L'eclisse Babel Bleu (or One for Shawn)

Three films that I've watched since the last post. Michelangelo Antonioni's (who just recently passed away) L'eclisse. It was heavy going, with all those long lingering shots that silently capture the turmoil of indecision and frustrated desire. It tracks the transitional space between the afterlife of one relationship and the birth of a new one, with the film spanning precisely the time from a break-up to a consummation. One of the controlling motifs and settings is the stock exchange where the male protagonist (Alain Delon) works and how its esoteric yet eminently precise practices obliquely represent the emotional vicissitudes that the lovers experience. It was the first time that I've seen a film with Alain Delon in it and I must say that he's really good looking. Click on the image for a really nice synopsis-analysis of the film.

Of the three films I'm writing about, Babel was the most disappointing. It's a great film if you're into bashing the white man and his thoughtless cultural colonization but there was a lot of inflated fluff. I think the feeling of dissatisfaction I have with the film lies in the way too many moments that are shot like standard made for Hollywood sequences, which establish event, place and character with too much certainty. At some moments you're thinking, "Ok, I get it already ... either assemble more interesting shots or move on ..." I thought, however, that the way the stories were interlinked without being chronologically synchronous (the film itself becoming a fourth dimensional Tower of Babel that holds together the illusion of a unified sense of time) was pretty interesting.

Bleu. This film is part of the Three Colors series of films that Krzysztof Kieslowski made in the early 1990s. I actually watched this when it showed in the cinemas. The interesting thing (for me) is the way I remember (or misremember in this case) my watching of the film. For the longest time now, I've always thought that I watched the film in 1989 with a classmate. This made sense to me for on artistic grounds as I've always thought that the trilogy was made to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution as well. (See, displaced memories always depend on elegantly dreamt up causes.) As it turns out, Bleu was only released in 1993. It's a significant shift for me because it demonstrates a certain repression taking place. I've always thought that we watched Bleu because my friend was a cool 15 year old who was extremely cultured and a committed Francophile (which he may have been). So 1989 was an appropriate date. But 1993 was a very different (and difficult) year for me and it turns out that my friend was probably being really nice in deciding that companionship, a movie in a foreign language, and the lovely Julie Binoch might lift my spirits. For that gesture of kindness, I am belatedly most grateful. I guess it may have worked its magic then, but sadly, I'm only placing it (the double "it" of the movie and the act of kindness, I intend to separate yet combine them - can I? - and don't want to use the plural demonstrative pronoun) back in its proper place amongst remembered things about 14 years too late. The film follows Julie Binoche's character as she tries to erase her past after the traumatic loss of her husband and daughter in a car crash that opens the film. Because her efforts at "running to stand still" only have the effect of the past haunting her constantly, and finally returning with a vengeance, watching the film caused me to experience an uncanny return of the repressed. Anyway, as this link suggests, that friend has gone on to great things, and as much as a dedicated blog post and a great U2 song can, I wish him well.