Man of Flowers

In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce pokes a little fun at Stephen Daedelus' aesthetics. Daedelus says there are two extremes in art--the kinetic and the static. Static art is beauty of the mind, or Apollonian beauty. Kinetic is more akin to sexual desire, or Dionysian beauty. Though Joyce found this theory to be rife for satire, albeit gentle satire, I think the distinction is compelling.

This film is in part about this distinction, or rather the absence of it in one man. For Charles Bremer, all beauty is erotic. For some reason, emotional or physical, he can't participate in the act of love, so he sublimates it into art. For him, seeing a beautiful painting or a beautiful woman undressing are two instances of the same thing, both equally erotic and equally profound.

All this babble makes the film sound pretentious, but in practice it is actually almost completely unpretentious. It has something profound to say, but it says it very simply. If there is a little bit of Charles in you, you will understand this film implicitly. If there isn't, then nothing will help you, because all of the great things the film has to say are unspoken. All is said with mood and characterization. The music, largely from Lucia di Lammermoor, is put to probably the best use that any music in any film ever has been. The 16mm flash backs with Werner Herzog (yes, THE Werner Herzog) playing Charles' father are brilliant and beautifully balletic, as if they had been choreographed gesture by gesture by the director.

The day I saw Man of Flowers in the theater, I walked out into the sunlight and looked at the world a little differently. That was in 1984, when I was 17 years old. And I'm still moved by the experience.

A middle-aged man is unable to have relationships with women, apparently a byproduct of his strict upbringing we learn via flashbacks. It is by turns provocative, funny, and pretentious, but always interesting and definitely quirky. Kaye is well cast as the man-child in search of beauty while Best is lovely as one of the objects of his affection. Among the amusing characters are the philosophical postman and Best's hack artist boyfriend. Cox directs with a sense of freshness, helped considerably by the ever-present music from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." The flashback scenes of Kaye's childhood are tinged with Oedipal feelings, simultaneously sad and erotic.

I've seen many films by Paul Cox but only one or two continue to impress me after all these years - Man of Flowers (1983) is one of them. Taking on familiar Cox themes such as loneliness and sexual repression, Man of Flowers adds an eloquent European feel to its Australian setting. Although the story is not a conventional linear narrative, Cox combines distinctive visual tones (super-8 flashbacks/ conventional framing such as the striptease at the beginning)) to capture different aspects of the protagonist's reclusive life (played by Norman Kaye). What is unique about this film is its refusal to subscribe to any cinematic norm. Thus we get a philosophical postman who adds a touch of off-centered eccentricity to an already edgy patchwork of lesbianism, blackmail and oedipal longing. The only sad aspect of the film is its low-budget which has seriously impaired its standing as a classic. The sound is not the best on VHS although the operatic score (Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor) more than compensates for this flaw. I presume the original budget of $250,000 was not spent enhancing the sound quality.

Charles Bremer, an elderly man, is a little eccentric. His love for flowers is only equaled by his love for watching a pretty woman undress. He lives on his own, plays the organ in church and tends to stick to himself. Things don't go really fast for him, until the drug addicted boyfriend of the girl he pays to strip for him turns violent.

Nudity, classical music, long slow scenes with a lot of colors, emotional darkness. That'd be the general description of the film in a few words. It'd be a great injustice to this little film though. The story is played out amazingly well, with a very acceptable explanation of the Man of Flowers, and why he is who he is and all.

The choice of musical overdub in this film, sometimes blotting out everything that is happening completely, reminded me a bit of A Clockwork Orange, although that film is almost entirely unlike this one. It works out very well though, pushing the accentuation in just the right direction when that is needed. Clearly a well done case of film-making.

8 out of 10 flowers in the air

In my language, there's a different word for erotic and non-erotic love. English has just one word for the two. And Charles, the main character in this story, doesn't even make a distinction. The attraction he feels to flowers or classical music is erotic, as is his attachment to his mother; at the same time, he's unable to consummate a sexual relationship. He's a profoundly lonely person, who writes letters to himself and buys 'human relationships' in the form of a doctor or a stripper to whom he hardly talks. Lisa, in turn, is just as lonely: her boyfriend hardly talks to her, only takes her money to spend on drugs. This film is about the isolation of modern people, the impossibility to create relationships. Charles sublimates this longing into a fondness for all art and beauty, others escape into drugs or pointless 'creation'. And the question arises: why am I watching this film? What am I substituting with it?