THE WEB
WE WEAVE

by Howard Schumann

Two from the Vancouver International Film Festival:

Spider, the powerful and haunting new film from Canadian director David Cronenberg, takes us on a journey through a disturbed man's psyche - a story in which we are uncertain to the end about what is truth and what is fiction. Dennis Clegg (Ralph Fiennes), who was nicknamed "Spider" by his mother, is released from psychiatric custody where he has been a schizophrenic patient for twenty years. He takes up residence at a halfway house in a bleak, run-down section of East End London, the same neighborhood where he grew up. As he wanders the shadowy streets, Spider begins to recall his fractured boyhood as the only child of an abusive plumber (Gabriel Byrne) and his doting wife (Miranda Richardson). He sees himself as a ten-year-old boy reliving the traumatic situations that led to his confinement.

Based on a novel by Patrick McGrath, and enhanced by Howard Shore's evocative score, Spider has, in the director's words, "the feel of Samuel Beckett confronting Sigmund Freud." Nothing is what it seems. Cronenberg shows the adult Spider lurking in the background of the childhood scenes, re-experiencing his past like a living ghost who has come to observe the dead. This man can only confront his past from a perception distorted by illness, and we see the events only from his point of view. Through him, Cronenberg asks us to think about whether memory is "creative" (as in the plays of Harold Pinter), or an objective fact fixed in time.

Fiennes turns in an Oscar-caliber performance of amazing strength, one that allows the viewer to get inside his head and feel his pain intensely. Though he mumbles in a virtually inaudible way throughout, Fiennes is never false or "over-the-top" as in other recent portrayals of schizophrenics. Equally outstanding is Miranda Richardson, who plays both Spider's mother and the floozy his dad brings home from the pub.

Cronenberg's vision is bleak and unsparing, using mood and expression rather than dialogue to achieve its effect. This is not a film about schizophrenia or how the mentally ill can rise above their disability, but about the lonely journey of all men to discover the truth about themselves. Spider is a brilliant tour-de-force and a gut-wrenching experience.

*****

"Since there is no hope left in the world, I tried to make a hopeful film without too much pessimism, because everything is kind of wrong nowadays." -- Aki Kaurismäki

The Man Without a Past, the latest film from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, is a feel-good comedy, Kaurismäki style. That means deadpan humor, stoic characters, a working-class milieu, and American-style rock music. The movie (which won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival) unfortunately does not break any new ground.

Markku Peltola plays a welder who is beaten and robbed after stepping off a train to look for work in Helsinki. Referred to as M, he barely survives and loses all memory of his past. Left without any material resources, he slowly picks up the pieces and restarts his life among homeless and eccentric squatters on the outskirts of the city. M has to rely on help from generous local residents and obtain charity from the local Salvation Army. In the process, he meets and falls in love with a dour Salvation Army worker named Irma (Kati Outinen).

The film moves from one contrived situation to another. Renting his quarters from a droll security guard, M acquires a "monstrous" dog named Hannibal, renovates a jukebox that plays American rock music and blues, then turns a bunch of square Salvation Army musicians into a rock band. In another incident, he is arrested as a suspect in a bank robbery only because he was in the bank at the time and could not verify his identity. He later meets with the newly compassionate bank robber, who asks M to use the money he took from his frozen account to pay back people who worked for him.

The Man Without a Past is a gentle fantasy that reminded me a little of Miracle in Milan. Like De Sica, Kaurismäki identifies with the alienated, and dramatizes society's dismissive attitude toward them. Ultimately, however, I found it a bit too cute to work either as comedy or social commentary. It's an engaging film, but it has too many clever one-liners and "colorful" characters who talk like Jay Leno on tranquilizers.

Video viewing:

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965).

"It all adds up", says François to his mistress Emilie, explaining why he can love her and his wife Therese and his children equally. In this brilliant and provocative film, Varda raises the question of whether "open marriage" can work, and answers it with a definite "maybe."

As the film opens, a carpenter, François (Jean-Claude Drouot), and his young (real-life) family are experiencing a Sunday afternoon picnic in the park. Shot in pastels and making use of exquisite color fades, Varda immerses us in the flowers, trees, and lakes of the French countryside. We are lulled by Mozart's languid Clarinet Quintet, yet soon sense that something is amiss. Communication appears superficial and few feelings are expressed. This mood carries over to a scene in their apartment complex where, in a family gathering that includes aunts and uncles, not much happens in the way of conversation.

When François is away on business, he meets an attractive telephone operator named Emilie. Soon he declares his love for her and claims that he has enough love within him to include her in his life: "I love you both, and if I met you first, you would be my wife." Being honest and open, François tells his wife Therese that he has loved another woman for over a month, but says that his love for Therese and his family remains stronger than ever. The love that François experiences is - the film states again and again - a natural occurrence, an addition, not a subtraction. However, Therese cannot separate herself from what has become her identity as wife and mother, which leads to unfortunate consequences. At the end of the film, Mozart's Clarinet Quintet is replaced by the darker Adagio and Fugue in C Minor.

In Le Bonheur, the characters are painfully pure, and do not question their actions. For François, happiness is apparently seamless - it will continue regardless of consequences, and, in his world, people are simply viewed as interchangeable parts. In the director's own words, happiness is "a beautiful fruit that tastes of cruelty."

"In my films," Varda has said, "I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see." One of the seminal works of the French New Wave, Le Bonheur was audacious in its day. Over thirty years later, it still leaves us unsettled, yet able to see more deeply.

©2002 Howard Schumann
CineScene