The Story of Qiu Ju and Existentialism

I threw my hands up in the air.  I admit it and everyone saw it.  It wasn’t disbelief as to the outcome of Qiu Ju.  I knew it wasn’t going to turn out well for her.  I expected one bad thing after another; I mean, please, we are studying existentialism here!  I expected that this poor pregnant heroine wasn’t going to have everything wrapped up in a pretty bow.  I prepared myself for tragedy.  But, and perhaps this is my westernized view of myth, I still had that hope in the back of my mind that the chief would humble himself and apologize.  Or that Qiu Ju would catch the police car.  But the look on her freeze-framed face felt like a slap to my poor little heart.  Sartre (as summarized in the introduction to his piece) asserts that reading creates a pact between freedoms, between authors and readers…it “calls forth from the reader examination, admiration and indignation.  It engages our support, consent, critique or opposition.” (1198) So, I feel like Yimou Zhang broke our pact.  I, as the reader, was invited to sample the work, to examine it and formulate my own conclusions as to the motivations and character choices.  But, alas, the director pulled the rug out from under me, so now I, in turn, get to critique him.

Perhaps that is precisely what this fifth generation filmmaker wanted.  Sartre states that it is the “joint effort of the author and reader which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind.”  According to Sartre, Zhang needs me just as much as I need him.  And together we get to create and direct meaning within the piece.  In a tale much like Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, it seemed as if our protagonist, Qiu Ju was in a never-ending struggle against the tension and the forces of power in her world.  Each day it was the same struggle, the same trek to and from the village, the district, the city, even the high court, again and again to try to get justice for her husband who had been injured.  All she wanted was an admittance of guilt and an apology from the stubborn chief who didn’t want to “lose face” in front of his subordinates; who bluntly attests: “I am the law.” 

Even from the first shots, we see the sense of suffering (with a lack of meaning) of a people, shoved together in a crowd.  Shot from one singular location, we see a crowd moving, mostly the women are shown in the middle, pushing their way through; no one particularly happy.  Instead it is the daily trudge in which our female protagonist is highlighted.  Possibly Nietzsche would also compare Qiu Ju to Oedipus as he did with so many others (including Dionysus) in his writing.  I imagine he would see her as a "Noble human being who is destined for error and misery despite [her] wisdom." She goes through an enormous suffering, much like the Greek central character, that leaves an impression on her community; her little world.  Searching for her own brand of justice, she is told by countless people, including her own injured husband that there is “nothing to be done,” (the quintessential existentialist sentiment.) Nietzsche further explains that the ultimate form of justice is found in the “limitless suffering of the bold individual on the one hand and the extreme plight of the gods…on the other; the power of both these worlds of suffering to enforce reconciliation.” (780)  Perhaps the gods are a bit of a stretch here, but fate certainly isn’t. 

Told in somewhat of a verite style, a glimpse into Chinese culture is seen and a clear disenchantment with the way the government is run.  We switch back and forth from village life and the countryside, packed with carts, barely functioning vehicles, and quickly disappearing stacks of dried chilies, to the city filled with both Western (American) and Chinese posters, swindling citizens, and propaganda.  Qiu Ju tries to function in a society, so alien from her own, and is faced with the dread of the nothingness to come-that nothing will be resolved.  Though determined to “want to believe there is some justice,” she is continually knocked down.  On another trip into the city, her husband pleads with her to just drop it, to forget the incident and move on.  He wonders what people will say and states that they have “almost no chilies left to sell. All of this was for nothing.”  Her husband doesn’t feel as though anything can be done to change their endless plight and asks: “If he is the chief, what can I do to him?”  But Qui Ju won’t concede.  She will work to cause change, and seems to inhabit the type of character that Nietzsche spoke of: "The noble human being does not sin, so this profound poet wants to tell us; every law, all natural order, indeed the moral world, may be destroyed by his actions, yet by these actions a higher magical circle of effects is drawn which found a new world on the ruins of the old one that has been overthrown." (778)  Not quite humble and inherently stubborn, she is determined to make the chief admit that he was wrong.  Refusing to accept any pacification from other officials who beg her not to let the chief lose face, she won’t take the council of simply having both parties do a self-criticism.  Determined to solve things her own way, she again goes to the chief for justice.  In what is supposed to be a final act of humiliation, the chief throws money at her, requesting that this extremely pregnant woman bows down to him to retrieve it and asserting that they are now even.  In a style all her own, she pulls her coat a little tighter and simply states: “I’ll decide when we are even.”

Sartre identifies “One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.” (1200)  Qiu Ju needed to feel like she mattered; that her plight and that of her family couldn’t be swept under the rug of bureaucracy and government corruption.  She needed to matter and her voice needed to be heard.  Sometimes she had to enlist another to speak for her, in which case she agreed to spend an exorbitant amount of many for a professional to write a complaint for her and another even larger portion of her family’s money for the year in hiring an unsuccessful lawyer, but she needed to be heard; to matter.  She was willing to sacrifice anything in order to make that happen.  Even the chief, or perhaps especially the chief questions her motives and determination.  Attempting to call her bluff he challenges: “Sue me if you want.  I work for the government.  They will back me up.”

So it is within this sphere that we encounter the text.  A reading is necessary for the story to exist, and it lasts only as long as the reading lasts.  If we “pick up” the film we accept responsibility for it as the reader.  Sartre says that this dialectic tension between the writer and the reader creates a space where “the words are there like traps to arouse our feelings and reflect them towards us.” (1203)  And in this way, the characters are allowed to live for a bit of time – as long as we are having contact with the text.  And in this realm, the Story of Qiu Ju was engaging and clear.  There exists within this piece a clear de-glamorized ordinary life and the individuation vs. community that Nietzsche spoke of.  The government official tells Qiu Ju that “To you this is a big deal, to them, it is nothing.”  Filmed in such as way that it didn’t seem at all inauthentic, the actors, who played their parts with such apparent ease, seemed to be real people, not actors.  They created a community of individuals and narratives.  Nietzsche speaks of the "gospel of universal harmony" in which there is reconciliation with the neighbor. And in this path we see a humbled husband beg the chief to help save his wife, a community torn apart that joins together to carry Qiu Ju to the hospital on a stretcher.  They allowed us to partake in the community of celebration at the baby’s one month party.  But, in true tragic form, all does not end well.  The party is interrupted as the chief is taken to jail.  We will never know if she got an apology, or if it mattered anymore.  Sartre summarizes that in this generosity that exists between the reader and the writer, “the final goal of art [is] to recover this world by giving it to be seen as it is, but as if it had its source in human freedom.” (1209) and that the “more disposed on is to change it [the story], the more alive it will be.” (1210)  So the question is posed, now that we have viewed the film and taken responsibility for it, where do we go from here?  Is there even a point?  Director Yimou Zhang also exhibited an existentialist view.  He stated that “The Chinese censorship system has been in practice for many years. I don't think there will be much change in society in the short run. This situation has been present for a long time and it is a reality in China. I work and live in this system. There has not been a significant change. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0955443/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm#trivia)

If Sartre says that art is the way we make meaning with the universe and that meaning occurs when we encounter a text, how do we view a piece of art like this film?  How do we view the possibilities of meaningful action in protagonist’s choices?  Or does this ungenerous belief in humanity and human agency even allow for us to make sense of the senselessness.  Nietzsche notes that in tragedy we long to go beyond looking and long to go beyond listening.  And we must consider the tragic myth and music, which “can’t be separated, [as] they express the capacity of a people.”  While perhaps it may be impossible to understand the plight of Qui Ju and her family, it is still possible, and in fact essential for us to encounter this text, her story, and take responsibility for it.  The images seen can be viewed in a new lens.  And maybe there is something to the “countless illusions of beautiful semblance which, at every moment, make existence at all worth living at every moment and thereby urge us to experience the next.” (784)  There is a reason the film was made.  There is a shout that needs to be heard.  Maybe if we keep thinking about the film, that shout won’t be silenced. 

Sartre further claimed: “the artist must entrust to another the job of carrying out what he has begun.”  And that we “can make something more out of what is already there.” (1206)  He is speaking specifically of the role, function, and essential quality of the reader.  But could that be what Yimou Zhang has invited us to do as well?  Could he possibly guide us through but leave the conclusion open and free for us to interpret?  Could he entrust us, as the reader/viewer, to do the story and the character justice?  If that is the case, can I have Qiu Ju wake up and realize that it was all a dream and have someone drive up the hill to give the poor woman a car so she’s not going to die or pop a baby out on the roadside?  I think, sadly that both the existentialists and Qiu Ju herself would find a problem with my supposed ending.  They would both say that if she was meant to have the baby on the roadside, she would have it there, no matter if she owned a car or not.  Nietzsche would comment on the essential qualities of a true tragic hero, and Sartre would likely agree with them both and ridicule me for attempting to mess with a godless universe.  But if “writing is a certain way of wanting freedom” (1213), and this text commits its creators toward that goal, then I as the audience need to take the good I can from the piece and let it inform my decisions and behaviors.  After I threw my hands up in the air, I did, however apologize for complaining that my life is hard, when clearly hard life is being fought every day in a tiny Chinese village with a stubborn chief and a determined woman.  

The Crowd and Mass Culture

The turn of the century seemed filled with so much promise.  A new age overflowing with possibility and hopes of the “American Dream”.  It is with this sentiment that we begin The Crowd; a story of the quintessential all-American boy, literally born on the 4^th of July in 1900 small-town America.  His father optimistically states: “I’m going to give him every opportunity.”  And from this point, he ingrains the notion of believing that you deserve more; that, in the mere moments of his birth and through his childhood, this boy is capable of greatness.  But, as we see from Marx, we cannot look from heaven down and see the creation of man in thought and dream alone.  (In fact each time our protagonist, John, attempts to merely dream of success or doodle about his dreams, nothing happens and he gets further ground down.)  Instead man is a product of his circumstances, indeed of the products he creates.  He further clarifies, “we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh.  We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.” (154)  Although the idealism of the turn of the century seemed enough for this small town boy on the road to great things, it is apparent that reality and necessity got in the way of those not fully-visualized dreams.

When questioned by the neighborhood boys about what he wants to be when he grows up, there is no clear response as to an occupation from John.  Instead he relies on his father’s notion that he is going to be great.  His path, however, is turned upside down when his father suddenly dies.  It is with this first moment that King Vidor’s visual genius and symbolic style emerges.  As the ambulance pulls up at the house, a massive crowd of neighbors appears, pushing their way into house, but still respectful.  They let the family, and specifically the boy John, emerge on the stairs, separating himself from the crowd while still being a part of the community.  This first image highlights what Simmel was discussing in his paper on sociology.  He realizes that there is a distinct difference in the feel and attitude of a small, rural town versus the big metropolis; a concept Vidor builds upon beautifully.  The contrast in the close up, asymmetrical shots in the small town to the stark precision of the metropolis is daunting.  His long sweeps of a huge building in which he zeros in on just one of many windows, and inside, just one of many desks, and just one worker, of so many.  At the age of twenty-one, John sets out to prove himself in a world that he is not quite ready for.  The title card further reflects that, calling him: “One of the 7 million that believed New York depended on him.”  The realization is evident; you must be good to beat the crowd. 

But it is not enough to just have a dream.  As Simmel further illustrates, in the metropolis, there is a distinct loss of individuality, and our boy with a dream becomes a number, working on an impersonal time schedule in a world run by arithmetic, where quantity has replaced quality and as Simmel suggests, the “money economy dominates the metropolis” (412)  But our protagonist doesn’t seem to fit within this world.  In the bathroom sequence, he doesn’t follow the protocol of all facing the same way and talking about the same stuff.  He seems to be the lone individual, trying to exert his uniqueness into the world; a world that demands precision and product.  John, however, isn’t focused on work, but rather on his dream.  At first he references study, but allows the pressures and pleasures of the world to distract him from even that pursuit.  He and Mary make fun of the lower class (the proletariat), a foreshadowing of what they are to become.  John does, however fall under the spell of advertisement, commercialism, and urbanization, realizing from an ad that he will be happy with a wife and house – yet again, the American Dream.  He soon, becomes disenchanted and disinterested in family life at Christmas with Mary’s family.  His in-laws are concerned with his lack of money and status.  Unappreciative of his tricks, they question the supposed raise he was supposed to be getting.  And with this, we see that Marx is correct in his thought that production and ownership determine status, even within the family unit. 

Marx suggests that reality shapes the mind, and creates a false consciousness for the oppressed.  The producer is disconnected from the product in this unjust division of labor, and people like John, who sit all day at a desk, tallying numbers, never get to touch or see the outcome of those numbers.  The product becomes this intangible and distanced thing and provides no pleasure, warmth (thank you Simmel) or actuality.  So the worker must become focused on essentials first, the needs or social productive forces.  Marx states that “As individuals express their life, so they are.  What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce.  The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.” (150)  And John’s aren’t good.  He is continually looked over for promotion because he won’t play the game like Bert and cozy up to the bosses.  He is waiting for his “big break” and thinks someone should notice his genius in slogan writing.  As Simmel suggests, our protagonist is focused on his specialization.  In a world where one has to keep up, to be incomparable or irreplaceable and have a confidant and definite sense of self, he surmises that this urban world has lied to him.  Blaming his wife for their house falling apart, he states that “Marriage isn’t a wonderful word, it’s a sentence.”  And though Simmel infers that urban life allows for individuality, it also, according The Crowd, stifles it.

But, as all life has its ups and downs, so too does John’s.  Problems with essentials and needs are swept under the table with the news that a baby is on the way.  Here again we can use Simmel to compare the difference in the metropolis and the rural community.  In contrast to the small town doctor who comes to the house to deliver John for his parents, John waits at work to hear the news.  Vidor’s uniformity of all the husbands waiting in the hall, all the wives sharing the same huge and impersonal room, lined with beds, the anxiety of the cold hospital where an apprehensive husband searches for a doctor and then for his wife sheds brilliant light on the inevitable assumption that the individual has to be outside of the norm to matter.  As Simmel states: “The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of the purely objective life.” (422)

The symbol of the crowd appears again and again throughout the film.  From the crowded hospital to the crowded beach where he can’t play his ukulele, to the crowd of people surrounding John’s family’s latest tragedy, we learn that “Crowds laughs with you always but will cry with you for only a day.”  And in this world of mass culture (the sheep mindset), “the world can’t stop ‘cause your baby’s sick.”  In contrast to the crowd at the first when John’s father died, this crowd of strangers won’t even let a father get through to his daughter who has been struck by a vehicle.  Vidor’s direction seems to show that we don’t know how big the crowd is or the opposition till we get in the middle of it.  But, unable to live in his grief, John returns to work and to, as Marx puts it, a place where “man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him.” (160)  Still thinking that all he needs is an opportunity, he spirals downward till he nearly commits suicide in front of his son.  This disillusionment demonstrated Simmel’s notion that “self-preservation of certain personalities is brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one’s own personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness.” (415)

John finds that Marx, again, is correct in realizing that “life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things.” (156)  His son gives him to courage to find and fight for those bare essentials for his family to survive.  He joins the throngs of men fighting their way for work – yet again an extraordinary crowd scene shot by Vidor that makes even the audiences feel tussled and claustrophobic.  As a desperate John gets a job juggling with a sign, the very thing he and Mary mocked not so many years before, Simmel’s belief that “money becomes the most frightful leveler” (414) echoes in John’s face.  We further see the wisdom of Marx in John’s need to keep his family together.  And though Simmel talks about how “One must meet the difficulty of asserting his own personality within the dimensions of metropolitan life,” (420) in order to survive, it seems that John must concede to the flow of the superstructure, from which there is no escape, just acceptance. 

King Vidor clearly struggled with the anxieties accompanying the impersonal metropolis.  Even the cover of the film shows a lone man, facing away from the crowd, pushing against them.  His storytelling in The Crowd discusses the effect of the individual versus the mass culture; and increase in standardization, urbanization, and materiality.  His aesthetic response to it is truly informative.  And I wonder if even Leavis, who showed contempt for some film, would be impressed.  Worried about the “cheap emotional appeals” of cinematic recreation and the far reaching consequences of broadcasting films, Leavis concluded that high culture was getting lost, and that Americanization and standardization was ridding the world of culture.  Perhaps, then, he would be pleased with King Vidor and his insistence (in a time when producers only wanted happy endings) in creating a realistic, almost foreboding conclusion to the film – a film the studio didn’t want to make in the first place.  But King Vidor was insistent, he thought the story needed to be shared and by novices, the everyman.  Marx has stated that “It is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means.” (169)  In essence, one must work and his work must be valued by another.  And in that final shot, the community laughing together, as we pull away from the individual to the uniformity of the mass, and the music strikes a dissident chord, one wonders if it is all worth it?

Romanticism and Siegfried

Romanticism has an ideal focus on Imagination and its power.  In order to fully understand how this imagination can affect the audience response to a piece of poetry, in any of its formats, one must contextualize both the piece and its power for change that might be found within that piece.  Percy Bysshe Shelley stated that: “The connexion (connection) of poetry and social good is more observable in drama than in whatever other form…and that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles.” (600)  And poetry can be found in several mediums, including film.  In the case of Fritz Lang’s 1924 period drama, Siegfried, a careful consideration of its elements and overarching tone, with nods to Edgar Allen Poe, can assist in finding the considerable effect of the film on its intended audience.

I have only ever seen one other Fritz Lang film: M.  I think his use of camera angle, close ups, and tone are incredibly interesting, especially considering the level of technology available at the time he was working.  In the brief time between the two great world wars, German expressionist films seemed to deal with a variety of subject matters, though a large amount touched upon the realms of science fiction, fantasy and horror.  Siegfried certainly falls within this category.  Upon the initial viewing of this film, I honestly saw very little that was redeeming in the characters, and therefore judged it quite harshly.  So after attempting to at least somewhat humble myself and do a little digging, I was on a better path to understand its place within the cannon of film history.  Shelley says that what we judge from partial evidence, we judge partially; which is certainly the case with modern audiences.  I honestly wonder if a 2013 audience can watch a film from 1924, with our understanding of filmatic elements, camera angles, established concepts of a good story and recognized tenets of good acting, with fresh eyes.  I don’t know if it’s possible to remove ourselves from our preconceived notion of good and bad.  I think that without research (and how many are going to actually follow through with that), very few can fully appreciate the film.  We have partial evidence and likewise, judge it partially. 

We begin our examination of the film with its multi-layered, yet still simplistic plot.  Based on a German epic poem, Siegfried begins with an (almost forging from Mt. Doom-esque quality of detail) outdoor landscape with cave man-looking black smiths (here I again see Peter Jackson taking note) and a young Arian’s determination to get the sword perfect, so that it could slice through a feather.  Upon completion, his mentor tells him, “Even I can teach you no more.”  Determined to leave, now that his apprenticeship is finished, he hears some of the other black smiths discussing the kingdom of Burgundy and the epitome of ideal beauty, the princess, Kriemild, wherein Siegfried immediately changes his plans with the determination to go and seek for this princess and win her hand in marriage.  Now let’s pause here to discuss the Romantic’s vision of the importance of beauty…

The Romantic era had a huge emphasis on fantasy and romantic love.  They regarded beauty and goodness as the ideal and the imagination as necessary in attaining that ideal, though for the true poet, that can never be attained, and therefore melancholy takes its place of dominance within the realm of poetic thought and interpretation.  They also tended to value feelings and intuition over reason, as well as nature’s goodness and the wisdom of the past mingled with a new-found purpose in art.  In this time, Poetry helped to see things freshly, new, how things might be or should be.  Significant writers of the time, Shelley and Poe believed that Poetry is a source of pleasure, originality of art is important,

Melancholy beauty is ideal, and the aesthetic must be valued over moral considerations; the effect before the plot.  In fact, Poe stated that “pleasure which is at once the most intense, most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. “  Like unto Kriemeld’s tale of beauty and Siegfried’s never-ending quest to obtain it.

So lets return to that plot for a moment.  Siegfried gets tricked into going the wrong way and encounters a dragon.  He chooses to fight the dragon, stabs out its eye and then into its side.  He hears a bird singing and understands “in the language of the birds” that he must bathe in the blood of that dragon to become invincible and immortal.  His one place of vulnerability exists because a linden/lime leaf lands on his back; a small section not touched by the blood of the dragon.   The mysticism to which the romantics are so inclined can further be evidenced in the battle with the king of the dwarves, the detail in the glowing orbs, and the headdress that makes one invisible or with the power to change forms.  After getting distracted, our simpleton hero twice defeats the king of the dwarves, and is bribed with a great treasure, held up on the backs of other dwarfs who turn to stone as he takes the treasure.  The treasure is then cursed for all those who attempt to possess it.  Meanwhile, in Burgundy, we see a courtly kingdom, complete with the requisite King Gunther who longs for the Queen of Iceland to help him feel like a man, a variety of knights, his beautiful (though perhaps somewhat androgynous to today’s modern audiences) sister, and a minstrel.  Kriemild is told of her hero in song, and love is established between the two before first sight.

Romanticism shifted moral grounds and created a new morality based on chivalry, harmony with nature, passion and intensity of feeling (See Brunhild’s refusal to eat and subsequent suicide and Kriemeld’s vow for revenge as examples.)  Within this period and theory, there was also a human awareness of desire and an understanding that as humans, and as artists, we are merely a shadow of what we could be or could attain, even the “Noble savage” is always falling short of pleasure, never can attain ultimate goal, just as each of our four principal characters will never attain their goal of ultimate happiness.  Why even the tree of love under which Siegfried and Kriemild share their sentiments and innermost secrets visually turns into a skeleton shape, symbolizing the death of beauty and trust and love.  Poe write that “Of all the melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?  Death—was the obvious reply.”  He chose to base his poem, the Raven, on that very topic to create the ultimate melancholy.  Likewise the massive slaughter at the end of this film creates an overarching realm of loss and death and longing.  And thus begins the tragedy that Shelley speaks of: “Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.” (607) and our sympathy with the characters depends on this.  As the romantic chose to re-expose myth and epic from the past, so also did Lang in his film.  Following along the lines of the aesthetic being the highest good, which is pleasure and the dwelling in the realm of the agreeable, Lang’s characters don’t seem to give one much to hope for in terms of moral values.  Siegfried is moral and good, but simple and easily tricked, Kriemild is loving and determined, but not trust-worthy. Gunther is weak and Brunhild is just a horrible, vindictive woman.  Even the knights leave chivalry in the dust and seek instead for power or good graces by those in power.  The characters emotional responses outweigh their ability to reason.  (I guess why its’ easy to see that in the second part of the epic poem and Lang’s sequel, Kriemild marries Attila the Hun…)  But, I digress.  It clearly is the aesthetic that takes the foremost place in this piece. 

Much like Poe was concerned with the structure of his piece, I wonder if the same could be said for Lang.  His elaborate sets, costumes, special effects, tone, etc. seem to remind one of the focus of the poet.  The romantics found an attention to detain to be of paramount importance.  Lang’s elaborate landscapes, architecture and geometric patterns in both set and costumes is unparalleled.  And one could surmise that he was able to take something familiar, the story of Siegfried made famous in Wagner’s opera, into the realm of the unfamiliar for German audiences of the time.  His mechanical Dragon, lakes of fire, stop-tricks, and disappearing were most certainly innovative and likely impressive to the audiences in 1924.   The focus on the goodness of nature was likewise present in Lang’s film, though it is in that very nature that the simple, but pleasant king Siegfried gets himself ultimately killed.

The king of Burgundy, Gunther enlists Siegfried’s help in securing the hand of the queen of Iceland, a title with matches her frozen exterior.  He, using his magical headdress, helps Gunther best her is three tasks, ensuring that he can become her husband.  But Brunhild always suspects.   And although Siegfried and Gunther become blood brothers, there is a continual jealousy that leads to destruction.  Lang uses color and light to help the audience identify with and ultimately root for the moral good over the bad.  In costuming and lighting effect he directs the audience into his ideal.  False accusations (“For the sake of a woman’s lie you have slain your most loyal friend.”) destroy relationships and in the ultimate state of melancholy, the hero is betrayed and his bride seeks revenge.  This story, told in seven cantos, sheds light on Shelley’s thought that “Poetry ever communicates all of the pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the light of life; the source of whatever of beautiful, or generous, or true can have place in an evil time.” (601) and that “The functions of poetic faculty are two-fold; by one it creates new materials of knowledge, and power and pleasure; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good.” (609)

If, as Shelley surmises, “The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry.” (613), then what is the filmmaker’s responsibility to the piece and to the audience?  As he speaks of poetry’s ability to make things immortal – all that’s best and beautiful, can’t we likewise say that film does the same in an immortal way.  Film never goes away, it’s always a record.  So do poetry in its written form, drama in its performance and films in their eternal an immortal record of times and thoughts really have the power for change, to add beauty to the most deformed to “marry exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change?” (611)  If, as Shelley insists, Poetry is the storehouse of examples to everlasting time, then what record does Siegfried leave?  Can we actually go into the place of Gunther and see the need for power, of Brunhild and see the loss of freedom, of Kriemild and see the persistence of love and the evil of betraying trust?  Or do we just look for the good and refuse to acknowledge the evil as Siegfried did?  Shelley added that “The presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct and habit.” (598)  So where does that leave us as an audience?  I guess we have to look beyond the fragment.

Kant and Hume Meet The Fountain

Kant and Hume Meet The Fountain

Before we start here, can I ask why all of these films lately have to do with death?  At least Big Fish felt redemptive and had some element of hope.  The Fountain was likely not the best film for me to watch at this point in my life.  And I know right now we are focused more on form and less on emotion, but I guess I don’t believe that you can remove emotion from a situation.  And if you think you can, you are just deluding yourself.  The Fountain felt like an exploration of how much death sucks…and life for that matter.

Ok, so now I will move forward with aesthetics, taste, and form.  Hume, when commenting On The Standards of Taste, stated that “it is natural for us to feel a standard of taste, a rule, by which the various sentiments of men be reconciled.”  We formulate taste by making comparisons.  And that seems to still be the case today.  We look at everything and formulate a judgment based on our interpretation of its supposed merit.  Be it a painting, a building, something in nature or a film, we appeal to its aesthetic qualities and as Kant suggests, we seek to possess pleasurable objects.  Kant cast further light on this when he called aesthetic judgments “judgments of taste” and remarked that, though they are based in an individual’s subjective feelings, they also claim universal validity.

According to the “source” (please note the sarcastic use of quotation marks here) of filmatic truth, Rotten Tomato, The Fountain only received a 51% approval rating from professional critics, and a 72% approval rating from the general commenting audience.  How then can we start to discover its aesthetic value?  (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_fountain/)  Kant said that we begin by searching for that which promotes moral goodness.  In the case of this thousand plus year journey to save his beloved queen/wife/tree, Tomas/Tommy/Tom, embarks on journey after journey, facing flame-wielding Mayans, primate operations, the neurological and physical effects of cancer, an extended moment in the bathtub, and a floating sphere encasing a dying tree to fight for his love.  The audience can certainly pull aspects of moral goodness from the fragmented, non-linear narrative.  As the story moves between representational story and images, the focus resides on life and death in the pursuit of immortality or the tree of life.   

If we are to attempt to understand Kant and how this film applies to theory, we must be able to distinguish between the “finer things:” the beautiful from the sublime. He says that Aesthetic pleasure comes from the “free play between the imagination and understanding when perceiving” an object.  Further, that judgments of taste can be considered universal because they are disinterested or unbiased; our individual wants and needs do not come into play when appreciating beauty, so our aesthetic response applies universally. Kant further instructs that while the “appeal of beautiful objects is immediately apparent; the sublime holds an air of mystery and ineffability”.  Izzy/Isabella is clearly, by today’s accustomed standard of taste, someone who is beautiful to observe.  We are able to appreciate her beauty without feeling driven to find some use for it.  She fits our notion and the aesthetic appeal of Rachel Weitz alone can sell tickets.  But our understanding of the sublime must cause us to go farther.  Kant states that our sense of the sublime is connected with our faculty of reason, which has ideas of absolute totality and absolute freedom. Sublime resides in reason.  And with that notion, we can look at her actions; her inside.  We can notice the moments she is desperate to spend time with the person she loves, to forgive and move on, to not be bothered in the little things and to take pleasure in the simple things like stars and snow.  Indeed even her surname lends itself to the sublime.  Their last name, Creo, is Latin for “I create” and Spanish for “I believe.”  (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv)

The sublime can also be found in its dread and melancholy, like that of Tom as he realizes he is losing his wife, that of nobility and wonder as he meditates, first-father-like, and focuses on the inner workings of the universe.  And tragedy such as this certainly lends itself to the sublime.  Throughout the piece, he continuously faces his greatest fear and enemy, death, in its variety of forms.  At the beginning he is greeted with the foreshadowed line, “First father sacrificed himself for the tree of life.  Enter here and meet his fate”  Beauty is harmony of mind and world; and perhaps the very quest Tom is trying to make at the end, to find piece with the never-ending pursuit of immortality. 

Aronofsky’s use of dark colors, his symbolism, modes of thought, motifs add to his purposeful visual stylization.  It seemed that his form centered around color, or the lack thereof, and on deconstructed storyline.  If we compare the stark darkness of the time of the Spanish Inquisition to the almost clinical nature of what I deem the post-apocalyptical time, to the bright lights and vibrancy of the tree of life, we can find a sensory experience that moves from the subjective to the objective as we pursue its individual, interested elements.  Further symbolism can be observed in the ring and its promise of Eden and a queen.  Tom even brands a ring on himself.  The doorways become transitional areas, portals to other times.  The tree is a powerful recurring symbol, focusing on the idea of living on in another form, like the tree,   The protagonist plants the seed at her grave, as the future Tom speaks to the tree, touching it’s bark like her skin; the fibers/hairs on the tree responding the same way as hair on an arm to static energy and friction.  The tree literally gives a new life from its sap.  He is able to reconnect with his ring.  But then becomes part of the tree.

The connection with religion isn’t as pervasive, though still underlying.  The shout rings out at the beginning of the film of the dreaded “Pagans” as most of the men retreat.  Tomas, on the other hand plows through, scales the wall and goes toward the light.  He finds that “our bodies are prisons for our souls. Death frees every soul.”  There are references to Genesis and the fall of man; as well as the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The quest for morality and desire to return to the time before prevails in the film.  Aronofsky actually interpreted the story of Genesis in regards to mortality.  He stated about The Fall:, "If they had drank from the Tree of Life [instead of the Tree of Knowledge] what would have separated them from their maker? So what makes us human is actually death. It's what makes us special.”  ("Interview: Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountain, Part 2". /FILM. Retrieved December 19, 2006)  The idea of death as an act of creation with the underworld being represented as a dying star further aids in his motif. 

Enlightenment theory can also be seen as parts exist for the sake of the whole, whole exists for the sake of the parts.  Though the Aristotelian format takes a backseat to a new form leading the audience through a repetition of scenes, addition of detail, and seamless transitions between time periods, between memories, There seems to be an interconnectiveness of the three stories, all exist for the over arching objective of trying to overcome death.  He further finds that “death is the road to awe.”  And he is able to overcome pain and distance himself from emotion and harm, as is the case when he is floating after getting stabbed.  But the film ends where it started; with the protagonist having somewhat of a chance to right his mistakes.  And in this, perhaps he can achieve some real serenity, or the sublime. 

Kant speaks of the faculty of genius. “Whereas judgment allows one to determine whether something is beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is beautiful or sublime.”  So is Aronofsky a genius?  Or just an artist trying to find a new form to captivate his vision of the world.  Kant’s teleology suggests that everything has to have an end, a purpose.  Does it matter that I, as an audience member walked away from the film disturbed?  Does that make me frivolous and uneducated and therefore not able to distinguish beauty?  Or really does everyone have their own set of experiences that can be validated and acknowledged?  In an interview in 2012, Aronofsky stated that "ultimately the film is about coming to terms with your own death".  ("Darren Aronofsky Says 'The Fountain' Was Too Expensive, Talks Connecting 'Noah' With Modern Audiences & More". blogs.indiewire.com. Retrieved December 14, 2012) Its form, though clearly non-linear still lends toward an overarching theme of searching for meaning.  I agree that taste is culturally relative, perhaps circumstantially relative as well.  And while I’m clearly not prescribing to Kant’s notion of disinterestedness in my approach to this film, maybe I can “achieve a measure of grace.”  And really ask myself what it means to become whole?  And perhaps the journey of the audience parallels the journey of the protagonist as he crosses centuries (1500, 2000, 2500 AD) realizing as the dialogue echoes: “everything’s going to be all right.”  Let’s hope so.