Nymphomaniac vols. 1 & 2 [Spoilers]
[Great big pull-no-punches spoiler alert]
Coming out of a back to back screening of Nymphomaniac volumes 1 & 2, it took me a while to compose my thoughts on the preceding four hours. Fortunately an acquaintance whose company I was in had made his mind up by the time we got the the pub. He enjoyed the film for all its cinematic qualities - its sound mixing, its camera work - but felt frustrated by the overall 'message' of the film. In his opinion, von Trier was making a political statement which takes an ultimately pessimistic view of humanity: we're all fucked up, so we should come to terms with it and embrace our true essence, warts and all.
In particular, we felt the final scene was the key to unlocking the film in its entirety. Seligman, who has been trying to mitigate Joe's self-loathing all the way the film, offers that Joe is a victim of patriarchal society responding to violence with violence. He says that had Joe been a man, major instances in her life (such as leaving her son and sleeping with a married man) would have had far less drastic implications and effects. Through all Joe's flaws - perceptible lack of empathy, apparent racism - we have come to identify and sympathize with her, and Seligman's theory seems like the moral we want to take away. Moments later, Joe asleep, Seligman re-enters the room with a naked bottom half and begins to rub himself against Joe to initiate sex. As she protests Seligman complains, "You've slept with thousands of guys," before he is shot (presumably dead) by Joe.
My acquaintance felt strongly that just at the moment we are offered the moral of the tale we were hoping for by the kindly and gentle Seligman, von Trier tears down any hint of an optimistic ending by showing finally that no matter how we may conduct ourselves for the most part, we are all ultimately fucked up, individualistic and violent. He referred to von Trier as a 'bad Nietzschean' for trying to expose humans as irredeemably flawed. For this, he said Nymphomaniac was ultimately a political statement from a reactionary playing at revolutionary.
I have to disagree. Nietzsche is certainly relevant here, though I feel my acquaintance's reading of him is woefully lacking. Nietzsche is not trying to assert that as we are all fucked up we should just embrace our 'fucked up-edness'. Nietzsche's project is to problematize what happens when everything which previously underpinned our world turns out to be baseless. If God is dead, how are we now to make sense of the world and morality? I would suggest this is a key idea in understanding Nymphomaniac. As Joe states early in her story, hers is a 'moral tale'. What she offers us is an account of trying to make sense of her life when she cannot relate to the categories and conditions which regulate normal life. Here Joe is living out Nietzsche's problem, and while the 'shadow of God' lives on through Joe's attempts to take on normal relationships, work and motherhood, they prove unfulfilling and even harmful to her relationship to herself.
Here we come to the crux of what I feel this film is about: the (seemingly insurmountable) disconnect between desires and drives, and the societal norms we live within. This is best demonstrated through Joe's uncharacteristically empathetic relationship to the man she exposes as a paedophile. For a moment she feels she connects with him as they share each other's loneliness. The paedophile (along with 95% of paedophiles, claims Joe) has lived with his desire in secret all his life, choosing not to act upon his inner drives so as not to harm children. "How sad it must be to be born with urges you can't act upon," says Joe. Whereas the paedophile has outwardly fulfilled all his social norms while repressing his desires, Joe has lived according to her drives but has been tormented by her inability to live normally as a result of her libido (which she loses after becoming settled with a child). Experiencing their anguish from different angles, they are able to meet halfway at their shared isolation.
There is much to be said here (as through almost all the film) about psychoanalysis. It is no accident that the set-up of Joe's bedroom resembles that of a psychoanalyst's study. Seligman, the analyst, sits upright on a chair encouraging Joe to explore her memories, offering anecdotes along the way to help her unconceal the finer details. Joe, the analysand, reclines on the bed, doing her best to recount her tale, often with dreamlike embellishments.As Joe struggles to reconcile her desires with fitting into society, Seligman acts as a transference figure. Initially, Joe cannot read him, finding him as enigmatic as she is. Eventually, as he puts her at ease with his theory of the violence that has been done to her and which she has subsequently sought, she calls him a friend. As Joe turns to sleep, we get the sense she has at last made friends with herself. But finally, Seligman returns with sinister motives: the calm brought by discourse is abruptly disrupted by immanent and crude desire again. As Joe shoots Seligman and flees, there is ambiguity as to the resolution.
This interplay between desire and discourse - the immanent and the mediated - is really at the heart of the disconnect between personal drives and societal norms. Through Seligman's talking therapy, discourse has been used to make sense of, to negotiate or mediate, Joe's immanent desires which have been so destructive when juxtaposed with societal expectations. Likewise, Seligman has mediated his lifelong lack of sexual desire through an understanding of asexuality. It is at the level of discourse that Seligman is able to offer the intelligent explanation of Joe's circumstances, but in his newly-discovered (transferred?) sexuality, he acts on the level of pure desire.
Rather than trying to expose some irredeemable evil which exists deep inside all of us, through Nymphomaniac von Trier tackles the relationship between desire and discourse and its implications for how drives are assimilated into society. The message is delivered brutally: discourse cannot succeed in wholly rationalizing desire, and its attempts to will either result in repression or destruction. Less a normative political statement about human nature, von Trier is critiquing the suspension of critical thinking that often results from hiding in discourse.
"The film wasn't as explicit as I thought it would be," said my acquaintance. "Still, for all this talk and pontificating at the level of discourse, I bet you still had a semi on at parts," I replied. He blushed.
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