TravelerThruKalpas

One thing I have loved most about Rivette's films is their ability to evoke the presence of human mystery: who are these beings and the worlds which they seem to ceaslessly create and move within?

Many of Rivette's associates, such as his scenarist Eduardo de Gregorio, also parlay a similar fascination with mystery into a homage that honors it by letting it largely remain unresolved, even at the end. One can never know completely who these people are, and the real nature of what has transpired between them... surface details float or ripple upon deeper pools of hidden motivations and tantalize, keeping one alert while waiting for another sign, although the watchful heart begins to quietly sound unheeded warnings.

The plot is spare: an opportunistic writer (Jean Sorel) seeks to gain access to a potential hidden cache of secret letters and other literary material, by wooing a young woman (Rivette regular Bulle Ogier) and her elderly aunt (Alida Valli) living in an isolated villa. Everyone is perfect here, with Ogier especially good, as her usual hyper-manneristic style is suitably lowkey in this outing, all the better to bring out the pathos necessary for this role. However, it was a real pleasure to see Valli again in one of her late appearances, many of which featured her as a muse of mystery (some will easily recollect her as the central enigmatic presence in Bertolucci's Spider's Strategem), and her brooding shines darkly here.

In Aspern, de Gregorio presents a much better involvement with Henry James material than his previous film Serail. That film seems to exist as an unfortunate footnote to Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating (both reference James' The Other House), which de Gregorio also contributed to; it seems that whatever Rivette kept off-stage and ambiguous in his film, was crudely demonstrated in Serail, by way of pretentiously clever and even vulgar strategies (which Henry James could never be blamed for).

Aspern is satisfying largely because he doesn't need to delineate the moral predicaments in such insensitive ways. The film represents a model of quiet restraint, a tactful attention to minimizing all elements to what can be tentatively revealed in any given moment, while suggesting the unknowable depths of the characters and their milieu, and the editing style displays the economy typical of French cinema of that period.

(Note: I saw this film in London when it originally opened, and today's available, English-subtitled print is sadly suffering the ravages of time, with pinkish discoloration that I became less aware of, since the film engrosses completely. The film is indeed good enough to warrant a restoration rescue, and many viewers will likely find it a much more rewarding experience than the 2018 film adaptation of the same James novella.)

Jorge Léon's film Before We Go is a truly inspiring and uplifting film about a difficult subject for many: what is left for human beings to meaningfully experience, after crossing a threshold of "no return," that is, after a medical diagnosis of their immanent demise?

Upon an invitation from a palliative care unit in Brussels, Léon created a workshop for some of its terminal patients which could possibly lift them beyond their seemingly hopeless circumstances, by exploring the theme of death through various creative means. He enlisted into the project some of the performing artists from the La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels, to work with these patients, gently coaxing out of them a performative inspirational response to their existential condition. Questions lurking under the surface, of mortality and its unknown expiration date, were perhaps secret drivers on the road to exploring the time left.

What unfolds in this striking old-world theatrical venue is a remarkable series of tableaux, in which the encounters between the patients and these performers who interact with them yield some often astonishing moments of communion: in which both parties are transported beyond limits of physicality and emotion, even of motivation — to break through into a new state of experience and existence.

In one instance, the elderly woman patient we see early on having so much trouble getting out of bed, her bodily pain transmitted respectfully by Léon's concise but compassionate mise-en-scène, shortly thereafter appears before us in an incredible pas de deux with another younger woman (a professional dancer), who leads her into an exploratory series of movements and gestures until, after ever greater degrees of abandon, the women collapse into each other with sudden joyful surprise and the new courage of human possibility.

There are many such moments in this powerful work, featuring several other patients and performers, which I will leave interested viewers to discover for themselves. Through their shared encounters, each of them seems to come to some vital and profound realization around the questions of meaning involving life and human limitation, as well as the healing and transcendent nature of art to mitigate some of our fear and vulnerability. Meanwhile, the question of how to face our death individually is one that remains hanging in the air, as it can only be answered by each of us in the most private and intimate internal circumstance of all: within the space of our souls.

Watching Léon's film immediately prompted memories of another very powerful cinematic experience I had some years ago, with Allan King's documentary set in a palliative care section (of the Grace Hospital in Toronto), called simply Dying at Grace. It followed a few individuals at different stages of physical decline, living out their last days and moments, as they received the necessary care and attention from the medical staff and occasional visitors.

Nothing prepared me for that experience — it was simply the most profound encounter that I have had (through cinematic means at least) with the reality of death. I fully experienced an identification with every person making his or her way through their last passage of life. And for those fateful two and a half hours of vigilance, I came to an extraordinary discovery: that the process of natural death was actually a peaceful one for the most part. I wanted to exit the theater during the first half hour because I thought I could not bear witness, but I am grateful that I stayed because of the gift I received from Allan King: that death could no longer make me afraid after that. If that sounds miraculous, please seek it out and see for yourself. Not only will you not regret it, you will want to share it with others.

And so, while Allan King's film seems death-affirming in the most unimaginably positive way, precisely because it paradoxically still embraces life, Jorge Léon's film is definitely life-affirming as it celebrates its participants ability to push the boundaries of death to a somewhat distant perimeter, while it fills up an immediate space that opens with human possibility and joyful transformative release of healing energy… even while the question of the ultimate fateful encounter still looms unanswered in the air.

In any case, I urge you to see both films.

Although one is initially alerted to the possible use of the police academy setting to metaphorically delineate some of the dynamics present in a society's norms as part of its imposed conditioning (the training academy especially implying a sense of regimentation), this very well-made film actually registers most of its concerns in a low-key manner, allowing some indirection to come through the proceedings by giving enough space for subtler impressions and meaning.

Apparently, many viewers want to characterize the film's subject in terms of a conflicted choice between heterosexuality and homosexuality, which makes about as much sense as merely portraying its content as the treatment of a love triangle; it reveals a rather limited level of engagement and even suggests that such issues are far from politically resolved in their minds. But while the storyline could be read on the surface for perplexing issues around self-identity, sexual or otherwise, it is ultimately about someone who gradually allows himself the freedom to experience not only different ways of loving others, but also the vital ways in which life actually unfolds in a broader sense, beyond the difficulties of imposed human limitations.

The courage of Lacant's film lies in its delineation of what life is like when one truly begins to negotiate one's freedom by opening up fully to the presence of ambiguity and not knowing - entering into the "free fall" of the title - and going beyond limited distinctions, to find and live out what is actually true from moment to moment. A Taoist expression comes to mind as one follows Marc's trajectory into his own realm of truth: the more free you are, the more unpredictable you become.

Which asks us all: can you live out your truth in this most uncompromising way? Or, can you live with someone who is? What does freedom look like in a world full of all the shoulds and musts which we and others continually wish to impose upon ourselves? Marc begins to show us as he learns to submit to his own free-fall - which is no less than remaining open and vulnerable to whatever is transpiring.

The performances are excellent throughout, although working from a carefully written script which tends to deliberately tailor the depth of all the other characters beside Marc. Thus, while in the end Kai shows up as little more than a catalyst for Marc's awakening and perhaps generating our wish for a bit more character development, it is really Marc's story after all, and we are meant to inhabit the film's shades of meaning by traveling through his experiences from his vantage point.

It could be said that in a society no longer concerned with an immature sense of morality or inadequate ethics, Marc would both be able to bear a child with a woman as well as express the love he might feel for another man, if he is so inclined. But Marc, like the rest of us, is born in time, and therefore occupies a certain karmic status, posited by the complexity of circumstances… and the way to the truth is largely through one's karma.

Although we humans are still somewhat tribal and limited beings, whose sense of freedom is defined and grounded in our very limitations, the film nonetheless demonstrates in its closing statement that we can only live meaningfully by choosing from our own freedom - and thus encountering the possibility of a real and lived life, beyond all expectations - if we assume the courage to do so… a courage exemplified by director Lacant in this direct and honest film.