The Pervert's Guide To Cinema Page #12

Tarkovsky's solution to this tension

is that of religious obscurantism.

The way out of this deadlock

is a gesture of self-sacrifice.

His last two films, Nostalghia and Sacrifice,

both end up with some suicidal gesture of the hero.

...for the great day of His wrath has come,

and who is able to stand?

But I don't think this is

what makes Tarkovsky interesting.

What makes him interesting

is the very form of his films.

Tarkovsky uses as this material element

of pre-narrative density, time itself.

All of a sudden we are made to feel

this inertia, drabness of time.

Time is not just a neutral, light medium

within which things happen.

We feel the density of time itself.

Things that we see are more markers of time.

He treats even humans in this way.

If we look at the unique face of Stalker himself,

it's a face of somebody

exposed to too much radiation

and, as it were, rotting, falling apart alive.

It is this disintegration

of the very material texture of reality

which provides the spiritual depth.

Tarkovskian subjects, when they pray,

they don't look up, they look down.

They even sometimes, as in Stalker,

put their head directly onto the earth.

Here, I think, Tarkovsky affects us at a level

which is much deeper,

much more crucial for our experience

than all the standard, spiritual motives

of elevating ourselves

above material reality and so on.

There is nothing specific about the zone.

It's purely a place where a certain limit is set.

You set a limit, you put a certain zone off-limit,

and although things remain

exactly the way they were,

it's perceived as another place.

Precisely as the place onto which you can project

your beliefs, your fears,

things from your inner space.

In other words, the zone is ultimately

the very whiteness of the cinematic screen.

"To the people of this city we donate

this monument; 'Peace and Prosperity'."

Chaplin's City Lights is one of those masterpieces

which are really too sophisticated

for the sophisticated.

It's a deceptively simple movie.

When we are enraptured by it,

we tend to miss

its complexity and extreme finesse.

Already, the first scene of the movie

provides the co-ordinates.

It's kind of a microcosm of Chaplin's entire art.

What's the source of Chaplin's comic genius?

What's the archetypal

comic situation in Chaplin's films?

It's being mistaken for somebody

or functioning as a disturbing spot,

as a disturbing stain.

He distorts the vision.

So he wants to erase himself,

to get out of the picture.

Or people don't even note him, take note of him,

so he wants to be noted.

Or, if they perceive him, he's misperceived,

identified for what he is not.

The tramp is wrongly identified,

by a beautiful blind girl

who is selling flowers on a street corner,

as a millionaire.

He accepts the game, helps her,

even steals money to pay for her operation

to restore her sight,

then after he serves the punishment

and returns, he tries to find her.

And I think that this is the metaphor

of our predicament.

All too often, when we love somebody,

we don't accept him or her

as what the person effectively is.

We accept him or her insofar as this person

fits the co-ordinates of our fantasy.

We misidentify, wrongly identify him or her,

which is why, when we discover

that we were wrong,

love can quickly turn into violence.

There is nothing more dangerous,

more lethal for the loved person

than to be loved, as it were,

for not what he or she is,

but for fitting the ideal.

In this case, love is always mortifying love.

Here it's not only the tramp

as the figure within the film's narrative

exposing himself to his beloved girl,

it's at the same time Chaplin as actor/director

exposing himself to us, the public.

"I am shameless. I am offering myself to you,

"but at the same time, I am afraid."

The true genius of Chaplin

resides in the way he was able to stage

this psychological moment of recognition

at the level of form, music, visual aspect,

and at the same time, at the level of acting.

When the two hands meet,

the girl finally recognises him for what he is.

This moment

is always extremely dangerous, pathetic.

The beloved falls out of the frame

of the idealised co-ordinates,

finally there

exposed in his psychological nakedness.

"Here I am as what I really am."

And I don't think we have to read it

as a happy ending.

We don't know what will happen.

We have the letters, "the end", the black screen,

but the singing goes on.

As if the emotion is now too strong,

it spills over the very frame.

In order to understand today's world,

we need cinema, literally.

It's only in cinema that we get

that crucial dimension which

we are not ready to confront in our reality.

If you are looking for what is in reality

more real than reality itself,

look into the cinematic fiction.

Corrected and additional transcription by Le Chef Gaspard

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