Introspection time
for European films
Kolkata: Returning home one night, Matiss notices a woman poised at the
edge of a bridge. He doesn’t speak to her then – and can’t
forget her after-wards, for he hears her shout for “help!”
and a splash in the river below.
One man. One woman. But is Fallen the story of one people – Germans?
No, says its director Fred Kelemen, “it’s a universal story,
of any man who stops to ask himself, ‘What am I doing?’”.
For the minimalist film, set in Latvia and shot in black and white, explores
the conscience of a man who did not act in time to stop mishap. Nevertheless,
the tone, texture, mood and psyche of the contemplative story of guilt
and redemption reflects the shadow of contemporary Europe.
Surely it’s a dark age – in fact Kelemen said as much earlier
in Kalyi, The Age of Darkness. But this is not the political darkness
that befell Europe in the noon of the 20th century. It’s the poverty
of soul amidst an abundance of material goods. Why else does every region
of Germany have a film school today, but so few memorable films? Why is
there no ‘new wave’ after the collapse of the Wall? Though
the fall of fascism led to the rise of America, and Hollywood, it also
gave German cinema names like Schloendorf and Fassbinder. Unfortunately,
once West Berlin conquered its East, directors with conscience lost their
bearings.
“Used to state subsidy, those of erstwhile East could not get used
to the new system where you had to ‘sell’ an idea to procure
funds, “ says Kelemen. “And those from West didn’t have
a big interest in the East.” Thus that culture is completely gone,
“eaten up first in terms goods, then in terms of its arts, its philosophy
.” The pressure to commercialise has turned auteur filmmakers into
endangered species. “People succumb to diktats regarding technical
norms, aesthetics, narrative format, and orient them-selves to TV channels
that fund them.”
It’s no different in Hungary where social restructuring changed
the parameter of the art for Szabo, Gaal and Mezaros. “Earlier films
were totally and only financed by state,” recounts Gyula Gulyas,
director of Light Falls on Your Face, about the rebellion against the
dictatorship in Hungary of 1956. “Funding was okayed in steps, so
was (political) censorship which was there but not overtly expressed.”
Now, that has been replaced by censorship of the capital: “People
do everything in expectation of commercial returns,” he states.
Unfortunate, since “a film doesn’t have to be expensive,”
insists Kelemen. And “why make a fuss about cost, when (military)
weapons are so much more expensive?”
Ratnottama Sengupa
The Times of India, November 15, 2005
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