Recently,
I had two consecutive brushes with the circus world. The first one
occurred while watching and reflecting upon the Italian Oscar-winning
film The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) (2013).
The movie's first ten minutes or so are confounding until the film
settles into something of a bare-boned somewhat cohesive story. The
film's main inspiration is undeniably the works of Fellini, and both
La
Dolce Vita
(1960) and his masterpiece 8
1/2 (1963)
are evoked and alluded to, if not shamelessly copied from.
In
fact, most of Fellini's work uses the circus as its ideological
inspiration. His movies are peopled with a number of odd creatures or
freaks that are fodder for absurd situations and outcomes. The circus
deals not only with the odd and bizarre, but also has its own brand
of awe and magic.
It comes as no surprise that in both 8
1/2
and The
Great
Beauty
we encounter magicians. In the former, the enigmatic magician has
telepathic powers and, although blindfolded, knows the purses'
contents of audience members. In the latter, the magician manages to
make a giraffe disappear in front of the protagonist's eyes.
In
both cases, the magicians admit that it is all an illusion or a sham.
However, the visible result manages to be still perplexing and
affecting. This could be interpreted as a metaphor for cinema
and movies in general. The director is the one who plans and creates
these vivid illusions, which are a skillful combination and weaving
of images, music, and words.
And
it is us the awestruck viewers who take in the magic presented on the
screen. The most vivid example would be one of the first instances of
cinema when people saw a train coming towards them, and they moved
and ducked in fear. Or the fact that movies can evoke a whole gamut
of emotions and scare us, make us cry or laugh. Yet in movies that
take their inspiration from the circus, anything goes and anything
can happen, and we are invited to think outside of the box of our
ordinary existence and see the world with the curious yet
unquestioningly accepting eyes of a child.
Incidentally,
one of my all-time favorite films, Wings of Desire
(Himmel
über Berlin)(1987) has an angel fall in love with a trapeze artist. In fact,
during a circus performance, one of the kids addresses the angel
quietly seated there. To the dulled eyes of the adults, the angels
are not visible, and Wings
of Desire
underscores the theme of beauty and wonder perceived and seen only
by the eyes of the child through the beautiful poem “Song of
Childhood” by Peter Handke. In the eyes of the child “everything
was soulful and, and all souls were one.”
Children
become important in these movies. They seem to know the answers
or at least they have the correct outlook or philosophy on life; this somehow alludes the adults because they have forgotten all
about it. We are so clouded and burdened by the weight of reason that
we cannot see the marvel of existence, the very circus occurring in
front of our eyes.
Yet
the circus is no stranger to cinema. Movies have embraced the circus
as a symbol since its heyday; the circus had its own birth or
marriage since Chaplin, and it finds its own updated and rejuvenated
voice and vision with the continuous works of Baz Luhrmann and its not
so distant cousin, the surreal film that characterizes David Lynch's
or Terry Gilliam's work, for instance.
The
day after seeing The
Great Beauty,
I actually attended, for the first time, Cirque du Soleil's Totem
show. It was not a deliberate succession of choices, that is to have
the movie follow by an actual act, but it was enlightening to have
the circus represented in its actual “live” and living form. It
has been a good number of years since I had been to the circus
myself, and it was so much more impressive this time around not only
because of the tremendous show, but also due to the fact that my son
was watching it with me.
And
his jaw was open most of the time. It was out of sight to have these
performers suddenly take flight and hover over the stage. There was
an awe I had not felt in quite some time, and it was also reinforced
by looking at my son's unfettered reactions. Although no live animals
were used as the circus of my past - for better or for worse – was
wont to do, there were still those essential components of any
circus, namely the clowns.
One
of Fellini's later movies had that same title, The
Clowns (1970).
Chaplin's Limelight
(1952) showed us a sad clown, one that may still have had love and
passion for his art, but felt that others had seemingly outgrown
those simple but lasting pleasures. In fact, all these works that are
aligned with the circus have dashes of humor. The circus represents
not only the extraordinary, but it also stands for joy and laughter.
No
scene sums that up better than the final sequence of 8
1/2
in which a tortured Guido finds solace in directing and orchestrating
an impromptu circus parade. The underlying message of these films
might be a heart-felt invitation to see the circus as a metaphor for
life. There is joy that we do not see or perceive because our mind
forgets that life is not only a stage on which we act as Shakespeare
once observed, but that it is in fact a full-blown circus filled with
clowns, acrobats, and yes freaks.
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