Mai Zetterling

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Mai Zetterling

#26 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Oct 03, 2020 11:30 pm

Loving Couples is an excellent depiction of the person-in-environment sociological model from female vantage points. Throughout the film, women escape their restricted positions -physically resigned to hospital beds and figuratively trapped in patriarchal decorum- temporarily through memory. It’s not a safe environment to publicly share past lovers or experience, to shove off an advance, or make a choice independently that society doesn’t affirm, but small gestures like grabbing a snack from a tray while stuck in that bed warrants a gleeful smile, and of course trips down memory lane.

The juxtaposition of interests between genders can be quite uncomfortable when we’re granted access to the feminine point of view. Men are set on sex as the women offer their bodies and attempt to converse over preferred topics to empty voids, but this isn't your typical tale of oppression as sublime weaves its way through these pockets of life shared between women and men- permitting the comfortable to exist alongside the uncomfortable. Perhaps the most interesting scene involves a flashback to a little girl dancing with an older man in an attic. It’s a beautiful scene, portrayed as such despite the obvious red flags, and when it does transition into alarm, that somehow doesn’t discount the magic of what came before. The female perspective here doesn’t rob women of their happiness even if it’s mixed in with rotten trauma and aggressive invalidation. The way the women assert their agency in the memories they cherry pick, within bubbles of flirtatious parties delivering playful jabs at male egos or willingly giving themselves over to romance, align with the men in their lives to form genuine loving exchanges, without divorcing their sexual intentions from one another completely. Contrasting these are brutal presentations of expectations thrust on these women, or examples of how quickly their rights can be revoked or dismissed.

The suggestion seems to be that there is (or was) a glimmer of hope in possibility of freedom and equality because such positive experiences have occurred. Though the fusion of all moods in this melting pot, positing liberations coexisting with imbalanced constraints, paints a complex portrait that holds views both cheerfully optimistic and gravely realistic, together.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Mai Zetterling

#27 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Oct 04, 2020 1:17 am

As I started Doctor Glas, at first it seemed like an odd choice for Zetterling to adapt a story told through relentless internal narration of a male doctor's dysregulated psyche coping with malaise. Though he muses and observes much that focuses on women, their rights, and their maltreatment albeit from the point of view of one that has rigid conformist attitudes ingrained such as a denial of reproductive rights that counter his empathy. This male's perspective is so detached from society that it's almost entirely segregated from a sense of belongingness, and there is a curiosity on whether his sensitivity to this woman is a product of his desire to be a renegade superhero already displaced from his brothers, or whether he genuinely feels a sensitivity but remains confused how to appropriately actualize support outside of the 'masculine' violence that is out of step with his identity. There's a terrific scene where Glas confesses his fears and breaks down, reverting to a fetal mode, crying that he just wants to read a book, escape into himself and nature, and receive praise for his thoughts and craft. Glas is destitute in his own way of loneliness without true knowledge, emasculated by trying to save what he cannot understand but feels affinity to, and mirrors a lost soul without the home of a secure sense of self to latch onto. Zetterling sympathizes with his character and in an on-brand move creates a dual position towards him that's vague in intention: at once pitying him for being a male who is not masculine and promoting women as 'lucky' for having the confidence to assume their roles with acceptance and resilience, but also exposing the weakness of the male ego when in direct confrontation with questioning the sick norms established for that identity without consent. On a purely aesthetic level, the surreal visuals are delightful and Zetterling has a lot of fun depicting psychological turmoil. Beyond the gender playing, it's a great exhibition of what mental health deterioration feels like with no supports.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mai Zetterling

#28 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Oct 04, 2020 3:45 pm

Night Games is as twisted as people say, though it never bests the opening flashback, utterly raw and absurd in exhibition; the bird-call singing is as comical as the public display of pain is upsetting. That doesn’t mean the rest of the film is anything short of excellent, oscillating between dream and nightmare tonal energies, curbing any chance at catharsis, or so we think.

The Oedipal whirlpool of obsession and compulsion drives a stake in the confusing space men find themselves in when with women, specifically in that pointed direction, and the theme seems to be how we are always on the edge of a psychological collapse of executive functioning reverting back to our ids, as well as the self-preserving drive to have our ego validated. The reminders of this nebulous attraction between son and mother/aunt affects the present tranquility that’s been adopted by the protagonist over time with his current lover, and the alterations in behavior insinuate that suppression doesn’t work either and may actually be counterproductive. By not providing didacticism or outlet in the form of any potential answer to the malady, Zetterling opens up the interest to our buried fetishes and lays them bare, as truths without endpoints for healing. She radically doesn’t even claim that they need to be healed at all, regardless of how they interfere with present functioning. Maybe there’s something else to do with them altogether that we’re missing, lying in subjective experience.

When he asks his mother to tell him a story and she responds by asking if that’s what he really wants to believe in, suggesting that he could believe in her, the sensuality is literally overbearing, her body on top of him suffocating his attention away from all other significance. Is this an actual memory or metaphorical for the carnal obsessions that have blurred his peripheral vision to find meaning elsewhere- in stories or in life? This is another fragmented surreal entry for Zetterling that plays with memory and fantasy, and their effects on one’s present psychological state. It’s also perhaps the most audacious film I’ve seen from her yet, and commendable for never holding back the perversity that clouds the honest flooding of intrusive thoughts. There is a deeper theme of general dissatisfaction with one’s current position, a commentary that uses the mother’s continuous need to leave her dwellings for another experience, and the boy following suit, unable to accept his present circumstances. That drive for ‘more,’ into fantasy and away from gratitude or observed fulfillment, is detrimental to the man’s stability, and reminiscent of the discomfort that plagues Zetterling’s characters across her oeuvre. The aunt, on the other hand, seems to indicate solace from that 'grass is always greener' drive, emulating that burning passion can transform routine stagnancy into a euphoric dream.

The chaos that physically populates spaces toward the end is a wonderful projection of the mind’s needs coming back against the desolate banality of the spaces at the start. Our protagonist is caught between conflicting drives without a home- he finds safety in the fantasies of his mother and aunt’s worshipping attentions, but also unease spawned from their impenetrable essence. The magnetization towards a fugue dream state is fueled by preoccupation with self-gratified needs of pleasures and self-concept, just as it is from fear of the absence of such centralized focus on himself from others, that he craves addictively.

Zetterling’s choice to make the women enigmatic forces representing incomprehensible alien qualities from a male perspective, just as he is inescapably drawn to them, is a statement in itself about the nature of females in a patriarchal society that demands to categorize such unknowability as a strength, and the disconnect between sexes an acknowledged struggle. I wonder if this is in part her way of creating the isolating female experience as a poisonous gift for men, similar to Doctor Glas, or to expose the male existence as sterile and empty without the presence of women, highlighting their innate significance. It’s hard to make out what the ending means, but the man is comforted by his aunt’s presence, and it’s assumed that without her love, real or imagined, he would be numbed, lost, and unhappy- or to reframe it positively, with her presence, he is able to feel alive, found, and find meaning. I guess I think the film has a happy ending, even if I’m a bit perplexed about what I’ve just watched, but I also think there’s immense truth in subjective experience that can supersede objective meaning in merit, so what do I know.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mai Zetterling

#29 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:04 am

After a bit of a hiatus, We Have Many Names seems to be a logical next step for Zetterling adapting into 70s modernity, probing a woman's strong reaction from a romantic breakup as it triggers a mental health crisis. The film is admirably balanced in offering hallucinatory manifestations of thoughts or actual delusions, with almost unbearably long sections that lend ample time to dwelling on the central character's apathetic flat affect, hardly existing in any participatory fashion against her social context. I can't say I enjoyed the film exactly, but it's no where near as awful as The Moon is a Green Cheese, which is the worst kind of displaced daydream- totally boring, nonsensical, and meaningless. Maybe the same kind of kids would like this that like The Neverending Story?

If the entirety of Love's omnibus is as bad as Zetterling's contributions, run far away. Love From the Marketplace is one of the worst shorts I've ever seen, period. The acting is so terrible it feels intentional, and I have no idea what the concept was behind anything we see, which is really just a vapid 'conversation' that veers into a final shot attempting to be perverse in the way that the credits for Nocturnal Animals was, which is to say a failure at shock-art underscored by its pointlessness. The Black Cat in the Black Mouse Socks is aimless and awful too but at least it makes sense, though when 'Joni Mitchell in blackface' is by far the most inspired aspect to the short, you probably have an idea of how much creativity is flowing in this dry well. Julia is on equal footing with the other two, as a toxic playboy picks up a woman, woos her, and the subsequently goes meek and does the same to his wife who comes home early. It's all executed so terribly that in conception it may be the least clever of all three, which is a microscopic bar to skirt under. After a near-perfect 60s run, the later works haven't fared too well so far, with the psychosurreal style implemented sloppily, without the intelligence or jarring provocation of those masterpieces.

Luckily Scrubbers sort-of rebounds by restoring Zetterling's auteurist juice that wavers between fugue states and grating reality, including some very striking usage of surrealism in a solitary confinement delirium amongst other examples of psychological deterioration, and the stark experience of women-in-prison without the action or sex fluff. It's not a particularly good film, but it's an encouraging answer to the masculine 'young locked up delinquent' British films from the 80s through a feminist lens, that draws lived-in characters far more interesting than the male versions in the more popular movies.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mai Zetterling

#30 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:48 pm

After a weak post-60s stretch, Zetterling fires back with Amorosa, which just might be her greatest work. I was reminded of Elvira Madigan's transcendental exploration of love through dreamlike attentiveness into nature and human expressiveness. This film accounts the tearing of one's soul between the safer, fear-driven normalcy of secure topics and lifestyle, and the risks of being vulnerable, of feeling, and expressing oneself along unsafe and taboo topics and ways of living. Stina Ekblad's approach to suppressing and yielding to her conflicting drives is a revolutionary, authentic performance, and we feel her own confusion pertaining to whether the sources of her needs are born in untrustworthy mental health issues or her honest nature stripped from social norms. Zetterling's style in filming this biopic is sensitive, raw, and mediates between rhythmic poetry and heart-pounding intimacy that capture behavioral observations so complex that they evoked physiological and psychological responses in me constantly. Through the objective yet fastened experience with Ekbald, we sense the emotions without being able to live her pain, though the drifting methodology between claustrophobic and liberated demonstrations reflect her imbalanced mental states. It's never didactically declared, but the film is a great projection of the complicated strengths and harmful effects of being an empath and emotionally-heavy person, as well as that personality's relationship to mental health deterioration. There's no clear answer, as we witness unambiguous horrors and beautiful emancipation of self-expression and joy that stick out amongst the conservative populations around her.

There are a few jaw-dropping sequences that remind me of Ema's empowerment, but these are densely packed in with irritation and malaise, and often delve directly into traumatic scenes to aggressively clarify for us that her life is a bipolar struggle of serenity and unbearable agony; freedom and shame. Zetterling has taken previously developed skills at oscillating between these moods in her early work, and outdone herself through realising the extent to the possibilities of the medium in translating such legions of tones, ideas, and beliefs that embody the psyche, let alone the wholesome anthropological experience. I mean, how do you show sexually-charged fantasies that torment and satisfy at once, painting an honest account of the multifaceted afflictions of passion? A breakdown at one point dictates the desire to connect with others without the means to, in an existential crisis that questions the honesty of one's work, the quality of one's life, and the hopelessness in actualizing one's needs; all while the emotions declare a heightened spirited soulfulness that is unsurmountable, and we recognize how rare it is to see someone able to tap into life's zeal this strongly, even if the aches of loneliness and depression coexist insufferably with it (and while these are primarily internally driven between Ekblad and her incongruity with her social context, it's also evidenced externally by the unsupportive and occasionally exploitative and violent people she encounters, and the end sequence that has her trying to escape her various tangled parts toward harmony is beautiful and ambiguously dour in its implications). This is, simply put, an insanely good film, and one that grants the intricate schema of mental health the complex portrait it deserves.

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L.A.
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Re: Mai Zetterling

#31 Post by L.A. » Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:26 pm

Does The Lost People (1949) have a home video release at all? At the moment I mean.

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headacheboy
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:57 pm

Re: Mai Zetterling

#32 Post by headacheboy » Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:01 pm

I received the Mai Zetterling box Complete Works and I noticed something surprising on the bottom where all copyrights and dates and region codes, etc are found. The studios listed as being responsible for this set include Svensk Filmindustri, naturally, but it also includes Handmade Films. Do you suppose there is a chance, considering how hard Criterion is working trying to put more female directors into the Collection, that they could be considering/ working on some films by Zetterling? I have no doubt they would at least want Loving Couples (which has played on TCM at least twice that I'm aware of) and I imagine the likelihood of a box is slim, although I imagine more people in the US would be inclined to pick up a box of Blu-Rays from Region A as opposed to a box of DVDs from Sweden. I would imagine they would, without a doubt and at the very least, put her works on the Criterion Channel.

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swo17
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Re: Mai Zetterling

#33 Post by swo17 » Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:12 pm

The Handmade film is the English-language Scrubbers, which has nothing Swedish about it except Zetterling behind the camera

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headacheboy
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:57 pm

Re: Mai Zetterling

#34 Post by headacheboy » Wed Feb 09, 2022 12:37 am

swo17 wrote:
Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:12 pm
The Handmade film is the English-language Scrubbers, which has nothing Swedish about it except Zetterling behind the camera
Ah, darn. See, I haven't watched any of the films yet. My mistake. Thanks for the correction, swo!

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