Vivre Sa Vie (Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)/1962
We live in both exciting and uncertain times: we’ve had a series of upheavals in world politics in recent times and the media is gearing up for the new year by pumping out predictions filled with paranoia and anxiety about 2017. I’ve thought about what wisdom we could garner from our past, in particular, the existentialist movement. What were the great thinkers of those times pondering about? What did they feel were important matters for humanity and individual human beings?
With these thoughts lingering in my mind, I watched Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie on the weekend. Translated as My Life To Live in English, the film came out in 1962 during the era of the French New Wave. The film has 12 chapters (scenes) following the love, work and life of a woman in Paris in the 60s: Nana.
Nana is an adorable character to watch: she’s beautiful, intelligent and curious about the world and those around her. She can at times be petulant and silly but that’s all part of her charm. The harshness of life and poverty start to take its toll on Nana but she doesn’t become resentful. Instead, she ponders on core existentialist values: individual freedom and responsibility. She says:
‘I think we’re always responsible for our actions. We’re free
I raise my hand – I’m responsible
I turn my hand – I’m responsible
I am unhappy – I’m responsible
I smoke – I’m responsible
I shut my eyes – I’m responsible
I forget I’m responsible, but I am
I told you there’s no escape
Everything is good.’
In a later scene, she discusses language and comprehension with a philosopher (who in real life was Jean Luc Godard’s former Philosophy tutor Brice Parain). Feeling tired and worn down, Nana complains about how we must constantly communicate: why can’t we just enjoy silence? However, in response the philosopher reminds Nana of the beauty of communication: how ideas from thousands of years ago, can still be understood.
Vivre Ma Vie is an account of a search for meaning in the midst of challenging events. While life continues to throw expected and unexpected challenges at Nana she continues to ask questions and thinks about how to live. And it is this quality that makes the Nana-character endearing.
Under the sun (Directed by Vitaliy Manskiy)/2016
I was once told by my sunday school teacher that we have two ears and one mouth because God wanted us to listen twice as much as speaking. Time and time again, at school, church, work we are constantly reminded of the importance of listening and paying attention to others' before we express and impose our views and judgements on others. Which is exactly what Vitaliy Manskiy did in his film about a day in the lives of a little girl in North Korea.
Many a other visual works on North Korea had focused on what could be retrieved as the 'truth' from this hermit kingdom shrouded in iron secrecy. Manskiy, in what I think is a stroke of genius, instead turned it around and asked the North Korean authorities to show us what they would like to show: the script and direction of the film has been entirely left to the hands of the North Korean national propaganda team with Manskiy holding the camera.
What we see is an incredible exercise of reverse psychology: what the propaganda institution decides to show when it is left to its own devices, when it has been given an absolute freedom to create. The film revolves around the lives of a little girl called Zin-mi and her parents; a family that may be considered middle-class living in the state's capital Pyongyang.
Manskiy's camera does not judge or probe, it merely observes what is presented; what is subdued; what is highlighted. Freedom to do whatever also means freedom not to do and that perhaps is more telling than what is chosen to be done; particularly when there is such a huge political and cultural gulf between our existence and Zin-mi's.
Perfectly behaving, bright children, eerily empty school except for Zin-mi's classroom, empty city except around the bus Zin-mi's getting on. The audience can gather remarkable insight by watching the surroundings than the intended focus in a scene. The viewers also notice smile-less, tired, and cold looking people with a constant look of fear or worry on their faces.
By watching what has been presented in this film, the viewers also engage in an exercise of trying to understand the world behind the scenes. Not only do we get to see what the authorities 'choose' to show us, we also look out for other signs on the periphery of the screen. It is as if we're trying to delve into find something in the sub-conscious of the film. In turn the film no longer becomes a visual product but it is simply a medium which the North Koreans and the rest of the world try to communicate with each other: them telling us something, and we trying to understand where they're coming from.
I really enjoyed the calm and compassionate eye of Manskiy's camera. I felt that this method allowed far more information to come through than what something like a surreptitious hat-cam could have ever achieved (a method that is fixated on usurping anything the North Koreans have to say). It is one of the more unique films on the most secretive country in the world I've seen and it is one that comes across quite courteous and respectful. And once we start to behave more courteous to each other and treat them like human beings perhaps we might have more chance of a dialogue.
Based on a true story, the film follows Olga Hepnarová, a 22 year old woman who committed a mass murder in the 1970s. Somewhat abstract, somewhat dream-like, the film provides a compassionate and questioning perspective on the demands of modern life and inadequacies of institutions to manage what is an organic and fluid issue.
It is not fully explained how Olga became Olga. Her family appears unable to communicate and rigid with formalities and social protocols. Her mother swings between a (failing) disciplinarian trying to get her daughter to "behave" to being a purse string: resigned to throw money at the problem to make it go away.
Set in the background is 1970s Prague; a highly functioning socialist society where the state provides for basic school, work and living. Olga grows up at the school hostel where she gets bullied by other girls. She finds other people dumb and boring to talk to. She has nothing in common with people around her and resigns herself to being a permanent outcast.
After leaving school, she lives by herself in a cabin in the woods but realises that she's not equipped with the life skills to live in the wilderness. Her existence depends on modern amenities without which life becomes as insufferable as living amongst other people.
She comes back to society and lives with her colleagues at work where she works as a mechanic. She wants to get some time off work and asks to see the work psychiatrist to try to get them to send her to an asylum to rest. The doctor kindly tells her that that's not what the hospitals are for. She asks them to find her a lesbian partner; her doctor tells her that "that's not what the health care system is supposed to provide". What is the health care system supposed to provide? What is the point of work and earning wages if your core being can only be described as 'confused' at best?
There is a German word: Prügelknabe meaning victim of bullying. Olga defines herself as Prügelknabe. But the film doesn't exactly go into great detail of the bullying that was inflicted on Olga. This is what makes this film different from other films that are based on a story of a murderer. They usually provide reason or justification for the offender's actions - for the horrific crime the person has committed.
This film doesn't even really portray Olga as a criminal. The overall impression on the audience is that these abuses are common to the human condition and here is one person that decided to scream out, leaving the question as to why other people don't scream? Hostility, violence, neglect, manipulation, exploitation; from friends, parents, lovers, colleagues or random strangers: human condition is a myriad of physical and psychological abuses that happen during social interactions. What the film is about, loud and clear, is the inadequacies of the formal and official manners of institutions to deal with these kinds of issues.
Olga decides to take revenge against all the people that harmed her: against the whole of society. On a sunny day in 1973 Prague, Olga drives a truck through a busy promenade killing 8 people and injuring 20. At the trial she declares her sentence against "your bestiality" and asks to be given death penalty. However it doesn't turn out to be the meaningful death that she intended for it to be. The time in prison prior to the execution grinds her further down so that she no longer recognizes her former self. Prison; the ultimate form of institution obliterates what is left of Olga's soul.
