I don't know if I am on the Right, but in any case, one thing is certain: I'm not on the Left. Yes, why would I be on the Left? For what reason? What forces me to be on the Left? I'm free, it seems to me! But people aren't. Today, first you have to pronounce your act of faith in the Left, after which everything is permitted. So far as I know, the Left has no monopoly on truth and justice. I too am for peace, freedom, the eradication of poverty, respect for minorities - who isn't? But I don't call that being on the Left. Being on the Left means endorsing the politics of certain people, parties, or regimes that say they're on the Left and don't hesitate to practice, when it serves them, dictatorship, lying, violence, favoritism, oscurantism, terrorism, militarism, bellicism, racism, colonialism, genocide.
Why did I have to think of Labour under Corbyn when coming across this statement in Antoine de Baecque and Noel Herpe's biography of Eric Rohmer (Columbia UP 2014)?
UPDATE: And, as happens quite often, Harald Martenstein's thoughts go in the same direction:
Ergänzend muss ich anmerken, dass ich es für legitim halte, wenn es eine
konservative, also rechte Partei gibt, ich denke selbst in mancher
Hinsicht konservativ. Wer behauptet, "rechts" bedeute das Gleiche wie
"Nazi", beweist damit Unbildung. Adenauer und Churchill waren rechts, Pol Pot
und Stalin waren links. Noch Fragen? Allerdings muss ich gestehen, dass
ich für Antisemitismus, Rassismus und dergleichen nie viel übrig hatte.
1. It’s good to get away. Away, in particular from the computer. We spend probably a majority of our waking hours every day staring at screens and typing. While in France, however, we were online for about a total of an hour over 2 weeks. This is partly because of the curious absence of internet cafés in this part of the world, which has mystified me ever since I started going there some years ago.
I found the withdrawal difficult for the first two days but then I spent long periods forgetting that the internet exists.
And, as much as I love the internet, this was a Very Good Thing.
But nothing personal, you understand.
2. Jacques Demy was a genius. Not only did he make mind-bendingly beautiful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) but -- thanks to Arte-- we can also report that his The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) is just the thing for getting into that summer vacation state of mind.
Just take a look:
I mean, really: what more do you want?
3. Beaches are a wonderful invention. One has a very different outlook on life when, well, the outlook is like this.
Or this.
And when the most exciting thing that happens all week is the occasional docking of a dredger, you can be reasonably sure that you’re achieving the right level of relaxation.
(Sharp eyes will note that this vessel is the brilliantly named ‘Britannia Beaver’. Further comment, I think, would be superfluous)
4. Reading is a joy. This may seem obvious; however, I mean 'reading' in the sense of ‘reading something from beginning to end for the pure enjoyment of doing so and being able to linger over the better parts for as long as you like while pleasantly lost in thought’ and not, ‘desperately skimming a book or article to get what I need out of it in the shortest time possible.’
I (and we) spend a lot of time doing the latter and not nearly enough doing the former.
And they are very different experiences.
The joy is only increased by being able to focus on beautiful prose, of course, and I thank Erich Kästner, Ian McEwan and Thomas Mann for providing it.
(And, in Herr Mann’s case, in such enormous quantities: Buddenbrooksis pretty epic, and its German – parts of which are in local dialect or a bit archaic or both – is not the easiest for a non-native speaker used to humbler fare. However, it’s a gripping read, both deeply moving and very, very funny. I’m now encouraged to take on Magic Mountain: any advice? For those of you who're looking more simple -- but still beautifully written -- German reading, I can't recommend Erich Kästner's Emil books too highly. They're meant for children, apparently, but I found them to be a delight.)
Finally: The French, in their creativity, civilisation and love of state-supported civic life, have managed to combine point #3 and point #4 by putting librarieson the beach.
Granted, the trailer to Éric Rohmer's Conte d'Été might lead one to believe that this film is just a slightly downbeat teenage romcom (minus the make-up artist):
But let me assure you: it's a very sweet movie, to which I attach very fond memories. The same goes for numerous other films by Rohmer, who has just died. How sad: We only watched Signe du Lion over Christmas (in fact, it was a Christmas gift). I have a penchant for films where nothing much seems to happen until suddenly characters burst into passionate philosophical arguments over the tarte aux pommes!
In one of the YouTube comments to the above video Rohmer is called the French Woody Allen, which might well be true. We also watched plenty of Woody Allen over Christmas. Stuff like that calms me down like nothing else, which is why I'm so nostalgic about these films.
The great news that Citroën is to launch a new version of the legendary Citroën DS in 2010 (yes, ok -- we should probably wait until the first studies are released before we get overexcited) put me in the mind of this:
After the drama and violence of yesterday's post, here's something more soothingly emotional to celebrate the end of the old, as well as the beginning of the new year. We all deserve it, for 365 days is a long time and not all of those days were happy. Still, all told, 2008 was a good 'un for us (which is why we are in absolute agreement with Harald Martenstein, who is reluctant to let the old year go over at Die Zeit).
One of the several movies that we managed to watch during and after the holidays was Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. I think that there is nothing in the history of cinema comparable to Demy's "films in song", which differ from the characteristic climactic musical outbursts of your ordinary (Hollywood) musical in so far as in them all dialogue is sung.
Les Parapluies is unashamedly bittersweet, as this crucial encounter between Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) -- who works in her widowed mother's twee umbrella shop -- and her boyfriend Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) -- a car mechanic who has just received his draft notice -- documents:
Now, that draft notice is nothing to joke about, as the film is set during the Algerian War, and indeed Guy later on ends up in North Africa, where he witnesses the death of his comrades and is wounded himself. The lovers' apparently vehement reaction is therefore not entirely inappropriate.
What follows, however, is not so much tragic (in a Romeo and Juliet kind of way) as sobering, in fact almost banal: while Guy is in Algeria the lovers drift apart, even though Geneviève is pregnant with his child. Her matchmaking mother, acting on the principle that time is a great healer, exploits the growing distance between the lovers (which is not least due to Guy's perfunctory correspondence). She encourages her daughter to marry a wealthy diamond merchant who, earlier in the film, fell for Geneviève at first sight. His virtue and devotion is signalled by his willingness to marry the pregnant girl despite her predicament. Guy returns from the war, briefly sinks into deepest despair but is jolted from this period of drunken debauchery by the death of his aunt (who conveniently leaves him all her belongings). He comes to terms with his loss of Geneviève, marries Madeleine, a young, sensible (though pretty) woman who has been adoring him quietly for a long time, and uses his inheritance to set up his own business.
Years later, Guy and Geneviève have a chance encounter at his petrol station:
The film is fantastically colourful and charmingly camp, but far from a poorly developed sentimental tear-jerker, as has been claimed.There is something uncannily true about Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, all technicolor frivolity notwithstanding. Yes, this is a silly boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl story but, hey, don't we all know that song?
What is most striking, however, is the calculating ruthlessness with which nearly all characters act in the film -- in a way that reminded me of far more naturalistic literary contexts, novels by Thomas Hardy or George Gissing, for example. Upward mobility is a major theme for Demy, in whose candy-coloured universe of cooing and crooning love is a very fragile thing indeed, always overshadowed by the powerful influence of human self-interest. Don't be fooled by Geneviève's pastel-coloured twinsets and ballet flats -- in evolutionary terms, the woman is a doe-eyed predator not unlike Elfride Swancourt in Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes. The mild-mannered Madeleine, too, follows a successful mating pattern of her own, unconsciously turning her passive self-abandonment into a costly signal of her general worthiness. Guy's love for her, finally, seems to be determined by a -- ultimately, I guess, reproductive -- pragmatism that is no less self-interested than his previous despondency.
Which all makes Les Parapluies of Cherbourg the perfect film to ring in the Darwin Year (and I don't mean this in a spiteful way at all). I'm convinced that it's healthy and sobering to remind ourselves at every opportunity that our grand gestures, noble emotions and high-falutin' ideals typically have very humble roots: the very basic needs and interests of the human animal, of which we, sadly, often fail to render ourselves aware.
To quote the man himself:
[W]e must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man [1871]).
On that note: have a good Hogmanay, ye animals. May your 2009 be happy, healthy and humble!
