The Conformist

[ellipsis7]

ellipsis what's your opinion of the transfer?

David - haven't got round to picking up the actual disc yet, so my own take is pending... I admire THE CONFORMIST, but find it quite a cold and calculated expressionistic piece of filmmaking, hence my lack of rush... Forgacs commentary will probably sway me in the end...

[j99]

I think you'll find that the finely judged Sight and Sound capsule review is written by our own MichaelB, the same who has argued the case for the Arrow CONFORMIST more comprehensively in this thread...

He appears to be a lone voice here. I'm slightly disappointed with it, especially in comparison to Before The Revolution, but MichaelB has given a plausible reason, which he obviously couldn't do in the S&S review. I thought it would get a half page review, but that honour has gone to The Devils. No surprise there, but surprised a release of Track 29 got similar coverage. I've always considered it minor Roeg despite the presence of Dennis Potter.

[MichaelB]

I'm slightly disappointed with it, especially in comparison to Before The Revolution, but MichaelB has given a plausible reason, which he obviously couldn't do in the S&S review. I thought it would get a half a page, but that honour has gone to The Devils. No surprise there, but surprised a release of Track 29 got similar coverage. I've always considered it minor Roeg despite the presence of Dennis Potter.

I suspect it's because The Conformist has been highly visible in the mag already over the last few years, running reviews of the Paramount DVD and a lengthy David Thomson appraisal when it was theatrically revived in 2008.

By contrast, I doubt very much that Track 29 has been discussed in any detail since its original release - and S&S has a bit of a tradition of giving the main DVD review slot to an obvious headline release (The Devils being the unarguable front runner this month) and the second slot to a quirkier (and cultier) title that might get missed otherwise - past issues have reviewed Swedish erotica, Chang Cheh's delirious Five Element Ninjas, and so on.

[MichaelB]

The Digital Fix on The Conformist.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yes, that's very fair.

Incidentally, I don't think it's so much a case of a new subtitle translation as the same translation that's had a subsequent going-over by David Forgacs. The giveaway is that some of the more idiosyncratic bits that Forgacs ended up changing were also on the Paramount DVD. But the Arrow subtitles should offer by far the most accurate translation that the film has had to date - I saw Forgacs' notes, and they were impressively thorough, with a detailed explanation for the reason behind every proposed change (even if the change in question was merely one word).

I've just noticed what seems an odd translation choice- near the climax, when Marcello has rediscovered Lino, his accusation that Lino is 'un pederasta' is translated as 'homosexual' rather than 'pedophile' or 'pederast'. Is there a translation note for that, or an obvious reason that I'm missing?

[stwrt]

I would have thought it was more accurate to describe Lino as a pedophile rather than a homosexual, unless one assumes all homosexuals are pedophiles ?

[Drucker]

The character, however, does seem more concerned about his homosexual urges, and repressing them (the thought that marriage and a wife will bring normalcy)...which might explain why if he's trying to call someone out, being a homosexual might seem to him to be worse.

[TMDaines]

I eventually ended up reordering this as I was going to end up writing about it anyway and I'm very glad I did. Having watched the Paramount DVD a week or two ago, this Blu-ray was a much more enveloping experience. Storaro's masterful cinematography is much more apparent in high-definition and, as always, Blu-ray sound is so much richer and warmer than that on the DVD. Maybe a better transfer will come along in the next couple of years, ala The Leopard, but we could say that for thousands of titles and that only comes to fruition for a very slim minority. I don't doubt this could look better with a grand restoration but this is visually and audibly far past the old DVD and I wouldn't hesitate in recommending it. One of my favourite releases so far this year. The commentary by Forgacs alone is one of best lectures on film you'll ever have and is worth the price of admission. I never buy DVDs or Blu-rays at release, especially with UK ones as a steep price drop is inevitable but I definitely got my money's worth. The RAI Bertolucci documentary is interesting too, although I suspect it has appeared elsewhere before. It's a shame they couldn't include the small docs/interviews from the Paramount DVD as they are all excellent and very informative but Forgacs highlights Bertolucci's and Storaro's key points anyway.

[kneelzod]

My memory of the prem screenings in Sydney 1970 (in the French language version which is disappointingly also not an option on the Blu Rays)

The Raro BD actually offers Italian, French, English, and Spanish audio tracks, along with English subtitles.

[Mr Sausage]

DISCUSSION ENDS MONDAY, February 14th

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

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[domino harvey]

Okay, almost a week and no one's bit. This falls under our theme of late, as this is a film that left zero impact on me when I saw it years ago and I was and still am mystified by the routinely high esteem it is held in. So, I'd love to hear a defense to inspire me to give it a second chance, because to me it committed a worse sin than being bad: it was nothing at all

[lubitsch]

One of Italian cinema's many attempts to convince the viewers that fascism happens when people repress their homosexuality. Like many of Bertolucci's films, dumb as a brick. Obviously people will get misty-eyed about Plato and the cinematography and so on but it's still plain stupid and tasteless.

[zedz]

Okay, almost a week and no one's bit. This falls under our theme of late, as this is a film that left zero impact on me when I saw it years ago and I was and still am mystified by the routinely high esteem it is held in. So, I'd love to hear a defense to inspire me to give it a second chance, because to me it committed a worse sin than being bad: it was nothing at all

I'm afraid I'm in the same boat. It's slick and pretty, but I found the characters and plot overwrought and unconvincing. It is nevertheless very slick and very pretty, and I find it much easier to remember lighting schemes and camera moves from the film than anything of substance. But I find most Bertolucci films handsome and hollow.

Is this yet another instance of people mistaking the Film Club for a "what's your favourite film?" vote? if you haven't got anything to say about The Conformist, why vote for it? At the moment, it's just us vandals scribbling on the walls because somebody left the doors open.

[Drucker]

I loved this film the first time I saw it, and upon re-watching it didn't have the same effect on me. It probably helped that I watched this relatively early on in my time getting into film. Anyway, I will try to re-watch it and give my impression on it this weekend.

[knives]

I like it as a bit of aesthetic fun which puts it near the top of Bertolucci for me, but in the same breath there are a lot of films which aesthetically and thematically do the same things better.

[Sloper]

Well I didn't vote for it. I really hated it when I first saw it - it struck me as an irritating, empty fireworks display of cinematographic tricks, in the service of a story whose point (insofar as I could see any point in it) seemed totally fatuous.

Watching it again for the purpose of this discussion, I suddenly fell in love with it. The fragmented flashbacks-within-flashbacks narrative structure, which confused me in a bad way on the first viewing, now made sense as a way of exploring how Clerici’s present, and his plans for the future, are defined by his past. He’s trying to break out of the ‘deviant’ identity forced upon him by others’ abuse and indifference in his youth, by joining the abusive and indifferent forces of his own day; but the resulting guilt, and the feelings of conflict induced by his attraction to Anna and admiration for Quadri (and contempt for Manganiello and Italo), are as inescapable as the damage he incurred as a child.

The absolutely breath-taking cinematography, art direction, costume design, etc., accentuate the feeling that this character is trapped in a giant, intricate, artificial construct – a cave full of shadows that have at best a tenuous connection to reality. My favourite scene in this respect is the one on the train when Clerici and Giulia are on honeymoon. It reminds me of the way colours and environments oppress Giuliana in Red Desert – the colour pink suffusing the hotel room to signify that she has given in and ‘become an unfaithful wife’. Here, the train carriage is suffused with an autumnal, romantic glow, then an even more romantic night-time blue as the consummation gets underway. Clerici deliberately mirrors the abusive lovemaking inflicted on 15-year-old Giulia by Perpuzio, to conform to this established patriarchal norm. Later, he rapes Anna in the same conformist spirit, forcing her to appease him with (largely feigned, I think) sexual interest. She hopes that this traditional form of bribery will save her and her husband. Anyway, I love how the film mobilises all the resources of cinema to both illustrate the workings of these oppressive norms and deconstruct their artificiality. Delerue’s music contributes a lot to these effects as well.

I also love the ambiguity of the film. Clerici is not demonised; Giulia is not nearly as stupid as she appears; Anna and Quadri are not idealised. The ending is especially thought-provoking in its openness. Clerici finds out that he never murdered Lino after all, so tries to put the responsibility for what he’s done since then onto Lino. He also tries to denounce Italo, who kick-started his career as a fascist. But these are not just cowardly, self-serving renunciations of responsibility. They’re not real denunciations, in fact: nobody who hears them could care less about Lino’s or Italo’s or Marcello’s crimes. When a marching crowd of people turn up who might actually lynch Italo if they knew about his past, Clerici says nothing. The crowd sweeps Italo up and carries him along, presumably to be assimilated into the rest of these blind optimists who can’t see that the bright future they’re looking forward to will be an illusion, another shadow on the wall of the cave.

Clerici is left alone in this desolate, antique subterranean place, still an outsider, still an underdog in spite of all his efforts. Meanwhile the young man on the steps has been listening to him with interest, and (as a cutaway told us a few minutes ago) has picked up on the fact that Celrici had a traumatic sexual encounter with Lino in the past. Now, this young man has taken off his clothes, lain down on his mattress and cranked up the gramophone: the song, ‘Come l’ombra’, addresses an exhausted shadow searching for love in the wrong places, urging it to avoid the sun that would obliterate it, insisting on the unknowability of the future and the brevity of youth. Clerici looks over his shoulder, like a prisoner in the cave looking at reality for the first time.

Insofar as the film is suggesting that fascism stems from repressed homosexuality, I guess I’d agree with lubitsch that that seems pretty dumb. However, I don’t see it as being about fascism as such (or at least not just about fascism), or about homosexuality as such. It’s about something more fundamental: what it means to ‘belong’ in a community, what it means to feel locked out of one, and what costs and sacrifices are required in either instance. The final shot cannot simply be boiled down to, ‘What do you know, I was gay all along’, although there is a sense here that Clerici is finally looking at the true object of his desire. Even Anna was a kind of artificial ideal, the archetypal romantic soulmate as opposed to Giulia’s archetypal pliable housewife – hence Anna appears three times in different costumes.

Yes, Clerici is looking over his shoulder, which is what Plato’s prisoners have to do in order to see the real world. But what he looks into is not the outside world, but another cave. In Quadri’s study, the discussion of Plato was ambiguous. Clerici remembered Quadri closing the windows of the lecture hall, blocking out the light so that all the students could hear was his voice. He seems to be suggesting that the lecture hall was like the cave, and Quadri’s voice the illusion they all believed in. There is something self-absorbed and pretentious about Quadri’s justification for leaving Italy (‘we wanted people to feel our disdain from afar, the historical meaning of our struggle as exiles’), and maybe Clerici is right to feel let down by the transience of this man’s ideals. I’m not sure there’s anything in the film that suggests otherwise, which is actually kind of surprising. There’s no real celebration of anti-fascist heroism, and the assassinations at the end are horrific, not heroic.

Back to the scene in the study: Clerici, in illustrating the Plato story, accidentally makes a fascist salute with his shadow; his shadow disappears when Quadri opens the window while saying that Clerici cannot possibly be a true fascist, given the way he talks. This is hard to untangle. Clerici accuses Quadri of causing him to become a fascist, by abandoning Italy; Quadri gets himself off the hook by denying that Clerici is a fascist at all, thereby asserting that no abandonment or betrayal has taken place. Like the shadow in the song at the end, Clerici’s is destroyed by sunlight. We might think this means that he is left standing alone in the light, forced to take responsibility for himself and for whatever he has become.

But what Clerici realises, and Quadri does not, is that the shadow is all he has, all that constitutes his identity. He may not be a fascist, but he isn’t anything else either. This is not so much because he is living a lie (and is therefore ‘all show and no substance’), as because he lives in shadows, in darkness, in concealment; behind screens, windows, windscreens (front and back), curtains, bars (note the rows and rows of sheets behind which Lino’s tiny bedroom is hidden), on thresholds. The shadow imagery in this film makes me think of Melville’s Army of Shadows, in which the ostensibly heroic resistance fighters end up as little more than shadows, struggling vainly against unstoppable odds and achieving nothing.

What Clerici faces up to at the end is not simply that he is gay, but that in every aspect of his being he will never be able to conform. Reality, for him, consists in the marginality and shadows of a small, hidden cave, outside which the profoundly fake ‘real world’ goes about its normalising business. He could never have enjoyed success or found fulfilment, either as a fascist or an anti-fascist. He has no ideological allegiance to give, no commitments to betray. I’m still not quite sure how to read the tone of the ending, but I think it mixes bleakness and hope. On the one hand, Clerici’s ‘real self’ will always be forced into the shadows by the society he lives in; on the other hand, the friendly young man and his gramophone indicate that the cave might not be such a lonely place after all – indeed, a lot less lonely than the crowd Italo just vanished into.

---

Not crazy about Bertolucci making Trintignant hit that puppy. But Trintignant himself is, as always, amazing.

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't know that this movie struck as being about how fascism is constructed- there's a conversation between the lead and an official that pretty explicitly points out that Trintignant is not the other men seeking positions within the fascist government, who are said to be mostly social climbers, and implicitly stupid, thoughtless men like Manganiello. The lead is a strange man, a fascist intellectual whose primary goal appears to be becoming what he is not, and who ultimately seems to have no core of self whatsoever. Repression is certainly part of what he is made of, but I don't think it is merely that he's repressing being gay- it seems to be a specific conflux of innocent violence, predatory sexual behavior, and forbidden sexuality that has created what we see of his psyche, and there are a few parallels to it in other characters; his wife was the victim of predatory sexual behavior (which she considers herself partially responsible for, and which appears to be normalized), he becomes somewhat the other party with the starving boy in Rome at the end of the movie, and the whole central act of murder seems to be contrasting with the helpless, careless (presumed) murder he committed as a child. It's freudian, ultimately, as there is also a lot about his shame regarding his parents, but I don't think it's necessarily a simple a therefore b statement about repressed homosexuality.

It's hard to put my finger on, but there is a real and genuine horror to the life Trintignant has created for himself, as it is an annihilation of the self; I think the physical beauty of the movie helps to put into relief the emptiness with which he's become filled. Manganiello doesn't feel it- he is a stupid, brutal man, who is nonetheless far more honest with himself than the 'Dottore', and who knows what he wants out of what he's doing. Trintignant has far greater depth, greater ability to understand the world outside the cave and greater sensitivity to the sensuality and charm of the professor's lifestyle, and it's reflected in the golden tones of the world he's working to shut out- the movie opens with him in hell, a barren hotel room of flashing red neon, and I feel like what's left inside him by the end of the movie must look something like that.


edit: Sloper, I think we have a relatively similar view of the movie, and it seems like you remember it in more detail than I do- I think the point about Quadri not being an idealized figure is well made. It's interesting that the movie leaves out communists, or anyone who is willing to meet and counter the fascists on their own violent terms- presumably this is not because Bertolucci didn't consider them a relevant presence. Perhaps it would have slid into didacticism if it allowed self actualized people capable of action who were not basically doing evil shit the whole time?

[ando]

It's interesting that the movie leaves out communists, or anyone who is willing to meet and counter the fascists on their own violent terms- presumably this is not because Bertolucci didn't consider them a relevant presence. Perhaps it would have slid into didacticism if it allowed self actualized people capable of action who were not basically doing evil shit the whole time?

Very interesting omission; especially considering that Bertolucci spent his formative film years under the tutelage (so to speak) of Pasolini, a self-proclaimed communist (though a rather renegade party member), whose influence - especially in Italy - was fairly substantial. Pasolini's Salò is a far more trenchant criticism of the upper middle class, as well as the proletariat in Europe - and that relationship. I haven't perused the extras. Perhaps there's something there that might shed light on this aspect of the narrative.

[MichaelB]

If you have the Arrow edition, David Forgacs provides one of the finest critical commentaries I've ever heard. He's particularly good on tiny details that a non-Italian viewer from outside Bertolucci's generation would miss - for instance, the number of references to Fascist-era films (often featuring the same now elderly actors).

[Sloper]

Yes, it's a typically great commentary by Forgacs - his remarks on the persistent motif of voyeurism in the film really helped to open it up for me. And I liked that he wasn't afraid to call out the offensiveness of the 'blind party', while also providing an incisive analysis of it.

[TMDaines]

I didn't vote, but this is probably my #1 film of all time - and is certainly never less than #2. It's interesting to compare the film to Moravia's source novel, and I wrote an essay on this at university that I have cribbed below.

Supposedly, Bertolucci was not deeply familiar with the novel before striving to adapt it and his understanding of the story was purely second-hand through his partner relating it to him, which may help explain why the film and novel are quite distinct from one another.

Firstly, the structure of the two works is radically dissimilar. Whereas Moravia’s novel is strictly chronological, Bertolucci uses memory and association to intersperse previous events into the present timeline with the use of flashbacks. As a result the two works read entirely differently, despite both looking at the same rough protagonist and story. The novel is utterly matter-of-fact and takes pride in its naturalist depiction of Marcello’s, at times, grotesque life. On the other hand, Bertolucci’s direction in combination with Storaro’s masterful cinematography provides an almost fantastical feel to the world that Marcello inhabits. In this depiction, Marcello can be the most banal and conforming person, while the sets, the lighting and the editing can provide a brisk and exciting pace to his life.

The film does not follow Moravia’s novel in wallowing in the mundanity of Marcello’s existence, but rather it uses the ideas of memory and perspective to alter and enhance the tale for the viewer. No longer does the viewer simply travel through Marcello’s life alongside him but we enter his mind and see how his memory has warped past events of his. As the film is largely experienced through flashbacks that are made up Marcello’s memories, the world no longer needs to seem completely realistic. On Marcello’s journey with Giulia to Paris, the view from the carriage window is clearly a back-screen projection. This is not a limitation of technology, but a clear intention to give the memory of this journey a magical quality. When Manganiello is searching for Marcello to pass on his orders, a Dutch tilt is used, in order to give another memory a sense of unreality. Another example of this disregard for realism is Lino’s apparent age in his two scenes. Paradoxically Lino barely appears to have aged in the time between the two encounters, despite Marcello growing from a young boy into a middle aged man. Frankly, it ultimately doesn’t matter. What we see of Lino initially when he attempts to abuse Marcello isn’t a real representation of what actually happened but a mere memory.

Bertolucci’s psychoanalytical approach to Marcello – undoubtedly inspired by the psychoanalysis sessions he himself had recently gone through, which he talked about on a BBC Radio 3 interview – emphasises the aspects of memory and experience as being key to Marcello’s behaviour. In this brief time we spend with Marcello in the present – from him leaving the hotel to join Manganiello until the moment the Quadris are killed – we see a multitude of memories: the incident with Lino, his drug addicted mother, him being bullied by other kids, his deranged father. All of these memories are used to give a sense of inside Marcello’s mind, they attempt to give an explanation of why Marcello became who he did, and they are offered to potentially explain why he feels the need to conform to society and try to become this conformist so greatly. Marcello feels a need to create an illusion of normality, overcompensating for what he feels is his and his family’s lack of it.

Moravia’s chronological novel differs in this aspect and there is a sense that since childhood Marcello’s destiny is already set in stone. There is a constant sense of foreboding that Marcello’s actions to plants and small animals in his childhood are signs of what is to come. His fascination with cruelty and violence will later manifest itself against those who are the enemies of the state:

"... [era un] segno indubbio che, in un modo misterioso e fatale, era predestinato a compiere atti di crudeltà e di morte.”.

"... [it was] undoubtedly a sign that, in a mysterious and fatal way, he was predestined to undertake deadly and cruel acts.”.

The conclusion of the film is one place where Bertolucci deviates so greatly from Moravia’s original. The ending of the film takes place during the night of the fall of Fascism in Italy. Marcello goes out onto the streets of Rome to meet with his friend Italo and stumbles upon a chance encounter with the barely-aged Lino, who appears to be attempting to seduce a young homeless boy. Marcello has a fit of rage and interrogates Lino about where he was on the afternoon when he attempted to seduce Marcello, before blaming Lino for the deaths of the Quadris and labelling him a murderer, a Fascist and a pederast. Marcello then turns his attention to his friend Italo (a Bertolucci creation) and denounces him as a Fascist too. After a crowd passes through, which is too preoccupied with celebrating the fall of Fascism to get involved with the hysterics, Marcello sits close to the homeless boy and turns to look at him, and indeed the camera, as the boy undresses.

This conclusion to the film, which radically differs from Moravia’s more straightforward and conclusive ending, is open to wide interpretation. Nothing is made explicit; there is only suggestion. One reading can see Marcello merely reflecting all of his actions post the Lino incident on Lino himself and thus blaming Lino for everything that he had become. Aside from the term pederast, which at the time the novel was written referred to homosexuals in the form of a derogative slur, the labels of Fascist and murderer certainly aren’t applicable to Lino from what we know of him. If Marcello was again just attempting to conform with society, highlighting someone’s Fascist past in this new era of anti-Fascism would surely suffice and give him the active sense of conforming with the masses and highlighting those who don’t. It’s the further traits with which Lino is labelled that highlight Marcello’s blaming of Lino for what he himself became. This is key to reading Bertolucci’s film as the director chooses to eradicate virtually the whole of the prologue of Moravia’s novel in which it is made clear to the reader that Marcello’s fate is set and that his actions and behavioural patterns in his childhood forebode his choices and his desire for normality in later life. By only showing a single event from Marcello’s childhood and bookending Marcello’s adult life with the two encounters with Lino, as chronologically they are the earliest and latest moments depicted in the film, Bertolucci places far greater emphasis on the impact that the Lino incident must have had on Marcello’s life and therefore makes this is the key incident that shaped everything in between.

There's a lot more that could be shared on Moravia's greater focus on character doubling and doppelgangers, as well as Bertolucci's original additions to his version.

[Sloper]

Apparently, Bertolucci planned to use the same linear narrative structure as the novel, but realised during filming that it might be more interesting to break the timeline up; hence he shot lots of material for the car ride with Manganiello, so he could use this as the frame for the various flashbacks. In a way, the film could almost be called The Passenger, and like Antonioni's film it's about a man striving to be what he is not - as matrix put it - and giving over his agency to larger forces.

The most interesting use of the flashback technique occurs when Manganiello tells Clerici that Anna cannot be saved: far from coming to her rescue, they're going to play an entirely passive, voyeuristic role, watching as the inevitable slaughter plays out. When Clerici realises this, he insists on getting out of the car, walks for a few seconds while Manganiello drives alongside him, then signals him to stop so he can get back in. This triggers the memory of being bullied by a circle of children while adults stood by and watched, then of signalling Lino to stop the car, watching the children from the rear windscreen, being sexually abused by Lino, and then (supposedly) shooting him dead (some of these details are interspersed with the beautifully shot confession scene in the church). Exiting the car is a desperate attempt to escape his passive role; but getting into Lino's car sealed his fate at an early age, dooming him to a life in which he can make no meaningful decisions, so now, echoing that fateful act, he asks the car to stop and gets back in.

Or perhaps the point is that there are only two roads open to him: either he gets abused and victimised, as he was by the children and by Lino, while others watch callously from the sidelines; or he watches callously from the sidelines himself, races ahead (pursuing his career with the fascists) while everyone else is left behind, and abuses and kills other people. It's understandable that the latter course seems the more viable to him, but neither one entails any kind of self-fulfilment. No wonder he seems so emotionless when he watches Anna being killed: as far as he knows, that's his role in this situation, to be the passive one on the 'safe' side of the window, watching somebody else being destroyed. His only reaction is to jump when he hears the first gunshot – an instinctive, self-interested fear, not an expression of concern for Anna. Of course, finding out that the memory he's always felt so defined by was not entirely accurate - that Lino didn't die - disrupts this formula of the two available paths, and perhaps opens up a new, less passive way of approaching life.

In the scene with the father, Marcello wants to reassure himself that he's fated, almost by birth, to be a tool of the fascists. He seems to see his father's insanity as a sort of cowardly state of denial, induced by guilt. He has no intention of losing his mind like this; he will just passively accept this role that has been imposed on him.

[Kat]

I saw the film two or three years ago on the big screen and have just watched the arrow dvd. I haven't watched the commentary yet. I have not read the book. I didn't vote for it, went for the Long Goodbye.

I agree with lots of what has been said and only want to add to that really. I do think that more is suggested for his motivation than his apparent experience of abuse. We have his relationship with his mother and as Sloper says with his father who is depicted as 'mad' (whatever that is, it was quite a stereotypical depiction, though I guess one well known at that time). His embrace of the prostitute who says she is mad i found a very authentic aspect of him -- and the knowing way he is tempted into this by the agent very chilling.
Now I think I'm most struck by his conformity as a mask that hides his uncertainty of who he is. As others have suggested he has a rich experience, yet consistently turns to the certainties of fascism. In many ways I saw this as an issue of language, that in some way he is disconnected from the language but uses it as a mask -- but it goes beyond that to self indeed. In this way he contrasts sharply with Manganiello, a very different man who makes it very clear what he thinks of him at the murders (to the audience anyway). I did feel there was a fatalism to him on that car journey and I think his inability to act was consistent with what we knew of him - and given that difficulty of knowing what he wants, is it any surprise that he'd want to conform as he does not know who he is otherwise. But he seems to speak words without wholly being committed to them.

In a way it seems to me he does not know how to trust love and choose it - and we see plenty of reasons for that.

The murder of Anna, who sees him in the car, the man with her only hours before, I find very powerful from that point of view. Maybe it also works more generally in challenging passivity to such violence, and so also challenging viewers.

At the end he's clearly shown in warm colours/light when he looks at the boy. This may suggest that he's repressed himself. But I agree I don't think it is making that case generally of fascism. For me he's a person with conflicting feelings and in this crisis -- having just faced his possible abuser who is not dead, as his actions are falling about his ears, he's reconnected to feeling something. Maybe he is gay -- or maybe this man that looks for answers in words and definitions and fits himself to them, in the ruins of the path he's taken will find a valid way of making sense of all this by fitting himself to being another idea of himself, the opposite of what he'd tried previously and again going with the flow of who he meets and the ambiguous feelings he has (and that is not a general comment by me on being lgbt). Or maybe he will suddenly release his authentic self that no one could show him to do previously and which he'd not found a way to allow? -- or maybe it could be a step towards that.

Overall, at the moment, I see it as a film that argues for a need to commit to love (and to be shown love to learn how to), to understanding ourselves (and the ambiguity of feeling beyond simple definitions) and which may help us face challenges - personal, social, political. It is beautiful and horrific but it is not a film I think I love -- it may be due to its perfection, and his perfection that for all his ambiguous feelings he doesn't get into dialogue with another about at all, but that may be my own wishful thinking and in that it may be very realistic. He does seem to be committed to his denial of those feelings unless they give him the answer he wants.

[matrixschmatrix]

Sloper, I like your idea of him as someone who was in childhood put into the position of dividing the world between victim and victimizer- his own abuse on the one side, his presumed experience of murder on the other- and therefore chooses, against his nature and against any moral sense he has (which does appear to be there, if only in the animal form of skittishness and anxiety) to side with the victimizers- the frightened quality Trigntinant brings to the role, the physicality of it, has a quality of an abused kid trying to be hard. The link to fascism, then, is not in his personal character or choices, but in the result of society acting in an abusive role- it eliminates modes of existing outside of one end of boot or the other.

I think that also answers why communists, or anyone else capable of meaningfully resisting the fascists, cannot exist within the movie- the moral quandary lies in Quadri, and especially Anna, being people who do not resist at all, and therefore ask Trintignant to re-enact the sort of ugliness that seems to be a defining quality in what he fears, what he's hiding inside himself- he has to destroy something helpless. A fair fight, or a dialog with anyone capable of putting one up (as Quadri's students seem they might be) cannot be allowed to exist in his worldview until it is annihilated all at once at the end of the war.

[Kat]

It occurs to me that the Quadri's deliberately show him love and the possibility of acceptance despite knowing what he is - and it'd due to his personal psychology that he cannot commit to this, choose to stand with it. I like the point about choosing to stand with the victimisers, their certainty, that being what he has learned when victimised and also due to the absence of a clear stance with his parents. The trying to be hard thing i'd see as believing the choices he has as he understands them and not feeling other possibility, in fact its hardly a choice for him at all.

But what the Quadri's offer is the true resistance.

matrixschmatirx you also mention his skittishness which I remember being more struck with when i saw it on the big screen - the ways his stance can suddenly seem comic...his walk at times, when he skips up the steps after turning the agent on Trees, the way he goes into the office at the train stopover, there's a childishness to this and maybe more. On that first viewing I also noticed more the times he finds himself in salute and has to put his hand down, not just in Quadri's office, a comic touch of finding himself this thing without having really chosen it, but at the same time realising he might suddenly be seen for having committed to something and so hiding it where it may not be welcome.