The Merchant of Four Seasons

From the perspective of portraying inter-relationship conflicts, hypocrisy within relations, class consciousness and yes, love, Fassbinder's The merchant of four seasons is a dedicated study, a masterpiece. Even though Fassbinder was clearly influenced by Sirk's melodramas, nowhere does melodrama creep into this movie, and at times even if there is a hint of it, it is deliberate, with reason, and annuls any immediate relationship with the viewer.To all the added complexities, Fassbinder adds more, namely sadomasochistic and "racialized fetish", which must be addressed too.

Hans, the main character, can get easily lost in a crowd. He doesn't look significant, he appears ordinary. He is a street vendor selling fruits and vegetables. Hans has tried his hands at a few things with failure. He remains detested within his family, especially by his mother, who, in the opening scene wishes him dead. Hans, living with his wife and growing daughter, is thus a marooned character, surrounded, right from the beginning of his life with hostility and division. Hans, after drinking too much, descends into rage and assaults his wife Irmgard who runs to her in laws. There, Hans, on confronting her, gets a heart attack. They reconcile and at his wife's suggestion, employ help for their struggling business. The man turns out to be the wife's recent lover. Feeling complicit and trapped, she conspires to have him thrown out. Hans runs into his ex-foreign legion friend Harry, who becomes his new help. However, Hans descends into a drinking depressive and dies of a heart attack. Irmgard seals a new alliance with Harry, and the last titles roll on.

Usually, story outlines like the above, become caricatures of movies for they do not in any way reflect the reality of the real. Fassbinder, it is said, made the same movies always. However, that is true of every artist, for in each work, each separate work, a thread runs through, which can only be discerned by a reading of the complete oeuvre. The naive reader or the viewer, like the writer of this post, must also be equipped with certain tools to read a work of art, a movie or a novel. This involves not only the historical dimension of any work but also a knowledge of how such things sustain and are born, and perhaps an inkling of the native climate from where such things attain sustenance and thus life. It is obviously difficult to know all of this, a thing expected from a student of cinema or a professional literary critic or theorist and yet, the average viewer must seek to redefine the lens with which cinema, the important cinema of this kind can be viewed.

Hans is a tortured man, a reject in society and a pariah within his family. I thought his treatment at his mother's hands was a kind of double-bind, a schizophrenic communication. She wishes him dead, telling him that "the best ones die young" ( Hans has returned from Morocco) and when he succeeds in business, she claims that she could foresee that. He meets the same fate at his brother-in-law's hands and his wife too. Within his family, only his sister Anna ( played by the dazzling Hanna Schygulla, a goddess of German cinema) confronts the hypocrisy within the family, though she too in the moment of reckoning lets him down. Hans' wife is unfaithful and a manipulator, quickly seeking new frameworks, new structures, though in a way she is a sufferer too. She is a survivor, while Hans does not survive. Hans does not survive not because of them but because he cannot, because he is Hans.

The reigning framework of this movie is a disjointed few existences, which are so and do not just appear to be. However, they are representative of the society that breeds this hypocrisy. Hans, known to his wife, has his "own love of his life", who brings a few bright flowers to his graveside. She, in a scene of brilliance, strips for Hans and lies on the bed while Hans feels out of sorts. However, this naked body does not emanate eroticism of any sort. It appears broken and disjointed, as if temporarily pieced together. Hans is thus a perpetrator of and victim of a malaise, a malaise of the middle classes, with him being the underachieving sibling, the loser, the victim, the culprit, the sufferer. There are many times when he breaks down, when he cries and is sad. We are affected by him, but Fassbinder isolates that feeling in us and then redirects that towards the viewer, which makes the viewer uncomfortable.

This movie has many flashbacks, in no chronological order, a task that Fassbinder leaves for us to untangle. Harry and Hans have served together and whilst drinking, Hans calls Harry a pig. Harry answers by saying that "we are all pigs". In another flashback, Hans is in Morocco ( ?), tied to a tree, being lashed by a native man ( played by Salem of Fear eats the soul). I was struck by the anomaly of this lashing, for it is being observed by Harry from a distance, who only later on shoots Salem dead. In a brilliant essay ( discovered more by chance) Barbara Mennel writes about Masochistic fantasy and racialized fetish in Fassbinder's movies. In a scene of homoerotic dimension,
"the native role, or the colonized man's role is reversed, and it is Hans who is at the receiving end". She argues, tracing back to Fannon, that
"the fetish of colonial discourse- epidermal schema- is not, like the sexual fetish....a secret. Skin plays a public part in the racial drama that is enacted every day in colonial societies. Thus, masochistic racialized staging is embodied in Salem, a role reversal is thus a masochistic fantasy". However, as in Fear eats the soul, this area needs to be explored further. It was evident in that movie that Ali was being fetishized, though any sadomasochistic element escaped me when I watched that movie.

Fassbinder wrote of the "exploibility of feelings, to produce in the viewer.....emotions, feelings and thoughts, which must combine to produce action, which is the true purpose of art". This movie, as Wim Wenders points out, reflects alienated subjectivity, disruptions. The whole of the colour schemes and camera work contribute towards this feeling ( I am not an expert by any means of this). However, it is easily understandable that his techniques are a social critique and yet nowhere, does he allow us to identify with the victim or the torturer. Hirschmuller as Hans is brilliant, understated and seething, as he dolefully looks out of his window, aware of many awarenesses, of his and his wife's infidelity, of haggling and buying and selling, possessing a certain knowledge, even of harmful drinking, which leads to his death eventually. Irm Hermann as his wife was a Fassbinder regular who also makes a brief appearance. Schygulla, bright beautiful has an important but short role.

The merchant of four seasons is a shining masterpiece, a jewel in Fassbinder's bright collection of cinematic treasures. I feel quite earnestly that it is my own shortcoming that doesn't allow me to understand more of what I saw. I also know that writing about a movie demands a craft that is different from say, writing about a novel. However, even Fassbinder might excuse this post.

Memory for forgetfulness

"For death is to see death".

I want a five-minute truce for the sake of coffee. I have no personal wish other than to make a cup of coffee. And coffee, for one who knows it as I do, means making it with your own hands and not having it come to you on a tray, because the bringer of the tray is also the bearer of talk, and the first coffee, the virgin of the silent morning, is spoiled by the first words. Dawn, my dawn is antithetical to chatter.
Coffee, the first cup of coffee, is the mirror of the hand. And the hand that makes the coffee reveals the person that stirs it. Coffee is the public reading of the open book of the soul.

Gently place one spoonful of the ground coffee, electrified with the aroma of cardamom, on the ripling surface of the hot water, then stir slowly, first clockwise, then up and down. Add the second spoonful, then stir up and down, then add the third. Between spoonfuls take away the pot from the fire and bring it back. For the final touch, dip the spoon in the melting powder, fill it and raise it a little over the pot, then let it drop back.......turn off the heat, and pay no heed to the rockets. Take the coffee to the narrow corridor and pour it lovingly and with a sure hand into a little white cup: dark coloured cups spoil the freedom of the coffee.
Now light your first cigarette, made for this cup of coffee, the cigarette with the flavour of existence itself, unequaled by the taste of any other except that which follows love, as the woman smokes away the last sweat and the fading voice.

Now I am born. Caffeine and nicotine, and the ritual of their coming together. No coffee is like another, and my defense of coffee is a plea for difference itself. Everyone's coffee is special.........Coffee with the flavour of coriander means that the woman's kitchen is not organized. Coffee with the flavour of carob means the host is stingy. Coffee with the aroma of perfume means the lady is too concerned with appearances. Coffee that feels like moss in the mouth means that its maker is an infantile leftist. Coffee that tastes stale from too much turning over in the hot water means its maker is an extreme rightist.
And the coffee with the overwhelming flavour of cardamom means the lady is newly rich. I can tell coffee from faraway: it moves in a straight line at first, then zigzags, winds, bends and turns on flat rocky surfaces and slopes.........

The aroma of coffee is a return to and a bringing back of first things because it is the offspring of the primordial. It is a journey begun thousands of years ago, that still goes on.
Coffee is a place.
Coffee is not for weaning, coffee is a breast that nourishes men deeply.

Coffee is geography.

Mahmoud Darwish, from Memory for Forgetfulness, 1982

The Leopard

Garibaldi's men are sweeping across Italy, the new order might overthrow the old, change, which is dangerous to some and deceitful to others, is violently sweeping across Sicily too, where the Prince of Salina, in his palace, surveys the impending new order or shape of things to come. He believes that change would mean that things don't change and essentially stay the same. These are the first glimpses we catch of the Prince of Salina as Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, a movie based on the novel of Il Gattopardo, written by Guiseppe Lampedusa, a Sicilian aristocrat. It appeared posthumously in 1958 and was followed by Luchino Visconti's film of the novel in 1963.

The Prince of Salina, played by a majestic Burt Lancaster is shown right from the beginning as a figure who, even inspite of his aristocratic hauteur, has an air of tragic sensibility about him. Living with his wife, children and his adorable nephew Tancredi, the prince knows that while violent change is inevitable, it will be ineffective. As Tancredi joins Garibaldi's men, the prince blesses him and yet seems assured of a return of the old status quo. The prince and his family leave for a holiday to one of their palatial houses in the countryside, a place swarming with revolutionaries, they stay for a night in a cheapish room, and yet the prince clings to his linen and ways with aristocratic fervour. The rebellion ends, Tancredi returns home, falls in love with the breathtaking Angelica, played by Claudia Cardinale and the prince arranges their engagement, in a way selling his nephew's family name to Angelica's father, a nouveau riche, a merchant parvenu. The rebels are now the king's army, the old aristocracy is invited to the senate, things have not changed.

The Leopard is a majesterial movie, an epic in true form, a sweeping panorama, a train of colours, a thoughtful paean to an age, to an idea. We begin with little sympathies for an aristocrat and we end feeling sorry for the prince of Salina, a kind of solidarity that has nothing to do with class or creed but the timbre of humanity. I might have expected Visconti to bring to his narration a Marxist sensitivity, as in Rocco and his brothers but nowhere did I find anything ideological in this movie, for while the prince does harangue, he does not preach, instead he does listen. The spectacle that is this movie, the drama, the lushness of the sets, the intimate details, the careful attention of everything one sees is the sign of Visconti's genius. It is not a period drama but a drama of a period captured with grace, with love and affection. Each image follows the other naturally, merging with the previous one without violence.

The hour long ball scene is the piece de resistance of this movie. When the ball begins, we are unaware of the drama unfolding. The genius of this sequence is time craftily mastered for an hour does actually seem a lot longer, for we too are a part of this lavish ball, as we follow hundreds of guests, as they partake of delights, young maidens and smartly dressed ex-revolutionaries dancing waltzes and mazurkas, and the new and old order exchange looks. This scene is an extravagance, a cinematic rarity and the colour, I repeat again, the costumes, the characterisation of each part of the ball in detail and effect is the highlight of this movie, something that cannot be even vaguely matched by Visconti's other films.

I was reminded of Edward Said's brilliant essay on both this novel and movie called A lingering old order. Even though Said' essay is on a different theme, that of lateness in style, there are acute observations, especially on the novel( sadly I haven't read it) and also on the movie. Said writes that "social disintegration, the failure of revolution and a sterile and unchanging south are evident on every page of the novel. yet, Lampedusa negates the Gramscian diagnosis and prescription. The prince stands for a pessimism of intelligence and a pessimism of the will. Nothing he does in the course of his work has any effect on the paralysis and decay that envelop him, his family, his class. The leopard is a southern answer to the southern question". Said goes on to say about the movie........

"The crowd scenes in the film, especially the Palermo street battles and the gigantic ball scene, testify to the prodigious powers of cinematic super-spectacles. The film's surface is lavish, large, expensive and overpowering. Visconti has said of this film that it is meant to be a realization of Gramsci's theory of transformismo, and this lesson is seen from the point of view of a prominent left intellectual and aristocrat, Visconti himself. This movie is in effect a wonderful costume drama whose mastery of cinematic technique obliterates not only the privacy of the past but also its very pastness, its irrecoverability, which is at the heart of Lampedusa's novel. What Visconti uses film to do to the Lampedusa novel is to add to it a sort of cinematically Proustian descant, the fin-de-siecle concern with overabundance, the leisure and excessive pleasure of the privileged class who do not give much thought to how much things cost".............

Burt Lancaster's performance is the driving force of this movie, around whom everything revolves and it seems so natural, so logical for him to do and act the way he does in this movie. He is as large as the ball room sequence, if not larger and yet, as he feels nauseous there, the fragility and impending death that he feels is effectively conveyed.
In the end, the prince walks towards the sea, kneels down in front of a church, Garibaldi's rebels are dying, the Risorgimento has failed, his aristocracy might survive for another hundred years, nothing has changed. He had rejected a senator's position earlier, for he declares that he lacks a politician's self deception. Sicily will not change, the prince declares, "our sensuality is a desire for oblivion" and we see him wishing for "perennial certainty". Even though the political concerns at the beginning of this movie are forgotten by the prince's personal concerns, Tancredi's love for Angelica, the ball scene, yet they are not swept away all together, for in the end and even during the ball sequence, we are in the palpable presence of things political.

I would have wanted politics to be this movie's main concern, but it is not. The prince of Salina speaks of jackals and hyenas replacing his order, and as Said argues, that might be us, the reader or the viewer. This keeps us at an arms length from him, for he is essentially an aristocrat and as Said further points out, Lancaster's performance and "authority derives from every other costume film made". Said compares Visconti to Adorno and Strauss and Lampedusa, as a theme of his book on lateness in style and says that their work "lacks embarrassment, with a certain profligacy, a desire to go the whole way toward extravagance, and an arrogant negation of what is acceptable or easy but also of a very risky yet adversarial pact with authoritarian systems".

Whatever is the driving force of Visconti's fervour in this movie, it is a true spectacle, a dream and a kind of movie which creates many myths.

Lolita, The justice poem

Because you took advantage of a sinner
because you took advantage
because you took
because you took advantage of my disadvantage
when I stood Adam-naked
before a federal law and all its stinging stars

Because you took advantage of a sin
when I was helpless moulting moist and tender
hoping for the best
dreaming of marriage in a mountain state
aye of a litter of lolitas

Because you took advantage of my inner
essential innocence
because you cheated me

Because you cheated me of my redemption
because you took her at the age when lads
play with erector sets
a little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indian took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy- lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse despair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die

V. Nabokov

Lines from the Testament

Solitude : you must be very strong
to love solitude; you have to have good legs
and uncommon resistance; you must avoid catching
colds, flu, sore throat, and you must not fear
thieves and murderers, if you have to walk
all afternoon or even all evening
you must do it with ease; there's no sitting down,
especially in winter, with wind striking the wet grass,
and damp mud-caked stone slabs among garbage;
there's no real consolation, none at all,
beyond having a whole day and night ahead of you
with absolutely no duties or limits.
Sex is a pretext. For however many the encounters
- and even in winter, through streets abandoned to the wind,
amid expanses of garbage against distant buildings,
there are many- they're only moments in the solitude;
the livelier amid warmer the sweet body
that anoints with seed and then departs,
the colder and deathlier the beloved desert around you;
like a miraculous wind, it fills you with joy,
it, not the innocent smile or troubled arrogance
of the one who then goes away; he carries with him a youthfulness
awesomely young; and in this he is inhuman
because he leaves no traces, or, better, only one trace
that's always the same in all seasons.
A boy in his first loves
is nothing less than the world's fecundity.
It is the world that thus arrives with him, appearing, disappearing,
like a changing form. All things remain the same-
and you'll search half the city without finding him again;
the deed is done; it's repetition is ritual. And
the solitude's still greater if a whole crowd
waits its turn; in fact the number of disappearances grows-
leaving is fleeing- and what follows weighs upon the present
like a duty, a sacrifice performed to the death wish.
Growing old however, one begins to feel weary
especially at the moment when dinner time is over
and for you nothing is changed; then you're near to screaming or weeping;
and that would be awesome if it wasn't precisely merely weariness
and perhaps a little hunger. Awesome, because that would mean
your desire for solitude could no longer be satisfied,
the one you can't accept, what can you expect?
There's no lunch or dinner or satisfaction in the world
equal to an endless walk through the streets of the poor,
where you must be wretched and strong, brothers to the dogs.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969

Why Bolano?

Why do I think that of all Latin American writers, Roberto Bolano, in the last twenty five years, wrote the only things that matter? It presupposes that I am familiar with all Latin American writing in that period or that I have understood or have been affected more. That is not true though. Far from it, I have read only a few but in spite of that, and this is so unreasonable, I dismiss their claims, for with Bolano, writing does not attain or attempt to reach a pitch of perfection, the frenzied stillness of sculpted art or the frozen imperfection of colours and canvas, but aims, within the mystical domain of words, the mellowness of fragile emotions.

Bolano the novelist, the poet is the traveler, the restless poet, the uninvited guest worker, the illegal migrant, the unrepentant lover, the destroyer of hopes, the nihilist, illusionist, faker, fool, but poet. The young detectives fleeing and chasing demons across a desert, their poems our poems, some written and some not, some etched on wooden bedsteads besides dirty linen, flushed with alcohol, steeped in nausea, always unasked for, sometimes forgiven, always poetry though. And rising from a world removed from us, these young men and now old and defeated poets, unpublished and unsolicited, unknown and unhung, unadorned and uncalled, write elegies, summons, a call for arms, within the world of fake and real poetry, for poetry happens sometimes, when you are fleeing from assassins or lovers, from parents or friends, or into the myriad pain of sunsets, the torment of meetings and the delayed torture of love.

Bolano who is Sensini or Lacouture, Belano or Lima or the poet who has thrown his pen and picked a brush or has hung his brush and become a night watchman, dropping into endless wells to save frightened young souls; or the writer who has thrown aborted loves away or has aborted and loved again or the writer who wants to jump into passion and has drowned into a misty love of alcohol; or that young or not so young woman, who loves and waits for that poem, which she believes she only find by prostituting herself. Bolano the male slut, the literary prostitute. There are certain elements of his writing though or lack of those, which I am not comfortable with, for if read contrapuntally, as Said would advise us, his treatment of native Americans is short and seemingly absent ( the insufferable gaucho for eg) but then, this ignorance or lapse in his memory should be not be forgotten or pardoned but understood within the demands of his fiction, which is essentially non-imperial.

The undercurrent of all Bolano's writing is despair and solitude, born out of migration and exile. thus, Bolano is the exile's writer, the celebrator of whims, the guardian of passion, the historian of failed poets. It must be said that he will only appeal to a certain reader, to a certain landscape, within a certain season of moons, for all of his characters are quite given to whims and fancies, of a strange nature, without the hint of those sensibilities that are reminders of new anxieties. For the essential Bolano character is a devout poet, a failed revolutionary, an idealist, a rugged hero, a brave but forsaken woman, a conjurer of hopes, a diviner of mysteries, running away, hiding her poems in a desert, giving up, giving way.

Bolano is the poet's poet, the writer's writer, and he only wrote elegies, one after the other, and in that train of elegies, in that foam and rush of regrets and love and exile and heartbreak, we have seen poetry and some life, and in this frank Bolano love, I must admit that I am unabashedly waiting for 2666, a book that is claimed to his best. ( In my several posts on Bolano last year, I have generally repeated what is written above, but the present post is mostly a remembrance).

Genet interview with Madeleine Gobeil

Gobeil: Was it in prison that your work evolved? Do you still steal today?
Genet : And you Miss?
Gobeil: .............
Genet : You don't steal, you have never stolen?
Gobeil : .............
Gobeil: Are you still in contact with your old cellmates?
Genet: Not at all. Look at the situation. I earn royalties from all over the world, you come to interview me, and they are still in prison. For them, I am a man who has betrayed them, that's all.
Gobeil: Is this a betrayal?
Genet: I certainly betrayed something. But I had to do it for something that I felt was more precious. I had to betray stealing because theft is a singular action, which I turned on, for the benefit of a universal operation, which is poetry. I had to do it.
Gobeil: You betrayed criminals and yet you are spurned by honest people. Do you like living in general disgrace?
Genet: It doesn't displease me, but it's a question of temperament. It is out of conceit and that is not the best aspect of my personality. I like being in disgrace......But this pride is foolish. I ought to stop at this. It is a naive and romantic attitude.
Gobeil : You believe in God?
Genet : I think I believe in him. I don't have faith in the mythologies of catechism. But why should I account for my life by affirming the things that seem to me most precious. Nothing is forcing me. Nothing apparently obliges me. Why then do I feel so strongly that I must do it?
Gobeil: And eternal life, do you believe in it?
Genet: This is a question for theologians. Are you a member of Vatican ? This question makes no sense.
Gobeil: So, what sense do you find in the life of a writer who wanders not from prison to prison, but hotel room to hotel room? You are rich and yet you own nothing. I counted : you have seven books, an alarm clock, a leather jacket, three shirts, a suit and a suitcase. Is that all?
Genet: Yes, why should I have more?
Gobeil : Why this satisfaction in poverty?
Genet : It is the virtue of angels. Listen, I don't give a damn. When I go to London, sometimes my agent books a room at the Ritz. What do you want me to do with things and with luxury? I write, that's all.

From Genet's interview with M. Gobeil, 1964

Clouds have descended

Clouds have descended, fugitive soul has got more tired than usual, hence the lapse in writing or reading. The mind seethes with tiredness, the written word leaps up with fangs, ready to maul a fragile mind. What use words or music when everything is so mute? I know that today, spring like day, has brought out many winter weary souls out into the sun, but night will follow soon followed by frost, by darkness again. And I, reckless and ceaseless will have forgotten how I feel now, and shall give in and abide by the rules, rules of this world, intimate rules between people and I shall wear a morning smile and an afternoon one and return to my misery when day has ended, when night has spread a huge sheet for me to writhe in and cover what is basically sensitivity, nothing else.

There is no desire to read anything nor even to write, so many others have written, and well too and besides what is my writing anyway, dust falling from sandals, snow that will melt, a heart frozen, a discarded love letter, a burnt out cigarette end, the last look in your eyes and that train that just left with you, forever? Why should I write and why should I read when it is of no use, even to myself, when my words sound so foreign, so alien to me, when this is only an affectation, an artifice, a loner's map, an ambitious writer's nostalgia, a reader's lust, lust for books, for words. Let dust accumulate on my books, let my shelves grow heavy with pain, the pain of pages unread, of pages read, of paper fish dreams and wet thumbs, of moonlit poems, strange foreign poets in strange tongues, translated into my lap, thrown.

Why shouldn't I converse with strangers in unpoetic tones, and find my own tongue, my own reasons to stop or speak, and leave art and criticism to academies, to those who write well and have formed a clique, a league, an establishment of bloggery? My books will look better untouched, unread, as they grow old and as I lose the will to read. I want to be patient and wait for spring and then summer and I want a tan on my face for the first time and I want to run along some coast and shout too for the first time, and say here I am, alone but like yourself, having rid myself of books, from you, of you and running to stand still. I declare that I hate some words, like ontology, like semantics, like philosophy and poetry too and the only words that will gladden me are sunshine in some meadow, beside a rook.

Can this mood last, can I win, can I stay firm, can I think straight? The obvious answer is no. But I will try and refuse to read, refuse to touch my books, for there is a heaviness inside me, a surfeit of words, a nauseous feeling, like Montano had, and I want to run away into nothingness and discover that I cannot speak and then how easy life would become? For all these writers, they wrote with certain certainties, while I know that there is nothing certain, so how can words mean anything certain and one touch, one candle drip, one match stick, one false step leads into oblivion and dust. So why think of plausible things and high art and thus why not leave criticism and literature to establishment critics and high academies?

Way

what is this road that separates us
across which I hold out the hand of my thoughts
a flower is written at the end of each finger
and the end of the road is a flower which walks with you

Tristan Tzara (1896 - 1963)

For a long time Now

This continues from before but the person is no longer inside his room.

For a long time, he had been wondering how he could actually describe how he usually feels from the inside or how suddenly a song that he wants to forget pins him down in a grip that could be considered a sign of weakness, for to be emotional is not being practical, and language that is ordinary, that uses words that are not his usual forte, could mean impending doom. He was also sure that his thoughts were not easily describable, for they were a mixture of misgivings and unmade promises, of sudden eclipses and unheard voices or a motley din of things that he lived on but only from the inside. And how could he consider it possible to give an example from a movie watched recently or a poem badly written, for the written and spoken languages are not the same.

He thought that I love you, if scribbled, seems like a confession while a partly meant confession of love is easy on the lips, for eyes and hands come to the rescue, detaching from his body a load, a weight that hangs heavy on his heart sometimes. It was also his opinion that his friends never believed what he truly thought about life, life that he thought was unliveable in opposition to what he actually lived, which from the outside looked easy. But then, how could this whole wordy experience be communicated unless the written word actually climbed out of his own heart, at that moment in time, whenever he felt that suffocating need. For at least he knew that the written or spoken word after the moment loses import in description.

These thoughts had been troubling him for long, even when days fell into his lap one by one rather than all together and nights came easy and gentle, and his window and his moon and his eyes and his fingers were not haunted. For he was haunted even if he did not seem so from the outside, but haunted from the inside, laid siege to by sentences and images, thoughts and ideas, memories and regrets and pain and a life that was rushing past him, a regret that he could not isolate and dissect, and say here is this atrocious hour of my life, where I was undone, undone by my heart, undone by you, you who did not know the difference between an elegy and a tear. Yes, he was feeling elegiac, but in a city of cement and parks and trams and trains, where the ideal bench or the saddest cafe does not exist, where there are no monuments for the person who cannot describe, cannot reach out, whose language and thoughts are locked in a platonic embrace.

And he knew, even this painstaking exercise of carefully objectifying his feelings came to nothing, for he usually forgot what he wanted to think right from the beginning for while doing so, he lost what he knew was important and forget entirely what he needed to think. So when they last met, he wanted to remember how she got up from the bench they had sat on, did she actually leave then or linger on, or did they both, now petrified of each other, say loud goodbyes? This, he thought, was a sign of a haunted man, but haunted from the inside, for all outward appearances he still could voice an opinion, even if half heartedly but all the time, thinking of the unstuck doors of his inside, doors that could crash on him, leaving him at the most with a ten line poem. For a long time now, he has been thinking these thoughts, but do such thoughts matter?

For a long time now, he has wanted to declare that his night and his palms, his eyes and his grip, his poems and his stare, his love and his silence, his heart and his solitude were the saddest, but how could he describe these things, for they only existed inside him, and these things must climb out from the inside, a haunted inside, because outwardly he was calm, but how sad from the inside.

Cobra Verde

Cobra Verde begins with an image, of barrenness, of scorched land, dryness, animals lying down, scattered skeletons, animals and humans perishing together and then we see Kinski, anguished, tortured, kneeling in front of a grave. The landscape seems post apocalyptic, beyond hope and repair. We get to know the Brazilian bandit Francisco Manoel, also called Cobra Verde, who strikes terror wherever he steps, but who is 'alonest among the alone'. The movie traces his employment by a sugar baron, who employs him to keep his slaves in check. However, Cobra Verde impregnates his employer's nubile daughters and as punishment, he is sent to West Africa to reignite the slave trade, in the hope that he will perish there. But Cobra Verde, resourceful and energetic, not only reorganizes the slave business successfully, he becomes involved in a local struggle for power, helping a local King to power by organizing an army of female warriors.

Cobra Verde becomes a king maker but not for long as the tables are turned and he, barefoot again, tries to escape which ends in failure. Thus ends his story but not before he has introduced a convulsion in this fiefdom, exposing intrigue, greed and hypocrisy amongst the power brokers back in Brazil, whose real interest in slave trade has not died and the supposed punishment meted out to Cobra Verde is just a front to profit from an exercise that Brazil had officially banned. The figure of Cobra Verde is distinct from Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, though there are similarities. All of them set out on voyages, for something, the three are crazed and manic in a way, given to rage and homicidal instincts, with an undying belief in their destiny and a selfish interest in achieving their ends, come what may. All of them seem convinced of their mission, thus to some extent deluded and fixed and also alone, solitary and brooding, quiet with menace, raging with passion, passion that destroys a lot of lives around them.

The movie from its other qualities, like pace and display is also distinctly different from the other two. Cobra Verde is less pacy, more reflective and gives the viewer more time to take in what is shown. The colonial fort on the sea, with its decaying wall on one side and the endlessly crashing waves adds to the melancholy craziness of Cobra Verde, as he jumps like a madman, teaching and shouting at his female warriors, who are as crazed as he. The desperation of the slaves, chained by their necks is conveyed in images as dark and silent as they themselves, against a sea that rushes towards the fort. But Cobra Verde sees this too, and in a rare moment confesses his loneliness, cursing the climate where in face of the external heat, his heart has grown 'colder, colder'. He acknowledges his 'existence as cretinous' and as he struts and roars, one thinks of him as a bandit, a mercenary, a loose cannon and yet somebody who is the symbol of a more depraved life.

Cobra Verde, unlike Fitzcarraldo does not drink to Verdi or Rossi but 'to our ruin.......slavery is an element of the human heart', he reflects from the fort as he loses his hold on the natives. As his other country man laments of slavery as a misfortune, Cobra Verde, his eyes burning, silences him by calling it 'a crime'. We see a distinct movement from Fitzcarraldo to Cobra Verde and enormous similarities. And strangely, I felt more sympathetic towards Cobra Verde, a bandit with no respect towards human life but given in to metaphysical ravings, war like dances, rage and anger and madness. While he surrounds himself in silence and solitude, others around him feel the heat. Perhaps the murders that are unleashed on the innocent by manic ravaging men are actually perfected first in the heart's of men, in their inner mess, in their solitude. The megalomaniacal voyages that Herzog has shown with such perfectionistic detail are perhaps symbolic of the human quest for things beyond endurance.

As a piece of cinema, Cobra Verde, like the other Herzog movies, is eminently great, from every point of view. The background score by Popul Vuh adds a ghostlike serenity to a landscape that has already died. It is lazy to excuse and forget excesses or even a crime to forget crime. One must however try to see the context in which things are perpetrated. I think that Herzog has depicted in these three movies a certain approach towards some puzzling aspects not only of history but human behaviour too. However, in Cobra Verde, his stance is more dedicated, more sympathetic, more melancholic and more philosophical towards themes like exploitation, slavery, war, conquest. The exploitation of native Africans and slave trade here are against the background of the inner life of a man, who remains unknown to us, only that he is a bandit, 'alonest among the alone' and is also called Cobra Verde. He is alone, the essential traveler, though on the wrong side, sometimes wicked, mostly selfish. We leave him writhing against sea waves, he hoping to perish, I unsure.

Cobra Verde was Herzog's final collaboration with Kinski and perhaps marks the end of a consistent theme, tackled in Fitzcarraldo, and continued in Aguirre. One could think of these three movies as a trilogy, though I watched them randomly but I must point out that it perhaps pays to watch or read an artist's work in succession, one after the other, for the thread that runs through individual works can be discerned more clearly then, rather than read or watch works in isolation, though it may not be practically possible. I must admit being slightly exhausted after watching Kinski and Herzog in succession though I felt, it was the only way.

Aguirre, The wrath of God

This movie is generally regarded as Herzog's best by film critics and it is such a studied approach towards multiple themes and as a stylistic and craftily made movie, it shows the mastery of an artist who was barely 30 when it was completed. Aguirre is a spectacle, a visual spectacle but more importantly a horrifying one, for we behold the scenes with discomfort, with mounting unease, with a tremor that reflects the fever of the characters we see, till they blur into oblivion, and as the last credits roll, we have seen horror and closing our eyes, remind ourselves of the greatness of art.

The movie traces a group of conquistadores, who having destroyed the Incans, go in search of the legendary El Dorado. The mission is led by Pizarro, the conquering general who detaches a section of his men to survey the amazon river further down. This detachment is led by another leader Ursua, who in the light of insurmountable difficulties, decides to retreat. This is prevented by Don Aguirre, who has him shot. Aguirre rebels and his soldiers follow suit. Then follows a journey on a raft down the Andean amazon, in search of gold and land, surrounded by invisible enemies, starvation, disease, death and uncertainty. One by one the men are killed by invisible arrows, they start to hallucinate and lose the strength even to rebel against Aguirre. The last man alive on a hopelessly drifting raft is Aguirre himself, as he surveys the river around, declaring that he is the wrath of God, and is willing to marry his own daughter to scion a breed of true fighters. We see him surrounded by the dead, including his own daughter, as the raft is taken over by monkeys, and Aguirre drifts into oblivion.

To say that this movie is just great is to belittle any important thing that one watches. The narrative here follows from the past but is more linear. The story, if it is that, is of conquest, of taking away from the weak what belongs to the weak. It does not have the pretensions of an adventure, even a benign imperial adventure, for the unforgiving nature of the landscape takes away all pretense. It is about conquering and as the monk who narrates the story tells us, the imperative is also "to bring to the pagans, the word of God". This is not the overbearing concern for Aguirre, who once declares that he is not interested in gold as much as in conquering the land and people around him, in subduing them. The soldiers have their own interests, the hastily coronated emperor on the raft his own. The monk, the man of God seemed hypocritical, but a golden cross was very attractive even for him.

Aguirre's case is separate. Played by Kinski, this performance by the great actor is one where he does not speak much, but seethes, burns, as he walks and struts on his stage, his raft down the river, as he walks with a slant, head tilted, eyes green, with derision at everyone and some sympathy for his daughter, his little one. Only Kinski could have played Aguirre, for he brings to life a homicidal monster, a man who is the ultimate traitor, a rebel against Spain and the Church. Aguirre wants not gold or God but victory, for as fever and delirium claim all his men, as his daughter lies dead, all his men fallen, as invisible arrows rain down on them, and as he defeated but standing surveys the jungle around, he claims "to stage history like other stage plays". For Aguirre the conqueror, the interesting part is conquer alone, to civilize the wretched is another perhaps less attractive goal.

One sees the fascist plunder of South America as hordes of Europeans pleaded to bring the word of God to innocent, weak and uninterested pagans but this core hypocrisy is shown here as it was, led by brave men yes, but hollow, hypocritical, led on by ideologies that are outwardly Christian but inwardly crusading, destructive, derisive, enslaving. As the raft of dying men fades into the river, one must wonder of present day invaders, who aim to democratize, to civilize, to bring to another people what surely they might not want. The horrors of war, of present day conquistadores, of murderers wearing cow boy hats, of heavens opening fire, of thunder and awe, are surely no different from Aguirre's wrath. A case for madness might be made for Aguirre but that would be dishonesty, for there is method in his madness and in his greedy men. Herzog has not just portrayed a fascistic raft going down nowhere but an important question for marauding people to answer. Aguirre is a phenomenal movie and Kinski's performance a sample of sublime art.

The Lover

Marguerite Duras' strange tale of love, called The Lover, left me thinking but thinking of something that I could not name, a feeling vague, a thought strange, some misgivings, some unvoiced doubts, in short a feeling of having read an incomplete tale but perhaps more complete than any. Thus, I confused, and a little worn out at the end of this novella. This is the first Duras novel I have read though I am familiar with her work as a movie writer, her Hiroshima mon amour such brilliance.

The lover is a story narrated by a grown up woman, perhaps Duras herself, who tells us of her love affair with a older Chinese man, when she was 15, when he was more than 12 years older than her, she white, he Chinese, she poor, he so rich, both in Indochina, she from the conquering race, he from the subdued, she so innocent, he so much in love, she so unloving, he so much in passion. Thus what begins by chance is a torrid passionate affair, away from the frozen eyes of her family, his family, their surroundings, society. They meet secretly, they make love, she writhes in passion, he suffocates in love, they both are sick, of passion, with love. But secrets are always found it, how long can secrets be kept in a room, and thus our narrator begins her cunning deception of hers, shielding him, herself, her family.

After reading this novel and during it, I felt that the love affair in itself is not Duras' central worry for the main bulk is devoted towards a tortured relationship that exists between our narrator, her mother and her two brothers, one young and the other older. The older brother is a figure of hate, he has been the family's black sheep, he is a petty thief, a liar, a swindler, without feelings or emotions but loved to the exclusion of everyone by his mother. This is a sore point, a point of friction between our narrator and her mother, even now, at a distance, when everyone is dead and time has flown, people have left, gone down the rivers of time, wars have been won and lost, hearts broken, bodies ravaged, death done and seen.

The love affair is not casual but at the periphery of this family, whose two male members have succumbed to poverty and a useless life, whose mother figure, having tried and lost everything is a defeated figure and this young woman, our protagonist is in a sulky, torrid affair with this Chinese man, older, richer. Her love seems to be a displacement, an act of revenge against her family. However, whilst inside this affair, she discovers herself but is sure that she does not love him. This is not much emphasized and attention is given mostly towards her mother, for in spite of her outwardly manifest hatred, she loves her mother, would do anything for her.

This white family in Indochina, reduced to poverty, feel united in a fundamental shame at having to live. "We are on the side of society that have reduced her to despair". Because of that, "we hate life, we hate ourselves". In descriptions of colonial societies, one must not forget the families of those who colonize, for some of them live many estranged and double and desperate lives. Because here there is a position, an attitude, the young girl seduced by an older Chinese, for her because of love, for everyone else because of his money. It is this double pain of her life, she torn between who she is and who she should be, he between a spate of identities too.

I am not sure she actually loves him but then I have never been sure what love is. He is terribly lonely because of this love for her, not because he is not in love, she is lonely too, she doesn't say why. "He moans, he weeps, in dreadful love". But his love is weak too, he cannot stand up to his father. She does not want to stand up to her mother, she leaves for Paris, he stays behind, they part, love comes to an end, a river is crossed forever, everything ends. He has got married, she too is with child, "let him feel Love's first violence", she says. And years later, in Paris, he calls her, telling her that he never stopped loving her, that he w'd love her until death.

This novel flicks before us as a movie would, or rather as images for there are so many devices here, of present narration, past and future, flashbacks, dreams, scenes that constantly change and merge, fuse and dissolve and then we are again, with our narrator, in the present, in an unknown place, crossing the Mekong, decades back, with her lover, in a hotel room, as she writhes in ecstasy and as she now remembers him with pain. Duras has not written a simple tale of love but a complex one filled with questions about motherhood and relationships, fidelity, race, culture and love and the interplay these have on people in difficult situations, away from a familiar habitat, in roles they are uncomfortable with, especially if they are poor, destitute and different. The writing style I much admired for Duras is a prose poet, her style is sonorous, hypnotic and descriptive without lapsing into any boring platitudes. There are many quotable passages and this novel is eminently great. Below, one of the many I liked.

"The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light. The night lit up everything, all the country on either bank of the river as far as the eye could reach. Every night was different, each one had a name as long as it lasted. Their sound was that of the dogs, the country dogs baying at mystery. They answered one another from village to village, until the time and space of the night were utterly consumed".

Woyzeck

If we decide to pass a judgement on Woyzeck ( that is if we have a right to ), we can only do so from an external point of view, from the outside, for he is not accessible, even to his doctor, who thinks he is too philosophical. Either Woyzeck is sane and his experiences quite normal, though slightly out of the ordinary, may be mystical or else he is deranged, with a fixed idea, suffering as his doctor is quite sure with "aberratio partialis mentalis" and thus foreign to us. The case of Woyzeck is a curious one, the movie is quite brilliant and the play by Buchner simply one of the best in any language permitted.

Woyzeck, a soldier and husband, father and a crazed man is aloof, estranged and at a distance from everyone. His officer observes that Woyzeck has a "hunted look" always and advises him to "pace" life. But Woyzeck is a troubled man, given in to visions, hearing voices, having premonitions and harbouring strange ideas. He is thus being treated, with a diet of peas only, to be followed by mutton. And when Woyzeck is told of his wife's infidelity, and he spies and sees her with a Superior officer, Woyzeck hears voices again, commanding him to commit the ultimate offence, to kill his wife. That he does and ends with blood on his hands, throwing the knife into a pool of water, mad with rage and grief.

Woyzeck is a strange man but is he actually mad? Should we be sympathetic towards him for we know that his wife is unfaithful to him? However that is not enough for him to kill someone, even if it is a crime of passion, even if such crimes are prepared in inaccessible regions of the heart. Woyzeck is betrayed but isn't he already at a distance from his wife, from his surroundings? Isn't Woyzeck not fit to be in the company of drum-majors and pseudo-scientists, on a treatment regime of peas? Should not Woyzeck be called a misfit if not a real philosopher, isn't he a thinking man and thus condemned?

Woyzeck's visions and reflections are unintelligible, his language allusive and his actions cryptic. He claims that "flames are raging through the heavens" and he can hear "a distant roar like mighty trumpets", he talks of nature and claims that "when the sun is high up, the world is bursting into flames and that it is all in the mushrooms". And he is in hell, he feels it, a hell that we don't know of. "Everything is going round in circles", he says. In short, he "feels hot". Thus Woyzeck and his experiences can be understood only if we make an effort but in the end the murder, the act of passion creates a wedge. He is quick to recognize that, shouting at the people who might think so, calling them murderers too, questioning their hypocrisy.
Is he an existential hero or a plain murderer, a rejected lover or a deceived man, a poet, a philosopher or is he only ill, hiding behind the moon and poetic expressions, an interesting psychological case, one who would interest modern forensic experts? I cannot decide.

Woyzeck, the play by Buchner is fragmentary but in whatever shape it is, it is a stroke of genius, written in a language that suits theatre adaptation admirably and thus makes it such a drama. And the movie, another collaboration between Kinski and Herzog is Kinski's tour de force, a performance that elevates acting to sublime arts. Herzog thinks that any English translation is at best watery but it will do for us. Kinski and the absolute fidelity between the play and the movie makes it a sincere adaptation and shows Herzog's admiration towards Buchner. In whatever order Woyzeck is watched or read, it remains a piece of art that defies time and space.Since I read the play last year and watched the movie only recently, I must admit that I thought I was reading it again. A great movie and a great play.

Fitzcarraldo

Now, Fitzcarraldo, an Irish emigre in Peru, "conquistador of the useless", after many unsuccessful business enterprises, gatecrashes into an opera house, with his mistress, hands bandaged and bleeding, demanding to see his beloved Caruso perform, in the heart of Peruvian wilderness, in the forest, beside the forest, among the natives. And from there, comes the desire to build an opera house, in this wilderness and invite the best of Europe to perform, at any cost, at whatever it takes, for this is the only thing that must be done.

Fitzcarraldo, one of the great collaborations between Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog is a feat in cinematic brilliance, a movie that exists on its own, without many comparisons, and open to different interpretations, depending on your dominant mood. And those familiar with Kinski see the same brilliance, the touch of genius that is characteristic of this great actor. So, Fitzcarraldo, now raving with an obsessive desire for his opera, must have money to realize his dream, money that is insufficient from his manufacturing ice and since this drama is at the turn of the 20th century, Peru divided between rubber dons, he decides to join this grand exploitation of the rubber trees, to finance his dreams. He is helped to buy a ship for this expedition by his mistress( who runs a brothel) and after assorting a motley crew, he sets off, down the amazon, towards Pongo das Mortes, towards the rubber trees, an area savaged by native Indians, unenthusiastic about the civilizing whites.

We are thus witnessing a drama, an adventure, as this ship heaves and rolls on with Fitzcarraldo, with his obsessive drive commanding a nervous crew, as they enter the dangerous Indian territory. The crew flee, just three persons stay back with Fitzcarraldo as they are surrounded by the natives. However, in a strange reversal, they turn to be his helpers as he decides to cut through a mountain and the ship is dragged through it, into the raging torrents, where finally lost, it flounders and Fitzcarraldo is back, lost and defeated.

This movie can be seen, seen for the sheer delights of a tropical kind, especially as the ship, surrounded by invisible hums rolls into the heart of fear. And also for the great technical qualities, the immensity of effort as Herzog battled to steer the ship through forest and rock. But who is Fitzcarraldo and what does he want? He desires an opera house and Caruso, in the wildest Peruvian jungles, he claims to be "the spectacle of the forest". Realizing the difficulties, he declares that he will "move a mountain". He has no concerns for anyone except himself. He loves his opera, his music, he does not believe in anything else. Apart from that, I thought, as he steered his ship, that I was in the heart of darkness, Conrad's apology to imperialism, for it is impossible not to see the parallels, this great civilizing mission, this operatic imperialism, this conversion.

As the invisible chants get louder and menacing, Fitzcarraldo takes his gramaphone out and blares his opera at the forest, at the invisible, deadly natives. In its very execution, this scene is comic and shows his desperation, but the humming stops, the noise abates, as they listen, listen and as a reverence to a superior expression, they obey. Is not this a kind of imperial motif, Fitzcarraldo acting through opera, bearing on the soul of the unconverted, crushing him through music, through wails. I saw parallels towards apocalypse now as napalm and classical music blare along with cowboy hats and nauseating accents, as the very marauding face of imperialism is softened through music. Herzog declared his disinterest in the native situation, his story is that of fitzcarraldo's obsession and as I said earlier, we can accept that. The ship, a tool, the rubber dons, exploiters, the natives defeated and naked, these are familiar stories. However, one cannot but question Fitzcarraldo, for one should ask and question his blindness towards his surroundings.

The creator cannot distance himself from his created, from his actions. Herzog, the artist must bear responsibility for the savagery that he does not justify nor condemn. The ship, cutting through forests and mountains is an imperial adventure, that he makes clear. However, the opera, the opera house and its silencing the natives is one too. We see the last image of Fitzcarraldo, on his ship that he has now sold, to finance a last performance, with an expensive cigar; he stands, surveying, burning, fuming. He is a megalomaniac, his desire is manic and even in his defeat, he is rigid and proud. Fitzcarraldo is a dangerous man, who only loves himself, and as he smokes his cigar, we are reminded that this is kinski, in a performance that unsettles the viewer. Kinski smoulders on the screen, unpredictable and mercurial, raging and fighting and when we see him as the movie begins, he is already breathless, tired, bloodied and brilliant. Within a few minutes, we are in the vicinity of genius.

Came to me

Came to me -
Who?
She.

When?
In the dawn, afraid.

What of?
Anger.
Whose?
Her father's
Confide!

I kissed her twice.
Where?
On her moist mouth.
Mouth?
No.

What, then?
Cornelian.
How was it?
Sweet.

Rudaki 870-940/41, from the Persian.

Through a Glass Darkly

One of the outstanding qualities of Through a glass darkly is the hermetic closeness of the world we see and very immediately, right from the first moment, as we watch four people swimming towards an island, an island that sets the setting for a minimalist monochrome, breakdown of senses, minds, bodies and walls. Even though film critics do not consider this Bergman movie as one of his very best and certainly not like wild strawberries, yet I felt in it the same qualities as in the seventh seal, the sea, the sea, Max Von Sydow, the running after God and yes, love sometimes.

Essentially, we watch frames and images and the lasting impressions after watching a movie are images that stay with us after time has flinched us, betrayed us. surely, here, we have some moments where the imagination of a great artist achieves a level of craft that borders on genius. This movie sustains an aura, an atmosphere and perhaps its greatest quality again is the lack of prelude, the quick drawing in of the viewer into this island world that is so tight with four people, Karin played by the the beautiful Harriet Anderson, psychotic and charming, with her mood swinging from moment to moment, her husband Martin, who is a figure tormented, torn between understanding her illness and loving her, her father, who has returned and is struggling to complete a novel, having left Karin and her younger brother, who has written a few plays and an opera, but wants his father to talk to him.

Karin's illness is essentially the thing around which the movie circles, her figure, her personality, which we are told is disintegrating. She hears voices, is commanded by unseen voices and is tormented between two worlds, one a supposedly normal one, the other a psychotic world of sensations and hallucinations. The intimate nature of her illness does not oppress us, we want to see more, but the understanding of a breakdown is conveyed quite well. And yet, Karin is a lonely figure, surrounded by a lonelier husband, a distant father fighting his own solitude, rising from the remains of a suicide attempt, his wife having lost and succumbed to an illness like Karin's. The incestuous play between Karin and her brother is not hidden, for Karin indulges in it in a way that goes with her persona, baffling her brother, who in a moment of Karin's madness, loses control. That moment is perhaps, I think, a defining moment in this movie, a fact acknowledged by Karin and her brother.

One of the important aspects of this movie is the setting, for where we to encounter them in a city, in a flat, in an opulent house, the madness might have seemed overplayed. The lack of colour adds an ethereal quality, the only house on an unnamed island, the sea, the sea gulls, the jetty, them, us, the silence, the words, the poetry and subliminal solitude, heartbreak and suffering. By Bergman's own account, this is a movie about conquered certainty, about God and love. The epilogue says that God and love are the same, as Karin, in an image that is stunning beautiful, after her breakdown, dons her dark glasses and her coat, and leaves for the city, for an institution and the camera does not follow her but lingers as she leaves the room and then we don't see her again. It is a triumph, this scene, for it is entirely credible and realistic and can happen. After she is gone, Minus and his father talk, talk of love and God, and both hope that she is surrounded by God, and Minus leaves for a run, while his father decides to cook.

Karin's illness, though not named, is perhaps not Bergman's central concern in this movie, for it interplays with his other sensibilities, mostly relying on faith. However, this platitude of God and love being the same seemed less convincing in the setting of the final moments, though I don't have any credible alternatives to the same. I felt that the atmosphere, which is so important here, is a crucial element of this movie, drawing us in to this world where Karin questions the legitimacy of suffering and being divided between two worlds. However, Karin is trying her best to make sense of a world that cannot be understood, even through a split vision and not just because of it. The title of the movie is important too, with a religious connotation but Bergman's characters usually are quite quiet, almost capable of further suffering, with an inner reserve and humility in being patient.

Karin's husband, played by Von Sydow, is the essential sufferer, cast on this island, in a life torn between love and madness, between solitude and a lack of passion. His ascetic refrain is a different way of responding to this isolation, this unknowing of life, while Karin and Minus are actively grappling with demons. Their father is now living a philosophy that warrants a peculiar harmony in itself, whether I understood it or not. This movie is a quiet masterpiece, and it is an ode to realism, of cinema and it decorating life and the unique religious solitude of isolated and grim places. Harriet Anderson's performance is the highlight of a great movie and her bare and fragile world enhances the fragility of these four characters and of life itself.

Southern Dawn

Written by Pasolini, this is one of best poems on Palestine, or whatever remains of it.

I was walking near the hotel in the evening
when four or five boys appeared
on the field's tiger fur,
with no cliff, ditch, vegetation
to take cover from possible bullets--for
Israel was there, on the same tiger fur
specked with cement-block houses, useless
walls, like all slums.
I happened on them at that absurd point
far from street, hotel,
border. It was one of countless such
friendships, which last an evening
then torture the rest of your life. They,
disinherited and, what's more, sons
(possessing the knowledge the disinherited
have of evil-burglary, robbery, lying--
and the naive ideal sons have
of feeling consecrated to the world),
deep in their eyes, right off, was the old
light of love, almost gratitude.
And talking, talking till
night came( already one was embracing me,
saying now he hated me, now, no, he loved me,
loved me ) they told me everything about themselves,
every simple thing. These were gods
or sons of gods, mysteriously shooting because
of a hate that would push them down from
the clay hills like bloodthirsty bridegrooms upon
the invading kibbutzim on the other side of Jerusalem ....
These ragged urchins, who sleep in open air now
at the edge of a slum field--
with elder brothers, soldiers armed with
old rifles, mustached like those
destined to die the ancient deaths of mercenaries--
These are the Jordanians, terror of Israel,
weeping before my eyes
the ancient grief of refugees. One of them,
sworn to a hate that's already almost bourgeois ( to blackmailing
moralism,, to nationalism that has paled with neurotic
fury ), sings to me the old refrain
learned from his radio, from his kings--
another, in his rags, listens, agreeing,
while puppylike he presses close to me,
not showing, in a slum field
of the Jordan's desert, in the world,
anything but love's poor simple feeling.

Translated by Norman Macafee.

The Saddest thing is Silence

The saddest thing is silence, and when noiseless rain falls, as it is now, silence seems to engulf everything, me reduced to dust, each fabric of my existence quivering with fatal stabs to my essence, a thing I cannot name, touch, see or remember being taught.
The most significant rain that fell on me years ago was loud, in a flood of chatter and bravery, for love seemed possible and the world looked benign, even death and destruction seemed plausible, a place where logic could reason and seek a reasonable answer from.

One hides behind faces, behind the caustic wit of friendly shoulders, friends seem to be around everywhere, friendship seems eternal, the only natural thing that can save, save from all inner storms, embarrassing slips and shy dreams. The rain that fell years ago was warm, getting wet was a bliss, the skin glistened with water, pouring down from friendly skies.
Then friends dwindled into the mist of future tense, into promises of future meetings, without hint or shades of doubt, with the certain certainties of real promises, those that lie shattered, ones that will never rise again, for further rain has sunk them into oblivion, into a storm of mirrors.

The hints half guessed, the promises half made, the words and poems read aloud and fought for, names scratched on trees, on desks, on rocky cliffs, on benches in public places, the writers covered and discovered, left unread, new words added to a raw dictionary, like the moon's rictus, like yes, I do, Yes, I know, Yes let this rain fall, it is sweet.
And then just so suddenly, an enormous silence, where even the saddest music seemed heavy with doubt, the faintest reminder of the days past so dull, so odious, so painful. And rain fell, but this rain was different, for the skies did not open, only a wound, only now, only then, sometimes.

And the saddest rain is falling now, as I attempted to write "the saddest lines", but I tried so hard, my heart stopped, memories flooded in, oh, I trembled with desire but desirous of memories, for forgotten conversations, for faces that surely must be older as I saw everything so clearly and what did I see, just nothing.
And so, now, as this soundless rain outside is tearing me to bits, I want this silent rain to fall all night, so that tomorrow everything could be wet, wet and awful, soft and damp, flushed and clean, a little dark, a bit bright, as my eyes shake this sadness, and I dream of sadder lines, ones I could not write tonight, so I wrote this.

The Year is Like a Thousand Years Ago

The year is like a thousand years ago,
we carry the jug and whip behind the cow,
we reap and know nothing of winter,
we drink cider and know nothing,
soon we will be forgotten
and these verses will fall like snow outside the house.

The year is like a thousand years ago,
we peer into the woods as if into the cowshed of the world,
we spin lies and weave baskets for apples and pears,
we sleep while our muddy shoes
rot outside the door.

The year is like a thousand years ago,
we know nothing,
we know nothing about the end,
about submerged cities, about the stream in which horses
and men are drowning.

Thomas Bernhard, Under the Iron of the Moon