Personal writings
| Brett Lockwood |
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Personal writings |
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1. Film review: The Man Who Cried |
Film review
The Man Who Cried: Personal identity and community
for Dawn
The Man Who Cried
2000
Directed by Sally Potter
Main characters:
Christina Ricci .... Susie
Cate Blanchett .... Lola
John Turturro .... Dante
Johnny Depp .... Cesar
Harry Dean Stanton .... Felix
The Man Who Cried is a film without subtexts. It has some laboured moments, a few attempts at stylisation, but it doesn't pretend to be elaborate and its aim is not to be stylish. It doesn't work heavily via metaphor or symbolism. It avoids nostalgia. It utilises momentous and shocking historical events in a matter-of-fact way, almost incidentally, to provide a backdrop and a small number of critically eliciting moments that show us how people who are essentially ordinary—as we all are—can, when called upon to act by great events, whilst also having freedom as to what they will choose to do, may become extraordinarily strong or extraordinarily weak. The film can be read quite straightforwardly, and when it is, what we see is a well-constructed and creatively portrayed contrast between two people, a woman and a man, who have mature human identities rooted in an enduring sense of community, and who choose each other proactively upon a basis of secure personal identity, and two people, a woman and a man, who have unstable and immature human identities, who have no community anchor outside themselves, and who choose each other reactively, out of fear.
The Man Who Cried begins with the depiction of a young Jewish girl who is loved deeply by her father. Loved and protected unconditionally. He dotes on her. Hesitatingly, but unfearfully, she interrupts him at night when he is entertaining his male friends. Without a word to his guests he leaves them, picks her up, puts her to bed, and sings to her. He sings solely for her, gently, sweetly, generously, looking directly into her eyes. She lies there, returning this direct gaze, listening, enraptured, adoring him. Oh, how wonderful is my father, how beautifully he sings. They are immensely important for each other. The mother is presumably dead, but the father fills her world. He is reliable and predictable for her. The makings for what will later become a firm and stable sense of personal adult identity for this girl, a secure place from which to operate from, are unmistakably present, and in spades: 'I am someone who is loved'.
The father unwillingly leaves the village and his daughter to find work in America. The village is attacked. We are in Russia. The attack is probably part of a pogrom, but perhaps the settlement is one of the many small villages targetted in the protracted struggle between the Reds and the Whites. The viewer isn't really informed. The relaying of historical fact and detail is not critical. What matters is the sense that a strong and cohesive community has been shattered, a community in which the daughter has been shaped.
In evacuating, the girl carries her father's photo with her. Upon arrival as a refugee in England she is peremptorily given the name 'Susie'. No-one asks her about her past. It is indicated that the past should be forgotten—by the immigration officials, by her foster parents, by her teachers. But she is not prepared to forget her father. The strength of this attachment is revealed when Susie's foster mother sees her holding her father's photo and senses the love Susie has for him. She tries to take the photo. Susie resists. The envy of the foster mother surfaces as gentle encouragement becomes sheer physical force, and she takes the photo, guiltily. Susie is undaunted, unshaken, and she becomes defiant. The foster mother comes downstairs to the sound of Susie smashing the foster family photos with the poker. She is fully prepared to retaliate, and is unrepentant about it. The foster mother smacks her hard across the face. Susie remains impassive, even aloof. When Susie finally leaves the foster home as a mature woman, her foster parents are clearly uncomfortable. They have no idea what to say. Susie stands in front of them and exhibits a sense of quiet authority that they acknowledge, acquiesce to. She does not thank them. They do not ask for thanks. There is no sense of loss on their behalf, or on hers. Whether they have loved her is not the question. They have never understood or known her. Susie was never looking for anything that they could give.
In the dancing troupe, Susie is befriended by Lola, also an emigrant from Russia, an artful, superficial and lonely woman. Lola senses things about Susie that she wants. Lola is continually talking out her anxieties; Susie is placid. Lola is untrusting of people (a result of projecting her own self-mistrust) and so finds it difficult to sustain intimacy, but at the same time is uncomfortable in her own company, dislikes being alone, and constantly seeks out others; Susie exhibits her own form of emotional strength, is content with herself, comfortable in her solitude, self-contained, has the capacity to be alone without being lonely, and is mostly indifferent to others. Lola vacillates, Susie is constant. Susie has the maturity built upon a strong relationship with her father, a relationship now internalised in his absence, and this helps her to feel confident about the present and the future. Susie experiences the external environment as benign. Lola lacks maturity and confidence, and in her anxiety views the external environment as threatening, hence to be manipulated. The personalities of Susie and Lola are remarkably well counterpoised in this film.
Lola discovers that Susie is a Russian Jew and there is a rush of genuine warmth from her. The link of community provides a point of identification between the two women and the possibility of real friendship is created. Lola fails the test. She dissimulates, exploits this link, and manipulates her way into rooming with Susie, not out of a positive desire to strengthen their bond, but out of reactivity, to help banish her own loneliness.
Lola does not appreciate Susie's desire to save money to find her father in America, or respect her willingness to spend the time needed to do it. Rather, she advises Susie to play up to and become a lover to a wealthy man who would pay the fare, failing to understand Susie's immunity to such suggestions. Lola goes for the short cuts, and her self-centredness prevents her seeing Susie's strong model for love, a model based on sincerity and trust. The idea of playing false games with a man is foreign to Susie, and she has no need for quick solutions: her father gave her all the time in the world; Susie will now take all the time needed to find him. Susie's character takes shape. A person who means it.
Dante wants stage centre. The tenor is narcissistic, arrogant, demanding, petty, and, like Lola, insecure. During rehearsal he proclaims loudly that the people come to see him, only him, and that no one else in the production matters. He projects his self-love into the stalls, like the dictator who believes he is benevolent and admired. Off the stage, when his narcissism has less free rein, he is not so certain of himself. Lola targets him, spots his vanity, and flatters him continuously. He responds cautiously until he realises she is not a threat and will do what he wants. Dante needs to be loved, but is fearful of a strong and independent woman, because he is a weak man. He is terrified of being challenged, is uncertain of his masculinity. If he is going to have a woman it will be wholly on his terms, and she will fit wholly into his world. This gives Lola no room in which to be creative with him. A false courtship ensues while Dante and Lola take each other's measure, get each other's number. When tacit agreement has been reached, Dante gets his sex and his admiration, and Lola gets her wealthy lifestyle and her man. But there is nothing enduring in any of it. There is nothing creative in it. They just don't trust each other. Neither do they care for each other. The lovemaking scene in Dante's house in particularly telling. He is uncertain of himself when Lola arrives to spend the first night in his own domain. In contrast to his confident proclamations of his brilliance during rehearsals, he is extremely nervous. He just can't cut it on the personal level. He clumsily knocks over a piece on the sideboard. She pretends not to notice. They don't look at each other in bed. In their intercourse there is no real union, and no intimacy. He collapses on top of her immediately after climaxing. Having satisfied his own needs, he is uninterested in her sexual satisfaction, escapes into sleep. She presses him to her, faking it, and her fear at the thought that she might have failed to please him is openly displayed on her face. For Lola as well as the tenor, life is a series of disjointed enactments, studied roles and false parts. There is nothing real about it.
Cesar's sense of identity is grounded firmly in his role as protector of his Gypsy community. He does not live just inside himself, as do Dante and Lola, but is anchored in his external role and responsibilities. He has authority. When Susie follows him to the Gypsy camp she finds him holding a child to his breast. In response to her query he states that the Gypsy children are all his children. He is proud and self-secure. He has been attracted to Susie from the outset, but he does not attempt to persuade her beyond her own inclinations. He sees her home, and when she does not respond to his caress, he does not feel rejected, and makes his horse bow to her as a gesture of admiration and respect. His confidence and skill impresses her and she acknowledges the compliment, smiles at him.
Although there is also an erotic attraction on the part of Susie towards Cesar, Susie is also attracted to him through her approval of him as a person of community, as a man expressing solidarity with the ideals of a group—echoing her father's strong group ties, and through her identification with him as a member of a dispossessed and threatened people. They both share an enduring sense of responsibility to others, both have the sense that they can only be fully themselves if rooted in something that is truly beyond themselves, something outside of their own egos. These external obligations provide a continuity of personal experience, a stability of identity, that Dante and Lola completely lack. Cesar takes Susie (deliberately?) to a cafe where a Russian is dancing and she is invited to join the dancer, revealing herself in the movement and expressing passion for the first time since leaving her childhood village. Cesar's feelings for her strengthen as he observes her autonomy and the display of her own sense of community.
When Germany threatens France, Cesar and Susie are the people with the most to lose; Cesar as a Gypsy, Susie as a Jew. Yet, of the four main characters in the film, they are the two who remain unafraid for themselves. Dante and Lola are the ones who feel threatened, even though they are safe: Dante realises that he might be prevented from singing if there is any prolonged fighting; Lola knows that if Dante falls, she falls. Dante, at a social function, publicly rationalises away any sense of personal responsibility for what might be about to happen, claiming that 'art is above politics'.
As the German army draws closer, Dante seeks haven in a Catholic church and there breaks down and openly weeps, weeps for himself. In a moment of great symbolism he look up to and pleads to the mother figure of the Virgin, 'Help me. If I cannot sing, I am nothing'. This is the most open statement in a film that plays in so many ways on the theme of personal identity. Dante has no real foundation beyond himself, no roots in anything of deeper meaning than his own ego. He cannot imagine life without his singing, singing which, in his narcissism, clearly equates to adoration by others of him. His identity does not lie in anything constant and enduring within himself, or in any deeper giving of himself, but in feeding off the love of others. He knows that if this adoration ceases, he will stop existing as a real person. Still crying, he quietly lies down on the chairs that form one of the church pews, curling up in the fetal position in an unmistakable representation of regression, his hands between his knees. Pathetically, he pleads, 'Let the Germans win'.
Following the occupation of Paris, Dante is invited to sing at a function attended by German officers, and performs successfully. His vanity and egocentrism return. He becomes pompous and garrulous. Cesar and Susie have attended the function as part of the entertainment and are in the courtyard as Dante and Lola prepare to leave. A German officer, who has already noted the presence of the Gypsies, indicates Susie and asks of Dante, 'Who is she?' Dante, though he could easily pass the question off, answer falsely to protect Susie, seizes the opportunity to ingratiate himself, and betrays Lola's friend. Ashamed, unable to look the officer directly in the face, he whispers, 'She is a Jew'. This incapacity to stay loyal to Susie is reflected by Lola, who, waiting in the car, witnesses the betrayal, and does nothing, her face again expressing terror at the thought of losing Dante. This is the second time that Lola has betrayed her friend in her desperate isolation. Earlier, in Susie's room, she has sought to curry favour with Dante by revealing to him Susie's sacred possession, the photograph of Susie's father, thus exposing her friend's Jewishness to a man she knows cannot be trusted.
The second great symbolic in the film is the later theatre scene of Dante singing while the camera drops down to below stage level. Cesar and Susie are making love, standing up against the stage framework. Slowly, and with great intimacy, they sexually unite, holding one another's gaze. They are interested in giving each other pleasure. There is creativity and strength in the act. What is happening is very real, and they are very alive. The viewer is offered the sense that the superficial stuff, the play-acting, the part-time roles, are going on up above, on the stage. The genuine stuff, the real stuff, is happening down below, out of public view, in private, in darkness, unconsciously.
A recurring statement throughout the film is the question asked about Susie, or asked directly of her, 'Who is she?', and 'Who are you?'. This is the key line in the film, and again it focuses upon the issue of personal identity. Susie is a mystery, is enigmatic. When asked this question, 'Who are you?', she just doesn't answer, and this unsettles people, unnerves them. Susie provides a blank surface for them to project their own identity anxieties onto, fears which evoke hostility towards her. Except for Cesar. In the first encounters with her he is not sure just who Susie is either, but having a mature human identity he is not afraid of her; and in fact finds her to be a challenge. His interest in her is sustained. As a result, what happens between them is creative. In contrast to the interactions of Dante and Lola, Cesar and Susie bring something into existence.
Though Cesar and Susie are in love, they are able to maintain their separate identities. Both know their primary responsibility: Susie, to find her father, Cesar, to protect his people from the Nazis. On their last night together there is no sex. As they hold each other and Susie expresses uncertainty about her commitment to find her father, her desire to stay with Cesar, Cesar persuades her to hold to her goal, to be true to herself, though he knows this means giving her up. And he is willing to give her up because theirs is a mature love. Why Susie is willing to remain with Cesar, and face danger and probable death as a Jew, could be simply put down to the strength of her love for him. But there is more to it than this. In this man of commitment, community and authority she has found a great deal of her father. Her search indeed could be said to be over. That night, as they hold each other and she is sleeping, he begins to grieve over her, quietly, privately, and cries.
