viii

If Alan Resnais made highly structured and architectonic masterpieces, the other crest of the "new wave" of French film in the 1950s is represented by an almost diametrically opposed spirit. Play, freedom, joy, the apparent lack of continuity and direction, are elements that combine to make films such as Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless such wonderful experiments in film.

Both are about society's marginalised - a troubled adolescent and an aimless drifter/conman - and both find pleasure in filming the little mundane situations that characterise ordinary existence. Taking out the garbage, running through traffic, struggling to light a cigarette, lazing around in bed. All these moments come together in a patchwork of experience. The camera sometimes lingers on a scene for an extremely long time, capturing conversations and encounters in a single take. We see the awkwardness of characters negotiating cramped spaces, without the cinematic convensions of continuity editing cut or the neatness of framing characters economically within the space. Characters move off the screen but the camera lingers on the empty bed, the deserted stairs, the abandoned window, hoping that our protagonists will return, so that it can resume its voyeuristic appraisal of what it means to be human, at the fringes of societal convention.

And what chracterisation and acting. The irrepressible character Antoine Daniol, who Truffaut felt was such a wonderful creation that he consistenly returned him throughout his film making career. The strange combination of a suave, reckless but increasingly alientated and desperate French con-man with a hesitant American student speaking stilted French, Godard's early recognition of a post-war clash of cultures. The conversations seem trivial but the unexpected erruption of emotional response to the most mundane comments are a priceless insight into the way we value what others have to say to us - even if we're on the run wanted by the authorities.

And what tragedy. Where the draw of new experience or the beguiling presence of someone so enchanting means you will risk getting caught to both escape and return to danger, in order to love.

vii

"Excuse me, didn’t we meet at that party last year?"
The worst of pickup lines perhaps, but the premise of Last Year At Marienbad, another Alan Resnais film. Nothing happens in it. A man tries to convince a lady that they met the previous year at a lavish mansion resort. She cannot remember. Throughout the 2 hours, he gnaws at her, feeding her, repeatedly bits of memory, describing what she was wearing, how her hands were palced, the statues that they stood under. All this shot in gorgeously arranged black and white, where the actors are props and the props – the interiors, wooden furniture, ornate paneling, baroque ceilings, unending corridors, lush carpets, polished surfaces, miles of mirrors, unopened doors and a impossibly symmetric garden - are explored incessantly. The tension arises from whether or not we remember correctly or accurately scenes that are shown over and over, not repeated ad naseum but layered textures of images that seem so similar that we ask, "Haven't we been here before?"
The actors are props. Many scenes have the cast frozen, standing statue-like but never statuesque as the protagonist find the moment, enact their little tete a tetes. A glass drops, shatters. Nobody moves but the waiter, and the camera stays on him for the excruciating length of time that it takes for him to pick up every piece. The shots vary – up close then a jump cut from high in the rafters – the mundane becomes pregnant with tension as the rest of the world stops.
The third character. The lady’s lover or husband? "Let me show you a game that I never lose." "If you never lose it is not a game." "I can lose – but I never will." The running action motif, that simple game where sticks, cards, tokens are placed in a rows then eliminated, the loser being the one forced to pick the last one. Played over and over with a variety of opponents, in different spaces – always a climax – will he lose? "I never will" he fires a gun – at her? In the bedroom. But she is left, standing and unsure at the end of that impossible garden that casts no shadows, wondering if her memory, which has come to believe she did once love, serves her well.

v

v - 2/6/2004






my feet hurt. i've got corns. i can think of several reasons why.

1.  didn't wear proper shoes during the dec hols and lounged around in flip flops too much. now that i need to wear proper shoes everyday - my feet used to them and are thus rebelling. 

2.  I'm fat.

3.  I'm thirty this year.

of course the last two reasons are just standard replied for everything that isn't quite pleasant for this year.  And yes I just realised that the kids I'm teaching this year are born in the year of the tiger as well - making them a whole zodiac cycle younger.  Wow - what was I doing when they were born? 

Avoiding having to do assessment books for the PSLE.  Raising money for the ACS building fund.  Riding on the 154 trying to convince one of my best friends not to betray us all and go to RI.  Playing tennis a lot.  you know - i really can't remember that much.  Maybe I'll fair better if I just stick to today.

ah - yes did my part for the PAP.  sent out 100 leaflets to the kids for them to sign up with the feedback unit.  I even had a nicely placed quote at the end of my instructions to the CT Reps about playing an active part in building the kind of society we want.  I don't suppose anyone will bother with the leaflets.  Of course with my legendary administrative incompetence, I parcelled all the leaflets out and stapled them into groups for distribution, only to find that I had about 40 left over.  I'll probably have to dump them because if they sit on my desk too long someone will think that I've been sitting on work ... 

I realised also that I'm an amazing procrastinator.  I looked at a kid in class and knew that I had to ask him for work that he owed me.  But I didn't.  Saw him later again - and remembered again - and didn't.  What's going on?  Some sort of strange assurance that consciousness is all?  Or do I predict, on some level, that he's going to say that he's not done the work and I'll have to ask him why and enact that whole ritual ....

I got a great idea for pple who don't bring their reading stuff for reading.  Came to mind during one of those periods today.  It's what the Head of Lit used to do to his students who didn't prepare for Lit tutorial at good ol NUS ... I'm looking forward to springing it ...

 

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*smiles* Sounds Diabolical, can't wait to see what punishment you bring down on the unsuspecting...wait...AHHHHH I forgot my homework...lol Good luck with your students and your corns for that matter. [Buggyone]

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I wish MY teacher wrote an online diary. Sometimes we forget our teachers have lives i guess. I forget that all the time till I read your stuff. [Contusion.]

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Could I borrow the Full Metal Jacket show? :)

Hope your feet get better soon.



- The Callous, Cynical Bastard

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hmm. Open book pop-quiz? :-) [Tempest Blue]

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have you been showing FMJ to 'dem kids again?? *tsk tsk* i wish you proscrastinated more when you taught us, that way i wouldn't have had to decline politely each time ;)



wotcher gonna do? make them write a story?



-fey

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oh yes, roar roar... haha...

oh dear, what evil ideas have E.Lit teachers at NUS been putting into mr lim's head? must be rather nasty... =S

^_^ [moi~]

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had a corn last year. dug it out with a penknife. very painful - not recommended.,

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vi

Hiroshima Mon Amour is as pretentious viewing for a Saturday afternoon as any film gets. A late 1950s French film shot in black and white that depicts an intensely erotic two-day affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect, that takes place in Hiroshima fifteen years after the bomb with flashbacks to German occupied France, is bound to draw accusations of being over-determined and too artificially self-conscious. But it works. The haunting music score and the beautifully composed shots of people lounging in empty, deserted spaces, grappling with the past makes for delicious viewing.
The opening montage sequence – the bodies of the lovers wrapped up with each other against shots of Hiroshima after the bomb – is a powerful reminder that the personal always partakes of social and political memory. As the film proceeds, the female protagonist, a french actress Elle, relates the affair she had in WW2 with a German soldier – "I was barely 18 and he was 23" – and the subsequent ostracism that she suffers at the hands of her parents and the community. The flashbacks of the beautifully spartan French countryside – "In France the Loire is known for its beauty" – stand as an effective contrast to a Hiroshima that twinkles late into the night. It is a Hiroshima that wants to forget the past and rebuild itself, but remains "haunted by the day of ten thousand suns". In a bar the couple sit, as the Hiroshima night sky is dominated by a replica of the Effiel Tower. A strange meshing of cultures, a strange thwarting of the ability to forget.
And they speak to no one else. Even when they talk to each other – he asking the questions, she painfully remembering – they seem to barely notice the presence of the other. In a particularly memorable scene at the train station, they sit on a bench with an old lady between them. In a rare moment of naturalism, the old lady asks the architect, "Is she from France?" and the camera lingers on a brief exchange where he explains that they are in love but very sad that they must leave each other with the coming of the morning. And on cue, the camera pans to the other end of the bench, to find that Elle has left. The intensity of the affair must not be spoken of. To do so exorcises the emotions that haunt it, that make it so destructively appealing.
It’s one of those movies that make you wonder about those little moments you’ve spent noticing someone else and wondering where their past resides and how the past has led them to this point. Get it and watch it – it’s in the Esplanade.