Only Yesterday (John M. Stahl, USA, 1933)
Few will be able to question a dogmatic stance that John
Stahl’s Only Yesterday is a towering
masterpiece of the classical melodrama given its rarity (not even on VHS!), but
be assured such a work is deserving of the praise. As
soon as the film’s seemingly trivial depiction of Black Tuesday (but
delightfully so—suicide never seemed so funny) begins to feel staid, Stahl
suddenly shifts toward innocent love, bitter disappointment, and ultimately the
value of life an unappreciated life. John Boles moves through his wife’s fancy
dinner party, unable to answer any questions about the crisis until he locks
himself in his office. With the gun loaded, he notices a private letter for
him, leading him down memory lane to a young woman named Mary Lane (Margaret
Sullivan) he met during the war and then abandoned, while she became the woman
who does not forget (for reasons both emotional and physical). Movement seems
to be the game that Stahl plays. Either the camera moves, or the characters
move, often in opposition, passing just for a second. The narrative involves
passing movements as well, these rare chances when diagonals of life can
finally cross, but only for a moment, and one that may lack recognition
(Stahl’s was the first adaptation of Letters
from an Unknown Woman, but where Ophuls highlights physical tragedy, Stahl
turns toward the metaphysical). A meet cute ends first as a comedy, secondly as
a tragedy, and thirdly as something beyond us entirely, a navigation of
emotional territory rarely felt in the American (or any) cinema. When the two
lovers finally collide first via a slow exchange of silent close-ups and then
finally via words, each phrase out of Boles’s mouth is an emotional dagger,
cutting right into Sullivan’s heart. But her continued gaze and affectation is
the core of the film—she is willing to let this man reveal his own hollowness,
and unwilling to believe their night was not destiny. Sullivan comes from a
theatrical background, but her close-ups stand in stark relief, a blank face
also a canvas of tears held back. While it’s wrong to create pointless value
judgements, Stahl does silent, black and white close-ups in a way that rival
any devastation created by Douglas Sirk, sometimes letting the gaze of Sullivan
carry all the pain in a way much riskier than a gambit by Sirk’s spilling of
emotions. His work is toward a quiet reverence that always respects its
protagonist, and never once falters toward anything of pity. She is a triumph
of human testament to live despite (a
word beyond her vocabulary). The ending of Only
Yesterday, both in terms of narrative and the carefully constructed mise-en-scene of the final bedroom,
brings to mind Dreyer’s Ordet. There
is no literal transcendence for this melodrama, but there is instead an
emotional one.
At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman, USA, 2013)
At Berkeley seems
like too broad a subject for Frederick Wiseman’s camera, and yet over the
film’s four hour running time, it becomes seemingly clear how succinct his
vision of this institution is, as well as his broader take on the triumphs and
weaknesses of American public education in this time of budgetary crisis (the
impetus for the film appears to be the reduction to Berkeley’s operating
accounts to only 16% by the state of California). Wiseman’s film is not about
the actual structures of institutions, but of an ethos when it is confronted
with daring problems. The film is essentially about the paradox: Berkeley
stands for free speech, liberalism, and diversity, but to operate under hard
times, it must be about conserving resources and limiting its vision as an
“equal for all” institution. What fascinates Wiseman then is how everyone from administration
groups to research labs to English classroom discussions on Thoreau find a
creative solution to this problem—of action and systemization. The opening
classroom discussion might be about idealism for public education, but as the
professor explains, it’s about how to institutionalize “charity into policy.”
If such an idea goes against contemporary liberal ethos, one shouldn’t faint
that the film doesn’t sympathize with the students who are losing, fighting
against the policies put that deny the free education the school once provided.
There’s one particularly devastating moment as a student explains her plight of
being too rich for financial aid but too poor to make by without it. But
Wiseman once again asks for rational thought. Each moment becomes an echo of a
previous sentiment. A conversation on constructing robotic legs begins to reflect
the same discussions budget committees have about how to create unique offers
to lure strong professors to the school. Constructing a plot might seem like a
misstep for Wiseman, but here it’s a chance to see theory in practice, and the
film’s epic third hour sit in shows three sides brilliantly: the protesters,
the administration in action, and even the students laying in the laws who go
on without even noticing. Wiseman’s camera is always curious but never
didactic; it’s tough to say where exactly his sympathies lie, both in terms of
his fascination with certain characters like the Chancellor Robert Birgeneau or
even the single man who mows every single acre of the institution’s lawn. But the
sprawling movements begin to take shape into an institution that might place
liberal free speech students with ROTC trainees in the same space, between one
that can’t compete financially and yet provides services beyond the above in a
negotiation of quality. And what seems like a university at ends with its
paradox is yet a shining beacon of thinking and possibilities outside of any
box. If anything, one of the major takeaways from At Berkeley is to acknowledge the potential of such an institution
under huge financial duress. Think what would happen if they didn’t even have
to fight for money.
To say Bastards is
a departure for Claire Denis leads to the question: what are the tangible
auteurist properties of her work? In her films, glances do the heavy lifting,
and a single touch is practically cathartic. Each frame feels, to give into the tactile sense of cinema that began with Chocolat. To name a film that stands
above her work feels strange; she is the opposite of the Coen Brothers, whose
individual works are more enjoyable than when taken as a messy whole. Denis is
more fascinating on individual shots and edits, which feel of a particular
digital vocabulary. But Bastards is
in fact her first digital work. Denis’s digital makes objects sharper, more
dangerous. Even when the world was dangerous (the mystery of Trouble Every Day, the lurking war in White Material), Denis always makes it seductive
and intoxicating; a place tantalizing with sensuality. The case is the opposite
of Bastards, whose world is cold,
harsh, and striking. The tactility of the image lurks out; each image feels
closer to a knife than a desirable plane, the glances display lust, but
with an anger and menace hidden just under the surface. Even the soft skin of
Lola Creton, a figure who has been casted before for her virginal qualities,
now has blood running down her legs. This reflects into the film’s narrative,
which could be describe as film noir, but Denis’s editing style and aversion to
straight exposition shouldn’t be confused with generic trappings. Denis sets up
the major relationships and tensions within the first act, leaving most of her
game to filling out details: a man who moves into an empty apartment, another
man with capital and desire to exploit those without, and a series of black
haired women, vulnerable to both men’s sinister games. The ellipticism of Denis
comes almost to a fault in Bastards.
It’s a film about corporate and sexual intrigue, in which we see neither. A
glance toward a shirt transfers toward a symbolic passing of cigarettes and
then reappears during an awkward encounter with unintended consequences. The
chess game seems quite obvious at first, and the resolution almost too simple,
even if the details come in and out as focus throughout. Erasing themes of her
previous work, and giving her imagery a more pointed, cutting tactility (as
sharp as those heels), questions remain in a way that how we are supposed to
walk away, especially given its final, surveillance footage, and at least one
symbolic reference taken from Faulkner’s Sanctuary
that leaves more puzzles than clarification, both tangibly and emotionally. The
work feels left unfinished in some way, the pieces left to be filled in with
feelings left unsaid, often spoken by a single frame (supercoherence at its
most specific). Which is to say, Bastards
is a Claire Denis film.
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