‘The changing critical forms we find in film writing are themselves responses to a changing cinema’[1]
There is no doubt about the fact that we live in a violent world where tragic events overrun our life through the ubiquity of the mass media. Nevertheless, filmic sequences of sex, flesh and blood in contemporary French cinema are labeled as “provocations” or “non assimilable emanations” and signaled as a symptom of a broad cultural crisis[2].
As I am analyzing in next chapters contemporary French cinema contains transgressive material not easily linkable with temporal referents that could facilitate its study. Both our current system of values and some frameworks among film criticism find their radical approach to reality a problematic element. Their display of sex and violence bring forth conflicts when such material is received by an external point of view likely to result in a dividing of opinions. However, there are some issues at hand. First, when giving an opinion about the inner logic of a work the critic of artistic matters since the turn to the twenty-first century must consider contextual circumstances. As highlighted by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood[3] from 1900 art begun to be considered an exemplary realm, what might be ‘seen or experienced within this realm would have a critical bearing on certain conditions of social existence in so far as art maintained a moral independence from those conditions’. With this, Harrison and Wood suggest that the assumed relations between art and theory and between art and language present discordances. As a consequence analyzing current cinema with the common economies ought to be carefully considered, it seems necessary looking at the context surrounding the works whether we attempt to approach them.
Secondly, the unstoppable rhythm of this feverish mode of modern life means that critical structures become extremely fast-paced so evaluations of contemporary cinema should be able to keep up to potential new visions of life and art.
Finally, for the interest of these papers I would like to reject the application of notions with regard to after-life, metaphysical certitude or religious’ takes. Although these categories should elicit a full respect they do not facilitate the evaluation of artistic practices such as contemporary French cinema. I am demonstrating that the films concern with the physical entities of this world and not beyond. In fact, the application of system of values that rely on transcendence or the estimation of moral views to resolve the conflicts within the profilmic reality is in itself problematic. As I am exposing, the authoritarian status of looking into moral concerns may overlap the intrinsic value of the works. So I affiliate with those that privilege the artist as an unquestionable author such as philosopher Gilles Deleuze to reject any metaphysical mastery over art by affirming that ‘there is no authority above art’[4].
This last point brings us back to the article that has caught my attention. In his Flesh and Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema[5], James Quandt evaluates some films included in this dissertation. To give an example, Quandt relates the “search for grace and oblivion” that he views along Robert Bresson’s oeuvre[6] with the “unintentional anxiety” of Bruno Dumont[7]. There are indeed some stylistic similarities between these two French filmmakers[8]. Nevertheless, “stylistic similarities” does not necessarily mean “system of values”, and I do believe that the latter determines the former. Although Dumont is following some of Bresson’s methods[9] he does not share Bresson’s morality. And their “beliefs” or “system of values” do indeed differ[10]. Whether when analyzing contemporary material there is a clear influence of a principle or belief upon the filmmaker’s legacy critic must irrevocably consider such principle or belief to approach the oeuvre. Ethical categories and the system of current values have logically evolved in the last 25 years, not to mention that critic and filmmaker may also have a different worldview. Thus, estimating Bresson and Dumont’s films by applying the same framework is seemingly inappropriate. Dumont is concerned with this life alone[11], so it is necessary to apply mundane analysis from now on.
The fact that Quandt is applying critical patterns employed with Bresson to this filmography his approach could not convey anything other than inaccuracies. Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002), Philippe Grandrieux’s La Vie Nouvelle (2002), Marina de Van’s In My Skin (2002), Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day (2001) or Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell (2004) among others are all films made in the 21stcentury with all the implications this includes such as: as living in a world where the existence of God has not been yet proven, the application of moral views derived from that belief may convey a partial analysis. In fact, could we possibly overcome an understanding of La Vie Nouvelle by means of ethereal spirituality? Are we thoroughly immersed in Trouble Every Day’s luring universe applying notions of charity or mercy to judge the film’s brutal murderers? What is the sense of metaphysical transcendence to the worldly matters of In My Skin? Shall we view Irreversible with a moral gaze?
As Beugnet[12] points out, Quandt’s article is a representative example of the critical argument dismissing aspects of contemporary French cinema. I would like to further this discourse. Similarly to Beugnet, it is clear to me that the critical categories applied to this filmmaking reveal what our general expectations on art and transgressive material are. I nevertheless argue in next chapters that we should not evaluate the films from the perspective of life but rather consider life from the application of the films’ challenges. By estimating this group of films as a “collapse of ideology” Quandt is attempting to announce a cultural crisis which is nevertheless located in his article. Contrarily to Quandt, I argue that such crisis is in fact in our system of values which as a matter of course may be limiting film criticism’s criteria. In his suggestion that this filmography is difficultly assimilable for our current values when the troublesome element is for instance female sexuality[13] the article reveals ‘how miserable it is to be able to bear so little[14]’. I attempt to claim the necessity of an amoral and godless cognition to approach the unbearable and the artistic notion of suffering. The elaboration of such framework is very important in order to break the films’ outward aspect and hence be able to estimate the values that as I am showing hide beneath.
This approach is referred to in Chapter 2 as a “cinematic-philosophy”. I evoke the term philosophy as to convey frameworks with which we can approach challenging proposals of new artistic manifestations. As we will see, philosophy helps us to maintain the indebted distance to look at existence in our dealing with life. This philosophy that I am presenting departs from Nietzsche and is made cinematic by brief overviews on Deleuze’s oeuvre. The former carries the negation of both God and some partial accounts of Western thought that underestimate nature and art. He presents a transvaluation of outdated theories to facilitate us a more reliable dealing with existence. By means of this he opens future for thought based on a strong love for art and life of his philosophy of immanence which I found applicable to this “cinema of immanence”[15].
Chapter 3 represents the main body of this thesis. The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a work of which undeniable force is crucial for my thesis. Based on the obscure passions inherent to the excellence of Greek art, BT[16] explores and expands the importance of suffering as such in an artistic form. I am applying this insightful vision to the unendurable nature of my corpus of films in order to overcome the inaccuracies that have provoked their underestimation. I am also explaining how Apollo and Dionysus, crucial characters of BT are inserted in the films
It may be worth mentioning that my thesis is contrasted with mainstream filmography. Mainstream tendencies create some generic expectations upon the audience. I am examining how these expectations determine the reception of certain material such as sex or violence. The latter, for the reason of transcending and questioning the tangent borders of the prevailing currents of thought is arguably labeled as a “growing vogue”[17].
Finally, my conclusive chapter formulates a question of which answer leaves the debate open beyond these papers. Quid Et Veritas[18]? asks the governor Pontius Pilate to the feverish crowd that yearned to crucify Jesus with the sole reason of the latter’s defamation of the truth alternative to that of the Sacred Temple. That very question, whether it took place or not has strongly conditioned the way in which a vast majority of cultures approach existence. That very question is asked by Nietzsche in his reformulation of the Western thought and floats along my corpus of films. The films do not provide an answer because no excluding interpretations of the world are given by them, but rather they will open plural visions for an ambiguous existence. By carefully analyzing their hectic proposals we may be able to estimate their value while embracing existence more enthusiastically.
[1]Ed. John Orr & Olga Taxidou, Post-war Cinema and Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 5.
[2]James Quandt, Flesh and Blood: sex and violence in recent French cinema, (ArtForum, February 2004) Sourced: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[3]Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory. 1900- 2000. An Ontology of Changing Ideas (Blackwell Publishing 2003), 2.
[4]Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974). (Los Angeles, California Semiotext, 2004), 129.
[5] See: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[6] In The Poetry of Apocalypse (2002), by James Quandt Bresson’s cinema is labeled “metaphysical” suggesting the existence of God. See: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Quandt_Essay.html
[7] Quandt does not refuse that Dumont’s Life of Jesus (1997) and L’Humanité (1999) are the works of a ‘true heir to Bresson’. Moreover, Quandt views that a moral vision ‘is incorporated into Dumont’s previous films’ and that it becomes ‘unintentional anxiety’ in Twentynine Palms (2003). See: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[8] See: The Life of Jesus by Brett Bowles, Film Quarterly no. 57, 2004. Access provided by Jstor URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185941, Edinburgh University.
[9] Shot in Dumont’s hometown Bailleul, such isolated country seat recalls Bresson’s milieu for The Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
[10] See Charles Thomas Samuels’ remarks on Bresson’s Christianity and the filmmaker’s belief that ‘we all partake of one essential soul’ in http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/Words/CTSamuels.html See Dumont questioned about religiousness in David Walsh’s interview: http://www.wsws.org/arts/1997/sep1997/freddy.shtml. Moreover, Dumont on the impossibility of predetermined morals to analyze The Life of Jesus in: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185941, p51
[11] See: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/dumont_bodies.html
[12] Martine Beugnet, Cinema and Sensation.( Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 36-37
[13] See Quandt’s analysis of Breillat’s Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[14] Breillat quoted: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040912/ai_n12757912
[15] Subjects are formed from ‘planes of immanence’ which are thought departing from our own physical experience as Deleuze explains. Nietzsche dealt with his own suffering which strongly determined (see BT, XXII) the formulation of his philosophy. This cinema is also formed on planes of immanence because it produces ground for thought form physical experiences. For further details: Colebrook, Claire. Gilles Deleuze. Routledge London, 2002. 72-79.
[16]The Birth of Tragedy.
[17] Sourced: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[18] What is Truth?
There is no doubt about the fact that we live in a violent world where tragic events overrun our life through the ubiquity of the mass media. Nevertheless, filmic sequences of sex, flesh and blood in contemporary French cinema are labeled as “provocations” or “non assimilable emanations” and signaled as a symptom of a broad cultural crisis[2].
As I am analyzing in next chapters contemporary French cinema contains transgressive material not easily linkable with temporal referents that could facilitate its study. Both our current system of values and some frameworks among film criticism find their radical approach to reality a problematic element. Their display of sex and violence bring forth conflicts when such material is received by an external point of view likely to result in a dividing of opinions. However, there are some issues at hand. First, when giving an opinion about the inner logic of a work the critic of artistic matters since the turn to the twenty-first century must consider contextual circumstances. As highlighted by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood[3] from 1900 art begun to be considered an exemplary realm, what might be ‘seen or experienced within this realm would have a critical bearing on certain conditions of social existence in so far as art maintained a moral independence from those conditions’. With this, Harrison and Wood suggest that the assumed relations between art and theory and between art and language present discordances. As a consequence analyzing current cinema with the common economies ought to be carefully considered, it seems necessary looking at the context surrounding the works whether we attempt to approach them.
Secondly, the unstoppable rhythm of this feverish mode of modern life means that critical structures become extremely fast-paced so evaluations of contemporary cinema should be able to keep up to potential new visions of life and art.
Finally, for the interest of these papers I would like to reject the application of notions with regard to after-life, metaphysical certitude or religious’ takes. Although these categories should elicit a full respect they do not facilitate the evaluation of artistic practices such as contemporary French cinema. I am demonstrating that the films concern with the physical entities of this world and not beyond. In fact, the application of system of values that rely on transcendence or the estimation of moral views to resolve the conflicts within the profilmic reality is in itself problematic. As I am exposing, the authoritarian status of looking into moral concerns may overlap the intrinsic value of the works. So I affiliate with those that privilege the artist as an unquestionable author such as philosopher Gilles Deleuze to reject any metaphysical mastery over art by affirming that ‘there is no authority above art’[4].
This last point brings us back to the article that has caught my attention. In his Flesh and Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema[5], James Quandt evaluates some films included in this dissertation. To give an example, Quandt relates the “search for grace and oblivion” that he views along Robert Bresson’s oeuvre[6] with the “unintentional anxiety” of Bruno Dumont[7]. There are indeed some stylistic similarities between these two French filmmakers[8]. Nevertheless, “stylistic similarities” does not necessarily mean “system of values”, and I do believe that the latter determines the former. Although Dumont is following some of Bresson’s methods[9] he does not share Bresson’s morality. And their “beliefs” or “system of values” do indeed differ[10]. Whether when analyzing contemporary material there is a clear influence of a principle or belief upon the filmmaker’s legacy critic must irrevocably consider such principle or belief to approach the oeuvre. Ethical categories and the system of current values have logically evolved in the last 25 years, not to mention that critic and filmmaker may also have a different worldview. Thus, estimating Bresson and Dumont’s films by applying the same framework is seemingly inappropriate. Dumont is concerned with this life alone[11], so it is necessary to apply mundane analysis from now on.
The fact that Quandt is applying critical patterns employed with Bresson to this filmography his approach could not convey anything other than inaccuracies. Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002), Philippe Grandrieux’s La Vie Nouvelle (2002), Marina de Van’s In My Skin (2002), Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day (2001) or Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell (2004) among others are all films made in the 21stcentury with all the implications this includes such as: as living in a world where the existence of God has not been yet proven, the application of moral views derived from that belief may convey a partial analysis. In fact, could we possibly overcome an understanding of La Vie Nouvelle by means of ethereal spirituality? Are we thoroughly immersed in Trouble Every Day’s luring universe applying notions of charity or mercy to judge the film’s brutal murderers? What is the sense of metaphysical transcendence to the worldly matters of In My Skin? Shall we view Irreversible with a moral gaze?
As Beugnet[12] points out, Quandt’s article is a representative example of the critical argument dismissing aspects of contemporary French cinema. I would like to further this discourse. Similarly to Beugnet, it is clear to me that the critical categories applied to this filmmaking reveal what our general expectations on art and transgressive material are. I nevertheless argue in next chapters that we should not evaluate the films from the perspective of life but rather consider life from the application of the films’ challenges. By estimating this group of films as a “collapse of ideology” Quandt is attempting to announce a cultural crisis which is nevertheless located in his article. Contrarily to Quandt, I argue that such crisis is in fact in our system of values which as a matter of course may be limiting film criticism’s criteria. In his suggestion that this filmography is difficultly assimilable for our current values when the troublesome element is for instance female sexuality[13] the article reveals ‘how miserable it is to be able to bear so little[14]’. I attempt to claim the necessity of an amoral and godless cognition to approach the unbearable and the artistic notion of suffering. The elaboration of such framework is very important in order to break the films’ outward aspect and hence be able to estimate the values that as I am showing hide beneath.
This approach is referred to in Chapter 2 as a “cinematic-philosophy”. I evoke the term philosophy as to convey frameworks with which we can approach challenging proposals of new artistic manifestations. As we will see, philosophy helps us to maintain the indebted distance to look at existence in our dealing with life. This philosophy that I am presenting departs from Nietzsche and is made cinematic by brief overviews on Deleuze’s oeuvre. The former carries the negation of both God and some partial accounts of Western thought that underestimate nature and art. He presents a transvaluation of outdated theories to facilitate us a more reliable dealing with existence. By means of this he opens future for thought based on a strong love for art and life of his philosophy of immanence which I found applicable to this “cinema of immanence”[15].
Chapter 3 represents the main body of this thesis. The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a work of which undeniable force is crucial for my thesis. Based on the obscure passions inherent to the excellence of Greek art, BT[16] explores and expands the importance of suffering as such in an artistic form. I am applying this insightful vision to the unendurable nature of my corpus of films in order to overcome the inaccuracies that have provoked their underestimation. I am also explaining how Apollo and Dionysus, crucial characters of BT are inserted in the films
It may be worth mentioning that my thesis is contrasted with mainstream filmography. Mainstream tendencies create some generic expectations upon the audience. I am examining how these expectations determine the reception of certain material such as sex or violence. The latter, for the reason of transcending and questioning the tangent borders of the prevailing currents of thought is arguably labeled as a “growing vogue”[17].
Finally, my conclusive chapter formulates a question of which answer leaves the debate open beyond these papers. Quid Et Veritas[18]? asks the governor Pontius Pilate to the feverish crowd that yearned to crucify Jesus with the sole reason of the latter’s defamation of the truth alternative to that of the Sacred Temple. That very question, whether it took place or not has strongly conditioned the way in which a vast majority of cultures approach existence. That very question is asked by Nietzsche in his reformulation of the Western thought and floats along my corpus of films. The films do not provide an answer because no excluding interpretations of the world are given by them, but rather they will open plural visions for an ambiguous existence. By carefully analyzing their hectic proposals we may be able to estimate their value while embracing existence more enthusiastically.
[1]Ed. John Orr & Olga Taxidou, Post-war Cinema and Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 5.
[2]James Quandt, Flesh and Blood: sex and violence in recent French cinema, (ArtForum, February 2004) Sourced: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[3]Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory. 1900- 2000. An Ontology of Changing Ideas (Blackwell Publishing 2003), 2.
[4]Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974). (Los Angeles, California Semiotext, 2004), 129.
[5] See: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[6] In The Poetry of Apocalypse (2002), by James Quandt Bresson’s cinema is labeled “metaphysical” suggesting the existence of God. See: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Quandt_Essay.html
[7] Quandt does not refuse that Dumont’s Life of Jesus (1997) and L’Humanité (1999) are the works of a ‘true heir to Bresson’. Moreover, Quandt views that a moral vision ‘is incorporated into Dumont’s previous films’ and that it becomes ‘unintentional anxiety’ in Twentynine Palms (2003). See: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[8] See: The Life of Jesus by Brett Bowles, Film Quarterly no. 57, 2004. Access provided by Jstor URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185941, Edinburgh University.
[9] Shot in Dumont’s hometown Bailleul, such isolated country seat recalls Bresson’s milieu for The Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
[10] See Charles Thomas Samuels’ remarks on Bresson’s Christianity and the filmmaker’s belief that ‘we all partake of one essential soul’ in http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/Words/CTSamuels.html See Dumont questioned about religiousness in David Walsh’s interview: http://www.wsws.org/arts/1997/sep1997/freddy.shtml. Moreover, Dumont on the impossibility of predetermined morals to analyze The Life of Jesus in: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185941, p51
[11] See: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/dumont_bodies.html
[12] Martine Beugnet, Cinema and Sensation.( Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 36-37
[13] See Quandt’s analysis of Breillat’s Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[14] Breillat quoted: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040912/ai_n12757912
[15] Subjects are formed from ‘planes of immanence’ which are thought departing from our own physical experience as Deleuze explains. Nietzsche dealt with his own suffering which strongly determined (see BT, XXII) the formulation of his philosophy. This cinema is also formed on planes of immanence because it produces ground for thought form physical experiences. For further details: Colebrook, Claire. Gilles Deleuze. Routledge London, 2002. 72-79.
[16]The Birth of Tragedy.
[17] Sourced: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_42/ai_113389507/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
[18] What is Truth?
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