Clouds of Sils Maria
FILM
DATA
Directed
by Olivier Assayas; Produced by Charles Gillibert; Written by Olivier Assayas; Starring: Juliette
Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë G. Moretz, this film is a French-German-Swiss co-production that was selected to compete for
the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival
on 23 May 2014, and also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival
and New York Film Festival. It won the Louis Delluc Prize for Best Film in
December 2014 and a best supporting actress César Award for Kristen Stewart in
February 2015
(copied from Wikipedia).
FILM
TEXT ANALYSIS
Since the first scenes when actress Maria
Enders [ME] travels in train along her assistant Valentine, appears the
actress’ dislike for internet invasiveness resembling those technological
instruments used in spatial/ science fiction films performances by which she is
known and followed by fans and teens (including her assistant):
1. -Have you read this
article about Google’s use of private information? It’s disgraceful, is too
powerful-.
2. When talking about her
performances in such movies the conversation continues to refer on measures that
had been taken to eliminate “Xmen-IMDb” file, whether fans would become
disappointed –One is enough. I’m not playing Nemesis again. I’m a sick of
acting hanging from wires and from (green screen) witches-.
On the other hand electro-technical
invasiveness replicates in the train environment interrupting cell phone
communication of her assistant because of the Alps’ “tunnels, mountains and
tunnels” crossing the way.
The main drama plot to unfold is the
surprising revelation of death of the honored writer, Wilhelm Melchior, for
whom ME is making the trip to Switzerland, in recognition of his advocacy for
her early theatrical formation playing a young woman (“Sigrid”). Later in the
film she would also become aware of the real motive of Wilhelm’s unexpected death: under
confidentiality secrecy his widow Rosa Melchior tells Maria that he had
committed suicide, in the same place where they both stroll together,
surrounded by beautiful magnificent views from Swiss mountains and lakes. At
the best sightseeing point of the Maloja pass at the background, ME is suddenly informed about the cause
of death of the writer that has chosen such place to turn the scenery for his
suicide. “Maloja Snake” is the title of the play in which ME has acted in her
youth. –Why snake?, in the play is ambiguous- inquires Maria to the widow. –Maloja Snake is a cloud formation, very
rare, usually unexplained it’s a sign of bad weather. The clouds come from the
Italian lakes over the pass riding through the valley as the serpent. That’s
why they call it a snake-. The widow also tells Wilhelm was fascinated by a
film in black and white “He used to marvel of the nature of the landscape as it
is revealed by these images”. Conversely at the film’s end –when a real Maloja snake phenomenon takes place in possible
sight of Maria, her assistant Valentine suddenly disappears, deserting her at
the mountain’s viewpoint of the Maloja pass, as if swallowed by earth, never
appearing again nor giving afterwards any sign of existence in the film. With
such a surprising outcome the life of ME is turned to replay at her real life,
the utmost tragedy involving theatrical roles and actors of “Maloja Snake”
since its initial representation at her youth. When after the ceremony given to
honor Wilhelm, ME talks with the theatre director Klaus Diesterweg that
proposes her to act in a remake of the same play as the elder female character ("Helena"),
an older loop of the same tragedy plot brings new clues for reflecting on the
emotional riddle behind all those interpreting or rehearsing on the play. ME
recalls the actress playing such character, Susan Rosenberg, who died in an
accident one year after. –It’s superstition, but I’ve always associated her
death with Helena’s suicide (in the play)-. Her dislike of the behaviors played
by such character –“I don’t like Helena, perhaps because of her humanity”- are
defied by her assistant when both reflect together on Helena’s role: Valentine
–Helena is able to talk about her own pain-, finding further sense to the
disappearance/ death association –I’ve been thinking in Helena’s suicide all
night-. Valentine –She didn’t suicide. She disappears.- ME –It’s a way of looking
at it.- The following day after that conversation that ends by Valentine action
stopping ME to continue to smoke hashish, either finishes by the sudden
disappearance of the assistant when both are next to arrive to watch the Maloja Snake meteorological phenomenon. Hence
not superstition but psychological redundancy significantly associates
disappearance to death both in the play text as well in the lives of the
writer, the actress playing Helena and in the assistant helping ME to rehearse
it.
This argument easily shows in the
overall context of play and lives of those involved with it, a pathological
mourning process that establishes a pattern of repetition of loss and denial
mechanisms of it, as described in detail with the interplay of the two women
that are mainly involved with the life and death of the writer, Wilhelm:
1. Wilhelm’s widow lends ME
her house where she lived with her diseased husband, at the same time she takes
physical distance with it avoiding emotional compromise while masking her
defense as a contribution to Wilhelm’s memory: -“Stay as long as you want. (I
have to accept that as you are working in the part it was already written). ME
–You promised me they will be no ghosts. Rosa M- There are any. ME -I’m joking-
Rosa M- No, it’s half joking. This is the place where Wilhelm took his life,
but this rests between you and me-.
2. Part 2 starts displaying
the magnificent mountain views while ME and her assistant reflect on the
emotions triggered by the offer made by Klaus to perform as Helena in a new
version of the play: ME -I had a dream. We were already rehearsing and present
and past were blend in together… I shouldn’t have said “Yes” to Klaus, but Wilhelm’s
death and mourning, I couldn’t refuse-. When ME tries to explain Klaus why she
is rejecting to play Helena, she sustains it on her own mourning with the
divorce of her husband –I am in the middle of a divorce. I’m feeling alone and
vulnerable to do this-.
Moreover the theoretical reasons that
the film director argue to convince ME about the importance of her performance
in another role at the new version spin over idealization concepts denying
destructive competition amongst Wilhelm’s characters as well on the writer’s
self-destruction of his concealed suicide that in turn is to be honored and
praised:
1. ME –I played Sigrid in “Maloja
Snake” when I was eighteen. For me was more than a role and somewhere I am
still Sigrid. (…) Time comes by and (Helena) can’t accept it. Me neither I
guess. Klaus –There is no antagonism. It’s the attraction between two women
with the same wound; Sigrid and Helena are one at the same person. That’s what
the play is about. (…) If you refuse I understand, but it will be a missed
opportunity. Especially for Wilhelm.
2. Klaus –Rosa gave me
fragments from Wilhelm’s follow-up to “Maloja Snake”, as signs of her trust.
Some of the pages making sense out of context but there are few others that put
the play a new light-. ME –How old was Wilhelm when he wrote “Maloja Snake”?
Thirty five or so? How?-. Klaus – Mmmm… Thirty eight-. ME - Thirty eight?-. Klaus
–He was older when he made the film-. ME –He was still a young man, on action.
Twenty five years later obviously was more analytical trained to put things in
perspective; may be thinking about posterity… Who knows? Isn’t it better to
stay faithful to his youthful energy?-. Klaus –And forget the new scenes?-. ME
–Yes!-. Klaus – Wilhelm never did any distance (on charity). On the contrary,
his last text get’s bolder and bolder, and more and more enigmatic. Is another
way of looking at it. We think like him. We project ourselves into the future
instead of freezing ourselves in the past.
Finally
ME accepts to play Helena and evolves into competiveness amongst a female role
assuming “defeat by age and insecurity” and teen female role as challenged by
high social pressure wiping
out the values of the person if it has to succeed in the group
competition for mastering jobs and social environment recognition, therefore
making no substantial difference amongst both characters in their own two ways
–mature and immature- of expression:
1. With Valentine, her
assistant helping her in rehearsal of the play and discussing both old and
young female roles:
Referring
to the young female role played by young American actress, Jo-Ann Ellis,
interpreting the role of "Sigrid", Valentine asserts the reason for
the actress to work in the play is bound to her refusal “to be swallowed by
Hollywood”, where she promoted as star in a superhero movie (otherwise in fact
similar to ME’s refusal to work in such movies), she disagrees with ME
conception based in living the characters at the emotional level rather to
understand them. –You don’t need to understand. I have no choice. I have to be
them, I have to identify with them. I feel it, viscerally.
V
-You know, you don’t have to keep
me here if you find my ideas are too simplistic.
ME
–Why do you say that?
V-
If you find my point of view uninteresting, I even don’t know what I’m doing
here. (I can run rehearsal with you), but I can’t see the point if I anybody
can do that.
ME
–All I’m saying that thinking about a text is different from living it. It’s nothing against you.
V
–You hate the play, you hate (Helena). You have to take it out of me. Still is
my job.
(…)
ME
–The relation between these two women is disturbing.
(…)
ME
–I was a kid when I played Sigrid.
(…)
V
–Like Jo-Ann in her science fiction as well.
MR
–Yeah, probably.
V
–Don’t you want to get that innocence back?
ME
–You can’t get innocence twice.
V
–You can. If you just accept Helena the way you accepted Sigrid. Obviously is
easier (the way) to strength rather than weakness. You resist better than
maturity. Cruelty is cruel, suffering sucks… She is mature and she is innocent.
She is innocent in the (wrong way). That’s what I like about her.
ME
–I’ll make some coffee. You want some?
V
–You didn’t answer me. You have your interpretation of the play. I think mine
is just confusing you. It’s frustrating me. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not good.
ME
–Stay-.
V
–No, no…-
ME
–Please stay. I need you-.
2. With actress Jo-Ann
Ellis, interpreting the role of "Sigrid":
Jo-Ann
–What’s up?-. ME -I wanted to ask you… You know the scene at the beginning of
act three, when you tell me you gonna leave…and I am on my knees and I beg you
to stay. You’re in the phone asking for pepperoni pizza for your co-workers(…).
You leave without looking at me, as if I didn’t exist. Am, if you can pause for
a second; Helen has stress that will last longer when she is left alone in her
office. By the way you’re playing it, the audience follows it out but instantly
forgets about her, so…-. Jo-Ann –So… So what?-. ME –When I played Sigrid, I had
it longer, I thought it was more powerful. I mean it really did well-. Jo-Ann –(…)
I’m sorry but is pretty clear to me that this poor woman is a washed up. I mean
the character, not you. And when Sigrid leaves the Helen’s office, Helen is a wreck.
And we get it. Now its time to move on. I think they want on what it comes next-.
ME –If you just hold it, a few seconds longer-. Jo-Ann –It doesn’t play all
right for me that way Maria-. ME –All right. I think I’m lost in my memories.
You think you’ve forgotten your habits but they all come back, after breakdown-.
ME –I guess you do-.
Therefore
both mature and immature women seem to be trapped in a similar disconnection
with the mourning process they are both experiencing obliging both to adjust to
new conditions in order to regain empowerment in the fulfillment of their role
requirements to fit into job and social relations exigencies, if not to become secluded. Valentine explains ME that the strategy
of Sigrid to gain power over Helena lays in creating a vacuum effect around her
in order to manipulate her, a perverse mechanism that in the science movie
played by Jo-Ann is metaphorically expressed by a gravitational field that isolates the protagonist neutralizing her
powers.
Incapable
of coping with the survival challenges that are running for ME actress’ role,
as well for her assistant failed attempts to help her with its accomplishment, leaves
both helpless and lonely, following the path of unexplained disappearance in
the latter as well into the isolation within stage glass boxes of actors with
no interplay between them in the new play representation of “Maloja Snake”, or
total incomprehension of new roles in other plays that are offered to the
former. In the final scenes a young filmmaker offers a new possibility of work
that she completely dismisses:
·
A new hired Assistant [A2] reports the actress about
the film maker [Piers Roaldson PE] asking for an interview with her:
A2-
What do I tell Piers Roaldson?- ME –Remind me who is-. A2 –He shifted a film song
called “Electric shock wave”. ME –What has he done?- A2 –Nothing, he is twenty
five. For Jay he is good (…)-. ME –Which is the part?-. A2 –They haven’t yet
telling us. (…) I think your character will be some sort of hybrid. A creation of
modern genetics, but with a soul. It’s on the future, on the twenty-third
century-. ME –On earth?- A2 –May be, I’m not sure.
·
The film director enters into the theater dressing room:
ME
-I read your script. PE –I know we never met but I actually wrote
with you in mind-. ME –As a mutant?- PE
-I’m trying to consider
Genetics from a more human point of view-.
ME –When I was reading it I
imagined someone much younger. May be me
younger actually, but you’ve
seen me in movies that (I’ve made) in
years ago. I‘ve changed-. PE –She
has no age. Or else she is every age at
once, like all of us-. ME –Can
I be frank? May be it’s because I’m
working with her, but as I was
reading it I kept thinking about Jo-Ann-.
PE –Yeah… Personally I never
think about Jo-Ann Ellis-. ME –You’re
wrong. She’s smart and talented.
She is modern, just like your character.
PE –My character isn’t modern.
Not in that way, anyway. She is outside
of time. ME -Outside of time… I
don’t understand, it’s too abstract for
me-. PE –I don’t like this era-
ME – You’re wrong, it’s yours-. PE –Yeah
madam, I didn’t choose it. If
my era is Jo-Ann Ellis and viral internet
scandals, I think I am
entitled to feel unrelated. Is nothing
against (…), is something I’ve
guessed you understand it-.
·
At this moment no abstract notion is introduced to
Maria’s perception but the recurrent presence of death displaying through all
the film since the moment when she gets to know about the writer’s death -as
communicated by the assistant in a sign she holds at the same time the actress
is talking by phone in the train-, up to the end when suicidal tragedy hits the
wife of Jo-Ann’s new mate in his attempt to get divorce from the former.
The
continuous recreation of reality that challenges manhood in times of very fast
technical advances creates similar confusion and disbelief as any other painful
mourning transition that is to be managed at human loss experiences. On the
silent incomprehensible reiteration of suicide involving all the group members
related with the play seems to lay the mystery of the Maloja snake cloud formation riding mythic mist from the Italian
lakes into the valley.
Discussion
The characters of “The clouds of Sils
Maria” seem to be gathered by a same unavoidable refusal drive triggered in
defence to aging, death and mourning. Instead of generating closeness and
sharing between the group members –both in real and fiction roles- such grief processes
leave them solitary and mutually excluded for possible insights and assays
recreation of togetherness.
We have proposed that the family/ small group narrative systems’
capacities for the construction and recreation of meaning would become
particularly at test at the group narrative construction of bereavement (Correa
& Hobbs, 2009). Loss and death would challenge the personal and
group narratives to shape new constructions of narrative by recreating meaning
following a same basic re-organizational survival response to injuries and death
in the biologic systems (Bustuoabad & Correa, 2004) as well it does in the natural
phenomena continuously shaping the environment (Correa & Bustuoabad,2007). This hypothesis assumed that a process of
competition between personal and group members´ narrative construction of
meaning at bereavement evolving within every group comprising natural groups
including families, small groups and associations of fellows working in a same
work project would render preferential voice to those becoming group leaders in
transmitting their stories to the group. The narratives of the main characters
involved as writer, protagonists and assistant of actors of the “Maloja Snake”
play at “The clouds of Sils Maria” deal with individual outlooks concerned with
a masked basic bereavement conflict that becomes impossible to unveil, although this overlaps through all characters in
real life and play.
|
|
Drive other one into suicide |
Suicide |
disappearance |
|
Main characters
involved in the production of the Play
|
Jo-Ann (actress/ boyfriend’s wife)
|
Wilhelm
(Writer)
|
Valentine
(Assistant)
|
|
“Maloja
Snake” characters
|
“Sigrid”
|
“Helena”? Valentine –“She didn’t suicide. She disappears”-.
|
“Helena”
|
Suicide
in fact remains unveiled in the case of the writer and uncertain in the case of
the elder woman play character (“Helena”). Disappearance aftermath
events also are kept ambiguous or undisclosed. Bereavement therefore doesn’t
proceed. The only mourning event that seems to affect the protagonist is her
divorce –“I
am in the middle of a divorce. I’m feeling alone and vulnerable to do this”-.
Nevertheless when she gives such argument to director Klaus Diesterweg, he eludes
any comprehension by instead bringing forward an idealization mechanism for
avoiding mention of his death –“If you refuse I understand, but it will be a
missed opportunity. Especially for Wilhelm”-.
By circumventing to talk about
bereavement and emotions triggered by it all characters pretend then to impose
their own criteria for which Maria has to become convinced to play again “Maloja Snake” in the role of “Helena”, a character she dislikes,
emphasizing the passage of time as her own aging. Integration of bereavement
processes between real or amongst fiction characters remain therefore
untouched, being subjected only to metaphorical treatment by the theatre
director (-“Sigrid
and Helena are one at the same person. That’s what the play is about”-) or to
emotional parity as referred by Valentine (-“If you just accept Helena the way
you accepted Sigrid. Obviously is easier (the way) to strength rather than
weakness. You resist better than maturity. Cruelty is cruel, suffering sucks…
She is mature and she is innocent. She is innocent in the (wrong way). That’s
what I like about her”-).
Otherwise within a
conversational and reflective context between two persons or amongst involved
members in a group, irreversible loss brought by serious illness or death, lead
to deepen person-to-person involved conversations, (Bowen, 1991), open talk and share of emotional
expression amongst all family members (Paul & Grosser, 1965). I have described an approach to bereavement based on
such exercise of reflective practice in the construction of meaning together
to the development of narrative expertise on grief mainly through clinical use
of storytelling with terminal patients and their families (Correa, 2006b/c) as
well with intercultural groups (Correa & Hobbs, 2007), or by
discussion on film narratives by members in a group (Correa, 2012). As group
members are challenged by bereavement to recreate stories and expand
comprehension of meaning, narratological competency is gradually acquired and/
or enriched (Correa, 2006a; De Grado & Correa, 2007; Correa & De Grado,
2012). Whether a healthy family group will allow all members of a group to
potentially contribute to the narrative of bereavement by the proper nature of
its relationships’ structure on which communication is characterized by the
valuing of freedom of speech, clarity of expression, mutuality, acknowledgement
and acceptance of different views of reality (Beavers 1981; Simon 1988); rigid,
stereotyped attitudes towards serious
illness and death will operate in those other group settings enhancing
competition in their different professional/ cultural and age bond statements,
that are enhanced by the socio-cultural narratives .
Maloja
snake
cloud formation riding both mist and myth labeled with persecution fear that is
brought by the basic human anxiety of death is overall present in art as well
does in nature. Otherwise, if death was to be accepted a natural phenomenon
leading to understand the diverse meaning hided under the mourning processes
promoting change and evolution, instead fear that same snake would perhaps turn
master of deep knowledge, a matter that humans may well perceive as metaphors
in the evolving changes generating destruction and new life that permanently
arise in the environment. In Harold Pinter’s
play “A Kind of Alaska”, the author describes that under the dark light
shadowed after a nap he got at the *sixth hour* -the right midday hour for a
midday sleep at a day without night...- "shadow (turned) into strange,
tenuous and, in many instances, brief light”, designing places for his characters of stories that would endow further meaning to
various relations with literature characters (as those in Denmark castle’s
‘Northern Darkness') or else disease in the play characters as well perhaps
himself in turn.
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Film
data were obtained from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
