On Goddard's Breathless

Jean Luc Goddard's movie À bout de souffle ( Breathless) was never in the mainstream cinema. And, neither ever, it will be. The movie was genre defying for its times. Goddard's fearless direction proved to be pivotal in making the film a classic.

Back in 1960s, Goddard and his contemporaries often discussed in the French cinematic circles about their search of something new. Their desire and passion to carve out a separate identity for French cinema led to what we know today as French New wave. 

Goddard never liked the idea of a novel-adapted cinematic culture.He was absolutely averse to it. The director, in his views, was more central to a film rather than a writer. The script need not be a thriller or intense love story to make a good movie. Goddard with his excellent direction could make seemingly everyday stories involving. This was a clear cut rebellion against a system where Alfred Hitchcock movies were striking gold at the box office.This was a quest for modernism in cinema, akin to what had happened with literature four decades back.

Breathless starts off with the character of Michel- a petty criminal who steals a car- murdering a policeman who is on his trail. Helpless and penniless, he turns for help to his American girlfriend Patricia. Patricia is a young girl, studying journalism at university. Her character defines the modern American woman in Paris; one , who is easily absorbed in the quiet and comfortable hustle of the city. Her ideas about sex and relationships seem to be heavily influenced by the feminist writers of France. Sleeping with random men doesn't in the least of ways shapes her moral personality. At one point of the film, she says "It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone."

 Michel is very much aware of this fusion of French-Americanism and is very vocal to her about how he enjoys sleeping with her and while on the run, he accosts her in the middle of Champs Elysees and offers sleeping with her that night. At another point in the movie, he goes to her hotel room and declares his love for her. She thinks over it. Their conversation on the hotel bed has some of the most extraordinary dialogues of all time. When she asks for sometime for thinking , Michel says "Women will never do in eight seconds what they would gladly agree to in eight days." There are many cultural allusions that are used in the movie.Michel is generally unaware of these references. 

This is seen when Patricia asks him "Do you know William Faulkner?"

"No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?"

Patricia starts sleeping with him, granting him asylum. She knows he has stolen a car but she is unaware of the killing. In no time, Michel's face is all over the newspapers.The police starts trailing him and also questions Patricia about his whereabouts. She denies accquaintance. But , when finally, Michel finds a hiding place through a mafia friend of his, Patricia faces a dilemma. Before sleeping there, she hints him about her tenuous and subjective idea of love and 'sleeping together' " Don't count on me. I sleep with a lot of men". In a sudden of chain events, she informs the police about him while buying the milk next morning. She very coolly tells him about this and asks him to escape. He escapes, and is shot on the street. 

Dying he says " That's really disgusting". 

To this, Patricia asks the detective "What did he say?"

Detective replies" He said"you really are a bitch.""

The movie finishes right on the street scene. There is no climax. Goddard in his portrayal of the city life brilliantly showcases the monologues and conversations. There is a minimalism in the direction and story. The post production work is perfunctory. Goddard never aimed for the smoothness in his cinema. He had his flaws and that is what made his cinema real, everyday. The dialogues mattered the most for him. He worked on them like a carpenter perfecting each exchange.

Its more than half a century from its release. During the movie, Patricia once asks Michel "What is your greatest ambition in life?"

"To become immortal... and then die."

I feel there was a shadow of Goddard in Michel's reply.

Reading Dickens in 21st Century

It always intrigues me as to, why Charles Dickens, to many seems to be the ultimate paragon of the art of novel writing. Any bookshop’s segregation devotes at least a shelf to Mr. Charles Dickens novels. All these works, that have enjoyed the epithet of classic, for over a century now, are hefty for the eye and hand. Every reader is handed down Dickens at some point or the other in life.

Dickens was one of the greatest, reigning and holding sway over the European literary world, when European arts and culture were at the cusp of modernism. What was to come in a few years was completely different to the Victorian style of prose employed by Dickens. The range of characters, settings and highly descriptive prose of Dickens have become his trademark.

One of Dickens’ most reputed works, A Tale of two cities, which, contrary to all relationship models between bestsellers and literary substance, is listed by Wikipedia to be the bestseller of all time. In A Tale of two cities, Dickens dealt with the theme of duality. He just not used it but staged it on the grandest scale possible in his depiction of Paris and London, separated and joined , by the English Chanel. The very first line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, shifts the prose from a singular form to a dual one, as if , there were two planks on which the reader is standing and steered forward  by a fine and delicate balance. The French revolution, where the entire set of characters molded by Dickens is thrown in, was both a strong and highly universal background at that time. French Revolution, with the peasentry and lower strata of society revolting against the age old injustices done to them by the aristocrats, was the first of its kind of social upheaval anywhere in the world. The perseverance of people had reached the limit and the angst with the system led them to ask questions both from themselves and their fellow beings. This growing resentment is very much palpable in the Book I of A Tale of Two Cities .

However, it was the storming of the Bastille -that Dickens uses with much precision- that was symbolic of the revolution. Dickens very deftly shows the post revolutionary period. The lack of government, public trials, widespread apathy of any kind of institutions and class become the guiding principles of the French society. The fact that the book was published in 1859, 70 years after the French revolution, was in itself a stroke of brilliance by Dickens. At a time when the younger generation was growing disenchanted with paying obeisance to the upper class, Dickens tapped into the undertones of the society. The book was very topical and pertinent in its content, ideas and at the same time, maintaining the virtues of a pleasant read.

But, what is it, that makes the book enjoyable even now, in the third century of its publication? The times have changed; most of the countries are not plagued with the same  social prejudices, even the revolutions that we are seeing (in the Middle East) are of a different character.

We live at a time in history, when class and categorization are starker than ever before, even though few of us acknowledge it. The rich are becoming  richer and the  poor poorer. The disparity and gap is humongous. The divide, whether on social or economic background, is something innate to any society. Dickens explored the fact on a social scale while we find ourselves facing this on a far reaching and wider panorama.

The Tale of two cities, is and always will be the perfect novel. Charles Dickens wrote at a time when authors often came from the upper class genteel society. Dickens on the other hand had spent his childhood in dark and dingy slums and not in lavish English gardens. Hence, he always had an inherent duality in him- something every author aspires of.

On Sartre's Nausea

Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea stands out as the best work of philosophical fiction, as I would like to put it, in the entire 20th century. The book, released in 1938, came at a time and place, when philosophical duels were happening with so much fervor and passion, as had not happened from the time of Socrates in the western world.

Nausea, by Sartre's own admission, is a work based on the philosophy of existentialism. The book centers around a character called Antoine Roquentin, a troubled writer and lonely man residing in the French town of Bouville. It falls in the nouveau roman(new novel) category or fictionalized fiction wherein the protagonist is trying to write a great work of literature and his struggle of writing this book in turn becomes the novel.

Roquentin is a lonely man. His life is very much routined. There are no adventures as such. He is trying to write a book on the life of Marquis de Robellon, a 18th century diplomat. He goes for walks in parks, sits for hours in libraries and takes his meals at Cafe Maleby. At the library, he meets a man, whom he calls Autodidact.Autodidact is a humanist whose sole aim seems to be reading all the books in the library; his reading goes on alphabetically according to the name of authors. Roquentin has some intermittent conversations with the Autodidact. In these conversations, Roquentin mentions how he has travelled the whole world from Asia to the Africas but there is no evidence of this and all this might be happening due to his mental state.

But Roquentin can't write the book with the pace as he would have liked to. Often, in cafes or in the street he is struck by an acute ailment which he calls nausea. This ailment isn't physical, there is something philosophical behind this. Roquentin is in a fight with the whole city. He is irritated by the bourgeois of the city; their superfluous nature. When, on a Sunday, he walks on the streets, he is struck by the crowd of people, their actions and habits that don't ever change. In these periods of nausea, he asks why does he exist? What is existence? He can't help it when every object around him-tree, chair, bird- starts peeling off the layer and shows what's beneath it.  He is driven to think that there is no reason for existence at all. He has attained freedom and might as well end his life and hence the existence. He sees the trees as carrying off their existence as a sign of their weakness, the roots and branches do what they have to do out of their functionality. He says that the trees go on with their existence because they can't end it. He finds everything superfluous and says that the seat on which he is sitting might as well be a dead donkey. He sees people in the cafe and thinks that one of them belongs to the same group as himself. Often he writes about his ex girlfriend Amy , who suddenly sends him a letter to meet her after five years. During their conversation he discovers that he and she think very much alike. Hence, chances are that both the Autodidact and Amy are echoes of his own personality. Roquentin abandons the idea of writing his book and says" He can't write about the existence of past when his own existence is superfluous".

Sartre uses the idea of contingency or randaomness through the fictional character. Roquentin, when under one of the attacks of nausea,  says that under everything that has got a name or which exists, there is a superfluidity. We call the 'tree' a 'tree' because we can't call it a cat or dog. There is a randomness in his own life " I am going out because there is no reason of my not going out ". It ridicules him to see everything in this world carrying its miserable existence, their name; while he can see the absurdity of all this. When he abandons writing his book, he feels there is no reason for him to carry on with his life. He feels a freedom like he had never known before. He sees this randomness as the absence of making choice. He has relapsed into a nothingness. He has found the absurdity of his life.

Sartre ends the novel, when Roquentin decides to leave for Paris but misses his train when he passes out in a hotel of Bouville listening to jazz. He thinks that he has to write a great book, something which goes beyond the mundane existence.

Nausea isn't just a book on existence. It's a book which rekindled the flame of philosophical debates that had been dormant for years now.

How shall i recognise you?

When you do come,
after crossing the oceans,
how shall I greet you?

How shall I recognise you?
On the airport,
among the myriad faces,
the cafes, the hustle,
the glint of greeting somewhere,
the frantic search somewhere else?

(Dear reader,
you are wrong to think that.)
Because this is 17 September,1974.
No mobile phones, no emails.

Just some letters,
hastily written,
the pen bearing your brunt.

No telephone calls either
for I never had a home
nor telephone.

Just some letters
how shall I feel your presence?

I know,
America has changed your handwriting.

But, I shall wait,
till the Boeing slides in the hangar
Till another Boeing
comes from London,
I shall wait, even if,
America has
changed your face.

Unknown Titles 2

I see,
you have become old,
not grown old;
Just become.
Your face is what
but a lump
of crinkles, cracks, crevices.
Something leaks out of it.
Something slimy, clammy, yellowish, demonic.

My eyeballs are stretched
to the limit.
Your torso is visible in the yellow pool.
Does your lower half still possess legs?
Or are you a centaur?
Is this a metamorphosis,
liken to Gregor Samsa?

The liquid reaches my toes
It climbs up my legs.
It has already tinged
me with yellow.
It gains my bodily altitude fiercely
as if my heart houses a magnet
for the liquid.

Your eyes flutter
for an instant.
Something you want to say
but the quick flutter subdued by forces unknown.

Now the cracks have opened wide.
Streams of yellow shored by you.
There is a mirror behind you,
visible through the widening streams and creeks.
I see myself in it,
but not me, not me.
Not yellow,
but red, blood red.
Not cracks,
but holes, widening diameters.

Unknown titles

People, things,
trees, bushes, tentements,
catchments,
Those misshapen mountain
Matted by verdure,
incomplete masterpieces of God.
They lay arrayed on the arid canvas.
The canvas, still present,
waiting for redemption,
in near future
from past's abandonment.

The canvas is strewn
with images
It tests my vision's expanse
Too much to behold,
as I rattle by
Click, click, click, click,
A rhythm beneath my foot
Or wait, listen tactfully
Is it the symphony
purely synthetic,
borne out of iron, diesel and slightly poetic?

Now, descending from heart of this verse,
you have reached its knee
on which it stands, staidly.
What is that tapering serpent in the sky?
Maybe, the iron monk
is breathing out.
The monk pierces the air,
slithers over water, slowly
on its iron mates.

The time, at which its written
is three ceturies
past industrial revolution.
Why now? It's highly unsuitable.
Maybe, I am pastoral
Now that idylls have become soul less
Synthesizers have replaced clarinets
Somethings always return, neverthless.