The Man Who Lies [Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1968]:
Like the preceding Trans-Europ-Express (1966), the fittingly
titled The Man Who Lies is essentially an exercise in cinematic deconstruction. Specifically, a deconstruction of the
conventional devices used in narrative storytelling, and - even more
specifically - of the role of the protagonist (or narrator) to provide a
greater context, understanding and clarification for the events, as they
unfold. What Robbe-Grillet does to
achieve this hypothesis is to dismantle the notion of accepted (or, more "tangible")
reality - which conventionally propels the standard cinematic arc - and, in
doing so, places the narrator in a greater position of power over that of the viewing
audience. When the narrator (and, by
extension, the central character) is gunned down by an armed militia in the
film's first scene - only to be brought back to life moments later as if
nothing had ever occurred - Robbe-Grillet is communicating the inherent intangibility
of narrative form; collapsing the various elements - from reality to fantasy,
dramatisation to allegory - in order to remind the audience, in a single
gesture, that this is a fiction devised, embellished and told by the central
character, and as such at the mercy of his own individual whims.
From this point on, the author will continue to obfuscate the
significance of the character's identity, his role and his specific intentions
or goals, all of which are intended, in a more conventional film, to make us
connect with a character, or to identify or even sympathise with their
particular plight. By making the
narrator unreliable (and upfront, the particularities of the title already
express a sense of duplicity couched in this character's attitude and approach)
Robbe-Grillet makes it difficult for the viewer to become embroiled in the
minutia of the film's story, its setting, its allusions to actual historical
events, or even in the emotional progression of the characters on screen. Instead, he focuses our attention on the more
elusive and often maddening games being played with the malleability of film
editing and of narrative in general. To
achieve this, the filmmaker frequently shows us two very different sides of the
same scene, action or conversation - in such a way as to provide intentionally
contradictory information - however, with no clear or concise delineation as to
which of these conflicting perspectives represents an accurate or emotional
truth.
Shot in the former Czechoslovakia, the visual style of the film
is noticeably much closer to the sensibilities of certain other films released
during the period of the Czech New Wave - such as The Fifth Horseman is Fear
(1964), Diamonds of the Night (also 1964) and A Report on the Party and the
Guests (1966) - than those of Robbe-Grillet's contemporaries, such as Resnais,
Godard or Malle. The style, defined by its
high-contrast lighting, intense close-ups, wide-angle lenses and a majority of
decayed, rural settings, heightens the emotional uncertainty of the film;
creating something like a fairy-tale, or perhaps even closer to that of an incessant
dream. While the final scenes of the
film eventually hint towards a more psychological (if not supernatural)
rationalisation of the story being conveyed, the real motivation of Robbe-Grillet's
film is - like the vast majority of the author's works for cinema - closer to
that of an intricate parlour game played between himself and his audience. A self-aware, self-reflexive adventure
through the conventions of film narrative, and how such conventions (and their
rules) can be used, or even misused by a filmmaker, to further engage the
audience in something other than the banalities of characterisation and plot.
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Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl [Manoel de Oliveira,
2009]:
It begins on a train. An
interesting choice of setting, since the figurative history of cinema is trains
and bridges. Here, the train itself
becomes a bridge, where - during the course of a journey - a young man will
recount his sad tale to a female passenger; telling her a story of doomed love
and economic hardship that works to connect the personal to the political, the
present to the past. At this early point
in the story the audience is uncertain of where this man (and his fiction) is
headed. Is he in retreat from a secret
shame - forced to leave a place of residence in search of somewhere new - or is
he making a return, back home, or someplace else? For now, the destination of the character is
unimportant. The journey is a narrative
one, as opposed to geographical; the development and progression of the train
along the tracks becoming a visual representation of the machinations of
narrative fiction, à la The General (1926) by Buster Keaton, or Trans-Europ-Express
(1966) by Robbe-Grillet.
On the surface the story is straight-forward and
confessional. A young accountant working
for his uncle spies an attractive young woman, whose family dwelling is
adjacent to his place of work. Already, de
Oliveira is evoking the cinematic representation of "the viewer and the
viewed." If the train becomes a
narrative journey, then this visual motif - evocative here of Hitchcock and his
famous Rear Window (1954) - supplants the author as voyeur and a surrogate for
the viewing audience, who sees, within a rectangular frame, a woman of great
and enigmatic beauty, and, like the tragic Sarrasine in Balzac's sorrowful
tale, is immediately and catastrophically bewitched. Through this, de Oliveira creates in this
woman, at first, not a character, but a representation; an image. The viewer, in love with the image of this
woman (as opposed to the woman herself), works hard to break the fourth-wall of
his own existence and to initiate a kind of courtship. When his uncle disapproves of the young man's
plans to marry this mysterious woman, his life is thrown into chaos. While the "meta" narrative of this
character as both protagonist and storyteller is central and compelling, Oliveira
nonetheless uses the confessional of this man, not just as a means of
discussing the role of the author, the objectification of the male gaze or the
representation of the image itself, but as something far more political.
Throughout the film, the director will emphasise the cultural
backdrop of the story; placing this modest reflection of love - its fantasy and
reality - within spaces that are redolent with artistic, political and cultural
significance, most often related to expressions, or representations, of
wealth. The office where the protagonist
works, the gentleman's club and extravagant soirées where gambling goes on in
the background of poetic recitations, to the jeweller's shop where de Oliveira
reveals his orator's final "sting", all reinforce a perception of the
world as one that revolves around wealth, status, privilege and the pursuit of
the above. That all of these various elements
are contained within a film that was shot and released during the immediate
aftermath of the global financial crisis gives a greater context to the
parallel the filmmaker is creating between the past fictions of the film's
author, Eça de Queirós, and the no less confused and unstable realities of our
own present day.
