#15
Post
by therewillbeblus » Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:18 pm
I revisited this earlier today and loved it as much as I did ten years ago. Finch draws an interesting comparison to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, for each film utilizes very different methods (hyper-realism vs. stylized, at times fantastical imagery) to yield the same meditations on defense mechanisms used by both the victims and perpetrators of abuse to make sense of or disengage from the trauma. However, both films do expose the surreality of social dynamics through heightened and passive absurdism.
I've already touched on how I feel Fire Walk With Me evokes a very authentic demonstration of a trauma survivor's social-emotional-behavioral response elsewhere on this forum, thanks a lot to Sheryl Lee's performance. Festen is admirable for taking the dogme 95 approach of purity into locating more banal yet evocative symptoms of abuse. A key difference is that Vinterberg is primarily interested in the family system theoretical model when zooming in to the individual level. Lynch is honed in on Lee as the survivor, to the point of making this obsessive focus a thematic one- he's giving her the attention she gravely needs with his camera, a need that nobody else in her milieu can fulfill because of barriers in externally-natural obstacles to piercing through to an intimate level, socially-constructed ones in the assumed power differential from her 'Image', and psychological-behavioral ones she's constructed to protect herself in response.
But back to Festen and Vinterberg's approach: I forgot how much forward momentum occurs in the first section of this film. Vinterberg spends its strong, constantly mobile first act detailing the maladaptive human behavior from deep-rooted family dynamics within each individual player. Vinterberg's maturity comes across best in his restraint, graciously withholding a lot of information that is kept in the elisions of these characters’ histories where it belongs- save for a valuable piece of tangible 'historical information' that serves as a thread to undo the fragile fabric of this family system. This strategy leaves the tangible behavioral information on the surface to speak volumes - from loud aggressively hostile interpersonal communication between the younger brother Michael and, well, everyone, to Christian’s quiet actions like zoning in on a glass of clear liquid and shaking it back and forth. This behavior is an idiosyncratic rote traumatic response if there ever was one, and a sly piece of “evidence” in support of his claim - as is the info-drop by an old flame of Christian’s who indicates he and Michael have switched temperaments, and thus roles in the family system, over time. This is never explored in a way that addresses cause for such a shift in adulthood, but trauma is something people live with -and I think we can assume that Michael is riddled with the effects of a dysfunctional upbringing himself, even if his trauma is left for another film's story- and this unpronounced alteration in family roles and relationships mirrors the dubious nonlinear fluidity of trauma's ramifications across time.
Once the information is stated, the denial in power structures reinforcing that suppressed acknowledgment is also absurdly realistic, as are the observable ingrained effects of abuse, including the Christian's inability to confront the father in private even as an adult, and his intuition to use a public space to make his provocative reveals. This last point may appear antithetical to some, considering the vulnerable nature of the disclosures and lack of support given by this group, but such a space still feels like the only place he can safely profess his truth, where he is but one person in a populated area with physical distance and clearly identified roles in who speaks and who listens established by the nature of the toast ceremony, regardless of if he’s going out of turn or not. Christian knows to expect social discomfort, but the reactions of a group mentality in moving on from disclosure so swiftly with an anxious joke is predictable, while his father's behavior has never been (is the man going to violate me, or crack a joke?)
There’s something both grimly hysterical and subtly tragic about how Christian keeps trying to enter the house, running away from the group of men led by his brother who are just trying to keep everything ‘socially appropriate’! It's a cartoonish setup: repeatedly moving away from obstacles (including being tied to a tree!) in a reptilian manner- farce stripped down and portrayed as stark realism, exhibiting the absurdity of human behavior in social environments. For me, these impulsive moves from Christian to return to the spotlight, self-destructing desperately to cause some deserved destruction, are the funniest parts of the movie and also the most devastating. We have no idea what's going on inside of him psychologically, but we can tell that he's deeply alone, and not only because of how he's treated by his unsupportive peers. The character, and actor playing him, wear that emptiness and unbearably active trauma just close enough to the surface of his disposition to show us that there's something pulsating there. Vinterberg doesn't pretend to know what to do with that information, and humbly remains at as much of a distance from that inner core as Christian is from it himself, and as we are to it as an audience. We all must just sit in that uncertainty. It's a respectful artistic choice by a director sensitive to the limitations and capabilities we have to tell another's story, or even to tell our own.
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I also watched the two shorts on the Criterion disc: Last Round and The Boy Who Walked Backwards, and enjoyed both. Last Round starts off slow, but as the narrative progresses, Vinterberg holds space for several unique, small life-affirming moments amidst the dreary content, including a sublime sequence of running down the street drinking and smoking a cigarette while listening to CCR, which sounds contrived but comes across as an earnest act of transient liberation. A similar moment where characters count a minute is meditative, intimate, and effectively encapsulates the significance of life as a series of moments where we are truly present with those we love. For a student film, I expected more obvious metaphors and instances of overcooked emotional resonance, but Vinterberg's knack for understated poignancy is evident from the start.
The Boy Who Walked Backwards contains an abrupt tonal shift, and I’m not sure Vinterberg quite pulls it off in the long run, but the rumination on grief from a child’s point of view is affecting. The film is very front-heavy though, with an opening act of nonstop majestic youthful comedy, calling back to the masterful La cotta- which took its sweet time crafting an earned tonal amalgamation of youthful emotion. I understand that the first act serves to make the whiplash work so well, and for that purpose it's incredibly economical by allowing us into this world of genuinely harmonic family relationships to comprehend how potent this affinity is to lose in just a few minutes. Still, to disregard the intention of the short for a second, I'd prefer a half hour of just these two kids' banter. It would be a perfect film.
