Pictures from everywhere -- 27 -- voices
by prudence on 14-Oct-2021Four very different films, but drawn together by the question of voice. Three seek to be a mouthpiece for those who have often been marginalized, disempowered, and/or forgotten, while one -- spectacularly, egregiously -- deprives them of their voice.
Two I straightforwardly liked; one I hated; and one puzzled me at first, but once I'd thought about it a bit, I found it quite brilliant...
Indonesian students, Yogya, 2013-14. Their voices taught me a lot...
1.
Kuessipan
2019, Myriam Verreault
Based on the novel of the same name by Naomi Fontaine (who also co-wrote the film script), this movie features the Innu community of Quebec's Uashat reserve. Fontaine was born in Uashat, and moved with her family to Quebec City when she was seven. She says: "When I was growing up in Quebec, I lived with white people and heard all the racism and prejudice about my people. I didn’t understand the prejudice and false facts because, when I went back to my community during the year, I felt free. I felt good, I felt happy. I was at home. Why were there false facts about this place that I loved and felt good about? I felt there was a gap between what people think and the reality. I wrote Kuessipan, which means 'it’s your turn' in Innu. I said it's my turn to talk, my turn for my people and I to talk about our community." Verreault and Fontaine worked on the film with the community, and the actors playing the key roles are all Innu.
Mikuan is the female lead. She has a strong, loving family behind her. Smart, funny, bold, talented, and pretty, she lights up the screen. She joins a writing circle, where her contributions are lauded, and she acquires a white boyfriend. Eventually, she'll leave for the city and higher education. Her life-long friend is Shaniss, who has few of Mikuan's advantages. She's from a broken home; she has an abusive partner; she already has a young child; and she sees Mikuan's new relationship as a betrayal of her and their community and culture.
Through these different relationships, through Mikuan's poems, and through the student debates on the way forward for indigenous communities, we start to see the tensions that beset the Innu people: "The film touches on the racism they must endure and the refusal of government and industry to respect their land. The film also discusses how continued cultural assimilation is affecting them and how they're struggling to balance their traditions in a changing landscape of capitalism and technology."
Kuessipan manages to present these very real problems while avoiding "cliche and miserablism". It's not heavy, but it's profound.
2.
Denial
2016, Mick Jackson
Denial (a must-watch after all my excursions into Jewish history in recent months) is a dramatization of Deborah E. Lipstadt's History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, which recounts what happened when Lipstadt, in 1996, was sued for libel by David Irving (with regard to her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust).
It's a UK court case, so it's up to the defendant to prove her innocence (ie, prove that her assertions are correct). Defending Lipstadt are solicitor Anthony Julius and barrister Richard Rampton. The case comes to court in January 2000, and the judgment (in favour of Lipstadt) was presented in April that year. All the trial transcripts can be found here, and the movie's courtroom scenes often draw verbatim from this material.
The question of voice arises in two ways. Lipstadt -- knowledgeable, eloquent, and passionate -- finds it hard to accept the defence strategy to keep her off the stand. As Jackson puts it, "Her legal team tell her, 'we know you want to turn up in court and confront this guy and tell him he's a liar and a falsifier of history. Don't do it. We're going to take your voice and silence it, because otherwise he will make the case about you.'"
Lipstadt also finds it hard to accept the decision not to invite testimony from survivors. (This point is very reminiscent of Arendt's criticism of the Eichmann trial, in which numerous witnesses did get to have their day in court, but in a manner that was mostly irrelevant to the specific case in hand.)
But both these legal moves are vindicated by success, when Irving's case is thrown out. The voices of the victims are "heard" in the verdict much more effectively than they would have been if they'd been mauled in court by Irving.
I found the movie compelling, and would second Peter Bradshaw, who bucks the trend of a largely cool critical response by stressing its "clarity, urgency and overwhelming relevance". Released at a time when Irving's stock was again rising, and the new administration in the United States was about to become famous for its alternative interpretations of events, the film constitutes a line in the sand. Broadly, that line is this: For all our postmodern distrust of "truth", there still are such things as facts; certain events are documented with sufficient evidence to be incontrovertible; attempts to understand history's chains of events must be undertaken in a spirit of self-awareness; and anyone not prepared to engage in that self-criticism shouldn't be doing that job.
The final word on this one should go to Jackson. In words that recall Hannah Arendt's, he says: "Yes, [Denial is] about denying the Holocaust, but it's more ecumenical than that. The fact that it didn't just happen to the Jews -- it happened to everybody. It happened to us as humanity, just as Hiroshima is not something that happened just to the Japanese -- it happened for all of us and we all have to deal with it. This is a film about truth and lies -- period."
3.
Hable con ella (Talk to Her)
2002, Pedro Almodovar
I hated this movie... I didn't like it as I was watching it, and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more my dislike crystallized.
We are introduced to two men and to two women. The women are in a coma. They literally have no voice. Passive, beautiful, silent -- the way some men like women to be.
The first woman, Alicia, is a former ballet dancer. She will eventually emerge from this semi-death. The other woman, Lydia, is a former bullfighter. She slips away into real death.
The first man is Benigno, one of the nurses assigned to look after Alicia 24/7. In many ways, he's an excellent nurse. He believes in talking to his patient (a recommended course of action with the comatose, I believe), and at first we see him carrying out his duties sensitively and thoroughly. The other man is Marco, an Argentinian writer, whose relationship with Lydia begins when he rescues her from a snake, but who struggles to see her as a human being now that she has been laid low.
So it's a sad scenario, but what's the problem? Well, Benigno is the problem... Devoted though he seems, and sad though we are about the limited life he has led (having spent many years looking after his ailing mother, now dead), he is nevertheless a stalker, an intruder, and a violator...
Before her road accident, he regularly observes Alicia dancing in the studio opposite his flat. He follows her. He obtains an appointment with her psychiatrist father purely for the purpose of getting into her house. He enters her bedroom. He steals something.
When she ends up under his care, therefore, he should absolutely have recused himself. The kind of intensely intimate care required by a coma patient should fundamentally not be undertaken by someone with a personal interest in her. Think about it. Would you want that to happen to you?
Worse, Benigno ends up impregnating Alicia. Consent is utterly impossible in these circumstances. It is categorically a rape. Admittedly not a violent one, but still, this is the violation of a woman who is vulnerable to the last degree. Benigno goes to prison. The baby is still-born. Alicia comes out of her coma, but Benigno doesn't know that. He kills himself.
We end with the germ of a relationship between Marco (now inhabiting Benigno's flat, as the two had bonded over their comatose women) and Alicia (now struggling to recover her mobility). Poor Alicia... Marco seems, on the face of it, a sensitive and relatively decent guy. But then again maybe not so much.... He has a track record of self-obsession; he too has been watching Alicia through his window; he too gazed inappropriately when she was out cold and uncovered and defenceless; and he also did way too little to push back on the earliest signs that Benigno's devotion was moving in a really creepy direction. To me, it's a distinctly unhappy ending, but I'm not sure if that's how the film-maker saw it.
At the beginning of the movie we watch a performance of a (real) ballet -- Pina Bausch's Cafe Muller. Two women bounce off walls and seem at any minute about to tumble over chairs. A man runs around moving the chairs out of their way. More dependent women... In the middle we have a silent movie about a man who has volunteered to try some potion of his partner's, and has accidentally been shrunk down to the size of a tiny insect. As she sleeps, he climbs inside her vagina. This is the movie, we are given to believe, that somehow made Benigno think his course of action was OK. Again, a woman is entered when she is not awake, and not able to give consent.
There are some beautiful things in Hable con ella -- the ritual in which Lydia suits up as a torera; a concert in which Caetano Veloso, who has the most exquisite voice, sings to us the song Cucurrucucu Paloma... And there are a number of positive reviews from observers I normally pay attention to.
But personally, I found it repugnant.
4.
Cache (Hidden)
2005, Michael Haneke
This, on the other hand, was exceptional... Jason Solomons even argues that it is "on its way to becoming the defining film of a generation".
Here we are introduced to a wealthy Parisian family. Dad (Georges) presents a literary talk show on TV; Mum (Anne) works for a publishing house; Kiddo (Pierrot) swims for his school in what looks like quite a pressurized coaching context. Their house looks very comfortable, and it's full -- FULL -- of books. It's not an idyllic family exactly. Georges and Anne are somewhat distanced from each other, it seems; when things start going wrong, they don't really trust each other. Georges and Pierrot also appear to have quite a cool relationship, and at the end of the day both parents are busy with work, and don't entirely know what their son is up to. Nevertheless, their situation would certainly appear idyllic to some; they're pretty pleased with themselves; and the film consistently shows them lining up behind life's winners.
Then they start receiving videotapes. The camera that has recorded the tapes is trained on their house for long periods, cataloguing their various comings and goings. Accompanying some of the videos are crude, childish drawings depicting mouths and necks that are spurting blood. Georges and Anne feel violated, menaced.
Eventually we meet Majid. His mother and father were Algerian farmhands who worked for Georges's parents, and they were among the numerous Algerians killed in Paris in clashes with the police in October 1961 (you can find extensive documentation on this tragic case here and here).
Georges's parents appear to be on the point of adopting the orphaned Majid, but the five-year-old Georges, who -- perhaps fearing displacement by the bigger boy in his parents' affections -- tells them that Majid is coughing blood. This is probably a lie. But fear of tuberculosis is so great that the child is "let go", taken away by social workers. His life is changed for ever.
When we see Majid's surroundings, it is clear that his trajectory has been very different from Georges's. But he denies any connection with the tapes, asserts he has no wish for revenge, and indeed appears to be a decent man. Whereas Georges is belligerent, threatening, and determined to assert himself (traits we have already seen in an encounter with a black guy on a bicycle, and in the way he ruthlessly edits the remarks of one of his show guests), Majid comes across as perceptive and courageous, a man of peace and integrity. His eventual shocking suicide seems to express despair (at the manner in which Georges continues to drive events) rather than a desire for vengeance.
So -- who sent the tapes and drawings? Who is behind all this? We never find out for sure, but if you want a thorough analysis of the possibilities, Roger Ebert is your best bet. Majid disavows responsibility, and we pretty much believe him. Which leaves in the frame Majid's unnamed son, Georges's son, or perhaps a combination of the two. There's a mysterious shot at the end, in which the camera focuses for a long time on the school steps. The two young men meet there (I confess I totally missed this). But is this a first meeting? Or do they know each other -- and have they been working together -- already?
Haneke insists -- perhaps a little disingenuously, given that the film is set up as a thriller, even if it ultimately turns out not to conform to that genre -- that the "whodunnit" question is not important: "If you come out wanting to know who sent the tapes, you didn't understand the film. To ask this question is to avoid asking the real question the film raises, which is more: how do we treat our conscience and our guilt and reconcile ourselves to living with our actions?... Who am I to presume to give anyone an answer on how they should deal with their own guilty conscience?"
In another interview (in German here), he expands on this idea: "How do you behave when confronted with something that you should actually admit responsibility for? These are the sort of strategies that interest me, talking yourself out of guilt. It's like this: we all believe we're so fantastically liberal. None of us want to see immigration laws tightened. Yet when someone comes to me and asks if I could take in a foreign family, then I say, well, not really. Charity begins at home with the door firmly shut. Most people are as cowardly and comfortable as I am."
He adds: "The film's main theme is not Algeria. But I was fascinated by the issue of where private spills over into collective guilt. There are black stains of this sort in every country... I took part in a discussion in Paris, in which a specialist on Algerian questions was also involved. He said the film was a expression of the fact that the suffering of the Algerian people had never been recognised. This was something that never even crossed my mind while I was writing the film."
And this is the crux of the film, I think. Georges is emblematic of the descendants of colonizers. He enjoys the fruits of the despoliation that others have committed. He may protest his innocence: "I never colonized anyone." Or in this particular case: "I was a child. How can I be responsible?" But he nevertheless lives off, and profits from, the consequences of the evil action.
Taman Budaya, Yogya, 2011
In a very detailed and perceptive review, Helen Macallan and Andrew Plain reproduce some of the dialogue of the movie. If you read it through this prism of colonialism, it is resonant with meaning.
Georges arrives at Majid's flat, and accuses him of sending the tapes. "His manner is not only inappropriate but, as Majid points out, it’s also characteristic: 'You barge in here accusing me of trying to blackmail you. You haven’t changed.'"
Yes... Hectoring colonizers have always barged in accusing others...
"[Majid] remarks that Georges won’t learn anything about him, even if he beats him to death, and adds that such a course of action won’t be an option because 'you’re too refined for that. Above all, you have too much to lose... What wouldn’t we do not to lose what is ours?'"
And that's it, isn't it? An awful lot of policy in the richer parts of the globe seems specifically geared towards not losing what is ours... And individually, we, the fortunate, don't challenge -- not really, seriously challenge -- the world that colonialism has built, because we stand to lose too much.
Georges threatens Majid: "If you try again to interfere in my life... you'll regret it, I swear."
There's the "War on Terror", right there... It's not insignificant that it is footage from Iraq that constantly turns up on the big TV screen in Georges's living-room.
And just before Majid commits suicide, in front of Georges's very eyes, he says: "I wanted you to be present."
The so-called "third world" is committing suicide every day -- undertaking hazardous jobs or perilous journeys, or trying to manage a climate that others have caused to change, or just routinely taking the sorts of risks that the better-off would never contemplate -- but the "first world" sees it all at one remove. It doesn't see the blood.
This whole dynamic is replayed when Majid's son confronts Georges at his workplace. Georges denies responsibility ("You’ll never give me a bad conscience because your father’s life was sad or a failure. I’m not to blame! Do you get that?"); and he repeats to the son the threat he made to the father. Asked what more he wants, the son replies: "Nothing more. I wondered how it feels, a man’s life on your conscience."
But George has trained himself to feel nothing. We, the "first world", have trained ourselves to feel nothing. Yet all our threats and bluster and denial and disavowal cannot conceal our very real responsibility.
Haneke's movie is a tour de force, which leaves us, as all good movies should, with a pressing question: We may not personally be responsible for creating the inequity of the world we live in, but we are certainly co-responsible for perpetuating it -- so what should we be doing about that?