TOWARDS A REALLY EUROPEAN FILMOGRAPHY?

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 1^st 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 1^st 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.

SOKUROV'S VICTORY AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Sokurov, a Real European Filmmaker
Сокуров, правдивы Европейский режиссер
Sokurov, un vero regista europeo 
Sokurov, un véritable cinéaste européen
Sokurov, ein wahrer europaeischer Regisseur

A very important event which has characterised the last week has been the award of the "Golden Lion", at the Venice film festival, for his film "Faust".

We have always thought that Sokurov is the only living "European" filmmaker, in the sense that he considers his task to make films which contribute to the definition of European Identity.

He can achieve this goal by  the most different means, from his  investigations about power and history, or through his debate with great characters of Russian culture, such as Solzhenitsin, Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevkaya. Sometimes, like in the case of Russian Arch, he has been confronted with the idea itself of a mutual cultyural exchange between Russia and Europe. As it is known, the Russian Arch portrays the Ermitage in Sankt-Petersburg as a connecting point between Western and Eastern, Ancient and new Europe, which the Great Catherine left in heritage to all of us, in order to preserve the core of European culture from the threats of history.

Sokurov is pessimist about the future of European (including Russian) culture:"Germans, French, Britons, Italians, tell me: we have money, but we have no ideas.But, then, form when did come Leonartdo da Vinci, Salinger, Remarque, Hemingway? Why have young people no ideas today?Why 90% of cameramen in Europe, who are women, carry heavy cameras?Why Faust is interesting for me, why it is for me a content of my life, why I go threough these  materials, and I devoted to it my whole life, whilst no German filmmaker took care of it?I talk with German journalists: 'Faust?How boring'.That's all."(Interview with Stas Tyrkin for Komsomolskaya Pravda za Rubezhom, 16-23 September 2011, page 25).

Certainly, we cannot share all the views of Sokurov about the future. He is worried by the alternative constituted by Islam.:"They will read and learn the Koran within a couple of years."And, further: "Certainly, the only waybrings to the Koran. An absolutely destructive, revolutionary way. Muslim youth is marked by energy, by the capability and the will to solve problems radically. Islam is complex. It is not a centralized culture. There is neither a Pope, nor a Patriarch, there is no center towards which people can focus for discussion. Islamic culture is dispersed, not unified. Therefore, it's impossible to come to an end with al-Qaida. The only alternative is to reinforce our culture, to stuck to it, to follow an evolutionary approach, to take care of the feelings of youth. No other way out, both for the European and for the Russian civilisation."."Albeit there are sacred books, which have given names to all things, there are, in our culture, deeply doubtful people. You cannot find this in the muslim or in the buddhistic world. There, an holistic world view prevails."

It is true that the lack of ideas by Europeans (and also Russians) favours the penetration of foreign cultures. However, first, we do't find that Islam is so different from Christianity, and, second, we do bot think that Europeans are so much ready to convert. According to us, the real danger, for Europe,an (and Russian) does not lie in Islam, which will have all its difficulties to affirm itself as aleading European religion, but, on the contrary, by the excesses of science and of technique, which are arising from mankind all characteristics which have traditionally brandmarked it.

Irrespective of what we think about the appropriatedness of these visions of Sokurov, he remains, for us, an example of a true, and engaged, European intellectual, who is not afraid to raise a debate, and  whose intellectual contribution we will be always obliged to take into account.

We have not  yet seen Sokurov's Faust (and it will take time to have it on the screens, even in Russia). From what we have read, it would appear that   he has tried precisely that task that we would like all European filmmakers to do, but that no one of them is undertaking, i.e., trying to revitalise the big classics of European renoun, through an updated reading, which stresses the pan-european character of those masterpieces. Fuast is one of those masterpieces which have a "transversal" meaning. for all peoples of Europe and for the most different mindsets (classic and romantic, modern and postmodern).

Moreover, Sokurov has pursued the above objectives precisely in the way we would have expected: he has produced his film in German, with a Pan-European cast, working in the Czech Republic and in Iceland.

Sakurov's victory has been achieved at the unanimity of the Jury, against films which are rather inspired to the mainstream of commercial production. The Jury has chosen, by this way, the traditional European way of "upper culture" production.

Now, the challenge is to follow up this achievement, studying Sokurov's works and drawing, from it, lessons for the future of European culture and arts.

It is not said that we share always Sokurov's points of view. So, for instance,,

So,let's wait anxiously fo the opportunity of seeing the film.