Dionysos

The slow pace of minimal action is filled with apathetic characters constantly waiting for an unpleasant resolution in a house that should be a model of a warm family idyll were it not for the behavior of one of the children. At first glance, Nathalie’s angel, even without her physical presence in most of the film's plot, "floats" in it like a black moth coming from the future and paralyzing the present. The indifference of the characters is only broken by the arrival of a strange wanderer. The film may not want to convey any message, and perhaps we are just meant to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of the house and its inhabitants. However, it is also possible to interpret a message about the growth of indifference and violence in an increasingly automated and alienated society (e.g., the washing machine, the educational system), as presented in the form of a radio broadcast of a pursuit of two teenage murderers, whose counterparts roam the screen in a slightly younger representation. It is thought-provoking in this regard that the male characters in the film are more emotional and action-oriented (Depardieu, the teenage murderers) than all the female characters, who, however, as mentioned above, will also "mature" to this stage. This is perhaps Duras' unintended contribution to the ongoing process of women's emancipation in society... The formal playfulness (repetition of the scene of the school interview, allusions to diegetic and non-diegetic music, and the camera and mirror games) is enjoyable, but after appearing sporadically, it is no longer further developed.

The core of the story is the relationship between Jean (J. Yanne) and Catherine (M. Jobert), which after six years of living together is slowly deteriorating. Nevertheless, this relationship is also enriched by Jean's relationship with his former (and formally never-ending) wife, Francoise (M. Méril). Initially seemingly insensitive, Jean - and I must commend Pialat's choice here, as J. Yanne played a butcher and a "beast" in Chabrol's film - gradually reveals himself as a balanced counterpart to the more devoted and fragile Catherine. Pialat managed to convince me of the reality of this fading love, but like in his other films, something is missing for me here. It might be that there is a certain distance from the story itself, something that would make this unique (and therefore non-transferable) love relationship less closed within its own cinematic microcosm (although this "closure" is captured very well by Pialat and could be a positive for someone else). As a result, the film would not partially resemble what we call "art for art's sake.”

The cut between shots disappears, taking with it the barriers between classes - from now on, the world is once again what it has always been: the only social field, the only stage without internal boundaries, the only stage of history and film, in which the constant rearrangement of elements through the medium of power and the camera moves the movement of the plot forward regardless of individual consciousness, but only according to the logic of purely relational pushing by historical actors for hegemony within the political space. The actors are collective subjects of classes, the driving force behind the struggle for power and emancipation, the method of exposition: mise-en-scène. When the proletariat and the bourgeoisie confront each other face to face, there will be no more artificial power-ideological boundaries to separate them - the violence arising from the desire of oppressors to guard their place and determine the place of the oppressed will be revealed in all its undisguised repugnance. It is at this very moment that a new medium arrives: the camera, to elevate the movement stemming from this violence into a movement usable for dance and capture this revolutionary Csárdás, given by the utopia of the non-place. The dance of the masses must be accompanied by music, and it is in this collective ancient ritual that the historical actors find strength for action.

Is it the infuriating abundance of overripe pleasures that begin and end within themselves, or the purity and simplicity that are never as simple as they seem because there is something else hiding within them? The headache is caused by the claustrophobia of details that cannot be visually processed in the same way, just as the stomach cannot digest an excess of even the best food... The image: Salome's body stripped of everything, including hair, against the backdrop of purifying fire... setting vengeance in motion. Vengeance, religion - no longer can one be here and now, enjoying life; it is necessary to see something more behind everything. Dance is no longer just movement, but a crime; the body is no longer an object of pleasure, but a (self)destructive idea. The moon is no longer just the moon and that's enough, but a sign that always signifies something more than the night, which should belong to joyous and colorful revels like those in a moving Rubens painting, but now it belongs to a principle that seeks something more in everything. Purity, therefore, kills; final purification and a flood of light can do nothing but torment.

The year is 1945, the end of the war is approaching, and the soldiers in the ranks of the Bulgarian army, fighting alongside the Red Army, no longer want to die in a conflict that is coming to an end. However, the war has not yet claimed its final toll - it is still necessary to confront the enemy. To the stagnant front, Soviet sniper Kolja arrives to help. A war-stricken Russian befriends a Bulgarian war correspondent and only with him and with a local little boy can he momentarily forget the horrors, death, and loneliness that he has been witnessing for years through the barrel of his rifle. The end of the war is near, but unfortunately, human innocence disappears along with it. The beautiful black-and-white camera is pleasing, but Burlyayev's melancholic acting performance was sometimes not completely believable.

What can a little boy who is locked in a room for misbehaving dream about? Giulio dreamed of a world without authority. When he, as an adult, symbolically walked out of the room, he immediately aimed his gun at the highest authority - the state. However, his fight kept something childish within it, an idea of a romantic rebellion that everyone will want to join sooner or later, and that a free world will be built tomorrow. And this world will applaud its liberator. With this belief, one can be free even in an empty cell, because imagination does not know any authority. The problem arises when returning to the real world (when Giulio walks out of the room for the second time, where he dream about himself and the future). That is because a person who has determined recognition from others as a condition for his own freedom cannot bear the fact that they will not live to see true recognition of their merits. His freedom slowly slips away... The major positive aspects of the film are the beautiful calm camera of Mario Masini and the performance of Giulio Brogi.

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

With this film, Wenders was not yet able to grasp the aimlessness of the "existential" situation as he did in his later films from the 70s, although he (presumably) attempted to do so here. The main character, a soccer goalkeeper (do not be misled by the genre stated here on FilmBooster or on IMDB because this film is definitely not a "sports" film), appears to be involved in a criminal plot at first glance, and later the film exhibits certain signs of the detective genre. Yet all of this is merely an intentional game with the viewer - the built-up "tension" finds its release in a surprising ending, which retrospectively permeates and explains the entire film: In the absolute lack of explanation for the motivation behind the protagonist’s actions and even the mere indication of his future destiny, we witness a metaphor for the radical lack of anchoring of a person to the world, an infinite field of possibilities that unfold before him but that he can never comprehend and choose with certainty (the true dilemma of a goalkeeper facing a penalty shot), and above all, in the context of the behavior of the main character as a whole, the incomprehensibility and unbridgeable otherness of human actions towards the Second Person, which is the viewer in this case.

A film's influence on the delirious soul of a disturbed character, a representative of women as a gender. The film is a raw depiction of the situation of the female psyche after she resigns from the cultural role that society imposes on her. More precisely, after her own identity, specifically her female identity, disintegrates both externally and internally, when she is no longer capable of internally identifying with all (or at least the prevailing majority, as is usually the case in reality) components of femininity that her personality was supposed to adopt. A succession of hallucinatory sequences and symbolic scenes staging the other hiding places of the asylum allegorically accompany us with this disintegration, from the protagonist’s youth to her present. We can speculate: if the protagonist's diagnosis is indeed schizophrenia, it can be said that her problem lies precisely in the fact that she was unable to incorporate into her own identity both herself - her unique self - and the imperatives of proper femininity. She is therefore condemned to the fragmentation of herself. However, this avant-garde film is not straightforward feminist agitation (it is quite experimental, so it cannot be straightforward...). The creators' political and ideological anchoring, in my opinion, is shown in a scene towards the end of the film, where we witness some kind of outdoor celebration, from which the adoration of concepts of anti-society or free communities detached from the oppressive repressive society out there can be clearly felt. Furthermore, as is shown to us, even sex is focused on satisfying your partner...

It is rather the mistake of the writer than the film's author that, similarly to his first film "La lune avec les dents," I cannot free myself from film science parallels, which easily degenerate into empty categorization. But even in this film, you will again feel the atmosphere of the French New Wave directors, which is even more significant because the film relies on atmosphere rather than plot: surveyors delineating the future highway site are a great metaphor for a film that stands on the immobility of space, as opposed to the movement (non-existent cars) of the story, as they move more through the emotions and feelings of the characters and the viewer, as opposed to the story and camera movement. The camera itself and the overall slightly sentimental and humorous tone, as well as the overall impression from the first camera shots, recall Truffaut's nostalgia for silent films of the past, and it is not irrelevant to mention the involvement of Marie Dubois in this Truffaut context. However, this film reminds me of not only Truffaut and his Jules and Jim but also another French bard, especially J. Rivette because the enchanting duo of the main protagonists more than reminds me, avant la lettre, of Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating.