An experimentation amidst Hour of the wolf, Persona, and Hiroshima mon amour; through the lens of Heidegger, Deleuze and Bergson
A certain overlap can be seen in the movies Hiroshima Mon Amour, Hour of the Wolf, and Persona. This overlap is on one hand contradicting each other and on the another it binds them together because of their mutual sharing of the inherent characteristics. The contradiction happens only when they are experimentally seen through the vantage point and philosophical tonality of Heidegger, Deleuse and Bergson. All three of them choose a differing ground to see these movies and try to incorporate their ideas into the narrative of these movies. When these movies are read individually, they seem to fulfill what their makers wanted to show us. I find an interesting ground of discussion for the observation of what I say is an origin. This origin comes through the composed dialogue between the movies themselves and arriving at the point of mutual sharing among themselves. The origin comes through the intense use of language by a character inside the movies. The repeated and intense use of language serves the function of assisting the character in recalling a lived experience of trauma in the post war-modern time in which he or she is physically located. The everyday existence makes them question the space in which they find themselves as a prisoner of the situation from the past. The thing, the time and the space as a concrete triangular structural element helps me see how the notion and perspective towards these three essential elements vary in each movie from the lens of characters even though these three elements make a link among the chosen movies for mutual ground of intervention.
Alma Borg in the opening scene of the movie Hour of the wolf is shown delivering a monologue that shows her experiences and memories from the recent past and her engagement with the space from where she has recently moved. She talks about things in a very fine detail as if she were trying to reconstruct the space in her mind. As if she were personifying those experiences and trying to accompany herself with a humanly company in the newly arrived space. Does the use of language in the form of a monologue compensate for the alienation of hers in that place? Or does she consciously talk about those experiences from the past as a part of her everyday ritual while working? Or is she trying to say something completely different and absurd through the detailed monologue about her past experiences? Even though there is an attempt or not to exhibit any of the possibilities mentioned above but we can take it for consideration that the physical and visual conditions can not be denied.
A still from the movie Hour of the Wolf. Liv Ullmann as Alma Borg talking to herself.
An
arriving boat with the things required for living on the island is
shown in the succeeding scene and her husband Johan
Borg carries
those objects to the land. The boat arriving towards the shore with
the man and the objects become a symbolic presence that Alma Borg
needs on this alienating island. In Heideggarian
thinking of
the book Der
Ursprung Des Kunstwerkes he
writes What is
in truth the thing, insofar as it is a thing? When we so ask, we want
to learn to know the being-thing (the thingness) of the thing. The
point is to experience (erfahren) the thingness of the thing. To that
end we must know the circle in which all those beings (alle jenes
Seiende) belong, which we have long addressed with the name "thing.”
Here
those are not just mere things that will satisfy their need. They are
a carrier of the lived experiences in a different time space frame
but at the same time those things become a company to their quest
that is to come closer to the space where they start a life anew.
Earlier the point of reference becomes the actions and events that
have already been executed and is referred by an individual but as
the process of “coming closer to the island” happens; the point
of reference for living is centered towards the two human beings who
are a participant in the process. The anxieties and the replacement
of the referential point between the things of the world and the
individuals as a closed entity help in understanding the friction
between the space-the island- and the awareness towards the time.
The
attention towards their awareness of time is very elaborately and
exquisitely shown in a scene where Johan talks about the passing of a
complete minute. He says to his wife A
minute is actually an immense space of time. Wait, here it starts.
Ten seconds. These seconds...You see how long they last. The minute
is not over yet! Ah, finally it is gone now. Through
the scene we are made aware of the character’s notion of time and
space. The heaviness of the time and the helplessness of the
characters in the situation is very avidly cataloged. They can do
nothing but watch and experience the conscious presence and volume of
time. Through their experience of the passing of a complete minute a
statement towards the engulfing characteristics of the time space
frame is exhibited. The thingly(Sachlich) experience of the things
around them while the complete minute is passing is the time itself.
We only listen to the ticktock of the clock. Clock itself is a thing
here but is representing something that is beyond their
characteristics. Does Heidegger give an apt understanding towards the
characters inner turmoil when he says that The
point is to experience (erfahren) the thingness of the thing. Can
time not be included in the universal category of the thing?
Heidegger
claims that language can open up possibilities of new beginnings as
being itself is open-ended: the poet creates language and thus
expands our understanding of ourselves, our world and our being.
When they are invited to the castle they face a strange and absurd
use of language which is used by the residents of the castle on the
dinner table. I see a visible contrast between Heidegger’s
understanding of the language as something that can open up
possibilities of new beginnings. Johan feels himself trapped in the
hazy web of language that does not seem to have any beginning and
end. He is there as victim who is given no choice of words or opinion
to show the self destructive language of the inhabitant of the
castle. The space is very organized with interiors full of furniture
and light and abundance of food. Time does not seem to penetrate that
circle of theirs to make them its presence felt. On the contrary they
are concerned with the things or the work of arts that is reduced to
be a mere commodity of consumption. Why do we see a differing notion
and experience of time, space, and thing between the couple and the
residents of the castle? To me this difference comes through the
surrounding materials and composition of space in their separate
living places. The existential anxiety is not seen around the
residents of the castle but the same can be very evident in the
talking and behavior of the couple who are living far near on the
island which is almost secluded. The residents living in the castle
are occupied with the affairs that are mostly about their absurd way
of indulging in the luxurious and leisurely act. Use of language
certainly in the heideggarian approach is opening possiblities of
beginnings here for them but this beginning is very engulfing by
nature.
The
character Elisabet
in
the movie Persona
is
constantly denying the presence and acceptance of essential nature
of language. All of a sudden she takes an inner oath to not to utter
a single word. Her denial is twofold. One she is an actress and words
mean life for the performances but the denial made by her as an
actress is a revelation of some inner
crisis
that is not completely inner. The cause of this denial is coming
through a crisis that is an integral part of the outer world. Words
become a futile attempt to make a negotiation
between the crisis that is located in a specific time space frame and
the receptor who is receiving that crisis and the cause. Elisabet to
me is not trying to go in the phase of a negotiation rather she
chooses to witness the events and causes along with human tendencies.
Another is that her distancing away from the language is a result of
an invisible decision which is to observe the nurse who has been
assigned the job of looking after her. The nurse called by the name
of Sister Alma
reverses
the phenomenon and carries forward Heidegger’s philosophy of Bauen,
Leben, und Denken. She
talks her heart out in front of Elisabet. Bergman
seems to exhibit his interest in experimenting between the Deleuzian
and Heideggarian notion
towards human beings and their consciousness towards the Erfahrung
of
Zeit and
situation. Elizabeth utters the only reactionary expression through
the words and these words are the embodiment of denial in a certain
time-space frame. She says “No, stop it.” Is this a Deleuzian
inheritance of the idea of word
image
and time image
from Bergson’s
irritation
of the clock-time? I see the character of Elisabet as someone who is
critiquing the enslaving and mechanical movement of the clock-time.
She is positioning herself in a situation from where the one
dimensional movement of time can be condensed and evaporated through
the accumulation of the experiences. The present for her is a
confluence of the past and future. She listens to the past events and
regrets in Alma’s life but at the same time tries to be in the
moment which allows her to not think of the arrival of a new form of
time. Even when Alma insists her to just say a word she denies
silently. The firm decision of Elizabeth to not speak even a single
word is the pity that she has towards the patterned circle of life.
The image and understanding that Elizabeth has towards time-space is
very contradicting with Alma.
Mirroring
and dislocating image of Elisabet
and Alma from the movie Persona
Both
of them are dissociating from one another and at the same time
finding their own identity in one another as well. Alma says Elisabet
“My words mean nothing to you. People like you can not be reached.”
Both of them are located together physically on the same island in a
specific time-space co-ordination. Alma after a certain time not only
starts reflecting upon her past events and her unrequited desires for
the future but also starts talking intuitively about the past lives,
events and expectations that Elisabet had from life. The seemingly
monotonous but meaningful monologue by Alma all through the film
starts acquiring an importance in the larger domain of the
performances of the two personae. Her monologue acts as a reflexivity
towards the passage of time and language as a supplementing and
complementing elements. Both of them become one another. By the
concluding part of the movie Alma says “I am not Elisabet Vogler.
You are Elisabet Vogler.” Through the monologues of hers Alma had
not only defied the movement of time and space as an engulfing entity
but also fell into the Bergson’s notion of the movement of time
through the lens of a lived experience in the world which feels most
real to us. She becomes the embodied reflection of Elisabet. In those
moments of becoming and not becoming Alma tells us that she certainly
is aware of the hopeless situation of falling for life which will
finally succumb her as well. If I see The character Elle
in
the movie Hiroshima
Mon Amour and
the way opening shot is exhibited, a completely different tonality can
be registered. All through the initial fifteen to twenty minutes of
the movie the close-up of the bodies of Elle and Lui is shown which
is accompanied by their monologues, footage of the victims of the
Hiroshima,
things
that are the reminder and remnants of the terrific
event,
living bodies that were unaware of their fate that was going to be
turned into nothing in a flash of second, their memories and the
anxiety of seeing everything. Elle shows an inner world with urge to
be with everything out there in the space that had suffered a loss
that was a crisis and disaster on the humanistic ground. She is not
reflecting the tendency to return to a seclusion that would deny the
presence of language, acknowledgment of space and the movement of
time. She very clearly the language that shows her anxiety and urge
to reassert the natural state of the things. She narrates Lui about
everything that she saw or imagined in Hiroshima. This action of hers
certainly sheds a knowledge to us that she also wants those things to
be as they had been in her imagination or rather as they had been
before the horrible event of Hiroshima.
The
characters Elle
and
Lui in
the frame from the movie Hiroshima
mon amour
If
I see Elle’s notion of the experiences through the lens of
Brgsonian time space conecption then we see how the time and space
can be understood in a new way. It also critique’s Kantian notion
of time and space. Bergson thinks that Kant has confused space and
time in a mixture, with the result that we must conceive human action
as determined by natural
causality.
Bergson offers a twofold response. On the one hand, in order to
define consciousness and therefore freedom, Bergson proposes to
differentiate between time and space, “to un-mix” them, we might
say. On the other hand, through the differentiation, he defines the
immediate data of consciousness as being temporal, in other words, as
the duration (la
durée).
In the duration, there is no juxtaposition of events; therefore there
is no mechanistic causality. It is in the duration that we can speak
of the experience of freedom.
A verbal illustration of the expectation that she has regarding the
well beings of everything comes when she asks Lui about his
whereabouts during the Hiroshima.
He
replies that he was off fighting wars. She says that it was lucky for
him and her as well. It can be understood that she is not only
interested in the reconstruction of the lost lives and things, but
also to share her existence with the beings that remain alive after
the Hiroshima. She talks about the metals as a vulnerable flesh,
human flesh that is still suspended which shows the agony to be still
fresh and about the distortion and abstraction that happened to
everything. An anxiety to fill in the gaps and intense suffering of
the things
in a specific time-space
co-ordinate is
always inherent in Elle’s
talking.
Lui starts
with a negation of all her claims. He says You
saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing. Elle
says I have
always wept over Hiroshma’s fate. Always. In
reply Lui says No,
What was there to weep over for you? Lui
is sure in what he intends to clarify her. He knows that the claim
that she makes about the ill fates of the things
is
certainly hollow and does not have any ground to do so. Her anxiety
is only on the psychological and visual level. What so ever claims
she is making there is based upon her visual consumption of the
tragic event which were evident in the museum space and in the
extinction of certain physical features of the species. All she is
doing is to re-envision the documented post-war sites and terrific
destruction.
To
address such a layered and almost invisible issues located in all the
three movies is a very rigorous work to be done. The characters vary
from each other on several levels. They carry forward an individual
concern towards life and its central location amid my proposed view
of thing, time
and
space. The
origin
of the trauma may also be the reason that all the characters in the
chosen movies react so differently towards the immediate situation in
their lives. Elisabet in the movie Persona
chooses to talk into the language of silent observer or a passive
consumer of the events that occur around her but on the other the
character Elle in the movie chooses to talk continuously about her
visual memory and releases that accumulated inner perspective of the
after Hiroshima
phases.
Bibliography:-
1.
Bergman, Ingmar. 1968. “Hour of the Wolf” 88 minutes. Stockholm,
Sweden, Svenska Filmindustri.
2.
Bergman, Ingmar. 1966. “Persona” 84 minutes. Stockholm, Sweden,
AB Svenska Filmindustri.
3.
Resnais, Alain. 1959. “Hiroshima mon amour” 90 minutes. Paris,
France, Pathé
Films.
4.
Heidegger, Martin. 1950. “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes” 12-57.
Stuttgart: P. Reclam.
5.
Deleuze, Giles. 1983. “Cinema 1: The Movement Image” 18-64.
Mineapolis, Minnesota, United States, Univ of Minnesota Press.
6.
Bergson, Henri. 1896. “Matter and Memory” P. O. Box 913,
Eastford, 06242, USA, Martino Fine Books.
Excellent piece
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