Reading "Amour", part three

The last part of the first act is again a combination of the opposites.   The act ends with a powerful deed which comes out of the blue and follows several pages of fairly light stuff (in the context of what had happened).  Reading it I was wondering why is Haneke loosening the screw.  Silly me.  Relaxing breathing is allowed only to set up the stage for a powerful punch.  And so, the payoff at the end of the act brings back the vibrating tension established at the very beginning.  

The way the big event is told is sparse and elegant, if one can use such a word for this kind of drama:

ANNE 

(once she’s seated in 

the wheelchair) 

Why are you back already? What time is it? 

Georges has understood immediately. He closes the window noiselessly.

I am surprised that afterwards, as a coda to the scene, the couple discusses Anne’s dead. Suddenly the characters say what they think.  I am sure that further reading will reveal the intent of that.  Of course, the Haneke’s writing technique becomes transparent by now: if a heavy conversation is coming, than that which precedes it should be lighter.  That’s indeed the case, although the lighter comes from a funky funeral description.   Still, the differentiation of colors is clear.  

I just realized that I am reading it as if it was a 120 pages script.  Now I see that it is has only 68 pages.  This means that we are in the middle of the story already and that my references to the first act were off.  This also means that the screen pacing of the written page will be much slower than normal.  Interesting.  How is Haneke going to do that?

Reading "Amour", part two

Information as emotion

The next ten pages seem like the next round of a dance figure.  It starts slow and seemingly away from the main subject: there is a conversation between the visiting daughter and the husband.  The illness of the mother is revealed only at the end. It is done in such a way that it ceases to be the information delivery.  Instead, it is a powerful revelation of the trauma that has been caused in the universe of Anne and Georges.  Another trick consists of mixing the graveness of the situation (the operation went bad) with Georges reaction (yawning).  Quite disturbing counter move since we already know that he cares a lot, to say the least. 

Then comes a surprise move: Anne is brought home and Georges waits there for her.  This means this is their first time close and together, the first time he has to learn how to handle her.  This writing maneuver borders on not plausible - didn’t the hospital offer the husband basic lesson about how to handle the wife?  However it also heightens the tension and the awkwardness between the couple.  

We have just “witnessed” or rather read the second movement of a dance or a tragedy.  While the first started with a gloomy scene (the police enters the place of death), the second begins with a neutral family talk which at first has nothing to do with the already established through-line of the story.  

I can pretty much image what I would.  It would be worse: the hospital, she is being discharged, a doctor offers him some pointers how to physically help her moving around.  They try with awkwardness.  Cut to their apartment: suddenly facing the reality, they sit paralyzed with the realization that they are facing unfaceable.  She announces “no more hospital”. 

Haneke designs this movement sharpening Georges’ anxiety and Anne’s horror.  Both emotions seem to be voiced through their respective denials.   The end of the scene has a potential for unbearable pitch.  I wonder how it is directed:

Then she notices that she’s forgotten her glasses. She rests the book back on the bed cover and fishes for her glasses on the night stand.In the end, she manages it. Then she opens the book again, and tries to read.

Reading “Amour”, part one

The next several entries will be about reading and watching "Amour".  There could be spoilers.  What follows is mostly geared toward those of my students (there will be classes next semester) who would care to look closer at the Haneke's work.  I suggest to read the script first, then visit this site and only then see the film.

Perhaps there is a connection between thinking about the way to validate philosophical concepts and constructing emotional universe through scriptwriting.   Let's start with philosophy:

Approaching philosophy: 

As Milan Kundera brilliantly explains using as the example eternal return, the true significance of a philosophical concept can be fully grasped through the exploration of its opposite. 

Perhaps naming the assumptions accompanying an idea could the second methodological tool for the analysis of a concept. 

Furthermore, practical (social and psychological) repercussions derived from a certain theoretical view might as well be the third lens through which one can asses the value of a given theory. 

So we have three elements to evaluate the structure with: the opposites, the assumptions, the repercussions.  How does it work in the screenwriting structure?

Approaching storytelling:

I’ve decided first to read the Haneke’s script and only then to see the film.   Got as far as the page 13 and am floored.  The read is strong, clean, emotional.   The structure is precise, the movement is fast.  

Within the first three scenes we know everything: how the story will end and how it starts.  We know the problem, we know the scope of the emotional trauma we will be taken through.  What’s also very important we love the heros.  Yet, the heros are doomed.  We know it and somehow in the third scene they also realize that.  By placing the end at the beginning, the characters somehow acquire intuition.  Although they don’t know how the story will end, our knowledge of it influences their subjective sensitivities displayed by them within a scene.  

The opposites of what’s coming is the base on which the tragic slowly uncoils itself.  Those would be the concert, ride home, tea drinking, chat about the plumber. 

The assumptions that envelope the story, the glass wall that gets shattered so early on are simple: the status quo will go on, life is good, things must be nice.  

The realization of the repercussions of a simple moment at the end of the “tea scene” is what concluded the introduction and what totally shatters our peace. 

“She takes her cup of tea, as if to show how well she is, and drinks it up. When she wants to re-fill her cup, she completely misses her aim. She notices it, puts down her cup and bursts into tears.”

From this moment on Anne, Georges and every reader are in it together. 

Framing

A flyer from the 2012 London Sebastiao Salgato exhibit says “....to frame otherwise unseen realities...”.  “Unseen” is the understatement in case of Salgato’s social work: the realities that he forces us to see are those that we know of but don’t want to do anything about: the poverty, the injustice, the abuse.  

His goal is simple.  He says “... I want the world to remember the photographs and the people I photograph”.  Only that.  He does not say, “I want you to do something”, he just wants us to remember.  

Because the sins of not acting, the sins of neglect come from forgetting.  

Because among many wars that are fought within our minds, one of the most devastating or uplifting (depending on its outcome) it the war within our memories.  Collectively and individually.  

In both cases the results define our ethics and therefore our destiny.  

That’s why framing decides our humanity.  

Bad acting

Bad acting 

is not listening. 

If you want to act - listen. 

I would say listen to your partner in the scene, 

but if you are too self absorbed to do that,

at least listen to yourself.  

Just listen to anything

- that will allow you to communicate. 

Otherwise you are just racing, 

frozen, scared 

and ineffective. 

The noble futility

A woman is a woman 
by Jean Luc Godard

This film is serious.  Despite its intoxicating charm and lightness, despite its erotic infatuation with a wonderful actress, despite its tongue in cheek playfulness with the film tradition it seems to ponder the questions of what’s true, how we choose to act, how we construct our world.  

The way Godard stages and edits most of the scenes is all about exploring possibilities, about hesitation, about the drama and the elation of choosing one of the many opportunities that present themselves in front of each of our “next moves”.  

It’s as if he wanted to break through the annoying vulgarity of the “here and now” and to challenge the pressure of "what's next?".  The vulgarity comes in many shapes: physical and psychological and (probably) spiritual and ontological.  The last two are clearly my own calls.  

In a few telling moments Godard suggests the suspension of the physical laws or their vulgarity.  A girl in a split second of crossing  the door frame changes her cloths or - an egg thrown in the air stays there long enough for the character to come outside the door, exchange a few lines, return inside and only then to catch the egg in the frying pan.  The defiance of psychological vulgarity (or at least an attempt to make the point of its ugly existence) is the subject of Godard's repetitions, versions, contradictions that he uses in directing.  

He plays on the terror of the completed moment, on its fakery and vulgarity of a single action that is just one of the many possible and beautiful until its potential is broken by the unavoidable "next move ".  Every "next " once, executed, becomes trivial and faulty.   Every single one.  

The noise that many critics make about his “playing with conventions” seems superficial.  The musical convention for Godard is just a tool to explore what is, to explore the way a story can be told.  He’s way to clever to satisfy himself with just dancing around conventions and cleverly switching them. 

As I wrote the above, I thought that such a read could assume too much into his style, but then I watched his conversation with Dick Cavett. 

In that interview (I highly recommend it) Godard, about 25 years after "A woman is a woman”, makes some points that in my mind chime with the observations from this entry.  He says   (I am paraphrasing) that the speed and the distance are the two most important variables in seeing and taking in the world.  That means in translating our experiences into filmmaking.

Here are some other ideas from that interview: 

The image is always a result of the shock of two images.

Movies are the trains not the stations (responding to why he focuses so much on the space between the actors).  He wants to be a train. 

Space is the time you need to go to someone else. 

Most filmmakers don’t really need a movie.  They want to be in a business, because it’s an easy business to be in, but they don’t need a movie.  Godard on the other hand needs his films very badly.  He needs them to ponder whether a story can be told at all.  

Run not to be literal?

Fritz Lang in his 1975 conversations with William Friedkin said two things that may be connected:

“I run away from home.  I think that any decent human being should run away from home”

and another:

“Don’t show so that the audience is forced to imagine and become a collaborator”.