The man is hypnotic. Asaf Avidan. Skip to 1:30.
I'm going to keep the existential ball going here with another film analysis I wrote about Krzysztof Kieślowski and Federico Fellini and several of their respective films a couple of semesters ago.
Grab a glass of wine and read on.
"I feel something important is happening around me, and it scares me," says Valentine Dusseau, the protagonist in Kryzsztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Red. In both of Kieślowski's films, Red and Blue, and in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, the protagonists are all struggling with an existential crisis that has hit them fast and hard. Since the auteur theory is based on the idea of directorial continuity from film to film, it also holds true to similarities across the stretch of auteurs in having collateral, long-lasting, deep-rooted fears of existence and what it means to be alive. Although these movies were made 30 years from each other, they bring forth a concept that has always been, and forever will be, a fundamental thorn on the side of humanity and its inability to quit questioning purpose. Valentine's quandary is that she feels her life turning in a way that is out of her control - although she is aware of this turn, she feels that she is not sure exactly what is occurring and fears that she will not understand it regardless. The issues of morality, spirituality, and sexuality in the following films narrow down to the central character's plight: All of this, and for what?
There is not much worse than meandering in a world that one keeps expecting more from - a world that makes one feel like they are waiting for something to happen, like their destiny is supposed to become clear at any moment. In Red, Valentine shows a regard for others and for life while Julie, in Blue, almost completely foils her character by having little interest in living and the will to keep going. Despite their polarized situations, both ladies engage in selfless acts that unearths the fact that the two are actually not so different from each other after all. In Red, Valentine meets Judge Joseph Kern by following the address on the tag of a dog that she ran over with her car. Upon meeting the Judge, she discovers that this man has made it his hobby to tap into his neighbor's phone calls and listen in. She tells him that she thinks his acts are "disgusting," and is morally appalled. When the judge tells Valentine to go on and tell the neighbors about his pasttime, she retreats and doesn't go through with her plan to actually do it. She learns that it is not her place to disrupt a seemingly "happy" home, despite it being the "right" thing to do. From the very beginning, we learn that Valentine's character is unblemished by life, either by conscious choice or safe disregard for the perverse. Her childlike qualities in her unwaivering puppy love for her long-distance boyfriend Michel, and her growing affection for the judge dictate that she exemplifies a life without misdeed. Because of her uprightness, she goes by life with a code of high moral ethics that are constantly tested and makes her question what the purpose of it all is.
In Blue, Julie has turned to a monotonous, yet altruistic lifestyle because she feels that she has lost all of her purpose to keep living. After her husband and daughter are killed in a tragic car accident, Julie floats on in a grand disconnect. Despite her desperate attempt to disengage from her previous life and to avoid anything from her past that may remind her of her loss, she keeps being pulled back to face the facts. The altruism is not an entirely conscious decision, although her actions reflect this. After everyone in her new apartment building has signed a petition trying to get rid of Lucille, a promiscuous tenet, Julie politely declines and Lucille gets to stay. Julie has no intention to keep hurting others; in her mind, no one else should feel pain the way that she has felt pain. Furthermore, upon learning that her late husband left behind a pregnant mistress, Sandrine, Julie refuses to hate her and lets Sandrine live in the house where Julie used to live. That deed was quite puzzling and idealistic. However, Julie doesn't want to be near, or keep, anything that will keep reminding her of her great loss. When Julie is in the hospital and learns that her husband and daughter did not survive the crash, she tries to commit suicide by swallowing a handful of pills, but can't find herself to do it. This moment of weakness obviously points out how Julie thinks that her life without her family is not worth living. When Olivier, her husband's coworker, comes into the picture and asks her to finish the composition, we learn that perhaps Julie was the original composer of the important piece. Her strong morals still hold true by the fact that Julie never comes forth and admits to being the ghost-composer for her husband; even after he has died, she does not want to tarnish his good name. It isn't until the end of the film that we see Julie finally working on the piece with Olivier that we think she may have a regenerated interest in living.
Kieslowski challenges us by bringing up the question of one's purpose in life. Although Valentine was not consciously aware of how her actions impacted the world around her, she felt it at the end of the movie when she says the great line of being scared by the changes she can't see. The judge character serves as a rude awakening for Valentine, when she sees that there is more to the world than people being "by nature good." Julie, on the other hand, is well aware about her general disinterest in continuing to live. However, it isn't until she learns the truth about her husband, that she realizes that that image she had of her loving husband was just a facade and everything wasn't exactly what she thought it was. Everything is deceptive, essentially. So the question of morality when it comes to overall importance in living a fulfilling life seems quite arbitrary. While our two main ladies in the films are trying to put their best foot forward and go for what's right, the world around them is crumbling with people doing whatever is in his or her own best interest. Kieslowski is saying that one gets to choose their own happiness, and that in the end, regardless of how or with what we fill our lives, we will never truly understand whether we got it right or what it was all for.
In Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, every character's moral code seems to be thrown about in a helter-skelter manner, not meant to be picked up or repaired. The protagonist, Marcello Rubini, is an avid and shameless gossip journalist, easily distracted by women and ruthless to get his story. He and his photographer friend Paparazzo follow around celebrities and public figures and harass them until they get a story. When Marcello's girlfriend Emma tries to commit suicide and he takes her to the emergency room, there is a gossip journalist waiting for him there. He begs him to go away, and goes back to the sick Emma. Marcello opinion for his type of journalism changed when the tables were turned on him and he was the center of attention. This type of intrusive journalism has never been welcomed at any point in history as depicted by this film and in Blue. When Julie sits on the porch at the hospital, a journalist arrives drilling her with questions and snaps a picture of her despite Julie's demand to go away. This kind of inconsideration and lust for a story trumps morality and general sense of what humanity is culminating to. Furthermore, throughout La Dolce Vita, every character seems to be following their own selfish primitive desires than focusing on any moral issue involved. Fellini mentioned that he grew up during a time where most everything was a taboo and the church had a say in everything. In both his films, his characters seem to be wafting along in this Bohemian, artistic, and quite idealistic society of no boundaries and a general attitude of "anything goes." Because of this mentality, everyone is basically left in the air with no sense of direction and no clue how to propel themselves in any which way. They are all seeking something that is on the other side of the fence, something outside of what they have right now. Steiner, the man who Marcello basically idolized, tells him "Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected." Fellini is simply grateful to celebrate the fall of such temperance, of such oppression and constant judgment. And if Fellini projects his own life into the life of his protagonists, then he was also facing qualms against freefalling through life and never really understanding life or one's own purpose.
In 8 1/2, the perfect example of a man whose hit a roadblock in his life (in the shape of writer's block) shows Fellini's trepidation with existentionalism. It is not easy to be right in the middle of a dramatic cultural shift where all the beliefs one grew up with were suddenly torn down. Fellini's fascination with this drastic change, the progression of paganism to Christianity, is quite clear in the visual diary that are his films. Guido has ran himself up a wall with a large crew and reputation forcing him to climb where there are no hand-slots. He dodges all the questions his crew is asking him about the film he's supposed to make, and is burdened by the fact that he keeps getting negative criticism from another writer. In the movie, Guido says, "All the confusion of my life... has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be." He is weighed down by this image he has created for himself of himself, and completely tormented when he can't deliver. This crisis ties back to the existential question of: "What am I doing this all for?" All the pressure and expectations drives him to commit suicide, an act that is considered by the church to be immoral. Fellini is driving a stake right through the church's belief system - the only way to escape all the mess the church has made is by killing yourself and committing the mortal sin.
Furthermore, the religious issues brought up by Fellini in 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita epitomize the changing new world of Italy in the 1960s. In 8 1/2, we see that Guido's doctor has prescribed holy water as a panacea for all illnesses to the community. After making the line for his holy water, Guido meets his friend Mario Mezzabota who indiscretely says "Don't drink that stuff, how stupid." Fellini is not trying to be subtle in his belief to break out of those precedented notions of the church as the know-all solve-all. Later in the movie, Guido is seeking some advice for his film from the town bishop. When he meets "His Emminence," the old man gets distracted by the bird Diomedeo, and he stops to listen to the 'weeping' bird. Suddenly, Guido's movie takes a seat on the back burner. Guido is not particularly insulted, for he himself is pretty distracted by a woman coming down the hill who reminds him of an old childhood memory. Guido's lack of interest in the church and in everything, really, mirrors the fact that such things are fleeting and suddenly not of such grand importance anymore in the new era. In La Dolce Vita, two children claim to have seen La Madonna, or the Virgin Mary, sitting underneath a tree. It is unclear whether their uncle has put them up to it, but they seem to be toying with the community that has come to witness the event by making them run back and forth following "la Madonna." It is more clear, however, what Fellini's statement was here. The desperate mob tears all the leaves from the trees and trample a person in the process - pure brutal selfishness: what the church is supposedly against. Fellini is showing how contradicting the church can be at times - and how obtuse the public is in falling for its scheming so easily.
In Kieslowski's case, his message leaned more on the spiritual side of causality, on fate and destiny. In Red, we have several narrative parallels existing all at once. It was actually Fellini who says "Not everything that is connected looks connected, somehow it is..." and that seems to add up both of Kieslowski's film into one tight punch. There is the unsettling "will they, won't they" ever cross paths between Auguste and Valentine, for they are always in the same place at the same, and looking for the same thing although they never actually see each other. Also, there is the mysterious notion of a parallel life between the Judge and Auguste that only the audience will ever make the connection to. Kieslowski is clearly drawing out the lines between all the things that are connected, or at least seem to be, and that only opens up the concept that there may be so many more connections that human beings are not, and will never be, aware of that can dictate all the things that are occuring in their lives. There is existential terror in that as well, because it can drive a person mad knowing that they are not in control of their destiny because any slight movement might throw their life into a different direction. In Blue, there is another slight hint in a parallel life with Julie and Lucille, in the moment when Lucille is passing her hand through the blue chandelier, the only remnant of Julie's dead daughter. Lucille says that she used to have one exactly like that when she was getting older, and Julie's expression, albeit hard to read, hints at something. Lucille could have been her daughter, or what her daughter would grow up to be - something to not be particularly proud of. Of course, such an awful thought wouldn't cross Julie's mourning brain but the idea was hinted. Everything happens for a reason, and the reason that Julie survived is still unbeknownst to her. Later on in the film when the boy that witnessed her car crash brings her the cross necklace, Julie tells him to keep it. She has lost her faith in living, but she is still alive. Something in that contradiction seems to keep her interest going - questioning her purpose of why she was the only one who survived the car crash. Kieslowski does not make it easy to decipher, because it was undoubtedly difficult for him to decipher, and unclear whether he ever did, why certain things happen and the direction things tend to fall in. It all ties back to existentialism and whether or not we are beings crawling around the Earth for a specific reason or to just fill a void in the food chain.
Sexuality in Kieslowski is tricky because it is not as loud and pervalent as in Fellini's films. Kieslowski approached sexuality in a more toned and subtle manner. In Red, all the characters aside from Auguste and Valentine, are seeking sex and sensuality outside of their established relationship. Auguste and Valentine merely want someone to love, not someone to lust over and fulfill their primal needs. In Blue, Julie first has emotionless, stoic sex with Olivier who is in love with her. She uses sex as a distraction from her misery. By the end of the film, Julie welcomes Olivier back into her life, and takes him in with another mindset. As aforementioned, in Fellini, the characters see sex as an "anything goes" deal, bisexuals, transexuals, any time, any place following their hedonistic tendencies. At the end of La Dolce Vita, Marcello drunkenly and broken-heartedly tries to stir everyone into an orgy, only to be shot down by a crowd that is not particularly interested. Throughout the movie, Marcello jumps from woman to woman, completely distracted from each as a new one appears, and tormenting his obsessive girlfriend Emma in the process. In 8 1/2, Guido is punished as a child for being attracted to a woman, the Saraghina, and shames his mother. At the end of the movie, in one of his common fantasy day-dreams, Guido is in a brothel-like place where all the women he's been involved with run around causing havoc and making a raucous in his mind as they have in his life. They mirror the perpetual burden of societies expectations of him, an established director. In all four movies, there has been at least one character who has shown signs of infidelity. Kieslowski believes that love can only exist in good faith and trust - which is why most of the characters in all the stories seem to struggling outwardly from an internal, deep-rooted disdain for their own lives.
In short, the philosophy behind Kieslowski and Fellini's social commentary on the issues of sexuality, morality, and spirituality can extend for days and is subject to endless interpretation. As distinguished auteurs, their fundamental concerns about existence and being permeates through their respective films. "Could you walk out on everything and start all over again? Could you choose one single thing, and be faithful to it? Could you make it the one thing that gives your life meaning... just because you believe in it? Could you do that?" cried Guido. That is a terse and concise depiction of exactly what Kieslowski and Fellini are trying to say. Nothing is for certain, so believe what you wish and live your life.
Now let that fester and get some sleep.
