Sokurov's and Lars von Trier's New Films
Новые фильмы сокурова и Ларса фон Триера
I nuovi film di Sokurov e Lars von Tier
Les nouvelles pellicules de Sokurov et de Lars von Trier
Die neuen Filme von Sokurov und Lars von Trier.
We
had commented recently with great pleasure the award, to Aleksandr Sokurov, of
the Golden Lion of the Festival of Venice for his film “Faust”, which,
according to us, represents an important attempt to revitalize a film
production devoted to Europe cultural
heritage.At
the Cannes Festival, another film has been presented, Melancholia, which has
not received an award for the well known political polemics concerning its
filmmaker, the Dane Lars von Trier. Also
the latter film represents, according to us, an important contribution to the
discussion about Europe’s identity.
1. Faust
Sokurov’s
work constitutes a programmatic effort to demonstrate the evergreen validity of
European classics, like Goethe’s Faust. As
it is well-known, “to translate” a work of the weight of “Faust” is a difficult
task, that only the filmmaker Murnau in the Republic of Weimar had really tried up to now.The
difficulties are manifold: the philosophical and literary “thickness”, the
seriousness of the themes, the length of the work, to which Goethe had devoted,
in practical, all of his life.
For
this reason, we cannot, either approve 100% the results achieved by Sokurov, nor criticize them. The work presented at the Venice Film Festival has already been considered as
excessively "hard" even for an élite audience, because of the strong literary influences,
because of the awkwardness of its stile and of its themes, and, finally, also
because of its duration. However,
it constitutes already the result of a thorough simplification. In practice, it is devoted
only to the 1st part of Goethe’s Faust, i.e., the sale, by Faust, of
its own soul to Mephistopheles, his love with Margarethe and his descent to Hell.
Unfortunately, ,
the 1st Faust without the 2nd is not so clear as to its meaning. In fact, according to our interpretation, the second Part of Faust represents a sort of reversal of the
meaning of the Tragedy's first part.In
fact, during the second part, the “damned” Faust continues to live, going through the symbolic
representation of the whole history of European culture, and, at the end, is saved
thanks to Margarethe’s prayers. So, he starts a new life, in a newly conquered territory , which the Emperor grants to him as a fief. Here,
he can try his social experiment, and reclaim the land from the sea, so finding
in social engagement a reason for his life, which should allow him, perhaps,, to find
that sense of life for which he, in the first part, had sold his soul to
Mephistopheles.
The problem is that
not even in this second part Mephistopheles is completely saved. On the
contrary, one sees the Lemures which surround him , what amounts to hinting
that, at the end of the day, notwithstanding Grace and Works, he will be finally pray of death and destruction.
This
long, complex and problematic part of the work is completely ignored by Sokurov. On the contrary, Faust, in
the middle of Hell, succeeds in "killing" Mephistopheles and in flying away over high mountains. This should mean a form of spiritual victory against the forces of
evil. This
conclusion of the tragedy corresponds to the optimistic view of Sokurov, that,
notwithstanding all problems, freedom of mind and search of perfection (the "faustian spirit"),
typical of Europe’s "classic" cultural eras, can still be pursued, or must be
pursued, also today.
2.Melancholia.
The
second film, the one of Lars von Trier, has nothing of Sokurov's optimism. It, like
Goethe’s original Faust, is dominated by the sense of death and of decadence of modern
civilization.
This
death and decadence is shown from two different point of view. From one side, the
emptiness of human life in modern Western welfare state; from the other side, the
unavoidable consciousness of the limitedness of human and personal histories in
front of the infinity of Universe.
Earth is bound to encroach the orbit of a huge, dead and unknown planet.
Scientists and media try to persuade world’s population that a clash will be
avoided, but fear and skepticism will prevail, and, at the end, the most
pessimistic forecasts result to be true.
Only
a young lady who, since a long time, had lived a sort of psychological desease,
because she was focussed on the foreseeing of the inevitable disaster, is in a
position to accept wisely the truth and to infuse a minimum of calmness and
serenity into her relatives, having even the courage to build, at the last
minute, a sort of pathetic, useless, small temple, inside which to recreate, at
least for a micro-instant, a moment of solidarity between the dying human
beings. Faust would hav exclaimed "verweile doch, du bist so schoen!"
Both
films show that Europe’s cinema has still the
capability and the ambition to put on the scenes the themes which are most
important for mankind, even if the latter does not like to be recalled of them.
