1.01.2005
marguerite duras' india song
india song, a 1975 film directed by french novelist marguerite duras, inevitably sent light bulbs flashing above the head of calvin klein. one wonders as to the number of euro-elitist perfume ads this film has inspired. in the canon of boho pretentions, one would have to look to an alain resnais or an ingmar bergman for a celluloid specimen more "sprockets-like" in its style and delivery. the film is ice-cold, humorless, crawlingly slow and filled with dialogue about "leprosy of the heart" and crap like that.
and, strangely enough, that is precisely its strength.
i'd imagine marguerite duras to be a pretty love/hate figure for anyone interested in twentieth century literature. there is no escaping the thick swamp of gloom and doom that hangs above her work, and you either dig it, or you don't. it's no different in this film, either. duras is unabashedly pretentious, sculpting a world of anemic aristocrats drowning in a sea of high brow melancholia, bourgeois boredom and fear-of-death. in india song, they don't even talk to one another directly. their foggy narrative unfolds in strange layers through a series of unseen observers and participants, speaking seperately from the action, often in a new-agey whisper. the actors simply wander around, alternately avoiding and confronting one another with their eyes. not to mention doing quite a bit of ballroom dancing for some reason.
i'm not making this sound like any fun, am i???
but duras comes through in the end. and not by means of any irony or trickery. she's just so damn insistent with this stuff. her affected tone reaches such unprecedented, hyperbolic heights that it leaps beyond its own avant-melodrama as a result. what should be dismissable and campy is instead hauntingly austere. her pomp becomes a posture, and one must re-adjust oneself accordingly.
there is drama, and then there is melodrama. and traditionally, one favors the former over the latter. but duras is capable of pushing melodrama to its breaking point. her affected obsessions are worn proudly on her sleeve, and their sharp frontality dismantles one's ability to dismiss them. the result does not obliterate her content in the name of some sensual sublime, but rather changes one's stake in it. duras uses her urgency to effectively alter the empathetic vantage point of a viewer. india song is tightly contained in a variety of static poses, and somehow it reveals too much. for all its ghostliness and deliberately drab engagements, it produces an excess of style-- a rich fog of exhausted romance that emerges as an event unto itself. the contained, claustrophobic interior through which india song is slowly enacted contains a crystallized ennui far weirder and more dimensional than her chic woefulness would lead one to believe.
and, strangely enough, that is precisely its strength.
i'd imagine marguerite duras to be a pretty love/hate figure for anyone interested in twentieth century literature. there is no escaping the thick swamp of gloom and doom that hangs above her work, and you either dig it, or you don't. it's no different in this film, either. duras is unabashedly pretentious, sculpting a world of anemic aristocrats drowning in a sea of high brow melancholia, bourgeois boredom and fear-of-death. in india song, they don't even talk to one another directly. their foggy narrative unfolds in strange layers through a series of unseen observers and participants, speaking seperately from the action, often in a new-agey whisper. the actors simply wander around, alternately avoiding and confronting one another with their eyes. not to mention doing quite a bit of ballroom dancing for some reason.
i'm not making this sound like any fun, am i???
but duras comes through in the end. and not by means of any irony or trickery. she's just so damn insistent with this stuff. her affected tone reaches such unprecedented, hyperbolic heights that it leaps beyond its own avant-melodrama as a result. what should be dismissable and campy is instead hauntingly austere. her pomp becomes a posture, and one must re-adjust oneself accordingly.
there is drama, and then there is melodrama. and traditionally, one favors the former over the latter. but duras is capable of pushing melodrama to its breaking point. her affected obsessions are worn proudly on her sleeve, and their sharp frontality dismantles one's ability to dismiss them. the result does not obliterate her content in the name of some sensual sublime, but rather changes one's stake in it. duras uses her urgency to effectively alter the empathetic vantage point of a viewer. india song is tightly contained in a variety of static poses, and somehow it reveals too much. for all its ghostliness and deliberately drab engagements, it produces an excess of style-- a rich fog of exhausted romance that emerges as an event unto itself. the contained, claustrophobic interior through which india song is slowly enacted contains a crystallized ennui far weirder and more dimensional than her chic woefulness would lead one to believe.
