The frankness and vulgarity can feel shocking and even
jarring to this day, whereas the graphic nature and the explicitness in terms
of sexuality fail to compare with other films that have radically pushed ahead
and passed and surpassed many taboos and boundaries since the inception of this
film. Arguably, this may have been due to the existence of Bertolucci’s
groundbreaking Tango and let us not forget that famed French enfant
terrible filmmaker Catherine Breillat appears briefly in it; still, there is more
than meets the eye and much more to this movie than its controversy.
In fact, the strength of this film lies in what it has to
say about its characters and their relationships with themselves and with
others, including but not solely pertaining to issues of sexuality and the
physical expression thereof. Furthermore, the film brings up and touches upon various
themes that play with notions of reality versus fiction, lived versus imagined lives,
and wishful thinking versus the reality of things. On the surface, it is an
anti-romantic and anti-idealistic film but somehow it ends up holding and containing
certain elements and seeds of romance and idealism within its dark heart.
To further explore this, the symbol of the double is of
relevance. Interestingly, the word double has in fact two meanings. On one
hand, it is a copy or mirror image of something or someone, while on the other
hand, it is a splitting and separating into two, which may contain unequal or
unwanted parts.
In the first instance, we have a type of doppelganger, someone
who looks, acts or thinks as we do. The focus is on similarities, which can be
eerie in some cases, and it is not unlike being identical twins. A cinematic
equivalent of this would be Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique where
it seems that the same person is simultaneously living in two different parts
of the world (Weronika in Poland and Veronique in France) as a type of carbon
copy or duplicate of the other. This double life is as if the same soul had
been split into two equal or equivalent parts of the self with each leading its
own separate existence miles apart.
Yet sometimes, the double is the shadow or the shadowy self,
the parts within us we don’t acknowledge or do not wish to, and this has been
exemplified in the push and pull of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for instance. The
personalities lead a double life as there are two different sides to them that
for one reason or another are hard to reconcile within the same person and
their shared environment.
In fact, the art of filmmaking falls somewhere between both
realms. Some filmmakers may create an alter ego, a character that shares many
similarities with its creator, say Guido in Fellini’s 8 ½. At the same
time, no matter how faithful the representation may be of the real person or
real things and events, the film only manages to reflect them and can only be
based on them as it is not able to fully and accurately capture the entirety,
the same way a snapshot does not give us the full picture.
The problem is that the event cannot be identical with its representation,
no matter how hard one tries, and the closest you can come to a potential replica
would be to do a documentary on it; and yet, focus, editing, and other
filmmaking choices can slightly - or significantly - distort the issues and
facts at hand.
Let us now discuss the different doubles and their
reflections, deflections, and mirror images in Bertolucci’s film. Please be
aware that from now on there will be major spoilers and do proceed at your own
caution. You can of course watch the film first and then return but again, you
may need to proceed with caution.
The Double Life of Paul
The main protagonist played by Marlon Brando creates a
double life for himself. His wife has just committed suicide, and he feels
angry, lost, and in limbo. He is looking for a place to stay and then meets
Jeanne by accident. It is not that he is sexually attracted to her (at least
not initially) as he shows little interest in her or anybody else for that
matter. Both are just taking or filling up space in an apartment that feels as
dark and gloomy as Paul’s soul.
Yet suddenly and with little warning, he grabs her and makes
love to her. It is instinctual and animalistic and has very little to do with
any type of feeling. She goes along and does not resist him. Then both walk out,
each their own way. But something lingers within each of them, so they decide
to continue meeting for these clandestine sexual trysts, but he sets the ground
rules from the beginning.
It is essential, he proclaims, to stay away from personal
details and information with absolutely no names whatsoever. Each would remain
anonymous in this artificial space, and they would agree to never meet outside
of the confines of the apartment. After a while, Jeanne finds this frustrating
as she has become curious about this strange enigmatic man. Oddly enough, it is
this air of mystery that makes him so appealing to her. It is not difficult to
see and understand why she is intrigued by Paul, especially after we meet her
fiancé, the bland and self-absorbed Tom. But more about their relationship
later.
As to Paul, he is grieving but he also displaces his anger, frustrations,
and personal failings upon this young woman who has happened to cross his path
at an importune time. He is cruel to her at different points of their time
together. This makes Jeanne uncomfortable and yet she keeps returning to him
and continues taking the abuse and humiliation that he inflicts upon her. This
reaches its most extreme point when he anally rapes her while spouting
nonsensical phrases about family and religion.
When taken in conjunction with his request to being fingered
by her and then spouting vile and disgusting images of pigs and bestiality
involving Jeanne, it made me wonder whether the character had been abused by
the clergy. In another scene regarding his wife’s funeral arrangements, Paul
vehemently opposes his mother-in-law to have priests present at the service
while in another scene he almost beats up a man while angrily calling him a “faggot.”
There may be homosexual tendencies or traumatic experiences that these scenes
and situations insinuate or point towards, especially when taken and considered
in connection to each other.
The sexual frustration and the double motif also existed on
the side of his wife. For a handful of years, she, the hotel owner was living
with one of the guests, an ordinary and insipid-seeming man called Marcel. In
fact, she turned him into a stand-in Paul as she got matching bathrobes for
each and re-lived and re-enacted similar or the same routines with either one
of them.
The scene where both Paul and Marcel are sitting next to
each other in identical bathrobes after the suicide of their respective wife
and lover has a surreal touch to it; it also underscores the hinted double life
that Rosa had during her marriage with Paul. Her lover Marcel went along with
the charade and did not counteract or oppose Rosa’s wishes and desires. Soon
enough, the passion ran out, but they still pretended to be a duplicate version
of the joyless marriage she had with Paul who was residing a few hotel rooms
away from there.
After Paul, in a moving and emotionally stunning scene,
pours out his heart to the corpse of Rosa surrounded by an array of flowers and
with make-up on her pale motionless face, he seems to change his air. Suddenly,
he comes to or becomes more himself and then passionately pleads Jeanne to stay
with him. Jeanne who up to then had merely been a projection of Rosa with all his
bottled-up hatred and resentment aimed at her suddenly becomes a different
person to him. Although he had previously turned her down and even mocked her
for confessing her love to him, he now wants to start anew and begin an actual
relationship with her.
At this point, Paul breaks all his made-up rules, goes up to
her on the street, gives his name, tells her his age and that he is a widow and
that his wife has committed suicide. All these intimate details pour out in a
frenzy and in less than a minute. He also shares with her later that he owns a
hotel and that he would now like to be and live with her.
This sudden move has its opposite effect. Jeanne may realize
that she was never in love with him but that she rather loved the persona, this
fictious double that he had created for her. As a result, she loses interest
and decides to break up their relationship (or whatever it was that they had
previously). Instead, she prefers to get married to Tom. In typical fashion, Paul
cannot accept this and starts chasing her down the streets of Paris in another
surreal scene that borders on the comical in its emotional overreach and intensity.
Before the film and Paul, the American, reach their
respective end in her Parisian apartment, I would also like to point out the fact
that Brando did not stick to the script but added his own flourishes and lines throughout
the movie. The infamous and humiliating use of butter, something that the
actress Maria Schneider had not been aware of was indeed his idea. There are other
lines that stand out and look and sound improvised and probably were not part
of the script.
Instead of simply being an actor that plays the character, Brando
was modifying the role as he went along by adding a more personal dimension to
Paul. This is Paul as imagined by Bertolucci and reinterpreted by the actor
Marlon Brando. The alter ego becomes another double that is split apart from
what the original character was supposed to be like and this occurs and evolves
during the process of acting and filmmaking.
The Double Life of Jeanne
Jeanne seems like a person full of energy and zest for life
who has unfortunately settled for an artificial relationship with wannabe
filmmaker Tom played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. In this sense, I cannot help but think of Bertolucci,
the director who is trying to express his desires, wishes, and fantasies
alongside his pain and confusion via the medium of images, words, and sounds.
Yet,
there is a hint of criticism there as Tom is as shallow and vapid as they come.
He does not seem capable of true feelings and in fact lives in a world of
fantasy in which there is nothing else but he himself and the movies. This can
be seen from the moment they first appear together where he wants his crew to
film everything they say and do, no matter how private and confidential. She
is, according to him, the main subject of his next film.
There
are various other scenes in which he supposedly explores Jeanne’s childhood and
past including her first experiences of love and romance, but it is serving
only the purpose of making an “authentic” documentary-style film. In this case,
what is real is turned upside down and is put on its head. Although Jeanne
expresses her feelings, he is less interested in her than capturing all this to
make a movie out of it. It is exploitative in nature and serves only his own
purposes instead of appreciating and respecting her feelings.
In
that sense, Jeanne is just a character he happens to marry for the intents and
purposes of making a movie about a man who decides to get married to a woman
like Jeanne. He does not explore her because he is not interested in her as a
person while he himself has little if anything to offer because he does not
have a self or personality to speak of.
What
is it that Bertolucci intended to say or show with this film? Part of it is of
course the desire to make a film that pushes boundaries but also it talks about
how we create doubles in different shapes and forms in our lives. It could be a
double of ourselves, where he split into two seemingly incompatible beings,
Paul in his two versions, Jeanne as Paul’s lover and Tom’s fiancée, Rosa as
Paul’s wife and Marcel’s lover.
In
each of these cases, this lack of authenticity creates a vacuum that
accentuates the pain and suffering underlying each life. At the same time, since
each of them fails to connect with their own nature, they are incapable of
connecting with other people and their relationships become a bundled mess that
lacks honesty, integrity or any type of sincere feeling or sentiment.
In the end, we can create works of art via sublimation, but we must be aware to distinguish one from the other or at least not get confused between the two. Reality is a tricky thing and the moment you try to capture it, it seems to fly off the handle. Yet at the same time, we do not want to live in a world that is purely of our own making; we ought to rather find or settle for a comprise and integration of the two while continuously trying to find or be ourselves or remain authentic to what we believe to be our true nature.
