When the rock at the centre of the Toda family is lost, there is little that remains to hold its fragments together – though the enthusiastic attendance of Shintarō’s 69th birthday celebrations might originally suggest otherwise. Surely his children would loyally support each other after his passing, and they would certainly never try to palm off their now-homeless mother and youngest sister Setsuko, effectively washing their hands of responsibility. For those who comfortably belong to Japan’s upper-class though, family ties are diminished by their lack of interdependence, and Yasujirō Ozu’s filmic foray into the stratosphere of the elite exposes the true weakness in their relationships.
With his focus shifting away from society’s disenfranchised, the personal conflicts in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family stem more apathy than the insecurity of Ozu’s previous characters, marking a notable departure from the industrial wastelands of The Only Son or the provincial streets of A Story of Floating Weeds. Perhaps this break from rundown locations is partly why its visuals are a little more muted, but it’s tough to criticise his mise-en-scène too much when it still bears the markings of his carefully set interiors. Here, patterned wallpaper forms delicate frames around doorways, while abundant flowers densely crowd out compositions at Shintarō’s funeral, commemorating his life through immoderate displays of wealth.
It is at Shintarō’s birthday party though where we get our first taste of this family’s decay, revealed in pillow shots which follow his initial collapse and move into an empty doctor’s office. There, a grandfather clock rhythmically swings its pendulum with the repetitive, ringing telephone, marking the first of several instances that Ozu calls upon this symbol of time and mortality – not that the Toda children necessarily consider the weight that either bear on their lives. Apparently the cultural tradition of honouring one’s elders only applies to the underprivileged who continue to lean on them, and even after being wracked by Shintarō’s post-mortem debts, still these siblings dedicate the bare minimum to looking after their mother.
When Mrs. Toda and Setsuko move in with the eldest brother Shin’ichiro, disharmony finds fertile ground, eventually sprouting into a confrontation between his wife Kazuko and Setsuko. Quarrels in Ozu films are rarely impassioned, yet resentment simmers in glacial accusations, beginning with Setsuk’s simple request that Kazuko avoid playing piano while she and her mother are sleeping. Kazuko is seemingly happy to oblige, but not without questioning why they didn’t greet the guest they had earlier that day, openly laying out her disdain for all to see.
Perhaps then peace will be found living with the eldest sister Chizuko, but when Setsuko expresses her desire to get a job, she is chastised for even considering the disgraceful notion of joining the working class. Elsewhere in this household, Chizuko’s resistance to disciplining her rebellious son sparks a clash with her mother, and ends in Chizuko sharing perhaps the harshest words of the film.
“Just stay away from my son.”
With this arrangement failing as well, Ayako is next to reluctantly offer her home, so she is relieved indeed when a frustrated Mrs. Toda resolves instead to reside in the family’s only remaining property – a rundown house by the sea. If there is any redemption to be found among the Toda siblings, then it is through the final sibling Shōjirō, whose move to China shortly after his father’s death has largely insulated him from these affairs. Upon his return for the one-year anniversary of Shintarō’s passing, he effectively becomes Ozu’s mouthpiece, scolding each of his siblings for neglecting their gracious mother. His home in China is not ideal given its distance, but it is nevertheless a safe place for his mother to relax and Setsuko to find work, free from judgement.
Rarely does Ozu take so firm a stance on the tension between tradition and modernity as he does in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family. Shin’ichiro, Chizuko, and Ayako may not be villains, but the shallowness with which they approach their personal responsibilities brands them hypocrites in his eyes, holding the foundations of their privilege in little esteem. Prosperity is evidently not the measure of family bonds in this cutting class critique. Through grief and adversity, the hollowness of their affluence is laid bare, and reverent devotion for one’s roots holds on by a single, resilient thread.
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
The rule of law is little more than an arbitrary imposition of authority in Zero for Conduct, and it is up to no one but the roguish schoolboys of its French boarding school to restore the natural order. For Caussaut, Colin, and Bruel in particular, a revolt is sorely needed for the students to counter that titular disciplinary punishment, condemning them to detention on Sundays. As such, they spend lunchtimes plotting against their teachers, planning a mutiny for commemoration day when staff and alumni gather to celebrate the school, and hoping to reclaim their liberty in a scaled-down yet equally impassioned French Revolution.
These three students are certainly not the only disenfranchised members of their cohort though. It is only natural that boys this age should seek to satiate their curiosity through play and pushing boundaries, so Jean Vigo often gathers them into what Sergei Eisenstein once labelled a ‘monistic ensemble’ – a sense of group identity achieved through complete visual unity. High angles are often used here to frame them in systematic formations, lined up along their dormitory beds or sitting at classroom desks, but so too do these same shots often capture them running through amok with gleeful abandon.
The high angle is Vigo’s trademark shot, often put to good use in wides that capture his ensemble.Visual form in the high angle of the dormitory, mirroring order and chaos among the students.This comparison is a running motif for Vigo, studying how the boys’ wild urges are restrained by authority.
Together, these children pass time with pranks and games, only really pulling themselves into line when ordered. Even then though, little can truly quell that stubborn streak of independence which interprets commands as challenges. When the oddly affectionate science teacher questions Tabard on why he isn’t taking notes, the student viciously bites back, and the arrival of a spirited class supervisor who does Charlie Chaplin impressions certainly doesn’t help to keep them under control.
Chaplin impressions from class supervisor Huguet, sympathising with the children’s playful spirit.
It isn’t too difficult to imagine how Vigo might have flourished during the French New Wave some 30 years later, though given the impact that Zero for Conduct bears upon François Truffaut, perhaps this would also defeat the point of its influence. The young director is evidently far ahead of his time, crafting a coming-of-age featurette which revels in its carefree naturalism and youthful outlook. Its brevity matters little with a director who knows exactly how long his story needs, and Vigo is economical indeed with his nonchalant pacing, smoothly shifting between vignettes that progressively mount a rising disenchantment.
Vigo does not focus on individual characters so much as he does the group identity, blocking them as a single unit in his high angles looking down from above.
This is not even to mention the form-shattering irreverence that comes with Zero for Conduct’s brief dip into animation, bringing to life a caricature the childlike supervisor Huguet draws while performing a handstand to impress the students. Its resemblance to the their tall, moustachioed teacher is no mistake, entertaining the children for a short time before its subject arrives and discovers the drawing. Taken by surprise, the lanky cartoon leaps into the air, before transforming before our eyes into a stout, potbellied figure of Napoleon. Vigo is harsh in his comparison of the school staff to iconic tyrants, though given the role these students have taken as revolutionaries, his political metaphor falls cleanly into place.
Mischief and irreverence as this caricature leaps to animated life, satirising the tyrants who rule this school.
Especially once we reach the boys’ day of emancipation, it is impossible to deny that their rebellion is anything other than a repeat of history. “Liberty or death!” they cry in their dormitory, raising flags and declaring war on the staff. Those glorious high angles return as the young insurgents form a procession, before launching an assault on their teacher using bed frames, blankets, and pillows. In this moment of euphoric anarchy, Vigo also initiates one of cinema’s earliest and greatest displays of slow-motion, revelling in the joyous mutiny. Feathers float through the air as the children carry their leader out on a chair, their elation blissfully stretched out in time and spurring them on to the next phase of their revolution.
Pure elation as the boys prepare for war and Vigo captures it all in slow-motion, spurring them on to the next phase of their revolution.
From atop the roof, the boys pelt guests visiting the school for its commemoration day with junk, much to the staff’s humiliation and displeasure. With the pomp and circumstance dissipating and Huguet cheering them on below, it is apparent that Vigo cares little for whatever consequences should arrive after Zero for Conduct’s final shot of the boys victoriously reaching the top of the roof, finally earning a heroic low angle. Their voices sing a proud anthem as the screen fades to black, and in this single, fleeting moment of their stifled youth, the taste of freedom is the purest they will ever know.
A heroic low angle as the boys joyously proclaim victory, standing atop the school building.
Zero for Conduct is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
Tormented by a lack of answers to his perpetual misfortune, Jewish physics professor Larry Gopnik meets with three rabbis in A Serious Man. The first is a young optimist fresh out of college, naively suggesting that Larry simply needs to shift his disposition. “The parking lot here. Not much to see,” he ponders, staring out his office window. “But if you imagine yourself a visitor, somebody who isn’t familiar with these autos and such. Somebody still with a capacity for wonder. Someone with a fresh… perspective.” Larry’s frustration with his frivolous metaphor is plain to see.
The second rabbi chooses to share an anecdote from a member of his synagogue – a dentist bewildered by the Hebrew scripture he finds engraved on the teeth of a non-Jewish patient. Driven to uncover what this could mean and how it got there, the dentist pursued the mystery to all ends, and eventually approached the rabbi to hear his insight. “So what did you tell him?” Larry eagerly asks, only to be met with curt indifference.
“Is it relevant?”
Still searching for a shred of guidance, Larry does not even make it all the way into the office of the final and most senior rabbi. He is busy, the secretary tells him, despite our view of the clearly unoccupied old man sitting at his desk.
The first rabbi – a young, naive optimist with nothing to offer but shallow metaphors.The second rabbi – a spinner of yarns who sees life’s mystery, yet lacks the curiosity to pursue answers.The third rabbi – a shrivelled old man whose potential wisdom remains just out of reach.
The fact that this seems like the run-up to a joke with no punchline is absolutely intentional on the Coen Brothers’ behalf, typifying their darkly ironic sense of humour. In these three rabbis, we find three answers that religion commonly gives to tough philosophical questions, including one total non-response. There is no grand revelation that inspires or consoles us. Instead, we find a mirror to the long, elaborate setup that is Larry’s life, prompting us to similarly ask – what is all this leading to? Is there a guiding hand behind the breakdown of his marriage to Judith, his brother’s legal woes, and his son’s troubles at Hebrew school? And if so, why must this suffering be inflicted on a man who by most accounts is a relatively good person?
Surrounded by books in the mise-en-scène, and yet none of these volumes can answer Larry’s burning spiritual questions.A magnificent frame – Larry is quite literally overwhelmed by figures and vharts in his attempt to understand the cosmos. He is a man of science, yet he remains deeply unsatisfied by his worldly knowledge.
That Larry makes a career out of searching for meaning through numbers certainly complements this existential character study too, and is perfectly distilled in his lecture on the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, suggesting that two conflicting states of being may simultaneously exist until they are observed. He is a man of both science and faith, and as far as he is aware, God both exists and does not. The mise-en-scène surrounds him with books in his attorney’s office and shrinks him beneath a colossal blackboard of equations, but all the information in the world cannot point to a simple yes or no answer.
The film as a whole is no great cinematographic triumph from Roger Deakins, yet in moments like these he draws a clean minimalism through Larry’s cookie-cutter neighbourhood and local synagogue, then every so often tips it off balance with canted angles, hazy drug trips, and surreal nightmares that bleed into reality. The discomfort is pervasive, eroding our trust in the security of Larry’s day-to-day existence, and prompting us to adopt his tentative doubt. Perhaps it would be comforting to believe in God, but then why is he being punished so cruelly? If there really is no sense to it all, how can he reckon with the random whims of pure chaos?
Oblique shots and high angles in the local synagogue, tipping the clean, orderly setting off-balance.Much like his son, Larry turns to drugs, and Deakins’ visuals hazily shift with his reality.
Although Larry’s journey from one tribulation to the next is not difficult to follow, the formal intricacies and allusions to the Book of Job place A Serious Man among the Coen Brothers’ most profoundly enigmatic works. We are condemned to the same ungratifying search for answers as our protagonist, so the decision to set the first scene of his story far outside his perspective is a bold one indeed. This prologue grounds the film in 19th century Jewish folklore, recounting the tale of a married couple faced with a terrifying uncertainty. Is the man they have invited into their house truly human, or rather a dybbuk – that is, an evil spirit in disguise? After the wife stabs the visitor, he wanders outside into the snow, leaving this question frighteningly ambiguous. If these are Larry’s ancestors and the old man was indeed a dybbuk, then perhaps this is the source of the curse which would ruin his life over a century later. If the visitor was a living being, maybe our protagonist is just a very unlucky man.
The Coen Brothers’ haunting prologue plays out an ambiguous fable foreshadowing Larry’s spiritual uncertainty, as well as his incredible misfortune.
From there, the Coen Brothers weave a tapestry of subplots through A Serious Man that mirror Larry’s identity in others. In his wife’s lover, Sy, he finds the well-respected “serious man” he wishes he could be – albeit one who coincidentally perishes in a road accident at the exact moment Larry crashes his own car. In his brother Arthur, he sees an even more broken version of himself, to whom he offers the same impractical guidance that others try to give him. As for his son Danny who struggles to fit in at school, there the Coen Brothers model a smaller scale version of his own ethical dilemmas. Is Larry justified in sleeping with his neighbour and experimenting with marijuana, now that he has split from his wife? What about accepting a monetary bribe from another student in exchange for a passing grade? If he is already being unjustly chastened by God, surely crossing these moral boundaries won’t make difference – and if God doesn’t exist, then who really cares?
Arthur’s brokenness reveals the true depths of Larry’s despair, as well as his inability to help either himself or his brother.Danny wanders through adolescence without moral certainty or guidance, and as we see in his father, answers don’t come easily with age.
It is along this line of thinking though that Larry lets his sense of accountability gradually wear away in A Serious Man, spurred on by a helpless passivity. Danny’s subscription to the Columbia Record Club under his father’s name isn’t exactly fair, yet Larry is still responsible for making the overdue payments anyway. He reasons that he shouldn’t be punished for not doing anything, but since new vinyls are automatically mailed without customer intervention, it is precisely his inaction that has landed him in this situation.
The more we begin to recognise this dysfunctional trait in Larry, the more we see how his inclination to dwell in self-pity is at least partly responsible for many of his other problems too. He did not need to move out of his family home without standing his ground, and neither did he need to give into the pressure of paying for Sy’s funeral. Michael Stuhlbarg’s sheepish demeanour embodies every bit of this unassertive meekness, barely pushing his soft, reedy voice past a moderate speaking volume even when he shouts. Instead, he focuses all his anger at a God whose old-fashioned retribution seems ill-fitting to his upstanding lifestyle, and who conveniently isn’t present to verbally retaliate.
A Serious Man put Michael Stuhlbarg on the map, playing to his strengths as an immensely introspective actor who can communicate entire thought processes through a simple facial expression.
If there is a divine message to be found anywhere in A Serious Man, then it is ironic that it should come from the reclusive senior rabbi who previously declined a meeting with Larry. Instead, it is Danny who is chosen to receive his cryptic wisdom, delivered in the form of song lyrics.
“When the truth is found to be lies,
And all the hope within you dies… then what?”
Even those who aren’t familiar with ‘Somebody to Love’ by Jefferson Airplane would recognise these words from the film’s recurring musical motif. Its urgent rhythms accompany Larry’s philosophical journey with a raw, driving intensity, yet still he overlooks his life’s missing purpose hidden plainly in the song’s very title. As if to answer the question he has posed Danny, the rabbi ends their brief meeting with a simple yet valuable instruction.
“Be a good boy.”
Finally, we hear the esoteric wisdom from the third rabbi – though Larry is not the one to receive it, and its meaning is far from apparent.
Living with such uncertainty, is this moral imperative not the best we can do? If every one of Larry’s trials has been a test of his integrity, then has he succeeded? The Coen Brothers rarely give us the endings we expect to their films, yet with the mighty coincidence that turns up at Larry’s doorstep the moment he takes his first truly sinful action, they once again prove why they are among their generation’s best screenwriters. Drowning in legal fees, the bribe his student left on his desk begins to look very attractive, and no more than a second after he decides to give into temptation does the phone ring with dire news on the other end.
A turning point for Larry as he transgresses his own moral boundaries – pain, desperation, and self-loathing in his expression.
The tornado which simultaneously approaches Danny’s school only compounds our suspicion that Larry is being punished for a relatively minor transgression, once again suggesting a visitation of the father’s sins upon his children, and referencing the Book of Job where God appeared to his tormented follower as a whirlwind. The Coen Brothers’ parallel editing evocatively binds both the fatal disease and natural disaster together as a chilling, fateful condemnation, yet still we must question – isn’t this totally disproportionate to the sin that was committed? Must Larry now endure the ultimate catastrophe for cutting a moral corner that anyone under similar duress would also disregard?
Biblical symbolism as a whirlwind threatens to end the life of Larry’s offspring – retribution sent from the heavens.
Or is this merely a convenient explanation we would like to apply to the chaotic winds of chance? After all, those with who listen closely may pick up on the phone’s muffled ring first sounding immediately before Larry changes his student’s grade, even though the sharp interruption of the second ring is the one we consciously notice. It seems a minor difference, but if we are considering cause and effect in broad ontological terms, then it bears incredible weight on how we view the universe. Maybe Larry was always going to meet this unremarkable end, and maybe living a moral life won’t save any of us from what’s coming. Without any firm assurances though, the Coen Brothers simply leave us to dwell in A Serious Man’s eerie, senseless ambiguity. When all is said and done, perhaps being a “good boy” is the best we can do with what little we’ve got.
A Serious Man currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Video.
For the first half hour of Letter Never Sent, the most pressing dramas that arises on our four adventurers’ journey into the wilderness are their romantic tensions and jealousies. Tanya’s affection for Andrei particularly irritates the insecure Sergei, resulting in a physical altercation that leaves Andrei picking himself up out of a swamp, and further complicating their already challenging quest for diamonds in the secluded mountains and forests of central Siberia.
Perhaps the only level-headed member of this party is their guide, Konstantin. Unlike the others, he is not a geologist, yet he has traversed this region many times before. It is clear from the letter he is writing to his wife that their juvenile antics are of little interest to him, and instead his heart and mind linger elsewhere.
“Remembered sitting in the hallway with you. I saw love and anxiety in your eyes. But again and again some overpowering voice keeps carrying me off. I’m even glad not to have sent this letter. Now during every stop near every campfire I’ll write to you about our itinerant life in the taiga.”
Each character is beautifully established in the opening scenes, as Kalatozov creates intimate arrangements from their faces.
Konstantin knows better than anyone how unpredictable the natural world can be, though even he isn’t prepared for the overwhelming turn of events which shrinks these emotions into minor trivialities. This rugged environment does not exist to profit humans, but is indifferent to their aspirations and suffering, tenderising vulnerable minds with its unfathomable, primordial chaos before swallowing them whole.
Where Mikhail Kalatozov once dedicated his handheld camerawork and canted angles to the soul-destroying grief of war in The Cranes Are Flying, here his aesthetic revels in a maddening struggle for survival, bowing down before ravaging elemental forces. We can feel every breath and shiver through his ultra wide-angle lens, pressing intimately against actors’ faces while stretching out daunting landscapes behind their weary expressions. His shift in location away from the urban centres of Russia only further demonstrates the versatility of his high-contrast photography as well, studying the evocative textures of rippling water, fresh fallen snow, and charred forests with equal parts wonder and terror.
Textured ripples in the water – a Tarkovsky trademark here that precedes his first film by two years.Low angles as well point up at overcast skies, forming these gorgeous, minimalist compositions.Griffith, Dreyer, Bergman – Kalatozov joins that list of directors who perfected and innovated the art of the close-up.
Even before these explorers begin dropping though, Kalatozov is already wearing away at their sanity, sinking his majestic orchestral score into a crashing, dissonant cacophony of strings, woodwinds, and percussion. “We are straining ourselves to wrench out the mystery from the bowels of the earth,” Konstantin continues to write in his letter, his voiceover playing beneath a frenetic montage of the party trekking across mountains and fruitlessly hacking at the earth, while the faint, double-exposed imprint of a fire rages over the top. The foreshadowing should not go unnoted here. As if sparked by this raging delirium, the forest itself catches alight shortly after, tragically dooming Sergei to perish beneath a fallen tree.
Foreshadowing in the double exposure effect of a raging fire.
“Nature has turned herself against us,” Konstantin’s voiceover poignantly reflects, though truthfully it was never on their side. Black smoke and haze rises into the air, and Kalatozov uncharacteristically uses a telephoto lens to cut out the survivors’ silhouettes against a grey sky, creating the impression of a two-dimensional image as they vainly call for help into a radio. The smog is far too thick for even a passing search helicopter to pick them out, and so they soon find themselves isolated once again, with nothing but their wits and stamina to outlast whatever the land should throw at them next.
A rare instance of Kalatozov using a telephoto lens, pressing his actors’ silhouettes against a dark, smoky sky to create a two-dimensional effect.
The cleansing rain that falls in the wake of this devastation helps to douse the remaining embers and quench the adventurers’ thirst, though it is little more than temporary relief as they trudge through the spindly, black trees of the forest’s ashy remains. Weakened to the point of total exhaustion, Andrei’s dazed expression floats by in close-up as he is carried on a makeshift gurney, and we too take his immediate point-of-view as he gazes up at the trees in a trance. Realising the burden that he is inflicting on his companions, he decides to disappear into the misty swamp one night and, much to Tanya’s horror, becomes the second to perish.
Letter Never Sent covers a huge range of natural environments, revealing central Siberia’s vast scope of danger.Kalatozov specifically styled these mounds for this shot – painstaking attention to detail, even when shooting in nature.
As the party’s numbers dwindle throughout Letter Never Sent, Kalatozov reveals a robust formal structure, not so concerned with narrative convention than his characters’ psychological disintegration. That each should meet their end in a totally different environment only further reveals the vast scope of the peril which encompasses them, particularly when winter falls and Tanya succumbs to the cold. As Konstantin carries her through the snow, Kalatozov recalls Andrei’s floating close-ups and point-of-view shots, though this time taking her perspective with a blurred lens that fades into a deep, empty darkness.
Horizontal close-ups and disorientated point-of-view shots formally connect these two devastatingdeaths.A lonely trudge through snowy wastelands, accompanied by a sparse quiver of strings.
By the time Konstantin is left as the party’s sole survivor, the score has settled into a sparse, lonely quiver of strings, accompanied by that constant voiceover. Unlike his companions, he was never motivated by the promise of riches – he has something far more valuable waiting for him back home, driving him to persevere against all odds.
“Vera! My darling Vera! My life doesn’t belong to me. I must deliver the map to people. I can’t die. I can’t. I must live. Too much has been lost. Too much has been found.”
Floating on a makeshift raft down an icy river, hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, while a warm vision of Vera gently calls him back to the harsh reality he must face to survive. This is just as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, and only those who are prepared to fight both battles may live long enough to find salvation on the other end.
Breathtaking vistas in central Siberia as Konstantin floats down icy rapids. Hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, evoking Murnau’s masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.This is as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, manifesting visions of Konstantin’s wife as he is on the verge of giving up.
For Konstantin, it takes reaching the brink of death for that lifeline to finally arrive, and the deep focus image of a rescue worker descending from a helicopter above his unconscious face in the foreground is all the sweeter for it. Suddenly, our weary explorer’s eyes flutter open, and Kalatozov ends his film the way it began. Flying through the air in a reverse tracking shot, all we can do is admire the terrible beauty of this desolate, untamed land, and the chilling insignificance of those who dare to challenge it.
Salvation arrives in this incredible shot, foregrounding Konstantin’s unconscious face while his rescuer descends from a helicopter in the background.Bookended helicopter tracking shots, flying out from the personal to the epic.
Letter Never Sent is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.
When spoiled heir Dickie Greenleaf catches Tom Ripley trying on his expensive clothing, the assumption that his new friend might be gay is only half-correct. Queer readings of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley are nothing new, and Steven Zaillian is not ignorant to them in his television adaptation, though the icy contempt and admiration that are wrapped up in Tom’s repression also paint a far more complex image of class envy. Tom does not wish to be with Dickie, but to become him, and the depths to which he is willing to sink in this mission reveal a moral depravity only matched by his patience, diligence, and cunning.
Of all the qualities that vex Tom about Dickie, it is his complete lack of personal merit that is most maddening, deeming him unworthy of the lavish lifestyle funded by his wealthy father. While Dickie admires the cubism of Picasso and even proudly owns his artworks, his attempts at recreating that distinctive, abstract style fall short, just as his girlfriend Marge displays little talent in her writing and his friend Freddie is no great playwright. Money might buy the bourgeoisie false praise, yet no amount of riches can endow upon them the ingenious intuition that history’s greatest artists naturally possess, and which Tom nefariously manipulates to earn what he views as his unassailable right.
Tom arrives in Dickie and Marge’s life as a looming shadow, ominously cast over their bodies relaxing on the beach.Few television series in history look like this – Zaillian draws on the expertise of cinematographer Robert Elswit to capture these magnificent visuals, making for some of their best work.
It takes the sharp, opportunistic mind of a con artist to conduct a scam as multifaceted as that which Tom executes here, murdering and stealing Dickie’s identity while carefully navigating the ensuing police investigations. Though Tom adopts his victim’s appreciation of Picasso for this ploy, Zaillian also introduces another historic painter as an even greater subject of fascination in Ripley. The spiritual affinity that Tom feels for Baroque artist Caravaggio is deepened in the parallels between their stories, both being men who commit murder, go on the run, and express a transgressive attraction towards men. Though living three centuries apart, these highly intelligent outcasts are mirrors of each other – one being an artist with a criminal background, and the other a criminal with a fondness for art.
A graphic match cut deftly bridges historical time periods, bringing Tom and Caravaggio’s formal connection to a head in the final episode.Gothic expressionism in the Caravaggio flashback, revealing the murder which has tainted his name.Caravaggio’s artworks are strewn throughout Ripley, most notably drawing Tom to the San Luigi dei Francesi cathedral where his three St. Matthew paintings are on display.
At the root of this comparison though, perhaps Tom’s appreciation may simply stem from the aesthetic and formal qualities of Caravaggio’s paintings, portraying biblical struggles with an intense, dramatic realism that was considered groundbreaking in Italy’s late Renaissance. When Tom gazes upon three companion pieces depicting St. Matthew at the grandiose San Luigi dei Francesi cathedral in Rome, they seem to come alive with the sounds of distant, tortured screaming, blurring the thin boundary between art and observer. With this in mind, Zaillian’s primary inspiration behind Ripley also comes into focus, skilfully weaving light and shadow through his introspective staging of an epic moral battle as Caravaggio did four hundred years ago.
Though the rise of cinematic television in recent years has seen film directors take their eye for photography to the small screen, one can hardly call Zaillian an auteur. This is not to take away from his impressive writing credits such as Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, and The Irishman, but the spectacular command of visual storytelling in Ripley is rare to behold from a filmmaker whose directing has often been the least notable parts of his career.
An Antonioni approach to photographing Italian architecture, using wide angle lenses to frame these shots that raise structures far above the tiny people below.Immaculate framing and lighting in the canals of Venice, trapping Ripley in a labyrinth built upon his greatest fear – water.Tom’s wandering through labyrinthine Italian cities offers both beautiful mise-en-scène and excellent visual storytelling, applying a photographer’s eye to the detail of each shot.
Robert Elswit’s high-contrast, monochrome cinematography of course plays in an integral role here, rivalling his work on Paul Thomas Anderson’s films with superb chiaroscuro lighting and a strong depth of field that basks in Italy’s historic architecture. Elswit and Zaillian’s mise-en-scène earn a comparison to Michelangelo Antonioni’s tremendous use of manmade structures here, aptly using the negative space of vast walls to impede on his characters, while detailing the intricate, uneven textures of their surroundings with the keen eye of a photographer. The attention paid to this weathered stonework tells the story of a nation whose past is built upon grand ambition, yet which has eroded over many centuries, tarnishing surfaces with discoloured stains and exposing the rough bedrock beneath worn exteriors.
Lichen-covered brick walls fill in the negative space of these shots with visual tactility, giving each location its own distinct character.Visual majesty in the cathedrals that Ripley ventures through, captured with astounding symmetry in this high angle.History is baked into the discoloured stains and weathered stonework of Italian architecture, dominating these compositions that push Tom to the edge of the frame.
Conversely, the interiors of the villas, palazzi, and hotels where Tom often takes up residence couldn’t be more luxurious, revelling in the fine Baroque furniture and decorative wallpaper that only an aristocrat could afford. The camera takes a largely detached perspective in its static wide shots, though when it does move it is usually in short panning and tracking motions, following him through gorgeous sets tainted by his corrosive moral darkness.
Baroque interiors designed with luxurious attention to detail, reflecting the darkness that Tom carries with him to each hotel and villa.Divine judgement in the unblinking gaze of these historic sculptures, following Tom all through Italy.
In effect, Ripley crafts a labyrinth out of its environments, beginning in the grimy, cramped apartment buildings of New York City and winding through the bright streets and alleys of Italy. Zaillian’s recurring shots of stairways often evoke Vertigo in their dizzying high and low angles, with even the flash-forward that opens the series hinting at the gloomy descent to come as Tom drags Freddie’s body down a flight of steps. Elsewhere, narrow frames confine characters to tiny rectangles, while those religious sculptures clinging to buildings around Italy direct their unblinking gazes towards Tom, casting divine judgement upon his actions.
Tom emerges from the cramped apartments in New York City – a cesspool of grime and darkness before he heads to the bright, sunny coast of Italy.Zaillian’s stairway motif arrives as a flash-forward in the very first shot of the series, which returns in its full context four episodes later.Dizzying high and low angles of stairway litter this series, forming spirals out of rectangles, hexagons, and arches.Distant doorways and windows place Dickie and Marge under an intense, microscopic lens from Tom’s voyeuristic perspective.Precision in Zaillian’s framing, trapping Tom in confining boxes.
As oppressive as these tight spaces may be, they are where Tom is most in control, though Zaillian is also sure to emphasise that the opposite is equally true. The only place to hide when surrounded by vast, open expanses of ocean is within the darkness that lies below, and Tom’s phobia is made palpable in a visual motif that plunges the camera down into that suffocating abyss. This shot is present in nearly every episode of Ripley, haunting him like a persistent nightmare, though Zaillian broadens its formal symbolism too as Tom seeks to wield his greatest fear as a weapon against others.
The dominant aesthetic of static shots is broken up by this sinking camera motif, appearing in most episodes as a persistent nightmare of drowning.The dark, churning water beckons Tom as he sails between destinations, threatening to pull him into the abyss.
Most crucially, Tom’s murder of Dickie upon a small boat in the middle of the ocean marks a tipping point for the con artist, seeing him graduate to an even more malicious felony. Zaillian conducts this sequence with taut suspense, entirely dropping out dialogue from the moment Tom delivers the killing blow so that we may sit with his discomforting attempts to sink the body, steal Dickie’s coveted possessions, and burn the boat. From below the surface, the camera often positions us gazing up at the boat’s silhouetted underside with an unsettling calmness. Equally though, the sea is also a force of unpredictable chaos, threatening to drag Tom into its depths when his foot gets caught in the anchor rope and knocking him unconscious with the out-of-control dinghy.
Zaillian’s execution of Dickie’s murder is cold, calculated, and passionless, the entire sequence unfolding over 25 patient minutes.Daunting camera placement from deep within the ocean, calling upon Tom’s phobia at the peak of his brutality.
Even when Tom manages to make it out alive, his continued efforts to cover his tracks bear resemblance to Norman Bates cleaning up after his mother’s murder in Psycho, deriving suspense from his systematic procedures of self-preservation across 25 nerve-wracking minutes. Within a two-hour film, a scene this long might otherwise be the centrepiece of the entire story, yet in this series it is simply one of several extended sequences that unfolds with measured, focused resolve.
Unlike most commercial television, there are no dragged-out plot threads or over-reliance on dialogue to push the narrative forward either. As such, Zaillian recognises the unique qualities of this serial format in a manner that only a handful of filmmakers have truly capitalised on before – Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage comes to mind, or more recently Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad. By structuring Patricia Highsmith’s story around roughly hour-long episodes, each scene unfolds with a patient attention to detail, unencumbered by the constraints of limited run times while maintaining a meticulous narrative economy.
Zaillian borrows this use of colour from Schindler’s List – a film he wrote – leaving behind evidence of murder in these red, bloody paw print, and breaking through Elswit’s severe, black-and-white photography.Exposition is brought alive as letters are read out directly to the camera.
Specifically crucial to the development of Ripley’s overarching form are Zaillian’s recurring symbols, woven with sly purpose into Tom’s characterisation. The refrigerator that Dickie purchases in the second episode is a point of contention for Tom, representing a despicably domestic life of stagnation, while the precious ring he steals is proudly worn as an icon of status. After Freddie starts investigating his mysterious disappearance though, the glass ashtray which Tom viciously beats him to death with becomes the most wickedly amusing motif of the lot, laying the dramatic irony on thick when the police inspector visits the following morning and taps his cigarette into it. Later in Venice, Tom even goes out of his way to purchase an identical ash tray for their final meeting, for no other reason than to gloat in his deception.
Tom eyes Dickie’s ring off early, and from there it becomes a fixation for him, representing the status he seeks to claim for himself.An unassuming ash tray becomes the murder weapon Tom wields against Freddie, and continues to appear in these close-ups with sharp dramatic irony.
This arrogant stunt speaks acutely to Andrew Scott’s sinister interpretation of Tom Ripley, especially when comparing him against previous versions performed by Alain Delon and Matt Damon. Scott is by far the oldest of three at the time of playing the role, and although this stretches credulity when the character’s relative youth comes into question, it does apply a new lens to Tom as a more experienced, jaded con artist. He does not possess the affable charisma of Delon or Damon, but he delivers each line with calculated discernment, understanding how a specific inflection or choice of word might turn a conversation in his favour. He realises that he does not need others to like him, but to merely give him the benefit of the doubt, allowing enough time to review the situation and recalibrate his web of false identities. After all, how could anyone trust those onyx, shark-like eyes that patiently scrutinise his prey when they aren’t projecting outright malice?
Andrew Scott’s take on Tom Ripley is far from Alain Delon’s and Matt Damon’s, turning in charisma for sinister, calculating discernment.
Scott’s casting makes even more sense when considered within the broader context of Zaillian’s adaptation, leaning into the introspective nature of Tom’s nefarious schemes rather than their sensational thrills. The question of what exactly constitutes a fraud is woven carefully through each of Ripley’s characters, mostly centring around Dickie’s class entitlement and Tom’s identity theft, though even manifesting in the police inspector’s passing lies about his wife’s hometown. The rest of society wears false masks to get ahead, Tom reasons, so why shouldn’t he join in the game?
It is no coincidence that the disguise he wears when pretending to be the ‘real’ Tom Ripley so closely resembles the representation of Caravaggio that we meet in the final episode. If anything, this is the truest version of Tom that he has played thus far, and Zaillian’s magnificent conclusion brings that comparison full circle with a dextrous montage of mirrored movements and graphic match cuts. Our protagonist is not some demon born to wreak havoc on the world, but rather a man who has always existed throughout history, seeking to climb the ladder of opportunity with a sharpened, creative impulse and moral disregard. As Ripley so thoroughly demonstrates in studying the mind of this genius, there may be no profession that better captures humanity’s enormous potential than an artist, and none that sinks any lower than a charlatan.
Zaillian sticks the landing with this tremendous montage of match cuts between Tom and Caravaggio, their weapons, and their victims, clearly inspired by The Usual Suspects while integrating his own sinister flair.Tom’s disguise as the ‘real’ Tom Ripley bears striking resemblance to Caravaggio, authenticating the connection between artist and criminal.
The entire history of war movies is filled with pacifist statements rendered through violent horror, and Edward Berger’s recent adaptation of the 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front is no different in this aspect. Similar ground has certainly been covered in the 1930 film based on the same source material, though where that was a Hollywood production interpreting a specifically German experience of World War I, there is an aching, historical authenticity infused in Berger’s interpretation that speaks to his nation’s guilt and trauma. For the soldiers on the frontlines in the war’s final days, it matters very little that they are losing to the Allies, and whatever fiery patriotism they once felt for the ‘Fatherland’ is gone. All they have to do is survive long enough to see 11am on November 11. Whatever shame they face when they return home will be negligible compared to their relief of being away from the Western Front.
Before we meet any of our main characters though, Berger presages the horrors that await them with a haunting prologue tracking the uniforms that they will soon wear. His editing is patient, lingering on the deathly silence of a forest shrouded in blue mist, its tall trees reaching for the sky, and a battlefield strewn with the bodies of lifeless men. As the camera slowly levels out from an overhead shot to reveal the soul-crushing expanse of the devastation, it picks up on the movement of one German soldier crawling over the top of the trenches, heading towards his death. These opening minutes are completely void of music, until we cut to a mortifying wide shot of coffins being packed tightly together in a pit, and we are blasted with an angry, diminished triad of distorted synths. This simple motif will persist all through All Quiet on the Western Front, but it is especially as the soldiers’ uniforms are trucked off to a factory, washed, repaired, and sent to the next round of recruits that it sounds like an apocalyptic warning to Paul Bäumer and his friends.
A quiet, haunting prologue to what will be an otherwise loud and brutal 2 and a half hours, introducing us to the Western Front via some of the year’s most beautiful landscape photography.This could be straight out of The Thin Red Line, except here there is a bleakness in the colours and overcast sky you don’t find in Malick’s work.Mirroring the shot looking up at the trees with a shot looking down at the ground where dozens of dead soldiers lay. Slowly, the camera tracks down and then levels out with the horizon, devastatingly revealing the expanse of the carnage.
The lie fed to these young men that great glory awaits them on the battlefield can be easily traced down to a single piece of dramatic irony that Paul very nearly picks up on – the name tag of his uniform’s previous owner stitched into the fabric. That’s just a leftover from another recruit who didn’t fit the measurements, he is told, before the officer rips it off and drops it in a pile of other names that have been so thoughtlessly discarded. The disheartening implications are clear: these men are considered more expendable than even the clothes they wear.
The first time anyone notes that “this isn’t how I imagined it” comes on the very first night, when they are forced to bucket water out of the trenches just so they have somewhere to lie down. It is a minor inconvenience compared to what other adversities they are yet to suffer, but it doesn’t take long for them to recognise its triviality when the first of these men to die, Ludwig, befalls his fate a mere few hours later. The idea that one can simply ‘ease into’ these conditions is hopeless.
Fields are graded in cool blues, stripping the land of all its warmth.Fire, smoke, and burnt-out scenery – Berger’s visual craft here is incredible.
Like The Thin Red Line before it, the bleak beauty that All Quiet on the Western Front instils in such total carnage paints out this grisly battle between the German and French as a stain on nature, lingering on frosty blue fields, withering vegetation, and landscapes ruined by the besmirchment of warfare. The flickering of bright, yellow flares up in the sky breaks this aesthetic up in one scene that feels almost spiritual in its meditative tranquillity, illuminating a desolate expanse of burnt-out trees and the silhouette of a fallen soldier tangled in a web of barbed wire, while his fellow troops gaze at the burning balls of light in awestruck wonder.
An almost spiritual interlude as flares are sent up into the sky, offering what might be one of the only warm light sources in the film.
Beyond this brief interlude though, Berger is committed to his harrowing imagery, working with a huge number of extras stretching into the distance to shoot their impending deaths like a horror film. In one scene, he lands a demoralising weight with the discovery of sixty missing German soldiers lying dead in an abandoned building, revealing that they were gassed after taking their masks off too early. Even more terrifying is the Germans’ successful assault on the French, which quickly turns against them when tanks emerge from the fog like monsters mercilessly mowing down everything in their path. As airplanes and flamethrowers join the fight, Berger adds fire and smoke to his dreary mise-en-scene, silhouetting Paul’s friend, Albert, in a disturbingly grim composition that sees him unsuccessfully beg for mercy on his knees.
This entire sequence plays out like a horror film with the tanks emerging out of the sick, yellow mist, and Albert’s hopeless surrender.These close-ups put us in a weary headspace like that which Come and See evokes, revealing the visceral impact of war in the transformation of one young man’s face.
The sheer fluidity with which we navigate the action only adds to the visual accomplishment here as well, rolling the camera through trenches much like Stanley Kubrick did in Paths of Glory, and traversing the battlefield in long takes as we saw in 1917. The impact is visceral, refusing to let us escape from the ongoing chaos until we move into the parallel storyline of negotiations between German and Allied officials. The interior, period décor of these scenes is stunning in their soft lighting and design, noting a huge separation between those giving the orders and the ones carrying them out, though some tightness in the pacing is sacrificed in the intercutting between both.
Tracking shots across battlefields and through trenches like 1917 and Paths of Glory.The scenes set around the negotiations of authorities make for a nice tonal contrast, revealing the gaping chasm between those making the decisions and the soldiers carrying them out.
Still, Berger does effectively manage to build these storylines to a unifying climax in the final act, raising our hopes for Paul and his remaining friends’ survival right before they are commanded to attack the French in one last show of German strength and dignity, fifteen minutes before the armistice at 11am. Paul has made some real friendships with other men while on the Western Front, and Berger spends a lot of time building out the sensitivity and warmth of these connections as the sole pleasures to be found in wartime, yet as we wind towards the end, even these companionships feel ultimately pointless. They aren’t enough to stop one soldier from killing himself out of fear of being permanently crippled, and perhaps even Paul himself could be held partly responsible for the chilling murder of his friend, Kat, by the son of a farmer they have been stealing from.
Immense compositional beauty as Kat faces up to the consequences of his thieving, set in this forest of towering, black trees and soft, blue mist.
The implication of there being quiet on the Western Front is put forward in the bookends of Berger’s film as a pair of fateful tragedies, recognising the cruel irony that only when its occupants are dead can there ever be true silence across its muddy fields and burnt forests. His direction does not hold back from demonstrating the haunting chill of these scenes either, certainly in the audio that whispers quiet breezes through the trenches, but also in the visuals which position the camera as the only moving thing in this environment. The sounds of gunshots, explosions, and screams may be confronting to hear, but All Quiet on the Western Front recognises that the true misery of war emerges in the still, lifeless aftermath, where an insurmountable grief is born.
A quiet bookend to the start of the film, returning to still, natural landscapes.
All Quiet on the Western Front is currently streaming on Netflix.
Preston Sturges was known more for his sharp turns of phrase, pacey editing, and unrelenting slapstick than his mise-en-scène, but Sullivan’s Travels combines all of his usual trademarks with surprising flashes of visual beauty. These mostly appear in the final act when Sullivan winds up in a chain gang and the entire movie takes a far darker turn, but even before this point it works wonderfully as a quick-witted satire of Hollywood liberalism and privilege.
Sturges opens the film in media res, at what appears to be the climax of an entirely different movie.
“You see the symbolism of it? Capital and Labor destroy each other. It teaches a moral lesson. It has social significance.”
Sullivan is inspired. He wants to make a real movie about real issues, confronting problems that the average American faces every day.
An image of poverty that the wealthy imagine it to be – a rucksack and a baggy coat. Hilariously clueless, but formally setting up the hard-hitting third act well.
“But with a little sex,” his producers continue to insist. Therein lies the problem. If there was ever a studio that could authentically bring rough living conditions to the screen, it isn’t the one Sullivan works for, and Sullivan certainly shouldn’t be the one helming that project. The Italian neorealism movement would prove a few years later that cinema can absolutely treat this sort of subject matter with compassion and authenticity, but those movies were being made by filmmakers with firsthand experience. To Sullivan, stepping into the shoes of the impoverished would serve to assuage some of his class guilt, and he might make a tidy profit out of it on the side. Adding “a little sex” is the studio’s push to romanticise the subject matter, making it conventionally appealing for their audiences who just want a laugh.
A slapstick interlude placed with purpose and precision.
Sullivan’s Travels is also a direct response to early Hollywood comedies that abandoned humour in favour of serious, hard-hitting messages. Sturges’ approach is a complex balancing act of conflicting tones which many directors might struggle to pull off, but this is his specialty. He dances around the real darkness at the heart of the story for the first two acts, playing in the realm of slapstick comedy, irony, and meta-humour. Sullivan’s first attempt to understand the poor is really just him walking around with a rucksack and tattered coat, followed closely by a bus of security, food caterers, and a legal team. As he attempts to shake them off and the bus speeds after him, Sturges has fun sending everyone in it into a tizzy, falling over at all angles, one man even putting his head right through its ceiling. Then Veronica Lake is introduced, and the film delivers its most direct acknowledgement of its own genre conventions.
“How does the girl fit in the picture?” “There’s always a girl in the picture?”
Credited only as “the woman”, she is there to serve the exact function stated in the text. She tags along, because it is what the film requires of her. But as an actress, Veronica Lake isn’t just filling a part. With her husky voice and plucky attitude she channels all of her charm and glamour into the role, stealing every second of screen time from her co-stars. She serves to underline the part of movies that audiences keep coming back for – that “little bit of sex”.
Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in two of their best performances, a perfect screwball couple.
So when Sullivan is suddenly assaulted, beaten unconscious, and sentenced to serve time in a chain gang, it is understandable why Lake is pushed to the background. It is a shocking narrative twist, but not entirely unexpected given how much time has been spent with Sullivan wondering it is like to live in poverty. In an earlier montage when he sleeps in a homeless shelter, he worries that his boots which contain his identification have been stolen, setting up the actual theft that takes place during this major plot shift. Now, he is stuck without a name or path back home.
The scene in which he is stalked by the homeless man looking for money is a stunner. Almost entirely silent, it is heavily expressionistic in the light and shadows that are thrown across the train tracks. He skulks behind staircases and trains puffing out steam in the dead of night, perfectly leading us into the darkest section of the film. We realise that all the comedy that has come before this point has merely been distracting us from the actual darkness at its heart, because suddenly all of that humour is gone. Without his status or identity to fall back on, Sullivan is no longer shielded from the dirtiness, violence, and roughness of “real” life.
Sturges’ camera suddenly becomes a lot more active in this final act. He isn’t trying to make this a truthful depiction of poverty, as his own screenplay has already made the argument for why Hollywood cinema isn’t suited to that. Instead he just wants to treat it sensitively, letting a sort of poignancy emerge that acts as a substitute for authenticity. The prisoners of Sullivan’s chain gang are welcomed to a Southern Black church, and Sturges makes the choice to frame the prisoners in gorgeous silhouette walking towards it, as the churchgoers sing a soulful rendition of “Let My People Go”. Inside the aisle symmetrically divides the church in two, and we gaze right down the middle at the prisoners’ feet moving towards us, chains clanking as they walk. It may be the slowest scene of any Sturges film, but this change of pace also marks the change in Sullivan’s character as he becomes more pensive.
An ambitious narrative taking a sudden dark turn. Sturges has never been so solemn, and he pulls it off with aplomb.
Dour atmospheres can’t last forever in Sturges films though. He gives us just enough moodiness so that when the comedy arrives again in the form of a classic Sturges montage, we eagerly embrace it. Newspaper headlines, studio producers running around barging into rooms, making phone calls, and getting on planes – Sullivan makes his way back to the glamourous city of Hollywood with a fresh outlook on life. Maybe the superficiality of the movies he makes is disconnected from reality, but so what? Disconnecting someone from reality might be the best thing you could do for someone whose reality is pretty terrible. Sturges’ real passion was screwball comedies, but as a comment on the limits of Hollywood moviemaking, this certainly seems like his most personal work.
Sullivan’s Travels is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.
The perspective that Céline Sciamma offers us in Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not just that of a spectator viewing a gallery of beautifully delicate paintings, but rather that of the painter themselves, translating every curve and angle of their subject’s visage into its artistic equivalent. That interpretation can only come after an intense study of these details – the contour of the cartilage on an ear, or the way they don’t blink when they are annoyed, as is the case in Marianne’s observation of Héloïse. It is a connection more akin to lovers than a contractor and client, and it is through this lens that such a relationship forms between both women on the distant French island of Brittany.
When Marianne arrives in Héloïse’s life, the young woman of the gentry has already proven herself difficult to capture a likeness of in her refusal to sit still, though her mother is determined for a painting to be completed so that the Milanese nobleman she is betrothed to knows what she looks like. Beyond this island of seaside cliffs and large French manors, it is a world of men that dictates the rules of romance, art, and politics with heavy hands and enormous egos. Besides the glimpses we get of those men who ferry women to and from the isle, this is not the world that Sciamma is interested in depicting. In their absence, a fresh new dynamic begins to form around Marianne and Héloïse, bound not by the oppressive gazes and laws of men, but rather by the slowly expanding limits of their own curiosity.
Seaside cliffs and beaches making for exquisite settings to this blossoming romance, these lovers’ faces and bodies staged beautifully within them.
Not every frame here is seeping with the picturesque imagery its title might express, but as this story gracefully flows along, Sciamma intermittently lands us with the sorts of visual compositions that leap out in their still, expressive beauty. Marianne and Héloïse’s deep red and green dresses imprint against pale blue skies, waves, and interiors, lending their rounded shapes to the elegant poses of both actresses who always seem to be aware of their roles as models for Sciamma’s camera. Where expansive oceans and grassy landscapes open entire worlds to them in exteriors, it is inside the neatly curated mansion that she arranges décor like still-life subjects, offering the women a quiet, pensive retreat.
The blocking and arrangement of bodies with set dressing, evoking the elegance of 18th century European art.Inventive uses of mirrors, emphasising the artist’s gaze.
One night as the women of this island gather around a bonfire to sing a wildly polyrhythmic chant, Marianne and Héloïse wander over to join them. Though the scene carries visual connotations of a coven gathering to share in something not understood by worldly men, there is not the usual uneasiness often attached to such depictions. In this moment, both our leading women begin to consider the possibility that the freedoms and desires they have experienced aren’t so unique to their own circumstances. The patriarchal view of female relationships as being pagan or demonic does not exist here, and as such these rituals of bonding are able to develop naturally without the typical vilification.
Sciamma’s fascination in the mythologising of gender, love, and art continues to reach out into ancient Greek legends, most significantly touching on the fateful relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice. Together, Marianne, Héloïse, and the housemaid, Sophie, read this story, pondering the tragic decision made by Orpheus towards the end while he is leading his deceased lover out of the underworld, being allowed to take her home as long as he does not turn to look back at her. Though Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not a direct adaptation of this story, it does carefully consider its parallels. Just as a simple gaze can bring an artist and their muse together in a powerfully binding love, so too may it divide them forever.
Artistic interpretations of Orpheus and Eurydice all over this film, including Marianne’s painting that captures the pivotal moment of his turning and loss.
Perhaps then it all comes down the purpose of that gaze. A lover might choose to keep their back turned and preserve this tangible connection, though as Marianne notes, Orpheus “doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.” Humans may die, but the impression they leave behind in the imagination of an artist lives on in many forms, and it is with this in mind that Sciamma evokes ghostly visions of Héloïse through Marianne’s eyes, as if in anticipation of their eventual separation. Within the conventional heterosexual myth, that choice to be either a lover or a poet is integral to Orpheus’ fate, though as the patriarchal influence of the outside world begins to creep in on Sciamma’s paradise, it is evident that there is no such thing as the lover’s choice for Marianne – as society would have it she must be a poet, forever staring in from the outside, or looking back from the future.
The spectre of Héloïse hanging over this film, an eternal image of her in that moment before Marianne parts from her forever.
As progressive a story as Portrait of a Lady on Fire may be, such skilful layering of narrative archetypes lends classical definitions to its characters, intertwining their passions with the nature of humanity as it has been represented narratively throughout history. All throughout, it comes back to the gazes of lovers and artists, both of which are especially tied together in Sciamma’s magnificent final shot that spends two and a half minutes zooming in on Héloïse’s profile at a live orchestra performance. While we engage with every tear and smile that breaks across her face, the camera remains unbroken and unwavering, offering a gaze which ties two people closely in a single moment in time with a burning passion, and yet which will only go on to survive as a lonely, singular, and eternally youthful impression.
A superb final shot paired with a remarkable performance – an entire story unfolds on Adèle Hanael’s face over two and a half minutes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Video.
