I'm Going Home
by Josh Timmermann

If Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is the quintessential example of a prodigious young film director trying every trick in the book (and inventing, or at least perfecting, countless others) to astonish his audience with the sheer boldness of his invention, then Manoel de Oliveira's I'm Going Home may come to be recognized as cinema's definitive case of a wise old master, precisely sure of the power of his art, making nothing short of a minimalist masterpiece.

This is a picture that owes much of its beauty and profundity to the simplicity, delicacy, and great patience with which it tells its story. At the beginning of the film, Gilbert Valence (Michel Piccoli), a famous, aging French theatre actor, is told that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car accident. Now, all that Valence has left is his career, his young grandson Serge, and life's simple pleasures. It is, with this in mind, that de Oliveira offers this moving, unexpectedly joyous film, which, in almost any other hands, would surely have seemed sentimental or despairing.

The director's spare, poetic approach is ideal for illustrating just how important some of life's smaller moments can be. Every day Valence reads the same paper at the same table in the same café while drinking a cup of espresso. Emotionally restrained, yet, at the same time, expressive, Piccolo naturalistically conveys the solitude and quiet pleasure that such moments provide for Valence. What makes his performance here so touching is that it feels entirely instinctive. Piccoli is, after all, playing a character that is, in many respects, quite similar to himself.

Some of the film's sadder (though still far from humorless) scenes involve Valence's career. After turning down a role in a dubious-sounding "TV thing" that his agent feels could make him more widely-known, Valence agrees to play the small but crucial role of Buck Mulligan (a character decades younger than himself) in a decidedly sub-par adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses by an American director (the pitch-perfect John Malkovich). In a long, single take, we watch Valence's transformation into what his film's make-up artists apparently believe Buck Mulligan to be like (the result bares a noticeable resemblance to George C. Scott's porn director disguise from Paul Schrader's Hardcore).

Even more problematic is Valence's inability to master English in order to play the role. During the first day shooting his scene, we primarily see Malkovich squirming with frustration and trying patiently to suppress his disappointment with Valence bumbling his part, while, offscreen, we hear the actor struggling to remember his lines. It's heartbreaking to watch, but the next day is even worse. This time, we not only hear but see Valence embarrass himself, until he wearily walks off the set, announcing, 'I'm going home."

Manoel de Oliveira

Both Piccoli and de Oliveira seem to completely understand Valence's character, and can probably empathize with his situation. He is an artist living in a world where art has become increasingly unappreciated or simply cheapened. Added to this, he has lost most of his loved ones to tragedy. At 93, de Oliveira has surely had to endure similar feelings of loneliness and perhaps even guilt, watching friends and relatives pass away, one by one, while he goes on living.

When do we finally come to the conclusion that we've outgrown the world we're living in; that we're no longer able to convincingly play the part we've been assigned? When do we sign off indefinitely and head "home" for good? This troubling, ambiguous question lies at the heart of de Oliveira's wonderful film. Whether or not he provides an answer may be debatable. That I'm Going Home is one of the year's very best films, is not.

©2002 Josh Timmermann
CineScene