For Thérèse and Laurence.
Two days before I left Abriés I
watched with T and L The Bridges of Madison County. It was a hot
afternoon. This film I used to enjoy on evenings of very hot summer
days like I am obsessed to watch Frank Capra´s It´s a wonderful
Life during Christmas season.
Like some days before when I enjoyed
with T Ozu´s wonderful Bakushu this afternoon had the same magic
atmosphere. We three were absorbed by the film but at the same time
the world outside of this film, outside this fragmented piece of the
world was always present: The dog in the room who sometimes lay under
the tables, L´s children were watching a film for kids upstairs and Ts
husband was occupied by other activities – or even the cats who were
invisible but present in this house. Even though I felt we three were
in another world, the idea that for this 2 hours each of us living
beings found his/her place in this house, a chilling idea.
The Bridges of Madison County is a film
I like to call, Eastwood´s most Japanese film and not only because
it remembers me in Keisuke Kinoshita´s You Were Like a Wild
Chrysanthemum (Yagiku no gotoki kimi nariki, 1955). It is as
well how Eastwood captured the atmosphere in a small town in Iowa in
the 1960s and last but not least with a subtle but wonderful work of
the production designer. It is as well under the surface Eastwood´s
most complex work with time. The love story between the
Italo-American woman Francesca in her forties and the photographer Robert n his sixties is told in a flashback. After Francesca´s
death, her children, a son and a daughter in their late Thirties or
early forties are reading her diary. What they can´t sense while
reading her diary are the nuances we see in the flashbacks. Despite Eastwood´s Robert Kincaid is one of his finest role (beside
one of his finest achievement as a director), it is Meryl Streep who
offers her most nuanced performance. She herself was in her mid
forties during the time the film was made. It is not only her usual
perfection (like her slight Italian accent) but her ability to
visualize the different “beings of time “ in the sense of Marcel
Proust her character is made of. For the grown up children who
remember her while reading her diaries, they remember her as a woman
in her forties. But while we seeing the flashback there is a lot of
nostalgia in her for her not lived youth in Italy where she met her
husband, who took her to the real America, a country where she dreamt of as a young girl. Meryl Streep let her
Francesca blooming for a moment, the woman in her mid forties turns
for moments into the teenager in love.
Cinema is both, a time machine and as well
vehicle to travel to alternate worlds and it can evoke both: real memories
and longings for a life we haven´t lived. The love story the film
tells about is finished before it is really lived and it has an
analogy exactly to the essence of cinema why we are absorbed by these stories,
a film is telling us. The Bridges of Madison County is a bit like
Aparna Sen´s Mr. And Mrs. Iyer. We are not very sure if we witness a
love story or if this love story is just evoked by us through the film. And like
Aparna Sen´s film The Bridges of Madison County is as well a film about the
strange ability, just let´s call it magic how cinematic images make
us dream, remember and at the same time how they help us connecting
with our own life.
And yes part of the magic of this
afternoon was the fact that I saw it together with these two women. Even
though each of us was absorbed by the film, probably involved in own
reflections, dreams, longings etc. We haven´t talked much but each of us
enjoyed being together, sharing this film experience. From time to
time the dog tried to get attention, we were listening what the two
girls upstairs were doing but it did n´t really distract us really
from watching the film.The more I remember this afternoon the more I feel like I fail to describe it. Or in other words. It has already become a memory.
I know there are cinephiles who think a
film has to be watched alone and at best in the first row of a film
theatre with as few other spectators as possible. For me cinema was
always something I like to share with others. Even though I enjoyed
also watching films alone and being just busy with my own thoughts,
dreams, longings there remains the taste of loneliness. Just the
presence of these two women who were like me absorbed by their own
impressions, dreams or longings chased this bitter aftertaste of
loneliness away. Again this feeling of Cinema as a lost dream, the idea what cinema once was. Despite we all three were in Ts living room, I sometimes dreamt myself into so much great film theatres which are not anymore in existence.
I remember - as the film is well know as
a sad film - there was a package of tissues on the table and I was the
first to use one of them and I felt safe and secure to express my feelings.
It is one wonderful but
heartbreaking moment, just one short image after a hard cut. It is
after the first time Francesca and Robert meet each other. Before they made a short
excursion to one of these old bridges, Robert wants to take images of
and later they had an evening dinner in Francesca´s kitchen (her husband and
her children are out of town for four days). Like in Ozu´s films rooms are
also kind of protagonists. The kitchen is at the same time Francesca´s
place for her routine duties as a housewife and mother and like the
film will tell later as well the place of love and longing, a secret which only belongs to her. The first
night, Robert left her home which ended in a kind of quarrel.
When they have talked about their lives, he told her about his
fascination for Africa, a place she never visited and she never will.
In the night she hides a written invitation for diner at one of these
bridges, her own action towards this short but intense relation ship.
Than there is this hard cut and we see the rising sun of the morning.
Even though we learn soon that Francesca will never leave this small
town in Iowa for a moment this beautiful sunrise is connected to
Africa a place she is allowed to dream of for a moment. For this moment
we get an idea about her longing which is heart breaking and at the
same time one of the most powerful moments for me.
Opposite to us three Francesca´s
children are like two spectators watching a film (Francesca´s diary)
with quite a different opinion about what they realize. Just at the
end when they are drinking a brandy together, smiling at each other,
they share the same opinion how to fulfil their mother´s last wish.
And like in the films by Ozu, they are persons which made
experiences which changed their predetermined opinions.
And yes, cinema has to do with
experiences, the ones about the film is dealing with and the ones of
ourselves, a complex chemistry between what we saw in the film and
how it connects to ourselves.
After the ashes of Francesca is spread
at the bridge we see this bridge from a bird´s perspective.
the Like all great
films the film gives all the matter lent for its fictive elements back to the world. We are dismissed from this film in a kind only great films can offer.
In the last years there was always a
time when I had to learn again to enjoy films without the burden of
ideologies, theories and last but not least without another burden:
the knowledge of so much films I have seen in my life. In Marcel
Proust´s A la Récherche du temps perdu, the narrator describes
several time his feelings while listening a special piece of music. A
moment which often reminds me in how I see films. In another kind at
the beginning of his novel, Proust describes his memories after
awaking from a nap in the afternoon. A human consciousness includes
always the beings of time of which we are made. Sometimes a moment or a scene can move us like it would have moved us in another time of our
life, as a child or as a teenager.. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep are
aging, but the nuances Eastwood´s film offers gives these characters a
depth and complexity which goes far beyond the length of the film, or
the fragmentation of the world by the frame of the images.
When I was young I tried to lengthen
the impact of a film which just ended. With a brother, a sister or a friend I tried to expand the objective limited length of a film in my imagination.
On that afternoon in Abries, after The Bridges of Madison County
ended it was a secret sign when T went out with the dog. L and I
followed and for a moment we were like teenagers who wanted to be for
a little while more among themselves. For a moment I was in another
time of my life.
We Cinephiles have often the reputation
as strange loners. But on this evening there was a connection with
the wonderful film that we shared with each other and the whole world. I can´t forget
this late afternoon with T, L and this film and this strange feeling
of being absorbed by a film but at the same time the awareness of
being a part of the world. And this feeling still found in the
evening another “sequel”. We all went out together with the kids
and Ts. Husband to a place called Camping la Monta; Odel var where we had dinner. As we had to go outside of this jurta-like
restaurant for smoking a cigarette, we saw at night the clear heaven full of stars. I looked at the heaven full of of stars like at an imagines mighty screen like it was total and eternal cinema.
Thank you T and thank you L for this
wonderful day.
Rüdiger Tomczak
on an afternoon in Abriés with a msterpiece by Ozu BAKSUHU
No comments:
Post a Comment