A Short Film about Love

The original version of this film was filmed for Polish television, about twenty minutes shorter, and, most incredibly, a product of the twilight years of a communist regime.  It was also the sixth component of one of the most magnificent cinematic experiments in recent memory which, like all masterpieces, seems more remarkable with time – and not only for its creativity in the face of Philistine censors and shoestring budgets.  One could imagine all kinds of lurid tangles for the sixth commandment (in the Catholic tradition); yet we do not get lurid tangles, or tangles of any sort.  There are no enraged husbands, no murderous mayhem, no handy weapons or crimes of passion.  Instead, there are two lonely souls, lonely for albeit for very different reasons, and a strange date during which one soul is opened to the other, who in turn finds the whole confession gauche and amusing.  Stranger still is the fact that adultery is neither committed nor intended.  This is well in keeping with Kieślowski’s general artistic credo for the Decalogue of simplicity and clarity in unorthodox situations.  The Devil may well be in the details, but he never gets past the surface.  And we dive well below a superficial demonstration of those actions and thoughts that we should not nurture.

Our protagonists are Tomek, an orphan (Olaf Lubaszenko) on the cusp of manhood and the object of Tomek’s desires, a dishy and impulsive forty-year-old (Grażyna Szapołowska) living in an interchangeably gray-brown socialist apartment building across the way.  Tomek has few interests to pass his time: he likes to learn languages (Portuguese, English, French, or so he says), although his pocket money comes from clerking at a local post office where he is granted a certain amount of latitude.  His only acknowledged friend is a coeval sent off on some military expedition, leaving Tomek with his friend’s interchangeably gray-brown room and his officious and elderly mother.  She soothes his introversion and his obvious unfamiliarity with women with wisdom like: “Women allow themselves to be kissed and pretend they are liberated.  But in reality they prefer men who are gentle,” which might be the most appropriate one-word description of her lodger.  She even tries to cajole Tomek into watching a gala event for hormonally overloaded teenage boys, the Miss Poland competition, granted, on a small black-and-white television.  When Tomek quickly retreats to his room, we rightly suspect that he has found something more interesting than girls (a near impossibility for a young heterosexual his age); what we do not gather is that he has replaced all the women in the world with one woman.  In other words, he has fallen in love.

This love is not, however, golden in its crown.  His beloved, whose name is Magda, is blissfully unaware of his feelings for her, and even if she were to learn of them could hardly be enamored with a virginal and unconfident boy who, well, spies on her.  I think all young men have watched beautiful women from afar at some point in their lives.  And it is this proximity to a princesse lointaine that fuels notions of life’s breadth, of how things will work out with an as yet undetermined female in an as yet undetermined future.  Another film suggests an elegant metaphor for this search, but Tomek’s choice is made: there can be no one for him but Magda.  The difference in age notwithstanding, Magda is as promiscuous as Tomek is innocent and pure, as open-windowed and open-legged as Tomek is hidden crouching in the darkness with his telescope pointed firmly in her direction (and yes, that sentence gets the point across).  She is no one’s wife, so the adultery of that sixth commandment might refer to the fact that Tomek’s friend, now duty-bound and uniformed, once spied on Magda as well.  For adolescents and younger men, cheating on your friend’s unattainable love is as real and unacceptable as cheating in the flesh.  Tomek also uses his jobs as postal clerk and milkman to interfere in her love life in more ways than one, leading to a confrontation and a date which, we presume, will end in cruelty and perhaps more impulsive decisions.  A wonderful scene in which Tomek tries to pull a cigarette out of the pack with his mouth and ends up with two, hesitates a moment, then decides to light only one, is only one example of his failure to become a man in the conventional sense.  A man who will take Magda to a lustful realm of pure delight?  A hairy-chested lout with a bad temper and breath full of illegal ingredients?  Tomek might have more going for him than he thinks.

The Lady with the Lap Dog

Should you have any doubts about the intentions of this story’s protagonist, look no further than his first spoken line: “If she’s here without a husband and without anyone she knows, it wouldn’t be a waste of my time to get to know her.”  Gurov is a still-young playboy on vacation from his wife and children on the beaches of Yalta, and there is no immediate reason why he should gain a morsel of our sympathy.  Not that his wife, whom we only see once much later on, has anything great to offer this world.  For to understand Gurov and why he is in Yalta to meet a woman he will never be able to do without, it is his wife one should consider:

She read a lot, didn’t write the hard sign in her letters, didn’t call her husband Dmitri, but rather Dimitri; and he secretly thought of her as intellectually limited, narrow, unrefined; he feared her and didn’t like being at home.

Yet Chekhov, too subtle a writer for modern tastes, does not allow Gurov to find his wife’s opposite.  That would be too easy, the fodder for romance novels where every maudlin expectation is gratified.  Instead, he comes upon the titular Anna Sergeevna and her Pomeranian, who may or may not be better examples of moral creatures, but whom he loves completely and absolutely.  This story has nothing to do with honeycombed love and the effusive, romanticized backwash of pink weddings and little white houses; this is a tale of destiny, of suffering akin to that of “two migratory birds, a male and female, caught and forced to live in separate cages.”  This is about the conundrum of finding your fated twin soul, and not being able to cast away the dregs of your previous life.

The love affair, like the seasons, has four parts.  Gurov and Anna Sergeevna are first seen around a summery boardwalk, and Gurov is portrayed as the rakish misogynist.  That he calls women “a lowly race” but cannot do without them for “two days” coincides with the most prolific clichés about Lotharios.  How strange is it that in this story which will do anything to convince us of Gurov’s artistic authenticity, of his difference from the Philistine masses who have assumed the contours of his daily existence, we find he is nothing more than the commonplace womanizer.  I cannot be persuaded by literature’s thousand and one tales featuring immoral beasts and hedonistic daredevils, that under some of these exteriors lurk true artistic souls.  How you treat the world reflects your innermost passions and beliefs.  If you believe in saying and doing whatever is necessary for monetary, political  or sexual gain, then you are as empty and as meaningless as the moments you spend deceiving others.  We wonder to what extent deception is part of Gurov’s repertoire.  What does he say to these lonely women as he comforts them, albeit for “a short time”?  What is his role in life outside of a comforter of women who have no interest in his personality (another tedious chestnut)?  What motivation might he have for continuing in this vein?  Why is Anna Sergeevna any different?  Is this a cautionary tale or an allegory for pursuance of the Good?

It is in the fall, our story’s next section where little time has actually passed, that we catch a glimpse of their immortality.  Where modern literary critics might dissect “the old women dressed as young women and the bevy of generals” on the pier in some kind of countercultural gibberish, the fact is that these critics have never actually bothered to look at pictures and books of the Crimea of that time period as well as lack any imagination whatsoever.  Men all aspire to some title of greatness, while women really only want to be young enough to be coy (to paraphrase this author), and there is nothing more to it than that.  Those generals and old women are as fraudulent as any sentiment that you cannot understand and deem fraudulent because your narrow world has yet to experience it.  Against this backdrop, we are given a taste of what to expect once the seas have calmed and our last breaths have slowed, and stopped:

It was so noisy below, and here there was no Yalta, no Oreanda; now it was noisy and would continue to be as indifferently and deafly noisy when we were no longer here.  And in this constancy, in this indifference to life and death, each of us is covered, perhaps, by the price of our eternal salvation, of the unending movement of life on earth, of unending perfection.  And sitting beside that young woman who at dawn had seemed so beautiful, so serene, so enchanting before the fairy tale landscape around her, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide blue sky, Gurov came to see that if one thought about it, everything in this world was essentially beautiful − everything except when we think and ponder, when we forget about the higher goals of existence and our own human dignity.

So later, when Gurov has gone through another season, this time a harsh winter, and realized that everyone’s “true life” is hidden beneath the surface, he makes one mistake.  He assumes that Anna Sergeevna thinks the way he does.  Men, especially those in more conservative societies, have the luxury of withdrawing from human interaction and relegating their secrets to a covert smile to a mirror or window pane when no one is looking.  But women, in those same circumstances, certainly cannot.  A woman will always be branded for her adulterous machinations, while a man may very well escape unscathed.  Yes Anna is also married, to someone whom we never quite meet but to whom she has bestowed one of our language’s most ignominious labels.  In fact, her husband seems to trot beside her as a reminder of her guilt, almost as if he were her Pomeranian (the Russian word for Pomeranian, shpitz, and his surname von Dideritz have some Germanic affinity), and almost like the two adolescents smoking above Anna and Gurov’s secret encounter in the opera remind the careful reader of Gurov’s two high school−aged boys. 

It is also no coincidence that the only line uttered by Gurov's wife is, "playing the fop, Dimitri, doesn't suit you at all."  And why would "Dimitri" have to be dressed so well if it weren't in his interests to look good to women around him?   We are not supposed to trust Gurov's wife because she is a classic manifestation of poshlost', of that smug vulgarity that is the absolute antithesis of art.  So then maybe Dmitri is very good in his role as seducer, and maybe his alleged love for Anna Sergeevna is no more than a delusion − Chekhov only hints in one direction but does not compel us.   The only compulsion we have, in fact, is to read on to the end, where Gurov asks himself another, much more important question. 

Briusov, "К Армении"

A lovely work ("To Armenia") by one of Russia's foremost symbolists.  You can read the original here.

And in that year of cruel rule,
When all our burden was one hand,
The twilight cover I sought out,
From day's bright face I stayed without,
And ran to graves' unpassioned cool.

This way I thought I might elude
The wrath divine in holy knoll,
Antiquity's gray eased my pain,
And melodies, millennial fame,
Relieved the ailments of my soul.

A world alive and whole I made
There where I once had sought sad tombs.
At break of day the reeds sang out,
Long crumbled ash, the flutes would shout,
The lea of death would never fade.

With lively greeting of my love,
Old tales came forth in no dead voice;
Nearby the vales would shudder, shake,
The ancient world as one would quake,
And clap like thunder: "Live!  Rejoice!"

As year and year divide the plains,
So now I hear the centuries' chant;
In mellow nature's glorious lair,
Of love, cognition, freedom's blare,
Of songs, of slaves, of breaking chains.

Armenia!  Your ancient voice,
Fresh wind amidst the summer's heat!
How cheerfully our locks are raised,
Engulfed by rain, I stand like maize.
Below the storm, above defeat.

The Illusionist

On more than one occasion on these merry pages, I have expressed my antipathy to historical fiction.  Whereas each of our tales necessarily contains some, or much, of our own personal histories, that of our families, nations, and faiths, the focus is not upon the history but upon our personal perspective, how we have absorbed the learning, love, and disappointment of our forefathers and converted all these ingredients into higher art.  Literature is then subjective and personal, but is saved from the morass of relativism by an overarching moral structure applicable to all, a skywalk from one atoll of clouds to another.  Historical fiction, on the other hand, can be broadly (but justly) categorized as an attempt to strengthen imagery, tragedy, or relevancy by appealing to fact, or what is generally perceived as fact.  Here the death of a real historical figure is infinitely more tragic than the death of a poor, unknown person who might have had a braver soul, a sharper mind, and a more loving heart but faded, as most do, into fameless death.  A princess with no suitors!  An emperor with new clothes!  Yet the minds to whom such flimsy apparatuses appeal usually cannot write anything without leaning upon the nearest gallery of battles, barons, and bamboozling taught in school as unconditionally admirable.  Over time, the wiser mind assumes control of the curriculum and starts to imagine a world where avaricious mass murderers who happened to run a country are replaced by quiet, introspective souls who would not hurt a fly and always err on the side of the greater good.  It is these magicians of word and song that fill the annals of literature, the history books of the human soul.  And so, when faced with a tale about a young magician in love with an Austrian princess, as in this film, we are inclined to hope for an ending based only on fiction itself. 

The youth in question is Eduard Eisenheim, and the eternal beauty he seeks is Sophie, whom he meets as a teenager in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the early twentieth century.  They are the prototypes of forbidden love, his station in life being a son of a cabinetmaker; hers daughter of a prince.  Eduard is an outsider not only because he is a Jew; he also lacks the same common sense and common fears that make others so common.  First and foremost, he loves magic, the rush of mastering something that your contemporaries cannot explain, a mysterious gift that is in essence a pound cake of diligence and persistence sprinkled with the crumbs of showmanship.  Before their inevitable separation, he gives Sophie her inevitable token of his memory: a marquetry locket that produces, upon manipulation, his image.  Their last encounter has them hiding in a cabinet that Eduard had promised could whisk them away magically, which of course it doesn’t.  But Eduard is still young, very young as it were, and can afford to consecrate the next fifteen-odd years abroad to an apprenticeship in the magical arts, which of course he does.  And when he returns is when our story begins.

Eduard has become simply Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton).  His smug bitterness (evident in his indifference to everything except his craft) cannot completely mask a certain glee in his own success.  For nights on end, his show is the most enticing in all of Vienna, and royalty and paupers alike are in attendance and awe.  One fateful night, the night we are all expecting, Sophie (Jessica Biel) appears among the crowd.  She has become the betrothed of the Crown Prince of Austria (Rufus Sewell), who exemplifies what we have come to understand of the nobility: ignorance, boorishness, impudence, and more than a tendency towards cruelty.  That Eisenheim and the Prince must clash over Sophie, and that Eisenheim must gain some redemption against the societal divide that is, it should be said, much more than a societal divide, lead us to consider the options of plot.  The short story (in this collection) on which the film is based has nothing of this love affair; it is Borgesian in tone and content, and features a momentous competition between two magicians, both of whom (in the master trick) turn out to be Eisenheim.  The addition of the period melodrama might have been fatal were it not for strong turns by each of the aforementioned actors and the mollifying presence of Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti).  Uhl is the narrator, you see, as well as the alleged impartial observer entranced by both the legerdemain of Eisenheim and the implied benefits of loyalty to the Prince.  We endure trick after trick with no small amount of enjoyment, and so does Uhl.  Unlike the other three main characters, each of whom embodies some force in its purest form – the Prince is Tyranny, Sophie Innocent Love, and Eisenheim Creative Genius – Uhl is less abstract and more skeptical, less vengeful, less involved in the proceedings.  But in the end he chooses wisely, as we suspected he might.  And that doesn’t matter, because few things in life, even an orange tree, are sweeter than justified redemption.

The Book of Evidence

There is an unfortunate subgenre of popular fiction which can simply be labeled “the confessions of a killer.”  Even unaided by cable or other lurid purveyors of societal atrocities, an attentive observer would find many such works in any bookstore servicing the whims of the demos.  We are intrigued by such stuff, if only for a moment, because we are naturally attracted to evil.  Not because we are inherently evil ourselves — we are, I say boldly, nothing of the kind — but because bad things show us the counterpoise to normalcy that stirs our juices with the potential knowledge of why there is so much vileness in our world.  This is why the more morbid or unrepentant the culprits, the more galling and demented the crimes, the more revolting the violence, the faster the chill that races up our spines as we lurch closer to Old Nick himself.  These diabolists ratiocinate at each step of their miserable life, from the most fundamental of daily tasks to love, death, and betrayal.  Everything has a cause, effect and logical framework; everything is the fault of others who conspire against them to bring out their very worst; every line, every feature, every shadow spreads like an inkwell across the virgin white page; and what they did is simply the unerring mathematical consequence of these factors.  Yet the true indication of a master stylist is not what to include, but what to omit; and no, every last detail does not need to be fanned into a Chinese lantern.  Which brings us to the jailbird confessions of Freddie Montgomery, the insufferable protagonist of this novel.

Our book is divided in halves.  There is first and predictably a long introduction to a crime whose gory details are suggested in asides and semi−demented philosophizing.  Our man Freddie is not an original thinker, nor, one should add, does he have any pretensions in that general direction.  He is “amazed at the blue innocence of the sea and sky.”  His morals are nonexistent, but so is his lucidity of thought.  It is in the sweat−stained journal of a degenerate teenager that we may expect comments on “the bad in its inert, neutral, self−sustaining state,” a fallacy in reasoning so basic that its mention begets only shudders and headshaking.  He has a wife, Daphne, a son, and two parents all painted in the most grotesque colors, each description increasingly exaggerated, momentum caused by the excitement of stringing together macabre observations.  Yet occasionally these suicidal rantings swirl into a divine wind:

I thought how strange it was to be here like this, glass in hand, in the silence and calm of a summer evening, while there was so much darkness in my heart.  I turned and looked up at the house.  It seemed to be flying swiftly against the sky.  I wanted my share of this richness, this gilded ease.  From the depths of the room a pair of eyes looks out, dark, calm, unseeing.

This is the mood throughout: bouts of insuppressible guilt interrupted only by noticing that he has been bleeding for the last thirty minutes.  That Freddie has killed, or the identity of his victim, which is not immediately obvious, should not interest us as much as the descent of his soul into absolute darkness.  I suppose we are to be enthralled by this cultured person (he is a proponent and student of statistics and probability theory), fallen and forlorn.  I suppose as well that the freak gallery that pervades the world of Freddie Montgomery — a man possessing “an inveterate yearning towards backgrounds” so as to avoid his reality’s loathsome foreground — must be seen as they are described, as an acting troupe of clowns and charlatans, drunks and dyspeptics.  And I also suppose that Freddie and his moral warts are to be forgiven long enough for us to be aware of how much everything has changed, and how, how, how this could happen to anyone at all.

But we are not aware.  We are not aware because despite the backcover blurbs, Banville’s intention is nothing of the kind.  He seeks first and foremost, like all good writers, a collation of pleasing detail in an atmosphere of his choosing.  That is why we shuttle between Spain, a country Freddie despises once his wife and son are left as hostages, and Merrie England, where the native Irishman also does not seem to belong.  It is only when Freddie describes what he truly loves (this Irish port being one of those things) that Banville’s carbons crystalize into a diamond:

In the ten years since I had last been here something had happened, something had befallen the place.  Whole streets were gone, the houses torn out and replaced by frightening blocks of steel and black glass.  An old square where Daphne and I lived for a while had been razed and made into a vast, cindered car−park.  I saw a church for sale — a church, for sale!  Oh, something dreadful had happened.  The very air itself seemed damaged.  Despite the late hour a faint glow of daylight lingered, dense, dust−laden, like the haze after an explosion, or a great conflagration.  People in the streets had the shocked look of survivors, they seemed not to walk but reel.  I got down from the bus and picked my way among them with lowered gaze, afraid I might see horrors.

You will find motifs and motives in this painting, as well as in a certain bombing that may be the handiwork of a politically violent faction, but this passage alone justifies Freddie’s lapsarian musings and outshines every other moment in the novel.  So you shouldn’t necessarily believe Freddie when he claims his life has no moments, just the “ceaseless, slow, demented drift of things.”  His crime has neither passion nor meaning, which we cannot say about the starry sky above his darkened cell.