

   Trish in a jungle where Daniel has had a small accident. They come to a deserted house, by which to patch up Daniel. Neither of them notices that they are in a structure of brilliant and loving marble, wood and glass. A deep design. A deep artistry, on the walls. A deep heart. The presence of authority.  Not for them.

Not for the millennials at the forefront here, by which to cover the steep bill. This last film of Denis’, in a blaze of dance. Sensibility, both tawdry and deft.  And always a prisoner. (And yet simple love has its strengths; while it burns out, and leaves ashes.)

The black who haunts the treasure. How much does he know?

Trish demands,  “Cover me up,” Trish demands. Cover me up. Cover me up. Cover me up. Cover me up.”

It begins with blood red flashes in the dark sky. Radiance. As if another being has made a discovery. Planet Earth, but instead of a foreign visitor, there is a donkey. A thinking donkey, in its own way. Thinking by the gut. Within that shimmer, one could see, despite the confusion, two figures: a woman, Kasandra, kissing the neck of a donkey, EO. Both of them work in a circus–she is a dancer; he is out of place.  (Don’t rush to table this matter, “Surrealist.” Even though we see the donkey having a carrot.)

From the circus of the elements, we land in middling Poland, where love is not a joke. The first of the shocks. She had given him a little candy. He had bumped her in fun… But  the circus had gone bankrupt. What had not failed, was millions of shiny metal objects, lying in their poison and uselessness.

Their comments, several months of irregular work. He had a stint in a large barn, where many impressive horses would be shown. In transit, he saw a herd of wild horses. (How did he feel about it?) He was bought by a farmer with many horses, who simply loved these creatures, and would find pleasure for his children. Perhaps he would have remained with the children for the rest of his life. But one late night Kasandra found him, in the easy-going farm. She was not the Kasandra of old. She had been driven by a motorcyclist, who didn’t bother to look at EO. She was drinking beer out of the bottle. Her remarks stink; but love had a part. The sky was pristine. EO eats some bugs on the feces. Kasandra  says, “I have a surprise for you! “Happy Birthday! May your dreams come true! Be happy!” EO is happy. They snuggle. The boyfriend tells her, “Come with me, or stay with the donkey.” /” I have half to go…” That triggers EO to find her. A hopeless enterprise. A dangerous one. EO cries, with that deep heartiness. EO in the hills, looking for the heights. He cries as he walks. A blue tone. The windy dances of forests. (Close-up of EO’s eye and vision.) Bats in the sky. His exhaustion. Three windmills. Up and down. EO cries to be seen. When seen in a town: “Where the hell did you come from?”

   EO comes upon a football game. The noises of spectators: “Blue and White, they make our day!” (Anticlimax?) “Good placement!… Zenek, you can do it! You’re  doing it! A great shot!” Lightning smart! Very balanced.  (Calling for a penalty.) EO, on a hill, watching. Free Shot. A Score! Much happiness! Much fighting! Much display of Advantage! “It’s all because of the donkey!”

The celebration moves to a bar. (EO becomes part of the parade.) “Blue and White, they make our day! We’re the winners! Losing is for weenies!” EO was dragged into this stupidity, as a cute logo. Screaming drunks. And that was only the beginning. He’s able to get out of the place because everyone’s pie-eyed. But he doesn’t know that a tempest is coming. During the riot he was viciously beaten. (In fact killed. And we have to resort, now, to our philosophist/artist. Along this way  we fill-in what is needed of EO:  absolutely dead; but there are actions later (not involving religion and science.. [Keep watching.]) EO pulled along. The attackers begin. A girl holds him, screaming, A car races up. Then, two trucks.. .. Someone notices… “The fucking donkey, in  high beams…Get the fucker!” EO cries. Someone says, “Die!” EO cries, off-screen. But the expression is shattering.

   At this point of the saga, a double attack upon EO, in order to sustain all the animals who have been given barbarism. And yet, in the second outrage, there is a keenness for truth which presents a mighty surprise.

He’s taken to a barn. “Three hooves up in heaven.” Sorry? (for the poor lack of  civility). One says, “Why should it suffer? (The staff goes by without a blink.) Cut to EO, lying there with stitches all around. Clean and “effective.” A worker hears EO crying. He looks around as if he is in a zoo. EO looks up. He calls quietly… Remembering the cleaning of the farm. A part  of her butcher opens from her eye. His fur, still beautiful, so lovely to touch and caress. Pan over his turf. His memory, being embraced by Kasandra. Her hands on his mane. Much caressing in the memory. The reach to see a loving heart. EO’s beautiful eye. The full reach of the skies. EO’s memory of the red places when being mysterious. “I still think, when there were four legs. Two legs up to the knee, and with another…” EO recalls all his great voyagers.  And the dancing moves to make four! He can do it now, by memory.

The Robert Brisson film, of 1966, presents a donkey under stress, but that Heaven makes it all right. Our EO finds bliss in a completely different way.

   Cut to another stable in the dark. EO in a place that doesn’t care. A cart; and a rider with no heart. EO stands there; he looks at those who will present a vision. As the horror takes its way… (The way of planet Earth. Fortunately, there are planets which are not a disgrace.) Outside of the farm. EO in flight. Being attacked. Carrying EO. “So what,” the  one says. “For a fucking horse!” EO cries. A woman reaches into EO’s cage. EO! One has to imagine… Blood red. Steering the poisonous  car, while intent on advantage. The wild music of the hopeless truck. EO’s wildness. EO’s eye, having seen much. Ludwig van Beethoven. Mountains to the heights. Overcoming distance.

Monster: “Damn,I”ve got a cramp in my hands.” Useless movement. Useless garbage. Useless coward. “Damn, why do I always have to screw up everything.”… A hurricane of blue… The author of nothing ends up in a mansion. Its first sight is a lilly-white priest. He shows us two candles. Back, then, the lilly-white-know-it-all. “Blessed are you. Lord of the Universe, the provider of this bread and fruit of the Earth and human labor.” Another woman appears. They whisper together. “… when he gets into trouble,you keep calling him my step-son. What has he done this time?” (And the cries of EO.) Pan to the priest. An appearance of EO in the foliage outside. Hands. Then eating grass. EO cries out, over and over; a long cry. EO enjoying the rich grass of beauty. (1966: “Besides, he’s a saint.” Recall Robert Brisson’s Balthazar.) The killer is gobbling a huge lunch. Back to the church. Deluxe. Across the table, the owner; her powers. But she only stages anger as a hope. After leaving the table, she takes a precious plate and preciously lets it crash on the marble floor. She can see that the killer has killed. “What did you do…? ” was her gutless move. She allows the excuse: “gambling…” But a pretty boy would never understand. She pronounces that she’s sold the place. She will be going back to France. “You won’t get much. I can’t help you  with your debts. You can take some of the family wealth. This was your home, too. Before you gambled it away.” (Gambling was not his worst vice.) She smashes a table. “Your grandmother got it, during the London honeymoon. Isn’t it quite exquisite? Isn’t that so?” The cutlery… The sister throws a knife. The butcher says, “Stop!” (He rushes to her.) “Please stop! Enough! I’ve never lied! Not to you, not to your father.” He looks down. He touches her hair. He kisses her.

   Quick cut. A garden, impressive. Foliage. A sunny day. EO reaches Kasandra. There would be reflections in the skies. The various stables at night, when the horses and donkey become true, finding their mysterious truth. His first love; not to be long, but deep. Coming to a ladder! How he managed. Over the wonderful bridge. Rushing water. EO embraces it all. To be alive! Cut to dusty cows. It was seen by EO. He could imagine it all. A lamb alone. He saw it. The herd. EO sees, and sees very far.

 Poetry, Language, Thought, being the title of a book by Heidegger. While Heidegger slogs with his academic blindness, there came recently, this film, which opened many poems, languages, thoughts. And once again we turn to Proust, for a step of verve. A verve to link with EO. In the Chapter, “The Captive,” we find topspins. EO never lost a moment to sustain his topspins. Here we go to Proust!

“Physically, too, she had altered… and not kept  their form… For, on the contrary, every morning the ripples of her hair continued to give me the same surprise, as though it were some novelty that I had seen before. And yet, above the smiling eyes of a girl, what could not be more beautiful than the clustering coronet of black violets? The smile offers greater friendship; but the little gleaming tips of blossoming, more akin to flesh, of which they seem to be a transposition into tiny waves, are more provocative of desire.”

   When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from which we spring come and bestow upon us a handful of their treasures and calamities, asking to be allowed to cooperate in the new sentiments which we are feeling and which, obliteration their former image, we recast then in an original creation. Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and earlier still, the past of my parents and relatives, blended by my impure love for Albertine, the charm of an affection at once filial and material. We have to give hospitality, at a certain stage in our life, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered around us.

It is precisely because this comfort has been necessary to bring grief to birth–and will return moreover at intervals to calm–that men can be sincere with each other, and even with themselves, when they pride themselves upon a woman’s kindness to them, taking,  although, taking things all in all, at the heart of their intimacy, there continually lurks in a secret fashion, unavowed to the rest of the world, or revealed unintentionally by questions, inquiries, a painful uncertainty. But as this could not have come to birth without the preliminary comfort, as even afterwards the intermittent comfort is necessary to make suffering endurable and to prevent ruptures, their concealment of the secret hell that life can be when shared with the woman in question carried to the pitch of an ostentatious display an intimacy which, they pretend, is precious, expresses a genuine point of view, a universal process of cause  and effect, one of the modes in which the production of grief is rendered possible.

   The entry of the young dairymaid at once robbed me of my contemplative calm; I could think only of how to give possibility to the fable of the letter of that she was to deliver and I began to write quickly without venturing to cast more than furtive glance at her, so that I might not seem to have brought her into my room to be scrutinized. She was invested in me with that charm of the unknown which I should not discover in a pretty girl whom I had found in one of those houses where they come to meet one. She was neither naked nor in disguise, but a genuine dairymaid, one of those whom we imagine to be so pretty, when we have not time to approach them; she possess something of what constitutes the eternal desire, the eternal regret of life, the twofold current of which constitutes the eternal desire, the eternal regret of life, the twofold. We  guess, we divine from her stature, her proportions. They are ready and waiting.

So, there is in Dostoevsky , not only people but their homes. Crime and Punishment. But did he ever murder? Those novels of Dostoevsky are not natural.

We start with the city of Marseille. Many years ago, we would visit Marseille as vintage poster dealers, embracing the city’s rich lithographic treasures. Not only that, we became friends with one of the brokers. His home was one of the small islands nearby. We spent several happy days there. (During the War, the Nazis used it, in various ways. Long before that, there was a nefarious prison.) Our story today, Nenette and Boni (1997), focuses upon poisonous instincts. One could place the planet in this way: a very large group; and a very small group which finds something very different.

Along that way, we find a young man, Boni, of Marseille, sketching out a big problem, which could lead him to the few. In much of the saga, the only positives are that he doesn’t kill anyone. His wrath involves lucidity.

However, a crucial matter has to be in place. Planet Earth is rapidly dying. It is a sign of a form of insanity, that this matter is not focused. In a hundred years there will be no birds. Birds with more depth than humans. Birds having engaged and held their fortune, while humans overrate. Does that mean that transaction is over? Not at all. One’s reach of understanding, clearly overtakes the dimness of this rabid disaster called Earth. Other places would be of higher quality.

Our protagonist ignores such burdens, in order to attempt feeling that he’s on the right track. Boni’s idea of progress, and he’s got something there, is to ignore the past. He moves around, of course, but he doesn’t trust anyone. He moves around, however, largely because his father had given him a pizza business; and with that, also, took over his dead mother’s house. On the basis of those windfalls, Boni takes his time to grow up. (He does very little to maintain his “business,” and plays around with “collectible” cards.) It gets worse; it gets better. “I do solemnly swear to fuck her brains out… to love everything minute before draping her. I’ve milked this stupid joke for all its worth. I swear on my mother’s grave that no one or nothing will stop me. If even I don’t keep this oath, may I be branded a coward like my asshole father who left us…and may burn in hell eternally…”

Then he’s finicky about two stray cats in his yard. However, another matter, far from cavelier, materializes, namely, his long lost cousin, Nenette. This is the point we must disclose that very recently Nenette had been close to committing suicide in the sea. What are you waiting for, Nenette? That’s a good question? Something makes her get out of that danger. “Get out, on the double!” (But isn’t it the triple?) Denis being a master of the third, the dialectic.

Boni, the fat cat, does not rise to the matter of Nenette’s danger. She’s pretty much beyond effective interaction. (Her side of the family lacks the money to burn.) Boni’s old neighbor putting up the laundry. Boni smiles, “Is  the wind that’s got you so jittery?” Boni’s all over the place. And soon to be jittery. Inside he tells someone, “I’m gonna stick my dick up your crack.” Powerful, right! For all their differences, they’re in the same business. One could say that the bunny rocks! Boni says, “Good  morning. How are you? Can you feel my hot French stick?” Could he ever understand a thing? Ambiguity wandering around in women’s clothes. “I’ll eat her up.” Maybe. Nenette, looking over a cement wall. Twenty-four hours, and no recognition of Nenette. She sends over a flotilla of sweet buns. Boni’s now in a man’s clothes. All grey. On a drive, she’s left behind. Could they become vital? With a baker. “Don’t you ever sleep at night?”

The ways of Surrealism. “Why are you in my house?” Nenette: “There’s now food. I’m starving. It sucks here. You’re really pathetic. It’s my Mom’s house.”/ ” Lay off my rabbit. Go back to Sugar Daddy.”/ “Why are you screaming! I just wanted to talk, asshole!” (She did want to talk. She, in her scattered way, could [once in a while] recognize their possibilities.)/”Write me a letter. I do what I fucking want.” (With every word, they show their weakness.)

He tells her, “You’ve changed.”/”It’s normal.”/ “You got a little fat.”/ “No, I’ve grown…” (Her sense of being  better than she usually does). “Because I’m pregnant… It’s not a joke. It’s true… I don’t show. I have a small belly.” Or is it a small heart? These two would profess being daring. But where is the delivery? Where is the preparation?  “You screw up my day, and it’s not my business? You came here to hide out, didn’t you?” (Boni never delivers here, until the last few seconds of the film.) Here we see Boni, gobbling his meal out of a cheap take-out. Nothing but cheap?(But when the Beach Boys sang, there was a bit of magic. In the air… Can you touch it? A mirror. One of his hands. A way of truth, if you open, if you open your eyes and shut your ridiculous mouth.)Then there was boxing at the gym. Traction? Inert?

From here to the end, it’s Boni’s choice. The families are insignificant. Make your move. Nenette at the doctor’s: “If he’s sleazy, I’m leaving.” The black doctor was not only professional, but also passionate –a tone never true by the cousins. He tells her, “Breathe deeply.” (A big challenge.) “Knees in tight… There! Very good. I’d  say you’re at least five months pregnant.”/”But I’ve barely gotten fat?” /”That doesn’t mean a thing. It’s your build.” (Nenette counting on a quick abortion.) “An Ultrasound will tell us more.” The questionable patient declares, “Knock, Knock! What’s there!” Cut to Boni, in the waiting room, looking at a piece of the doctor’s walls. Many hands in the waiting room. The doctor discovers, “You lied to me. You’re not 18. It’s my job to be able to tell me how much.” The doctor is a gentleman. Nenette has pretty much become a thug. The next fabrication is one that the doctor should have understood. He asks, “Who’s the boy in the waiting room, your friend?” In a flash, she invents, “My husband, but he doesn’t want to be known. This is nothing of his business…” / The doctor asks Boni, “Would you mind stepping in here.”/ The loud-mouth says “This is none of his business.” (Stupid power while being hopeless.) The doctor tells her, “It is his business. He has to face up to his responsibility… “(Going off the rails. Close to a farce.) Boni asks, “Is this serious?”/ “It is but the doctor fails to understand how poisonous “my husband” is.” So the coverage is wrecked. The doctor gets back to his skills: “No, everything’s fine. Sit down.” (Cut to the doctor, writing. He has written something to the couple.) “Here! You want to have  any hospital bills to pay.” The (too) nice doctor tells Boni, “I need to know how pregnant you are, how changed you are. I’m counting on you for the ultrasound. (Moreover, the sweet doctor had come to understand that Nenette, if ever she were able, was beyond it now. An ugly disposition feeling beaten by something extremely demanding. Beaten from the casual love that needs extreme attention. It isn’t impossible. On other planets, surely, merely elevations could be more than that! Your wife is confused, but it’s only normal. Normal indeed! A satin touch… A well-planned childbirth can be wonderful.)

Boni tells her, “You cost me a lot… So now you’re not getting an abortion…” (That brings out a string of savagery.) She  tells him, “Nothing’s decided yet… Three fingers… a good number… She covers her face with her hair… Boni, in the dark… A  new girlfriend… His nude presence… Her belly… She stretches out… Boni  shoots at a figure with his rifle… Next time I’ll kill you… “Daddy understands” [hoping Nenette would open the locked door].In that melee, even coitus has a go.

The doctor. Fetal test. The white clouds  in the machine, in the dark, showing off the baby to come. “Very good. Everything looks fine. Look! You can see its profile. Do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”/ “No.”/The nurse announces, “Anyway, he’s kicking up a storm.” (The storms of life are hidden in deep hiding places.)/ ” Let’s get something clear. If you are thinking of an abortion, it’s too late.”/ Her response; “I’ll have it somewhere, and kill it.”/Boni slaps her for saying that. “You’re like an animal. Worse than an animal!  I can feel it moving.”(She’s not pleased.)  Nenette. “It won’t come out. He hates me.”/ “We’ll find a foster family. We call this a “Jane Doe” birth. I have to make sure you understand one thing. Your decision is irreversible. Just remember, once you’ve decided, there’s no turning back. But, as I said, it will have a family…but no name.”

Another practitioner.”Is she next? I’ll be in the cafeteria. See you later.” Nenette begins, “It better not hurt.”/ “It’s too late, sweety. And don’t moralize me. You have an attitude problem.”/ “Fuck! Fuck! This fucking hurts!”/ “I know it hurts.Try pushing. You’re not pushing! You don’t want to… Push!… Again!… There you go”/….”I want this to end!”… The baby cries. Nenette cries. Baby in basket.

Now the end. Boni, to the hospital, sort of. He “drops the flowers… ” , sort of. Nenette gone.  Here’s a fantasy with power. On the balcony with his rifle, and then having picked up the baby… An eye. Two sets of hands. Boni caresses the baby. Face to face. He kisses the baby. “How are you doing, baby? Wake up…” A smile on his face. Wake up. (A good line.) The baby cries in Boni’s arms. Baby responds to Boni’s embraces. Baby asleep. Boni smiles. “Yeah, you pissed on me!”

One more time! Nenette’s hard eyes.There is a strange and melancholy connection between our two most recent essays. Marcel Proust, after a long, brilliant discovery in literature, came to see that it was not real, not strong enough. As if there had to be a great finish. Months in the hospital. Then, only, a flow of irony. A.M. Cassandre, face to face with imagery to heighten the skies. Unable to engage for a lifetime. Finding death best.

   Here I want to open the enigma with a wealth of the shock of Surrealism.

The enigma, however, involves Surrealism being old hat. That doesn’t  sound like Denis. (In the Ingmar Bergman film, Thirst [1949], there were many stunning visual presentations, by way of the cameraman, Gunner Fischer.) Why, though, this matter now, after all these years. Of course Denis must have very good reasons for us to ponder. We’ll begin with a primer, and see what can develop. Surrealist thinking was, and still does, have a hope. A small hope. We begin, however, the hope of the new. The new, but normal. Looking to the normal, in any way, could give one a horrible time.

However, we have marvelous resources in the form of novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922). Denis engaging Proust? Yes. Watch and be thrilled! One of the protagonists of Denis’s film is a former lover (of the main actress, Sara). His name is  Francois. He gets around. Another mover, is the busy and wise servant of the protagonist to Proust, namely Francoise.

Sara and Jean are not of the same era. Sara is about twenty years younger than him. But they adhere to helping new immigrants to France. Rather peculiar, Denis opens with a tropical fling. They alone tread the wonders, and Jean  embraces her as if he were in a Hollywood flick. One with much business caressing her. “Twisting,” being in several moments in difficult films. After that, there is darkness in a subway, which turns to a station that does not allow places to step. The rooftops of Paris! Fog along the river. Fog everywhere! Mail under the door. Digging for what. (Proust was seldom a traveller. He seldom left his bedroom. His family riches allowed concentration.) Sara owned the flat. Her taste in features was incisive. Her taste in men was something else. (All these considerations require thought. Denis delivers.) Tickling, kissing, her long graceful hands and fingers. Long needs. In shadow, a sort of monster. Then on the phone. “Yes, Mom, it’s me. Yeah, it was great… Give her a kiss… Sara sends her love. We relaxed, it was nice, we took it easy…” (Taking it easy may not be the best choice.)

   This pair are humanitarians. Humanitarians mean well. In this family it goes badly. Years ago, a woman in Paris, Nelly, took an abandoned baby to love and give him years of love. The baby, Marcus, a black, is now an adolescent, and if he ever loved the lady, he certainly doesn’t know. A saga of engineering. In fact, it was Jean who had placed the boy; but (“we took it easy”) was his method. (“I just want to know where Marcus is heading.) “Here’s where It’s going…  “What do you want for lunch?” “I’m not hungry.”  “You’re going on junk. You’re not serious.” “I’m in a rush, Grandma.” “Don’t forget your mask!” (Were she a little bit savvy, she’d know about drugs.) At a well known friendly grocery, she hopes to understand a problem. (On the way to this transaction, she tells herself, “I’m too old to be a real grandmother. I can’t, anymore.”) “I got my bank statement [two old  hands]. And look!” “You’re overdrawn. There were several receipts with withdrawals.” “What could have happened? I don’t know…” “So  yeah, it’s unusual…” (Cut to the worker’s blue glove… a Visa card.) “Did anyone borrow your card, Mrs. Charles? Do you have it on you?”  “Yes, here.” “You see? Did you give the Pin to anyone?”  “Of course…” (Cut to, “Mister I’m in a rush.” Then a jungle. And then, “Dad , are you there? Call me back…”)

More outrages. Back to the sweet helper. Jean was in prison, and couldn’t raise a son. It’s not your fault. He did something stupid and it backfired. But he survived. Now his son is screwing up, a little. (A little!) But it’s no big deal. (No big deal?) Nelly tells her, “I can’t manage Marcus anymore. He needs someone strong. (He needs a strong  cell.) Someone to admire. You don’t admire your grandmother, and work around the house. He loves you, he mentions you every time.” (Nelly: “Does his mother ever call? But Marcus has to go to Martiqui, to see his mother. It’s important.”)

Jean presumes to straighten out Marcus. Marcus tells Jean that he wants to go into retail. The idea-man tells the boy about the hazards of retail. Along the way, he insists that Blacks and Arabs can never get employment, because they are unable to think independently. Thinking for oneself is a great skill. Jean has no doubt  that choosing retail is a sentence for cleaning toilets. “Take time to think, to grow…” Marcus has his own ways. His kind of effectiveness infuriates the big talker. “So, in fact, nothing mattered.Coming here, serves no purpose.” (The boy’s sense of enterprise involves stealing goods. Many inventions look to a bright solution. Their directions are  hopeless.) While Jean wastes his time, he does pose, for our perspective, a flow of possibilities. “Being smart is where you have two paths.” (In fact, there is a third to play. Dialectic.) The kid is happy with his allowance. The smart guy says, “If you need anything, ask?”

   Another no-show. Jean and Sara, in bed. (Francois, her former lover, wanted to know if I was still with you.) Jean: “You never told him?” Sara: “Well, now he knows. Sara is not comfortable with this flow. Jean: “I don’t work with people who clam up. No way!” Sara: “Was he surprised we’re still together? He couldn’t have imagined  we could be a couple!” (Many moves, many crashes.) Jean: “I don’t give a fuck what Francois thinks.” (She cries. ) Sara, in deep shadows: “My love, my love…” (He tries to penetrate.) Both sides of the blade. More crying. Then both of them on their backs. Like a morgue. They hold hands. He looks at her, in suspicion… The two sets of hands. Inert. Then Sara, amidst white sheets.

It’s morning. Francois has some appeal. She finds Francois amidst Jean’s new scheme. “You work with Francois, so I’ll see Francois.” The magic has disappeared. “I’ll ask him to dinner one day. So, you can see him. You’re beautiful… Crazy how pretty you are.” Desperate. The end game. A woman’s thigh; and  two fingers, with two missing. Francois eating candy. “I’ll leave my number.” Francois: “You’re as pretty as ever.” Sara in the bathroom mirror. She murmurs to herself. A long way from the zenith.

The flat is her’s; and she wants him to get lost. Sara tells Jean, “You’re unbearable… I don’t want to see you anymore. Leave. please.” He babbles about some documents… “I never sent a text… I’m not afraid…” Glad to hear it. Now get out. What texts… I saw them! It’s not true. There’s no use lying, really. Get out. What texts? What did they say? I want to see what they said. They said, “I love you, I love you.  I think about you… I love your smile. (She bushes him.) I love your scent.” (He screams as he marches around.)” No one can tear us apart.” (She says nothing.)” It’s all  on me? I don’t give a fuck about him (Francois). Move or I’ll you.” He screams…” I can’t stand it anymore! What did I do to deserve this? Why is this happening to me? I can’t stand it! Want to drive me crazy? You want to be able to! You know why? Because it’s over! Let me go! Stop it!” She was crying. “You  think I was ever free in my life? I don’t give a fuck… Listen to me! Do I have to go to prison for this? I was never free, never in my whole life! I toe the line. Obey, obey. obey… Sara racing around the flat… I don’t give a fuck. Figure it out… I can’t bear this anymore! I’m going to Francois’ place. Let me explain.” There’s nothing to explain. You don’t  understand. Go on, call him! …Don’t give a fuck, about him.” He doesn’t give a fuck, either. (The missing need.) More screaming from the civilization experts…” I’ll destroy everything. I’ll wreck it all. There’s a gun, it’s loaded too. Think you’re going back to prison to make you happy?” Sara: “Call me! Call me back!” This Francois is not virtuous. In the second  part of our essay, treating the miraculous, Marcel Proust, there is a Francois to love.

   (Sara in the bathtub and her phone.) Jean: “The other day, when you said you loved Francois, it hurt. Physically. Now it’s over. I’ll let you live. I want you to know that I’m capable of living without the person I love.” (Forms of need.)

He leaves with a lot of things. She leaves with nothing. It takes a while to understand for Sara what nothing has become. Everything erased from her property. Starting  again. Think of it! Think of the height. (Of course, she could have engaged recent colleagues. But the workload, here, would be very arduous.) Think of the heart of Marcel Proust.

“We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare for us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come, which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different  order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed around them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see the picture of what we once were, in early youth, may not be recognizable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not deny the truth of it, for it is evidence that we have really lived, that is accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life and of mind that we have, from the common elements of the studios, of artistic groups—assuming common that one is a painter—extracted something that goes beyond them.” This being a sidebar (from the saga of the writer’s novel for presenting the wit of France). We’ll touch upon several moments, in hopes of finding the right fit. There is, no doubt, a right fit. The wisdom of France is a fine place to work. Our first chapter does not represent the wisdom of France.

Because the dream world is not the waking world, it does not follow that the waking world is less genuine, far from it. In the world of sleep, our perceptions are so overcharged , each of them increased by a counterpart which doubles its bulk and blinds its bulk and blinds it to no purpose, that we are not able even to distinguish what is happening in the bewilderment of awakening; as it was Francoise that had come to me, or I that, tired of waiting, went to her? Silence at that moment was the only way not to reveal anything, as at the moment when we are brought before a magistrate cognizant of all charges against us, when we have not been  informed  ourselves.

  Meanwhile there was one person who never took her’s [eyes] from what could be made out of my grandmother’s altered features, at which her daughter dared not look, a person who fastened on them a gaze wondering, indiscreet and of evil omen: this was Francoise. Not that she was not sincerely attached to my grandmother (indeed she had  been disappointed and almost scandalized by the coldness shewn by Mamma, whom she would have licked to see fling herself weeping  into her mother’s arms, but she had a certain a tendency always to look at the worse side of things, she had retained from her childhood two peculiarities which would seem to be the mutually exclusive, but combined, strengthened one another: the want of restraint coming among people of humble origin who make no attempt to conceal the impression, in other words, the painful alarm, aroused in them by the sight of a physical change which it would be in better taste to appeal to notice, and the unfeeling coarseness of the peasant who begins by tearing the wings of a dragon-fly until she is allowed to conceal the interest that she feels in the sight of suffering flesh…

Francoise was of infinite value to us owing to her faculty of doing without sleep, of performing the most arduous tasks. And if , when she had gone to bed after several nights spent in the sick-room, we were obliged to call her a quarter of an hour after she had fallen asleep, she was so happy to be able to do the most tiring duties as if they had been the simplest things in the world that, so far from looking cross, her face would light up with a satisfaction tinged with modesty.

Often the sun would disappear behind a cloud, which impinged on its roundness, but whose edge the sun gilded in return. The brightness, though not the light of day, would then be shut off from a landscape in which all  life appeared to be suspended, while the little village of Roussainville carved in relief upon the sky the white mass of gables, with a startling precision of detail. A gust of wind blew from its perch, a rook, which floated away and settled in the distance, while beneath a paling sky the woods on the horizon assumed a deeper tone of blue, as though they were painted in one of those cameos which you still find decorating the walls of old houses.

But on other days the rain would begin to fall, of which we had had due warning from the little barometer-figure which the spectacle-making hung out in his doorway. Its drops, like migrating birds which fly off in a  body at a given moment,  would come down out of the sky in a close marching order. They would never drift apart, would never make movement at random in their rapid course, but each one, keeping in its place, would draw after it the drop which was following, and the sky would be as greatly darkened as by the swallows flying south. We could take refuge among the trees. And when it seemed that their flight was accomplished, a few last drops. feebler and slower than the rest, would still come done. But we would emerge from  our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now, among the branches, and even it was almost dry underfoot, a stray drop or two. lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang glistening from the point of  it until suddenly it splashed plump upon our upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.

The new sanitarium to which I retired at that time did not cure me any more than had the first and a long time elapsed before I left it. During the railway journey back to Paris, I fell to thinking of my lack of literary talent which I had early suspected along the Guermantes way, and had recognized with still more sadness on my daily walks with Gilberte at Tansonville before going home to dinner very late in the night, and which, the evening before leaving that country estate, while reading some pages from the journal of the Goncourt brothers, I had very largely attributed to the vanity and falseness of literature. This idea, less painful perhaps but still more dispiriting if I explained it, not by a deficiency  peculiar to me personally, but as due to the non-existence of the ideal in which I had formerly believed, had not recurred to me for a long time past, but now it struck me anew and with more crushing force than before. I recall that it was while the train had halted out in the open country. The declining sun shone halfway down the trunks of the trees that lined the railway track. “Trees,” thought to myself, “you have nothing more to say to me; my deadened heart no longer hears you. Behold me in the midst of nature’s beauty and yet it is with indifference  and ennui that my eyes take note of the line that separates the sun-bathed foliage from the shadowed trunk. If there was once a time when I was able to believe myself as a poet, I know  that I am not. In the new chapter of my life which is opening before me, perhaps amenable to believing myself a poet to appear…And yet, even as I offered myself… I knew that I was merely of no value.

Another twist: theoreticians. “No more literature! Give us life!” “The idea of a popular art, like that of patriotic art, seems to me ridiculous, even if it had not been dangerous.” “From the changes which had occurred in society I could readily extract some important truths, suitable to give cohesiveness to part of my book, because they were in no way peculiar to our time, as I might at first have been tempted to believe.”

… “And just as certain creatures are the last surviving testimony to a form of life which nature has discarded, I asked myself if music were not the unique example of what might have been—if there had not come the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas—the means of communication between one spirit  and another. It is like a possibility which has ended in nothing; humanity has developed along other lines, those of spoken and written language. But this return to the unanalyzed was so inebriating, that on emerging from that paradie, contact with people who were more or less intelligent seemed to me of an extraordinary significance. People—I had been able during the music to remember them, to blend them with it; or rather I blended with the music little more than the memory of one person only, which was Albertine [the protagonist’s poisonous lover]. And the phrase that ended the andante seemed to me so sublime that I said to myself that it was a pity that Albertine did not know it, and, had she known it, would not have understood what what an honour it was to be blended with anything so great as this phrase which brought us together, and the pathetic voice of which she seemed to have borrowed. But, once the music was interrupted, the people who were present seemed utterly lifeless… Meanwhile, the septet had begun again and was moving towards its close; again and again one phrase or another from the sonata recurred, but always changed, its rhythm and harmony different, the same and yet something else, as things recur in life; and they were phrases of the sort which without our being able to understand what affinity assigns to them as their sole and necessity home the past life of certain composer, are to be found only in his work, and appear constantly in it, where are fairies. the dryads, the household gods; I had at the start distinguished in the septet two or three which reminded me of the sonata. Presently—bathed in the violet mist which rose particular in Vinteuil’s later workers, so much so that even when he introduced a dance measure, it remained captive in the heart  of an opal—I caught the sound of another phrase from the sonata, still hovering so remote that I barely recognized it; hesitating, as it approached, vanished as though in alarm, then returned, hands joined hands with others, come, as Iearned  later on, from other works, summoned yet others which became in their turn attractive and persuasive, as soon as they were tamed. and took their places in the ring, a ring divine but permanently invisible to the bulk of the audience, who, having before their eyes only a thick veil through which they saw nothing, punctuated arbitrarily with admiring exclamations a continuous boredom which was becoming deadly.” (Proust, spoiling the joy here, due to his weakness.)

Instead of presenting its extravagant beginning, one might, for the investigator, bring forth another, introduction to locate the quintessence of the problem. (A problem being deeply embarrassing to Bergman himself.) Although we had a taste of Bergman’s Big Band thoughts, in the film, Crisis (1946), here we have a majestic version of the type, with dozens of snappy musicians in great digs, a veritable  Manhattan club, in that era. The two protagonists meet here. But there is something more arresting than that. Look at the bandstand, its backing: the battle flag of the Japanese forces of World II; The Rising Sun! (This recalls the Nazi, White Cross, in the film, Crisis [1946].) What are Bergman’s interests here? Having the Axis, best? He did want the Axis to win. (For a while, anyway.) But I think there is even more, here. Much more. A small beginning, comes by way of the dance floor. Someone on the floor yells out, about a couple of dancers “At least someone’s  going all out…” That remark elicits, “Must be foreigners…” (The locale is sleepy Halmstad, Sweden.) How much bombardment can be delivered? How much wit can be embraced.

  We have here, not only a treasure of contrasts, but a delivery of a genius (Bergman) being almost crushed by a strange task, a Surrealist demand. Bergman’s film, here, has been constructed by way of a long history by a sailor, a long pondering on the part of a sailor, Gosta. (By the time he reaches port [a seven-year stint], it seems that much of the strength of the matter had been exhausted. But in order to set in relief the significance of the saga,  more narrative needs to be shown. At this point, here is all we find: “A large ship [perhaps a series of ships],  on the vast sea. The beauties of the calm sea. Coming into port. Our protagonist contemplates a city. A rich melody. Sunny day. Chipper flags. Close to another ship. The gulls, happy in the skies. More gazing… Large and small crafts. Dynamics, abounding. Minor charges. Darkness. More of the harbor… The long sites… Down the gangway. A suitcase. Stirring music… He walks along a narrow street, until he opens a door. On finding the apartment he knows of, he is greeted warmly with several men. A few days later—now living there—he has an interesting chat one evening. Gosta was reading a book, and a more elderly friend asks, “Are you going out?”/ “Don’t think so.”/ “On a Saturday night? I’ll be damned!”/ / “Don’t feel like it” [The tonality is wrong]. / “Have you fallen in love? Or caught something?/ “Neither, in a long time” [the light sizzling on the wall]. / “You have your severance pay…” Gosta stretches back on his bed. There is scribbling on the wall. / “As long as you’ve got dough, you’ll get ladies and booze.” Two commodities Gosta had suspicions about. “Oh, that! We all have our ups and downs, don’t we?” [And more shadows]. Forget about a simple narrative. Our protagonist has a book in his hand. “You really read this stuff?/ “You’re not interested in books at all?”/ “I used to be… My old man was a schoolmaster. He had lots of books.”/ “At your age you feel lonely. You sail the world. You see lots of things.” Gosta’s eyes look down./ “But it feels like you’re missing out on most of it. The lost man… So, I stopped and took to drinking instead.” (Voice-over. Books just make things worse.) The cynic heads for a bar. Before he leaves, he adds, “But go ahead and read.” That being another hit upon his reflections. On the boat there was ample time for reflection; the elements could help; they could allow to find out what he is made of. Port of call.

   How was a surrender going? At this port of call, at this dock, on the day of his arrival, there was a young woman intent on hurling herself into the sea, never to be seen and felt again. She was rescued, by many rescuers, (with much anger). Along  came our protagonist. “What happened!”/ “A girl jumped in!”/ “Must  have gotten a cramp. It’s too cold to be swimming.”

Gosta had been diminished. By almost killing herself the girl had been, in one sense, her best. Where does courage go here? There must have been tonality. Her best was short lived. Let’s follow another involvement which could break the bank. (Not for many. Not for a planet like this.) The daring one lives amongst bogus. Clever, useful, bogus. Tone-deaf bogus. But there is more than that. More than the hordes. Can she find a way? Her name is Berit. Her mother is a killer. Her mother is a monster of advantage. That’s been going crazily along, for many thousands of years. You could say it’s in its guts. It’s rotten guts. It’s complicated guts. The top spin. Surrealist powers, coming and going.

   Things don’t go well for the weak. But the weak have its visitors, its elements. Out of an embarrassment, a chance to dance. Berit and Gosta, despite fuss, were meant for each other. On consideration, we’re nearly all meant for each other. The two protagonists had met under that Rising Sun. But the advantage-maven had other plans. Twisted advantage.

“Dad sent a cable saying he’ll be home soon.” (His long maintaining his distance from her [by way of many years at sea] would be a pipe dream.) Berit remarks, “Are you getting a divorce?/ “No, we’re making a fresh start.”/ “When was that decided?”/ “Yesterday. I decided…”/ “So we’re on to hell again…”/ “I don’t know what you mean.”/ “Poor Dad…”/ “He wrote that he misses me.”/ “He’s always been a little crazy…” (Such cheap foolery becomes Bergman’s way of pinpointing a matter few would notice.)/ “I really wish you could be happy  too… I do care for you. I’m always thinking about you, worrying about you.”/ “You’re very kind. You’d even be kinder if you leave me alone.”/ “Is that how you speak to your mother?”/ “Oh for God’s sake!” (Mother slams the door. A shadow of an old lady.)/ “You’re hard-heated, Berit. But that will bring its own punishment.”/ “I wish you were dead.”/ “People your age, say things like that.”/ “When I see you waiting for Dad… I know what’ll it be: “The porridge is too salty…” (And the fights will start… First the little ones, then the long nights filled with hatred. Port of Call, where the hatred reigns… and heart dies.) “That’s all over now, Berit.” (As if a young woman can overlook a crisis of many years.) “We’re getting older… I’ve been talking to the vicar this time… For you, too.”/ “You’re such a liar, you foul yourself… And everyone else too, including Dad! But not me.” (And what is the power of this poison—family!) “ I know you’re always lying. Always!” The attacker leaves. But, before, there is, “You’ll regret what you just said.” And the girl cries and lies on the table. She gets up. Melodrama, yes. But touches of crazy mystery, in Bergman’s experiment. Surrealist pondering. To the gut.

   “I should kill you,” Berit blurts out “And myself… You’re insane. You should be locked up.”/ “I’m insane, you say?” (A dream of being a little girl…) “Come to Daddy! Don’ t be frightened… It’s horrible when I’m home.”/ “Don’t drag her into this… You’re hurting her!”/ (The two pulling the girl in different directions.…)/ He calls out, “What about the way you act?”/ “You’re the one hurting her.”/ “Is that true, Berit?… Come to Daddy!”/ “Don’t touch her!”/ “I’ll slap you!”/ “She’s my child, too!”/ She slaps him. And the child rushes into the bedroom, under the bed./ “Poor little Berit. What a father you have!”/ Berit wakes up. Upside down.

Had Daddy stayed so long being part of the Axis? (He was wounded, and needed a year in the hospital.) Many questionable, borderline attachments. Here’s one, though, that she could have managed, without huge heroics. Berit in the stairwell, having been locked out by her mother one very late night./ “Mamma! Open the door!” After a long no, she lies on the stairs. Then a bright light (a Surrealist light) and a whistling. The whistler stops whistling. At first, Berit tells him to get lost. But the tone of approach is pleasing./ “Don’t mind me…”/ “Did your  mom kick you out? Or your old man?”/ “No.”/ “So you’re sitting and waiting to be welcomed back into the fold.” (His hat gets a jaunty twist.)/ “I have nowhere to go.”/ “Can you imagine their faces if you just disappeared!” (A surreal explosion occurs.)/ “How would I do that?”/ “Come stay with me.”/ “You’re crazy!”/ “Come with me.”/ “Where do you live?”/ “Don’t you know?”/ “No.” (Berit’s visage is a reflective monster.)/ “ I don’t know you, do I?”/ “Come with me. I’ve got my own pad. Come on!”/ “No, I don’t know if I dare.”/ “ “Don’t worry, Sweetie…”/ “No horror in the stairs, here. Clean sheets and a daily  meal at the milk bar… No Doubting Thomas’s…”/ “I think I will!”/ “Madam’s name? Berit!”/ (Shadow. The New World at a window of the stairs. A bright light swinging in the wind…/ “We lived together, and he was swell to me. But they put out a description of me over the radio.”)

   No doubt this idyll is a fragile loss. But it has the makings of something one may engage to shoot the heights! The word  was “conscience!”  Antinomianism is its opposite. (A dirty war.)  Homesick for home.

“Is that  a deckhand?”/ “I can’t believe it. You with your red toenails…” Has anyone ever seen a dead person?  Have you seen, two?… That’s happened to me… but it doesn’t affect me… Even though I’m 29.” (Rhythm and Blues.) “You see, I have no conscience…” (I’ve been humiliated, in this feeble attempt to be a seer, a warrior, a heart.)  / “Do you have a conscience? Let’s get away from all this.” (Bitter irony…) “What if they catch us?”(about the rinky-dink backwoods overseeing?) They won’t! The lady’s man, tells us, “I’ll talk to my buddy. He knows about these things.” Berit embraces the so-called runaway. (The supposed rebel-ship had been cluttered with children! “I can speak a little German.”/ We learn tomorrow, morning.”/ “Is it expensive?”/ “No more than its worth.”/”Are you having second thoughts?”/ “What do you mean?”/ “You’re so quiet.”/ “I can’t talk all the time.”/ “It feels odd running away…” (And yet they choose to be to escaping the powers of wonderment.) (“You’ve done it before.”/ “I know, but…”) ( Big crafts in the distance. Here the very little…)/ “Listen, I’ve been thinking…”/ “About what?/” / “About what?”/ “Things were a lot worse for us a year ago. A lot has changed since then, if you think about it [Covering the wild change of melodrama will be noted, slightly, at the end]. Berit’s laugh./ “You mean it’s silly to leave?”/ “I didn’t say that!”/ (They sit in a plaza by the sea. Later he’ll hold her over the dock, to prove they’re courageous.) “He picks up a kitten.) “A lot of things still haven’t been set right.”/ “Your probation… Your mom… My job [at the docks]… All kinds of bother and trouble…That’s true.”/ “It all gets too much.” (To make a true change is not a job for cowards.) “But we have each other. We didn’t have that before.” (The kitten leaves.) / “I’m not much to have now.” (But during part of the mystery tour, she could give it a shot, in her dreams.)./ “To me you are.”/ “Then things must be all right!” (Smiles all round.) “Something tells me it would be foolish to run away. Not because we’d get caught, but for our own sake.”/ “You think so, too?”/ “It couldn’t be worse for me,  than for you.”/ “I’m used to it.”/ “I feel like taking on the whole bunch of ‘em” [advantage, of course]. (A big Surreal hand.)… “The Social Worker, too… Sure, and my mom, the devil’s own grandmother, if need be.” / “Let’s stay! I feel it in my bones. It’ll be hard, but it might work. People like us mustn’t give up” [but they  don’t have to blind] . “We won’t give up! No!”/ “And it’ll be summer soon!”

Our saga plays out in a triad, the better to present the problematic. The first episode is called, “Magic, Or Something Less Assuring.” The protagonist, Mieko, has many names. But the name you must engage is “Millennial.” We find her, as always, assured, being lifted by a horde of intimates. Her work of a fashion model allows for much eulogizing. In action in a Tokyo park, where a rich, deep sweater and a rich deep scarf seem appropriate, the crew pauses to see if all is flawless, perfect. During the preceding poses, there was from the crew a steady cheer to her wonderfulness. Next stop, the retinue crowd around the laptop. “Really pretty!” someone sings. “Looking pretty… I like the eyelashes reflecting the light.” (Before that, though, she had totally ignored a dying tree.) “Good, yup, the best! And you click so well.”  (Along with this good time, though,  the princess only half attends to the motions of hands and fingers. Too bad.) One of the crew insists, “Every little move can explode…”

Later that evening, the darling of smarts connects with a woman of some balance. On a long taxi ride toward the home of the lost, things happen. Mieko begins with, “How’d you click so well?” / “Well, at some point, he started saying, ‘You’re not who I thought you were.’”   (Tzu/Mieko, having been  dumped for her crudeness and adultery toward that same man, she would imagine the obvious. But the click was about a bid to reach something better. The better [Kazuaki] was not aware that Mieko had been there.)    All along this journey, at the back seat, various lights play right behind the cab, as a mysterious firmament. For example, gusts of green lights call for a never-seen approach. These ignored beauties put to shame the overwhelming smallness of the women, in various states. We’re in for many twists and turns here, but the deficiencies will rule. However, by careful scrutiny, one may find what is needed.

Right from the get-go, this bid to be unique has been poisoned. Hamaguchi has made it clear, to those awake, that a drastic step must be taken. A drastic step that will never occur on planet Earth. Yet, such failure carries a gift, the gift of semi-heart, the warmth of semi-joys.

Here we go, then, to find what can be done. At virtually close to the worst, there was Mieko, “But you know how friendly I am…” Going on, “He’s the head of an interior design company; and he invests.”/”Somehow, we started talking about our childhoods. We both had similar upbringing, and moved around a lot. (Upper class.) We quickly realized that’s why we both appreciate people from a distance.” (Green flashes on Tzu’s arms and shoulder. Once again, a case of “really pretty.” “Really pretty,” but no dice. Kazuaki thinks to brighten the tone by: “I told him about things I’ve never told anybody… not only you, Mieko. And he did the same thing…” (What a powerhouse of thought!) Kazuaki does allow, “Maybe he was copying me to be nice… But… I could sense that I touched something deep with him.” (Various colors paint the skies. Tokyo for the thinkers.) “…  And I felt he touched me deeply, too.” Mieko suggests. “That sounds… erotic.”(Up with a penis light. Ka covering her face. “I didn’t know considerations could be erotic.”) “We ended up talking about what it would be like as a couple.”

   Surprisingly enough, there are thoughts in the air, accompanying the flashy lights and the near idiot; and Kazuaki’ s, “To be honest, it wasn’t a bad idea. I think I was giving him signals…” (How could even the smallest thought come through. But Hamaguchi has hope.) On to more of the shock. “I can empathize with that!”

The long drive ends for the lover who lives there. Mieko also lives there; but on that night, she tarries at the car, in order to get into it again and race to the ex. An eagle on her sweater. On getting into the target (a chic office), those still in action are excused. He tells her, “I need a word.” When a person like Mieko needs a word, she means total advantage. “I heard you started investing. Can you handle that? I never saw you as the type… You two spend a magical time together… You guys are lame! Did you tell her about us?”/”No, I didn’t.”/”You think I’m jealous? You’ve hardly crossed my mind… You got it easy. You passed yourself off as this traumatized guy who got cheated on.”/”Who are you to probe into that night…”/”Get out! You’re acting like a stalker! You’re insane…” (In a mirror, we see her emoting, “Don’t worry. I’m aware of my insane behavior.”/ “You’re operating normally, then.”/ “You know me.”/ “Why’d you come here?” / “To tell the truth, I don’t know. But there’s nobody else. I can’t allow this. And I know you’d listen to me, even after two years.”/ “Listen to what.?”/ “But you used to enjoy what I had to say… I got pissed off when I heard about you and her. I felt sad, too… But I’m not in love with you. Maybe it’s the loss of something I believed was mine.” / “I don’t belong to you…Look, woman.  That girl’s not yours, either.”/ “Why’d you just call me, woman. You’ve never spoken to me like that. Say it again and I’ll leave.”/ “Woman, leave!”/ “Also, (in a flash) I don’t like how you refer to Gumi/ Ka … You’re in for an ordinary, boring relationship…” Is wall-to-wall advantage—if you look at it closely—any more apt to be better than the boring relationship. Isn’t this a matter of other heights? Isn’t it a matter of carrying out the full treasures? (We have a long journey here, to present.)

   Mieko, along with her questionable hopes, tells the link, “Our fates are nobody’s fault.” Her ex argues, “If there’s anyone evil in this story, it’s you.” / “Why? Because I cheated on you?” / “Your motives were disgusting. You wanted to experience sex with a rich man …Leave. I might lose control and kill you…” / / “Why do you keep hunting me…”/ “I don’t know.” Along with more of such irritation, she does eventually express her new wave.

The man you thought was yours. The whole cosmos has to be considered. She is a clown with Millennial advantage. The world being bogus. “You’re only repeating what I said. We can’t be together. I can’t be with you.” He in a military-like outfit. “I can’t stand you.”/ “Be humble… But you loved me so much. And you were devastated.”/ She stands there as if she has a right to devastate the planet. (The pest was counting upon a very vague power to make everything easy.)  “I bet you’ve never imagined…”/ “What?”/ “How badly I got hurt from hurting you… My feelings for her are different.”/ “You might lose both.” (She and her baby voice) …” I can’t promise anything… That’s who I am. Can you accept me?” (He about to vomit.) She declares, “The truth sometimes comes out impulsively. I came here on impulse…”

Mieko came, as always, to feel being a star amidst the low. Her flamboyance, however, must not be entirely dismissed. We have here the makings of a horde of skeptics. A horde of skeptics, nearly incapacitated. But in the likes of Mieko there is (spoiled rotten) a hatred of the proceedings. That it comes down to claptrap means nothing here. The gift, as it were, becomes, in spades, the mystery of the inscrutable. After many years of pretending to be covering what is paramount, it turns out it doesn’t! There’s something more.

   He continues, “I feel like a defective product.” Much fake-sentimentality, regarding Gumi/Ka becoming part of the investment package. A marriage to overtake, hopefully, many corruptions. Another package ends the juggling. Three days later, that morning, Gumi, and Mieko have a breakfast at a café. Then along comes the defective product. The latter had never thought of the “lover,” being well-aware of Gumi, in the position of a spoiler. The fix was in. The fix, now, was out. And as the invasion by Mieko disappears, here, to discover other opportunities, the prosperous two must handle what they can stomach.

The second episode is called, “Door Wide Open.” But before we tackle that matter, we must come to more clarity about Hamaguchi’s procedure of making a story that an adult would hate. You hate pretty much the entire action, with its cemented stupidity. Many great filmmakers of the past and present pose deep confusion. They, at various involvement, represent reflection toward a crisis of sensibility beyond anything else. World history has, of course, been assaulted to the point of paralysis. Our task is to understand if the artist has something up his sleeve. (Bidding for nothing but Netflix-dollars would be a form of suicide.) Does the ancient, embracing wisdom of Japan provide a hope? “Door Wide Open,” seems to be a beckoning. Have a look!

   The first look, is a university student, grovelling on the professor’s floor, crying like a baby, having been   seen as a failure to thrive from the university. (The shadows of filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, would be right there, in its humiliation.) We hear, “My future depends on you!” (That being only one of a swarm to err.) The howling involved, that a woman teacher who had allowed that non- student to be graduating without work—for his gall in finding that one does not live forever—had departed on the point of becoming a mother.) Very soon vengeance would be his stupid reply. “A honey trap.” Powers of sensibility.  Along with a woman able to stand him, there was a plan to have that woman create a scandal which would end his career. But surprising matters transpire. For instance, the attacker had been a remarkable student of his French studies. Her spoken French was a joy to hear. Ambiguity in the matter.

One more time! (“Oh, Miss Murayama!”/ “You remember me?”/ “Of course. How can I help you?”/ “Congratulations on the Akutagawa Prize.”/ “Thank you…”/ “May I have your autograph?” [She brings out her version of the coup, for autographing.] / “Oh, sure.” / “I really enjoyed it. Your signature (on his book) would make me happy every time I read it.”) “I was in your French class, first and second years…” / “I remember… Well, you stood out.” / “Right. I’m much older than anyone else.” / “No, not for that reason. You asked a lot of questions during and after class.” / “Yes, that’s me…” / “You’re very thorough and your French is beautiful…” / “If you have time, and don’t mind…”/ “Oh, sure.”  / “I’ll just be a housewife again… I have a daughter, too… I wanted to study psychology; it’s fascinating… I did think of questions” (pertaining to the marvellous book). The Marvellous Book.

“I held myself upright with the back of my hand.” Sensibility has its hopes for great power. Hopes alone, without a very strong strategy, might as well be watching Netflix. But very strong strategies have already been seen, in various locales. Very strong strategies, in fact, are what this very unusual film offers. That preamble has, with its two bunglers (Mieko and the “genius”) pretending to make a breakaway of lucidity, provided us with the something else needed, namely, the deferral, another force. (The novelist: “My life is quite boring.”/ The Belle Letterets’: “Did you know that I was trying to tempt you this entire time.”  “It never occurred to me.”) The visitor, somewhat feeling badly, had promised to present the full tape to him. (Here she was, still a creature of advantage; a creature of hate.: “If you want the recording, you have to promise me… that you’ll masturbate to my voice at least one time…”)

   Unfortunately for her, the delivery was faulty. No kill this time. Five years later, in a tram, in the night, she bumps into the presumptuous, howling atheist. At first, she regards him as a nothing. Then she shows how far she had fallen. She listens to the “progress” of the louse. He brags that he’s a corporate power, now. And along the way, there is a marriage imminent. (“I got trapped. She wanted to get married before thirty.”/ “Congrats.”) She allows the laughable creatin to sneer about her work as a proof-reader. (Her sad response was to tell him, “You don’t even read novels…”) And yet she’s game to be part of his harem.

The third episode is called, “Once Again.” Visiting’s, getting closer to the mark. Then: “Nobody knows if the situation [of the plague] is temporary or permanent…” A woman walking at sunset. She enters the event, “Class of 1998, High School Reunion.” On being noticed as a long-ago loner, by someone— “Sorry”/ “Don’t be”—her   connection tells her, “You’re that type…” Yes, and no. It’s far from a done deal.

Sentimental hauntings had hung around for her for a poisonously long time. Thereby, one day, while taking the escalator to the trains, one fantasies imagining that old flame, from many years ago. Here we had the protagonist ascending, while the hopefully lover descends. Much goes on here, between the two women. But it all comes down to the up-and-down of that action. The protagonist had been out to lunch, in her fantasy. But the vehicle was true-blue Hamaguchi-gift, involving much wisdom, pertaining to that vehicle.  The two previous episodes were a disaster. Here was time to begin some joyous lucidity. (But of course, the way would be extremely punishing. This being, of course, a site of nearly complete disaster.) Up and down, by way of hands and fingers. To workings; and to revel. Back and forth, interplaying.

A bit of whimsy between the women, as to both of them unsure of features and names. “Come home with me [to nearby, Tokyo], if you have time,” the second protagonist suggests… “Nobody’s home during the day…”/ “You must think I have no friends.”/ “No, I don’t.”/ “Then I guess it was all in my head.” “All in my head,” becomes a mantra of the craze of advantage. Where others find unhappiness, for a while, the likes of the mantra become permanent. And yet, the lady from Tokyo, who’ll disclose her disappointments, in time, had seen fit to choose a life of disinterestedness and passion.

But in that haze of deep hope in finding a former lover—a former lover who had been married to a man for years, now—that barely sane figure had the crazy impudence to tell the host, “You seem to be scared of silence…”/ “Do I?”/ “You keep avoiding what’s important. Even though it’s been twenty years…” / “What impart?”/ “Whoa! Here it comes, in spades! A lesson not to take in strangers… Especially, in a plague.” This also puts all that supposed profile, of the “Romantic:” “I’m a systems engineer… IT work; so that means, yup, I’m out of a job now…but I have savings…” [“That’s good.”]

“Are you happy right now?”/ “I haven’t thought about it… You shouldn’t have to think…” The adult gets up. She is hurt… “There were hard times, but I won’t be miserable… I was ignorant then…” / “That’s why I came here… To be honest, I can’t remember your name.”/ “My name’s, Aya Kobayashi…You got the wrong person.”/ “That can’t be….”/ “But you haven’t seen her in in twenty years?” (Rushing to the door. The lost.) But the strong one tells her, “Why don’t you stay?… (Why don’t you become a model of deep hopelessness. And a model of finding the way.) The ironical lady tells the scum, “It’s like a sweet popsicle… A high-grade version…”/ “Are you sure you’re not Mika…”/ “I’m not Mika, sorry… Was Mika your first love?”/ “I’m not sure about that… [prodigious matter]. But she was my partner. She wasn’t like me, so I should’ve seen it coming. But I was oblivious, somehow…”

   The lady could never be oblivious. Her husband was too busy for her and her children; but he had a mistress. “Was Mika understanding?”/ “Not at all… You can’t reason with her…” Therefore, the lady proceeds with more wit— the actors exchange roles. “You said you weren’t happy.” (the stranger playing the game). / “Is it my fault I couldn’t truly connect?”/ “Were you truly with me”/ “Are you mad?”/ “Yeah. I’m mad.”/ “It’s not your fault… I know that pain was an essential moment for our lives…”/ “I assumed you’d have a hole in your life now, just like me. So, I came.” / “A hole? You must have a hole that nothing can fill!”

The last stage tells the story. “I should be going.” On the walk to the train: “Can I walk you to the station?”/ “Thanks.”/ “So your name is Kei? That means “to play.” We wanted gender-neutral names.”/ “You’re progressive… But you missed love…”/ “I’ve never told anyone before.”/ “I’m honored.”/ “I’m amazed…” (The deep foliage along the way has its power. But the “deep thinkers” drop the ball.) They go into the lady’s high school days, and its ardour with another girl. They were fond of playing the piano at the school. The other was boyish. The stranger picked up that the lady would be wondering, after twenty years, if that vision was the pianist. (Lost joys.) “We lost track, after she went to Tokyo… Let’s play pretend again [at the escalator]. I’ll be your boyish pianist this time… Do you recognize me?… I live every day to the fullest. I’m so glad you haven’t changed.” / “And you? Are you good?”/ “I can’t answer straight away, like you.” / “You’re not well?”/ “My body’s fine.”/ “Then… it’s not a big problem… But sometimes I wonder why I’m here…” (The approach has now become philosophical. The craze of mating has been put in its place.) “I could’ve become anything, but time flew by before I knew. I’m fairly satisfied. This is what I chose. And I know it’s wrong to want more. But…I’m not passionate about anything anymore. I don’t know what to do. Time is slowly killing me.” Ability to hold hands together, as if a miracle could happen. (The maniac: “I always felt different, like everyone observed me from afar. I always felt like an outcast… Your existence gave me power. You have the ability to give power… See you!” [A wave]. Lady waves, over and over.)

She goes to the station. She goes down the escalator. She rushes down the steps. And then she goes up again. She races to the questionable figure. We see her in a distant position. She catches up to the lost one. They embrace. “Wait!”/ “What’s wrong?”/ “It’s nothing big.”/ “What is?”/ “But I can only tell you…”/ “You can tell me anything.”/ “I remembered!”/ “What?”/ “Her name. It’s Nozomi!” (They feel elated.)/ “Nozomi!” (And they embrace again. “And her last name?”/ “I can’t remember.” More hugging!)

   A piano for the end credits. The joys of that last small treasure of passion. (Or at least the joys of the lady in Tokyo.)

Why such a frail (but true) response? There was passion in the lady’s rush to disclose the name. What had frozen that enterprise? Does it take an outlaw to see? That is Hamaguchi’s question, going forward.

Despite much craft and heart, the involvement needs more coherence. “Nozomi” is the tip of the iceberg of this deep, beautiful, brave monster of a film, at war. Drama, yes. But there is a mountain to climb. Japan has its great ancient strengths, crushed by crude advantage. But the West also has had its reflective towers. These days are in shadow.

However, amazingly, there has been for centuries a horde of joyful wisdom within the players of deep musicians. And it all begins with motion of the fingers and hands. Along that crest, there abounds the workers and the players of love. An embracing to the heavens.

Arts in spades, could also be called philosophy. Jarmusch never uses the term, but he practices that skill, deeply. In all of the works, it was philosophical daring that made the difference. Daring to maintain that nearly all who have ever been alive have been seriously, horrifically blind. Moreover, his artistry could open a door of charm, wit, in the midst of trouble. Such sophistication would be hanging from a gossamer thread. One could say that the term, “indie,” –small revenue–had come to a crisis. In fact, our film today, would be his last feature, a film unlike any other of his endeavors. Film practice at this point has become a strictly quantitative business, with no serious focus upon matters that have to be managed. If not with that slush, or slack of looking for happily involved, one must invent another orientation.

For now, we have Jarmusch having turned his wit to extreme deadliness. Our film, The Dead Don’t Die, presents a cannon over everyone’s bow. Make no mistake, he is seen to be angry. He is addressing a planet of slackers, unable to die with dignity.

In order to disclose what is at stake here, I have begun with capsulized versions of the treasures of yore. Such treasures of yore… Mystery Train (1989). Two young Japanese tourists, a boy and a girl, had got into their head that Elvis Presley, in Memphis; at Graceland; would be something to wow the folks back home. However, they found that magic was not there. The boy came to the point of calling Carl Perkins the better rocker. His girlfriend attempts to brighten things up by covering her face with lipstick. Then, at their hotel, still disappointed, he goes to the window and something happens. It is night, a train goes by very close, giving a charge to the industrial street. Why was he happy? “This isn’t Yokohama. This is America. To be 18 and feel cool to be in Memphis.” Would the magic buoy, and buoy? Unlikely. But he had had a visit from the elements.

Broken Flowers (2005). Dan, a lucrative genius in the form of IT, had divorced several, including the unnamed here. His curiosity gets burned. The woman’s husband, after Dan, had died in a Nascar rally. “Larry died in a ball of flames. After Winston died, I got this gift soon after. I realized I could hear animals speak to me. And I certainly hadn’t been aware of any minds. But when they want to communicate, I can hear them. Animals can tell us what they want. But that doesn’t mean it’s best for them… It sets in relief the far from conventional rules… to create efficacy, the abyss of death. Winston had cast unflattering light on the matter. A very productive chord has been hidden.” She makes no effort, knowing it would be a waste of time. To convey in depth how her being touched by the dog’s changing her. The black mutt in the photo, though, consists of department of finding those who are taking track of embracing the motives of beasts, presenting themselves as having friends while maintaining a self-embracing in the face of slights. Carma (the not about words) has walked the walk, a walk seldom entertained and provides a diamond-hard center to a soft and flowing saga of self-destruction. Her’s as good a place as any to revisit the understandable but still horrific pathway of avant-garde film artists leading us to feats, work that no wants to see. Only now, the American Dream. Feeble and heart. Beasts and breakaways. Schismatic!

Limits of Control (2016). A career killer, who never speaks. Business; but the pleasure is something else. The actions of Lone Man. Visual and sonic to the fore. Another venture. A suspenseful world. Everything is subtractive. Tai-Chi. To ponder. To ponder the difference. The Sufi Say: each one of us is a planet spinning in ecstasy.

Dead Man (1995). William Blake, a British poet and artist. Long dead. Maybe not. An accountant in Cleveland who had to find adventure in the rough and tumble western mountains. Another William Blake, who insists, “Don’t call me a poet.”/ Could we call him hungry for the uncanny? No and yes. This makes William a Dead Duck. He had come for another perfection. He had come for the wrong planet. At the mountains, William quickly finds the girlfriend of the oligarch’s son, who, in trying to kill William, kills the girl. (She and our protagonist were showing off her pistol. In a reflex, William kills the precious son, having, then, to get out of town. A little pinto of the property is happy to be carry the new killer into the pristine woods.

What was to be more healthy, doesn’t. But William’s short life involves some vigor, much of it not his. The pinto carries the outlaw to the homeland of a character. On hearing that William has that somewhat bizarre name, the aboriginal gets into his head that he is in the presence of the wit of the that ancient artist. (“Man was made for joy and woe.”) Moreover, that busy brain, would seem to eat up the news of that kill being a warrior. “Now you are a killer of white men…” Amidst that politics, the forest delivers handsomely. The posse catches up, but the dealer presents his death in a canoe along a stream. William’s need to be uncanny has made a little step.

Stranger than Paradise (1984). Youngsters behaving badly. The song, “I Put a Spell on You!” because you’re mine…” Ten days would ruin me! With my cousin. I really hate that kind of music…” Shoplifting… “You’re OK.” The New World. But Eva could channel Buster Keaton. “Quality does not lurk here. And Night on Earth (1991). Corky, an LA cabby, picks up a Hollywood corporate at the airport. Soon the fare asks her if she’d like to have a screen test. Though she’s a possibility, she doesn’t want to leave driving a cab. She tells Victoria, the fare, “Definitely, “I want a family… boys, lots of them! No girls… The real problem is to find a good father. ‘I don’t care what he does… As long as he loves me right.” (You might have thought Corky, the night racer, had something more to say.) On to Paris at night, where the driver from Ivory Coast, encounters a fare who is blind. She tells him, “Nice driving, asshole!” He thinks, “Listen to music… I feel colors… At a stop, he places his hands on each side of his head, and cries out, “It’s not my fault.” (Would there have been a sigh, sometime, that hearts had come to a focus?)

Paterson (2016). Is there such a thing as dangerous amateurism? Jarmusch, in this film, considers a plague. Our protagonist, a bus driver/ poet, may not seem like a killer; but he is. The poems he writes could be called modest work. (He suggests, once in a while, “Dadaist;” “Surrealist.”) Here’s one: “I become the cigarette and you the match. Blazing with kisses. He is the most beautiful match in the world. It’s one and a half inches… capped by a dark purple head” [for Laura]. Every night ats the nearby bar, Patterson has one beer. Every night, then, he retreats from life. Moreover, in a rare hope, he bought a dog. Perhaps he imagined to be like his poems, like his bar. The dog was full of joy, for a while. Laura’s idea of playing with Marvin, was to open the door and have him piss and poo. Marvin’s eyes don’t twinkle. Patterson tells his pet, “I Don’t like you, Marvin.” But Marvin knows his rights. He knows there is more.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). Delicious reflections at a java. Taste! How Plato had maintained a craze for advantage. “All ruling the roost.” The alternative… A notion of deep uncertainty that won’t go away. The New York Armory Show of 1913, where avant-guard stirrings came to America.

Ghost Dog (1999). On the roof of a Rust Belt, a professional killer. And a pigeon sanctuary. The way of the Samurai. The dog knows heart. “Don’t you live in America? Your Mystery Man fucked up.” A lost dog. Devoted to the master. Devoted to the elements.

Down by Law (1986). “Do you have some fire?”/ “You’re a good DJ, Zack. All you gotta do is jerk people off a little.” Zack: “It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop.”

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). “When is vampire movie not a vampire movie?”/ When it is a Jim Jarmusch movie./ “Our powers and influence will never die.”/ Eve and Adam.

When is a vampire?… When lucidity has been silenced. Our film today allows some wit because it allows a ton of sickening stupidity. The wit is at its bests. The little town has a gas company, which enriches by way of a trucker regularly visiting. On this day of top-up, he not only presents a rare horror magazine (to the young entrepreneur, being also operating a vintage graphic and DVD and CD horror business); but he finishes with the phrase, “Just give me your Herbie Hancock, right here.” Herbie Hancock is a great jazz pianist and creator of jazz groups. One of his greatest moments was a disk called, “Maiden Voyage.” The irony of that notion here is hard to stomach. On to another matter. “Hey Dean, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind just dropping a little wisdom until the next delivery.” Here it is: “The world is perfect.” (The boy bemused.) “Appreciate the details.” (The world perfect—if you include the whole cosmos. Details, like “Maiden Voyage,” rich in dialectic, a play that never fails.) Bobby the boy-thinker, whispers, “The world is perfect. Appreciate the details.”

Another extraordinary man lives here, namely, Hermit Bob, within this rich forest along the mid-Atlantic coast. Bob, somehow, had for years enjoyed what most of us could not stand a week. Though he carries a machine gun and dresses like a soldier, he is far from anyone’s thoughts. But this day, a farmer who got into his that Bob had killed one of his chickens, brought a police car, of two. Cliff, the Chief, was sure that the loner was innocent of this attack. His deputy, Ronnie, was ready to book the unusual. Here’s what happened in the forest. The visitors first noticed a skinned, small, and rancid animal. (Others had violence in mind.) Then they found a tiny house of sticks, which could not accommodate the entire body. Cliff had to go through the drill, which had not yet yielded the hermit. “Farmer Miller says you might have stolen one of his chickens. (Chickens with Jarmusch has another direction.) Coming from the thicket, there is the remark, “Up your hole with a wooden pole, Cliff.” A bullets hits a tree. (This being the first, but far from the last, deliberate B-plus amateurism.) “Fuck you, Ronnie!” Bob and his cool binoculars. America. Nothing but the best, right! (There is, here, though, another special loner. Cliff discovers, almost covered by the rich forest floor, a publication of the novel, Moby-Dick, in search of something Big. Cliff, though, tosses away the book. Perhaps Bob had also tossed it away, after engaging its contents. Was that wise?)

And on to the titles. And on to the theme song. Jarmusch covering the text; folk-rocker, Sturgill Simpson, covering a changing shoot.

“Oh the dead don’t die Any more than you or I They’re just ghosts inside a dream Of a life that we don’t own They walk around us All the time Never paying any mind To the silly lives we lead Or the reaping we’ve all sown There’s a cup of coffee waiting On every corner Someday we’re gonna wake up And find the corners gone But the dead will still be walking round In this old world alone ‘Cause after life is over The afterlife goes on ‘Cause after life is over The afterlife goes on.”

We’re back to Bob for a sec, now pulling mushrooms. Here comes a very different energy, but at least manageable (if only laughable). Into the world of this Centerville, three Millennials from Cleveland have no interest to find more; but they need some gas. The driver and owner, Zoe, is in love her rare vintage car. But also, she “loves,” as played on the radio now, that catchy tune. In classic easy avoidance of serious reading, she streams the work.

“And the streets look so empty in the morning There’ll be no one out at night For the lights to shine down on For the dead will still be walking round In this old world alone ‘Cause after life is over The afterlife goes on. Hearts break. Simpson has a shot for every occasion. Where loved ones journey on At the thought That they’re now forever gone So we tell ourselves They’re still around us All the time. Gone but not forgotten.”

How about advantage? Here’s a tricky one. James Dean and beauty. A star with a short history. In this ridiculous asset, cute James here, and the world disappears. Moreover, the reflective Dean had become a gem. (Becoming a gem will be a consideration at our culmination here.) Bobby being the only gas guy in town, there is a moment of deep irony. Coming into the store, Zoe entheses, “Nice [horror photo on his shirt]. It’s really cool.”/ “I make ’em.” Then she finds that hot disk, for sale. Oh, that’s a really good CD! I love this song!” But the stirrings about the end of the world, in the little paper here, takes aback Zoe’s sense of the cool. “Earth off its axes?”/ One sneers, “You get a lot of zombies here?” On paying the gas, she calls him, Frodo. Very mild, of course. But Bobby had had a sense of (very shaky) profundity. He being a friend of a real philosopher; but he was, as with Zoe, merely streaming.

There is one more provocateur to understand. Quite recently the village had had a new undertaker. She had travelled from her home in Scotland to make a difference here. Why? Because she had up her sleeve a singularity. Singularities can be marvelous in the right hands. (Remember Dean, who tried to bring wit and love to slacker, Bobby. Was our wizard here, like that? Not really, but she had things going. What was her skill, was a brilliance in cosmetic’s, for the dead, the nearly alive? What was her failing was arrogance. Along with that, she had become a brilliant swordswoman. (Not in the in the same league, Cliff, the negotiator, would suggest, “kill the head.” (A boxing strategy.) Quickly over to Hermit Bob. “What a fucked up world.” (But Bob, there are a few who must be considered also. Running around in the bush is running away.)

“The Dead Don’t Die.” Oh the dead don’t die Anymore than you and you or I They’re just ghosts inside a dream Of a life that we don’t own The walk around all the time Never paying any mind To the silly lives we lead Or the reaping we’ve sown On every corner Someday we’re gonna wake up And find the corners gone But the dead will still be walking around In this old world alone. ‘Cause after life is over The afterlife goes on They’ll be old friends walking round In a somewhat familiar town That you saw once When you looked up from the phone Nobody bothers saying hi And you can save goodbyes Stop trying to pretend That we’re all not at home And the streets look so empty In the morning There’ll be no one out at night For the lights shine down on But the dead will still be walking round In this old world alone ‘Cause after life is over The afterlife goes on. Hearts break Where loved ones journey on At the thought That they’re now forever gone. So, we tell ourselves they’re all still Around us all the time Gone but not forgotten Just memories left behind. But the dead will still be walking round In this old world alone. ‘Cause after the life is over The afterlife goes on The afterlife goes on.”

This early (reckless) involvement by Bergman could not sustain very long. Our film today provides a dramatic form of his education. There is, at the outset, a vicious attack. In the tranquil, neat-as-a-pin village, a lady, namely, Mutti, had seen fit to take in a baby whose mother refused to touch. The violence, however, did not end with that. Mutti’s love and joy for the child, namely, Nelly, was to be arrested by the now eighteen-year-old girl rounded-up to become a decorative prostitute, in Stockholm. The girl had been given the idea that she would be a clerk in a chic clothing boutique. But in no-time Nelly adjusted.

Its follow-up is far more sophisticated. Most of the heavy lifting becomes the holder of one, Jack, a vague relative of the owner, and a seldom active actor. That he was a somewhat ambiguous sage, there   was, on the train back to Stockholm, his pandemonium of glee in noticing on the seats there was stylized crosses of the Nazi type. (Of course, the business-lady had joined in.) Nelly’s confusion here would by only customary.

Nevertheless, Jack had ventured into dangerous and astounding territory. He and the so-called mother (who had sent ahead a flashy gown for the recruit) attend the yearly dance phenomenon of the village, focused upon the music of the waltz. Jack, already drunk, asks Jenny, “Would you mind if I asked your daughter to dance?”/ “Not at all. You can dance as you like…” During that first dance with Jack (which created anger in her partner), Jack blurts out, “You’re very beautiful, the Belle of the Ball.”/ “That’s very kind of you.”/ “Feminine beauty makes me sad… I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other… You look so sad.”/ “Me? I’m not sad at all.”/ “Not sad in in the usual way. It’s a sadness deep in your eyes. Perhaps your heart is sad…”/ “You sound like a novel.”/ “I was going to enter the church…. To live in peace, far from the noise and the worry…” (Nelly argues, “It can be a bit too peaceful.”) He requests two drinks. He then adds something. “I call it, ‘Jack the Ripper’s Evensong.’ It’ll go down easily. I’m sure you’ll like it.” (Easy revolutionaries! The world is cluttered with them. Bergman’s career being dedicated to better than that.)

  The second step for the two show-offs fails to thrive. The “ripper” begins by mocking the sedate and rounding out a quorum for crushing the aged. Along the way, Jack finds a drum and a piano and a tuba. He and his jazz pianist and tubist delight the opposition within the basement. Some real dynamics ensue. Jack, particularly, has a heart for this music. How earnestly would he engage this? The mayor appears, telling the noisy crowd, “Stop it! Stop it, I say!”/ Jack comes back with, “What a bunch of crazy marionettes! And who pulls their string? Me!” (Out they go to the forest! The long summer night. Moreover, the drummer has been thinking about the resentment in Nelly’s dance partner. “What about that tall fellow?” / “He’d kill you!” (She kisses him!) Here he rattles off another skill, namely, a theatrical actor. (“Take that you clod!”) “There lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swards. Look thou but sweet and I am proof against their enmity. My life we’re better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of their love…” / “That’s my clockwork! You wind me up with a key.” (The wrong metaphor.) “Who winds you up?”/ “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? Poor man.” (She’s going to be a sensation in Stockholm.)/ “Don’t pity me. One day I’ll leave the puppet theatre and enter the darkness.” (Bergman revving up a long career of trouble. Does he have a finale?)/ A piccolo sounds. Down to the lake. She sits on his jacket. Nelly objects to his morose position./ “How do you mean?… I’m happy right now. May I kiss you. ” She closes her eyes to receive his kiss on the cheek. /”Once I lived under some stairs in an old castle in ruin. Across from the  stairs was a big broken window. Through it I could see the fields beneath the moon, and the sea, the woods and two bone meal factories. In those days I was happy. Now I’m all right, but I’m not happy. A dragon stands guard over me. It gives me everything I need in exchange for just a few pounds of my body and a few ounces of my brain everywhere.”

A presence to avoid. Talent isn’t nearly enough. A train wreck.  Having been exposed to the “very strange” (Jenny’s expression), Jack tries sanity: “But  it won’t be that way longer… May I kiss you again?” He takes her to the ground… “This is a moonlight life…” Ulf the clod sends Jack into the lake. Even what could be called uncanny had taken place. But the main event carried this foible: “You little bastard…;”/ “Leave me alone! Don’t hit me!”/Nelly yells, “Ulf, don’t!” /”What’s wrong with you? Leave me alone!” (Bergman at the outset [and forever], intent upon humiliation in its various forms. Where does such militaristic concern touch Bergman as warping his gifts?) The skirmish had rapidly discovered the worst in all of them. Jack: A cheap opportunist. Ulf: “You go to a ball and behave like…” Nelly: “I was so excited about the ball. This dress made me want to sing. I didn’t sing that much… I didn’t know what I was doing. And Ulf just stood there gaping. ” The last of this embarrassment falls upon the sweet semi-mother. “I won’t let you go. You’re all I have. No one else means anything to me. I’m so happy now…” Here a show of trashing the authenticity. Grasping what is real seems to be of no great interest. That it is lucid is a voyage of crucial importance. The most important and difficult challenge to master.

   The trampling of Mutti’s pride, and its sentimentality, has its own ironic overtake. But for now, the cynics are smiling.  “You may [Nelly] not believe it, but I   think of you often.” The girl replies,  / “I think of you too, Auntie.” / “You think you might call me, Mother? “/ “Perhaps…”/ “Well, let’s settle for Auntie for the time being…I wasn’t much older than you are now when I had you.” (Jack, no doubt, having noted to Jenny the near thing.) Casual touching and the paramount being big money and big looks. Nelly speaks from out of Jenny’s prison experience, conveyed by a quick moment of bars. “I know you’ve been through a lot for my sake.” (Mutti’s fantasy for the girl’s well-being)./ Jenny brazen, “Well, we all have our crosses to bear…I own a beauty salon, and it’s very interesting work.”

Mutti’s bid to find her balance occurs while unable to be satisfied with her musical chores and helping a woman with twins. Moreover, she had been notified that she had cancer. A generous friend covers the trip; and she comes to see Nelly. (Before that, significantly, she knew that her baseline would not be tranquil. “When I get back, we’ll sit and knit in the evenings. We’ll light a fire in the autumn chill.”) On reaching the girl’s bailiwick, she finds that Jenny was working out of the office that day. The owner greets Mutti with a cheery smile. “Welcome! What a pleasant surprise… Nelly will be so happy.”  Mutti tells her, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.” /”Not at all.”/ Mutti’s hands are tightened. “I just got into my head to come.” (Grasping for more cogency.)/ “A splendid idea,” (embracing irony). “Nelly isn’t home, but she’ll be here any minute. She’ll be happy to see you. Would you like to see her room?” /”Yes, please.” (A slip.)/ “Be my guest.” (Be my owner. Be my slave.)/ (Shadows in the movements of the girl’s supposed bedroom. Something amiss.)/ “Nelly seems to like it here… She’s often out enjoying herself. She’s made lots of friends. Everyone likes her…” / ” That’s nice,” the rural lady hopes.  Mutti, ill at ease. / Jenny twists: “She  has written, hasn’t she? I tell her often to write to you.”/ “That’s very kind of you.” /”But perhaps it’s hard  to find the time. What do you think of her room.”/ “It’s very nice.” (Steps attacking the naive, while one tries to thrive.) /”This  is her closet.” (Opulent. Overwhelming.) “I had  a few things made for her. Look at this!  A dress for a princess! Feel the silk! And look at her little shoes. And  she has new undergarments too. It’s so nice to give  her beautiful things. They look so good on her and make her so happy. Shall we sit down?” (Her broch has the form of a penis.) /”Here’s her diary…”/ “You read her diary?” /”No, I just leaf through it. It’s so amusing. Listen to this, for example. I watched Mother get dressed this morning. She looked so young standing naked before the mirror. Her skin looks young like mine.”/ “I don’t want to hear any more! I haven’t  read her diary once in eighteen years.”/ “That’s you, Miss Johansson.” (That’s missing the boat in both cases.) Little tiffs clutter the heights. Bergman’s dramatic hard truth. “You look pale.”/ “Just fine, thank you.”/ “Any news about the province?”/ “Oh, yes. I bought a geranium” (something real). Mutti might be weak in money. But her musical art (which she downplays) allows sophisticated arguments, which slaps down the simpleton, who becomes livid, along with the entrance of the girl: “This is wonderful!  Absolutely wonderful!” the girl emotes, embracing her real mother./ “My dear little girl. I’ve missed you so much. You’re older and more beautiful. Much more beautiful. And your hair! Back home, you had no hairstyle at all, really…” Nelly, wanting to change the subject of glamour (and its business), blurts out, “I had a feeling  you were coming! Did Aunt Jessie see you off?”/ “Nothing happens back home, sadly that is really the truth. But you should have lots to tell.”/ “My job is lots of fun. I’m always meeting fun people and some odd ones. But Jenny is so nice to me, always giving me things and spoiling me. I think she was very lonely before, the salon got busy.” (Advantage on the march.) The subject of Ulf comes up, and in a flash, Mutti has mooted that the girl has more to say./ “Nelly, what is it you’re trying to tell me… that’s so hard to say? What is it? “/ “Nothing.”/ “What could it be?”/ “Can’t you see I’m  just fine. That everything is fine…”/ “You’re not telling me the truth. You must tell me what it is!”/ “Nothing’s the matter, dearest Mutti!”/ Jenny comes in: “Dinner is served. I don’t understand where Jack is. He’s never on time… My half-brother’s son… He’s here a lot. He’s an actor, but he hasn’t worked in a long time.” (Maybe he should have tried becoming a playwright, like Bergman. Jack eventually will commit suicide. Bergman’s several emotional crashes follow the philosopher, Nietzsche.) Mutti  makes the move to go home that night. The hating hostess sneers, “It’s  a pity I can’t see you off. Will you come again soon?”/ “It may be a while…” (Nelly and Mutti embrace desperately.)

   Jack recognizes Mutti leaving the building. He asks, “May I see you to the station?”/ “Don’t  go to any trouble…”/ “No trouble at all. Let’s go!” On reaching the station, Jack rushes over to an exotic woman. Then he rushes to the timetable. Coming to Mutti, he offers candy. “Here’s your ticket and a magazine.” / “Thank you for all your help.” He sits down. “Not at all.” / “Don’t you want to go to that party with Nelly?” / “It’s not that.”/ “I see.” (Mutti does not see what Jack sees, sort of.  Jack at work, here, at the station, imagining the mayhem if Mutti where to stay the night.) / “But  you didn’t stay longer? It wouldn’t have been indiscreet for you to ask.”/ “What should  I have asked?”/ “If Jenny is going to a party… And I’d say, ‘No, she’s not, because she’s doing a trick at home’. Everything is one great muddle… Up until I met your little girl [‘I say ‘your,’ because she is yours, even if Jenny happened to give birth to her]… Well, ever since then, I’m no longer a moonlit creature in the moonlight… You understand?”/ “Not really.”/ “It’s not easy to understand. What I mean is…”/ Mutti’s turn: “You mean you’re in love with Nelly!”/ “No. No, that’s not it at all. I can’t be in love with anyone. I only love myself.”

With Jack,  there is that “great muddle.” A great muddle can find lucidity, if one stops insisting that only one is  good enough to know. His appalling overrating of  Nelly, a lost flake, brings to the matter of show biz. (Bergman’s dedication would want much more from theatre and film, as a study and an action, and a philosopher.) The remainder of this truly thrilling film, will set the table for crisis. One more time! “But Nelly is real, if you know what I mean…”/ “Yes, I do… She’s  so real that I become more unreal and start wondering why I live my ghostly life at all.”/ “Perhaps I understand. I could do with her as my anchor in reality. For my own benefit, that is. It’s a purely selfish point of view. There’s a price to pay for that…Oh yes! If you only take and never give, the penalty is severe.”/ “May I have a cigarette?… Your words are a bit upsetting?” / “With pleasure… I must say I admire you.”/ “Me?”/ “You’ve given and given, without any for yourself.”/ “Have I?”/ “Nelly’s always talking about you. She loves you. She’ll come back to you one day. Then you’ll have your reward! And then Jenny and I will have to pay…” (Like a choleric, this duo dashes into absurdity. Enthusiasm, hoping to make some sense. But sense requires courage.)

   “Jenny lives off me. And I live off Nelly. It’s all rather diabolic. But we must be content that we’ve had her on loan. And I’ll tell something else. Tonight, I’m going take off this stupid suit [zsuit suit], bundle up in a package and send it to Jenny. Ask me” what I’ll do after that? I’ll put on old rags! I’ll leave Jenny and that whole world. I’ll live under some stairs [the same garbage as when the ball]. Don’t miss your train.” (These two have already missed the train. How many others have missed the train?)

Mutti has a bad experience going home. He told Jack, “I’m so worried. Something’s going to happen, but I don’t  know what.” What happens is the marriage of Jenny and Ulf. (It’s a matter of perspective.) But the bad experience will spoil the ride. And then she’ll be ignorant. (Mutti’s bad night: It begins promisingly. In the sleeping car, her berth was connected by a younger woman. She listened politely to, “I’ve been to see my grandchildren.” The drama at the solon and the station made it impossible for her to sleep. Therefore, she began to desperately look for her highlights: Jenny, a pliable child; piano playing with the child. “You see, I’m not  your real mother…” (Never look back.) “I didn’t want to tell you. It would only make you sad…I sold my books so she could have a dress… I only love my self… I could do with her as my anchor of reality…. For my own benefit… Dear Lord, why is this happening to this old woman. I always thought I loved the girl for her own sake. Why else have I existed… Only one front tooth…Dear Lord, take these thoughts from me. I don’t want them! I can’t bear them!” (The train pounding. Black smoke. No easy action!) Mutti’s berth. Hands tight. Hands pushing up into the young woman’s back. “Help me! I don’t want to die!” The calm woman comes down. “Please help me!” the one in disarray, calls out. “I can’t bear it!”/ “Calm down! It’s probably something you ate… There, have a little water. There we are…” (Are they there?)/ “Goodness me…”/ “Keep the light on, and you’ll be able to sleep…”

   After the jag of the bogus of the magic bimbo, Mutti’s new policy is, “There is nothing anyone can help. It’s something everyone has to go through on their one. No one can help you through it.” Jack’s  way, now, was the way of sentimentality. Nelly opens the blinds, somewhat. A knock on the glass, and he’s in business. She asks him, “Please don’t smoke in here. Jenny doesn’t like it…” Jack ignores that, tossing his spent match on the floor. “This place is fantastic.”/ “Why?”/ “All these severed heads [of mannequins]… I’d like to come here when it’s full of women. I’d look in their eyes and say, ‘Tell Jack everything…’” (A mirror presents two Jacks. He pulls out a gun.) “Why don’t you say that to Jenny.”/ “Please don’t mention her name…”/ “What’s wrong.  You’re not your usual self… I asked you not to smoke.”/ “Sure… Not my usual  self, you say?” Jenny comes in. “You’re not your usual self. You’re not happy, Jack. What’s wrong. Did something happen?”/ “There’s one person I love, and it’s  her.”/ “Why don’t you leave her?”/ “I tried to stay away a few days, but I couldn’t.”/ “Why?”/ “Don’t ask when I don’t want to answer or I’ll leave again.” (Jack into a murky showroom. Long shadows. Those  shadows more substantive than them. He holds her, pushes her.)/ “Don’t touch me. I’ve kept my distance, and I’ll go on doing so. Why are you badgering me like this? We don’t love each other.”/ “I don’t know. I only know you’ve changed everything for me, so it’s your fault.” / “ ‘Poor Jack,’ I’ve said that too often myself.” /  “I can’t go on. I can’t bear another day of grinning. I’m going to kill myself!” (His shadow, smallish.) “No, now I’m just acting. Although I always carry a revolver in my pocket.” (Shows the pistol.) “ But I don’t know if it’s to impress myself or to scare a young thing like you. Or if I’m actually serious about it. I really don’t know.”

   Jack looks for a showy exit to overcome his humiliation. His humiliation in being routed by the elements concerns some wit. But this trial will only smile upon the strong. “We get just what we want, and we pay the price too.”

Jack and Nelly opt for sentimental melodrama. “You can help me, Nelly.” / “How.” / “Take me by the hand, lead  me to the police and say…This boy wants to turn himself in for murder… He murdered a girl he was living with… She was pregnant. He turned on the gas and made it look like an accident. It was all very ingenious… I couldn’t help it, Nelly.” Not surprisingly, Jack plans to be a prisoner… Tomorrow! Jenny, coming back from another room completes shooting down the fakery. “How long has this been going on?/ Like a  child, he yells out to Jenny, “Don’t answer her!… Go away!” Jenny, in rare lucidity, responds with, “No, I think I’ll stay.” / “Is that so? Then stay. Forgive me, Nelly…” / “You mustn’t listen to Jack. I was a fool to think I could have him in the house. He’s a sick man. Don’t listen to him. Perhaps he told you about murdering a girl… and had to end his moonlight life. Perhaps he said you were his anchor in reality… How many women do you think he’s said that to?” (Shadow of a dog.) Humiliation. The serial goof. But now only a real deal can salvage his stature. More scuttlebutt from the dying man. “You’re not telling the truth. You brought me to make your lover. You were getting too old. No one wanted you. No one.” / “Jack you were afraid of being alone. I was to be your escape. And you brought Nelly here for precisely the same reason.” / “You’ve never been any good. I only let you stay out of charity…” (Bergman’s theatrical dance.)

Humiliation  with only that one step of a player. “I’m leaving.” / “Are you?” / “Yes, goodbye.” / “I suppose you’re going to shoot yourself. I hope your little cap gun is properly loaded. Do you know where your head is, so you don’t hit something else?” / “You’re quite right, my dear. I probably won’t shoot myself. People like me don’t kill themselves. It wouldn’t be in keeping with my style. Good-bye, Nelly.” A few moments after, the women hear the gunshot. He chose the sidewalk of the nearby theatre. An onlooker was to note that he was reading the theatre billboards. (Bergman, again, now giving a thumbs down to the competitors.)

  Resolution.

After covering the suicide in this film, we pretty much ignore the “happy ending.” Here we manage to engage that matter.

Due to the neutral status of Sweden during World War II, the setting here is prim and proper. Bergman’s setting of a lovely lake and carefully constructed homes has been carried in this way. “I’ll be unfaithful” [her mother’s way]. “You’re so naïve…” The last voice-over being,  “The stillness of a Saturday evening… The little town that is so small…”

Do we leave it at that? Or are there other possibilities beckoning? Two outstanding positions vying for our hearts have to be considered. One is world religion. The other is world science. Most of us find a haven within one or another, or in both. However, that disregards a significant constituency, namely the arts. Do they seem to be so trivial as to nothing but “entertainment?” Surely, one can distinguish the difference. Or can they? Religion and science would have no trouble finding their payoffs. Those of the arts, however, become active by attending to a sensibility that does not easily occur. Jack, in the film, becomes a fatality in that dangerous business.

Bergman’s solution was to encrust serious work, while the supposed Hollywood endeavor could thrill the armies. Perhaps not a thing of beauty; but a unique undertaking in those dodgy precincts. As we see it in its “sexy,” “violent,” “madcap,” “charming,”way, there is, of course, the real McCoy. Here cinematography takes us to another world.

In the darkness, three men stand on a dock. One is black, the others white. Their stance bestows them an intensity, as if danger. Lightning dears the sky. They are alert, to a point. In that same darkness, one of the protagonists, Johannes, a young officer in a sailor suit, just arrived, has a cigarette whose smoke bestows a white ripple. Another craft proceeding. The waters churning. Before that, a gangway. A forest of shadows along the craft. Along a murky sidewalk, a beautiful woman rushes out of a bar. His shadows on the facades.    (Now for the wide-open saga.) The other protagonist, Sally. Her room, being a play of a modern palace. Uncanny! His shadow on the door. Johannes sleeping on the rocky beach. A place to dream. Forest around. Birds singing.Two mirrors in his mother’s houseboat. (Making four.) The montage in his father’s room. Still life. Rippling light on the ceiling. Ceiling ablaze. The lovers on the sea. Ignoring the magic, as usual. Never nearly enough: planet earth. Johannes, just came back from a seven-year stint as a sailor, almost immediately encounters an old friend, a rather unusual friend. Or is it? She is a happy-go-lucky, middle-aged prostitute. As a stranger, one might not imagine her career. Here she addresses Johannes in the shadowy night, being ignored by him. (A moment before, along an open window, he heard, “It’s clearing up. Shall we bike to the sea for a swim? Just you and me? We’ll give the others the slip.” [Black monsters-imagery. Ignored, of course.] “Let’s hurry!” “Let’s hurry” being a trademark here, for all the world. Swedes at that era were a cliché of, “let’s hurry!”) Back to the coincidence, on the sidewalk. That active woman comes behind him, saying, “What’s on a sailor’s mind?” The protagonist tells her, “Nothing tonight, thanks.” She shifting gears, as she comes closer. “Don’t you recognize old Sofi?” The sailor lifts Sofi in a warm embrace! (Bergman forever!) “Of course! It’s old Sofi!”

Rather than stay the night where Sofi’s work had sustained two invalids, he wanders the town, and, as morning dawns he finds himself at the seashore. There he falls into deep reverie. The subject being the story of how he needed to get away from his family. (He was here for only a day, and then taking off again.) But, even more urgent, he had on his back unfinished business of his own. Johannes has a hump-back. He seems to be a bore about it. But he has some grit. He’s from a family of salvaging broken material in the sea. His family could be called trash. (Lots of  Hollywood 30’s “drama”. His uncle being the boss of the firm and his father the go-for. We see the former and his friends beating up folks at a carnival. Then we see the dad with his friends attacking the uncle’s gang at a strip bar. For sentimental reasons, the dad is going blind from hits on the head. [Blind, what a word!] Then there is Sally, girlfriend of both of them. The mother of Johannes tries to be pleasant.) In his teens the boy was, as it were, smitten by Sally. So much for box office!

   Let’s see some life! At a glance, the go-for seems to be entirely thick (as two short planks). He had installed for Sally a flat where Sofi seemed to be in charge. But in fact, there had been a touch of magic, transforming a hell-hole to a savvy home. (Later on, the go-for will be exposed to humiliation, allowing us, in his weakness, to appreciate his inner sanction of high design. And be careful of seeing this film as a beginner’s work.) Here’s the heart of this surprise. At Sally’s digs, he opens another inner sanction, another moment of the meaning of his life. The meaning of his life is to run away with her to the tropics. There is, in a special area, displays to convey what he means. There are photos of Tahiti. See the palm trees. This is from Ceylon, an island off India. Sailing at night into a harbor gleaming with lights… the waters dark and calm. And the air has a strange scent, very different from here. A kind of wild smell that makes you wild too… There are palm trees there, too. And this is dried shark skin. (How far can the exotic go?) There are corals, seashells from the Pacific. Pink and white corals, seashells of every color and size. This one’s light blue. This one changes color as you turn it in the light…” Sally calls out, “Look at that!  Listen… [the shell]…” She continues, “It’s murmuring. That’s the sea murmuring inside.” He adds, “I can listen to that seashell for hours at a time…” (Other Bergman films; and films instrumental by film writer, Tonino Guerra, as with,  Amarcord [1973], come to bear along this magical source.) “Every night I put on a shell up to my ear…” But now an abrupt turn. Grotesque figures in stone, to suggest that the idyll is faulty, chockablock with failing… “And it’s as if a voice whispers to me not to stay here, to set out to sea… With every passing night, the voices around me grow clearer and clearer.”/ He tells her, “Keep it! (The shell.) It will speak to you just as clearly. I know it will. You long for something else, too.”/ “Yes, I long for something else!”

   Grand thoughts, evaporating. Evaporating in dispirit ways. It turns out that the go-for would be a strong enthusiast. It also turns out that Sally would not be a strong enthusiast. However, his passion could be reckless, a stance lacking that precision needed to cover the complications. On the other hand, Sally’s remoteness may involve tackling the full toil of the matter. Here comes the big wild.

It begins badly. Mister Tahiti bullies his son and his wife. He tells her, “I’ve tried, Alice.” (Tried to do what?) Johannes tells Sally all about Africa. “Sailing at night into a harbor, glimmering  with lights, the water dark and calm.” She asks, “How do you know all that?”/ “I’ve read about in books…” This emboldens him to invite her to his inner sanction, a wrecked windmill, far from what is called civilization. “I’ll show you  something fun.” Into the rowboat. Glistening waters, how far can they go?  She  asks, “You sit up here all alone?”/ “No.” / “Who do you bring?”/ “I imagine someone I can talk to, about my thoughts and my dreams…” / “What do you want most of all?” / “To be rid of my hump.” / “You’re just a bit round-shouldered.” (Has she posed a test? “Most of all…”) She quickly opens another matter. “I’ve been wondering about something.”/ “What.”/ “Your eyes. They look so sad.”/ “Do they?”/ “It makes me wonder why you’re sad.”/ “I don’t know.

 Maybe  I was born to be unhappy and make others unhappy.”/ “You mustn’t ever give up…”/ “I never will.”/ “I know you won’t.” (Out of the blue, we’ve reached a bend in this scenario where theatre overtakes film. Sally (silently) abandons her study of the boy and becomes candid about her shortcomings.) “But I’m lazy and apathetic…You’re not like that at all.”/ “I’m going to get free of everything that’s holding me back. You just have to be determined as hell.” (As if that’s enough.)/ Sally’s retort: “I’m never determined as hell about anything.”/ “Are you in love with my Dad?”/ (She becomes distraught.) / “Why do you ask?”/ “I’m thinking of my Mom. It can’t be much fun for her.”/ “You wish I wasn’t here.”/ “I like  having you here, but Mom’s getting sadder and sadder.”/ “You needn’t worry. I don’t love your father.”/ “Is there someone else?”/ “No, no, no.” / “What did you do before the variety show?”/ “I was poor… What do you think? You stop caring about others.” [Sofi didn’t.]/ “I still believe there’s something good and true…”/ (She laughs.) “Do you, do you… I guess we’ll see.” (I guess Sally is a wild card. Better than nothing. Think of the shell.) After the spate of cynicism, she blurts out, “If I could fall in love with someone, I’d fall in love with you…” (She also insists, “I’m completely crazy!” There you are, Hollywood!)

   Many changes now occur. Few of them really matter. On the basis of that ambiguity, Johannes cruises back to port being another man. His father slaps him. The boy slaps, for the first time, back. Such a setback puts him in his modernist studio for two days. He then devises an underwater escapade for his son, which would, hopefully, become a murder. The plan fails (as screwballs would), the go-for rushes to the Tahiti bedroom, smashes all his largesse, becomes a prisoner, breaks away from the police, hurls himself through a high window, and lives to be the cripple he always was. Or can intent failing have a productive role? (As a coda, the boy’s mom, Alice, settles in to do what can be done with her husband. Sally was to say, “I don’t want to end up like you.” But Alice may transfigure the artist in both of them.

The long reverie begins to end with Johannes finally leaving his problematic family. There was, also, the thought that after his stint in the invisible navy, he would return to Sally and sweep her off her feet, along a brilliant location. Before that, however, there is the long good-bye, not without problems, not without box-office sentimentality. They are in her dressing-room. She tells him, “I know what you’re thinking… but don’t say anything. Don’t think anything…” She rushes to him. “Don’t let all the seediness get to you. What you and I have isn’t like that that at all.”/ “I promise to take you away from all this, as soon as I can.”/ “That’s very sweet… But don’t make promises you can’t keep.”/ “I really promise. I give you my word…” (Cut to him getting dressed from her bed.) She  tells him, “I’ll be waiting each and every day. I’ll think about you every moment. It will be terribly hard. I won’t be able to think seriously about anything else.”/ “It’s strange. Tomorrow I’ll get what I’ve wanted all these years., but I don’t feel happy.”/ “You will.”/ “Think so?”/ “I know you will…” (Childish. Fine for television.)/ She goes on with, “You’ve gotten so much and put it all behind you.” (The rain and a bird—far more interesting than this babbling.) He  needs to tell her, “You helped me.”(Shutting up and reflecting; enjoying the moment—where was it?) He tells her, “When you showed up, I was one big knot.” (Was this a moment of love? Or a contract?) She goes on, “It’s nice to hear you say that, even though I know it’s not true…”/ “Why are you crying? We promised to be faithful always and to love each other. We hold each other tight and feel both happiness and unhappiness”/ “If only it could last!”/ “Of course  it will last.”/ “Yes, for you. You’re upright and clear. But I’m afraid of tomorrow and the day after.” She goes back to sleep. The shell in sight; and his shadow over her body. He leaves. Cut to the docks. He carries something in a paper container. He approaches his mother. Whatever was in the paper, he decided not to give to his mother. (A gasping sound covers the docks. The sea, large waves, whitecaps.) He hears, “Jeez, I thought it was a dead body! He’s probably just drunk…” He wakes up painfully… “I’m perfectly all right…”

   He’s now intent on that action of sweeping her off her feet. Still in bed, she opens her eyes. He explains, somewhat, “Did I frighten you?”/ “What?… No…” (She’s troubled.)/ “Did you think it was someone else?” (A bad entrance.) She turns her back on the bed. She tells him, “Don’t look at me.”/ “I’ve been sitting here a while…”/ “You have your nerve!” (Her nerve pertains to that nagging sophistication.) / “I want to talk to you about something. Listen, Sally. This is important” (to hold a tone, while having the right wit; perhaps over the seven years, she had been making progress). Not a walk in the park. She looks up, alarmed. “We have nothing to say to each other. Go away! Leave me alone.” (His and her perspective involves the bars of the bed.) He plows along. “I have something important to say that’s been on mind.”/ She rudely, arrogantly, tells him, “Then say it quickly and leave.” He tells her, “You know why I came back at all?”/ “How would I know?”/ “You remember what we said that night before I left seven years ago?”/ “No.”/ “I promised to come and take you away as soon as I could. I gave you, my word.”/ “What of it?/ “Here I am… Put this on and come along. Hurry.” (American screwballs did this sort of thing in those days, with many kudos. But this is Bergman’s Sweden and nobody’s laughing. Recall Johannes is of a family deep with violence, not necessarily physical.)/ “I don’t want to.”/ “Why not. You said you’d been waiting for me. So, you realize it’s impossible. I don’t understand.” (Bergman playing with freaks for Hollywood. But Sally’s ontology is not for laughs.) She tells him, “You’re dumber than I thought.”/ “Perhaps, but you’re coming…” What really comes to light is wild screaming and great faces.  She tells him , “Don’t argue! Just go to hell! I don’t want to, dammit!”/ “Yes, you do! You’re just afraid!”/ “My life was fine. Why can’t you just leave me alone.” (A critical error on her part. Of course, her life was not “fine.”

 No doubt, her reflections could yield some enjoyment. But there would be many unfinished snags. Tell the stiff about that, and maybe he’d reconsider. But as a bimbo it’ll by forever.) / The collector tells her, “You remember when we first met. How you took my side and helped me?”/ “Why won’t you just go when I ask you to?/ “It’s my turn to take care of you, and I can do that… I’ve  missed you all these years. I care for you as much as ever.”/ “She yells, “I want nothing to do with you! Just leave!” Sofi comes in with, “What’s all this?” He tells her, “We’re talking.”/ “I thought you were slaughtering the girl…  He demands, “Shut the door.”/ Sofi tells him, “You’ll get us evicted.” (He’s holding her upside down.) He calls for shutting the door. He also tells Sally, “Listen to me, we both saw what happened to my Dad. That mustn’t happen to you. You have to get out when things start closing in, not just shut yourself in and grow more and more afraid.” (All his indistinct threats.) “You have to get through it, even if things seem hopeless. Or else it all grows up around you, with no way through… and you end up leaping out a window… Listen to me, Sally…” She fiercely cuts in. Then she runs to Sofi’s part of the sprawling flat. She locks herself in the bathroom. He yells, “Open up, for Christ’s sake! Don’t be stupid! Open up!” Sofi tells him, “Let her stay in there!”/ “Get away or I’ll punch you!… Open this door!” (He hammers on the door.) Sofi  says, “He’s gone mad!” Sofi’s friend says, “What is all this about?”/ Sally tells him, “I’m not coming out! I’m staying in here until your boat sails with you on it!”/ “I’ll break the door down.”/ “I’ll jump out the window!”/ Sofi tells her, “There’s no window in there.” He smashes down the door./ “You see now that you can’t get away.” He caresses her head. “Suit yourself. I’m not worth having….”/ “You can’t be the judge of that.”/ “I don’t even know why I’m arguing. If you want me, you can have me. I’ll leave when you tire of me.”/ “I promise… Would you pack up your things… I must say, there’s never a dull moment with you.” (Their embrace involves exertion.) They board a snowy ocean liner. Their gangway resembles the 1983 film, And the Ship Sails On, by Fellini and Guerra (especially Guerra). The latter being a great admirer of Bergman. Three consecutive soaring seagulls present an ironic denouement.

   Along with the film, Crisis (1946 [coming next]), our film today involves the situating of Bergman’s entire career. The woes of Sally are the woes of tangling with a planet of perverse sheep. His war against his father’s church was only part of the misfortune. Murderous religion was bad enough. Murderous science (as a religion) would be even more calamitous. There are of course many virtues in the marches mentioned.  The slight about World War II and fascism would be a lack  of self-control. But Bergman was on solid (but rarely attended) bases, nonetheless. His work would be to open currents being grossly underrated.

   Grossly underrated is the arts. The arts have always lifted hearts. But the arts have never been seen to be supreme. Bergman would be an exception, yes. But I’d like to cite someone perhaps unknown to this forum.