Some Non-Synchronistic European Directors

A sudden revival of appreciating my European filmmaking roots was curiously prompted when the game between the Saints and the Cardinals abruptly intensified in the second half. The Pig and Whistle restaurant on Hollywood Blvd.–where I was watching the game with my friend Ryan, an unconscious Cardinals fan–became so loud and erratic that I and everyone in Ryan’s radius decided to get out for a breath of fresh air not contaminated, yet, by Ryan’s gradual collapse into drunken insanity.

The Pig and Whistle is an old Hollywood joint right next to one of the oldest American theatres, Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, the home of the American Cinematique. As Hollywood Blvd. has become safer and relatively less bizarre over the past several years, the Egyptian has become a more frequent host of various film events.

That day, it was hosting a Q&A with directors of foreign films nominated for Golden Globes. By the kitchen exit of the Pig and Whistle, Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore was giving an interview just a few steps away from Austrian director Michael Haneke, who was talking to enthusiastic film buffs (and was generally ignored by the Cardinals’ fans). Among the directors were also the young Chilean director of “The Maid,” Sebastian Silva, and a French director of a prison saga “The Prophet,” Jacques Audiard.

During the Q&A inside the theatre, the most notable moment was a little back and forth between the Italian Tornatore and the French Audiard, who expressed his disappointment for the decline of the great Italian cinema. That really struck a wrong cord with Tornatore, who claimed that Italians are really great in exporting the notion that Italian cinema is in decline, when it is simply an extension of the world cinema in decline. Then he went into a full-fledged attack by stating that there are not many particularly great French movies either. And there it went again, that never ending European family feud . . . then people wonder how Europe got itself into the same war twice within the same century.

Austrian director Haneke was sitting in between them. He was composed and relaxed. His movie, The White Ribbon (the eventual winner of the Globe award), explored the origins of fascism and war, a mini version of which was happening on his right and left sides. I saw The White Ribbon some weeks later. When I was driving to the only theatre that was playing it on the opposite side of the town, I pondered about what marketing hook could be used to attract American audiences unfamiliar with Haneke’s work to go and see a black and white movie in German by a director that looks like a monk who has taken an oath of silence. When I came out of the movie, the answer was clear. The only reason one should see The White Ribbon is because it is a masterpiece. That’s all.

It was refreshing to see how in exploring the complex dynamic between rigid Protestant religious morality and an almost feudal society, Haneke never fell into the temptation to politicize the issue and blame religion for all the ills of man. It is this wisdom and mastery that is lacking from the current American foolish and childish critic of religion in the movies and general culture.

Haneke’s criticism is wise and deep. He is concerned with finding the truth through exposition rather than through forcing his opinion on the viewer. It is not the trend but the thought that moves him and his kind of filmmaking. Haneke is one of the rare filmmakers who knows how to talk about society without being a socialist. His view of society and politics is apolitical, not in the sense that he does not care about politics, but in the sense that he goes beyond political and societal structure for the explanation of the former.

This is where lies the essential difference between a socially concerned artist and a socialist propagandist who uses art to promote political beliefs.

When the event was over, I ran into Ryan, who was mad that I left him and even madder because the Cardinals were blown out of the water by the Saints. “Where the hell did you disappear to?” he yelled. I explained, to which he responded, “Screw your European directors, the Cardinals are over!”

Up until recently, that had been my sentiment as well. I grew up watching the films of great European directors. At some point, I got weary of their long “message” movies. Today, I have to admit, though, that proportionally more European A-list filmmakers still have that ease of expression that we, the freest people in the world, have lost due to the leftist hold on and politicization of art. I think Europeans–although, as of now, more politically socialist than we–are mostly over their experimentation with art’s Marxist use as an instrument of revolution. Regretfully, we in America are not.

By another strange coincidence, I visited the Egyptian Theatre next day. They had a showcase of short films by the students of the New York Film Academy, which is a very expensive course of learning film in a very intensive way. So one would expect some minimal production value and thought quality from the graduate work of these directors. In fact, their work was not just bad–it was an insult to the concept of the moving picture. The films were almost exclusively about health care and none of the ten films, NONE had used a tripod. Shaky, sloppy moves about a shaky and sloppy proposal.

I asked the instructor whether the students were given an assignment to make political movies without tripods. “No,” he smiled, “it’s synchronicity.”

That’s the freedom of thought and expression I’m talking about!

“Synchronicity” is one of those dubiously trendy concepts that everyone uses but no one really understands. Probably, it is the same “synchronicity” of lacking a tripod, or a solid grounding, that makes Obama bend in front of foreign kings and tyrants. This is the classic case where filmmakers deserve their leaders.

Or probably “synchronicity” implies the narrow mindedness of socialistic experimentation with culture that results in ten students promoting the same exact point in the same exact way independently of each other. By synchronicity, one may also imply a dictatorship of ideology that results in shock when a leftist can’t come to grips with the fact that David Lynch was a Reagan supporter. How could that happen, how could he think differently from “us”?

Another example of synchronicity is LA Weekly’s article about the death of great French director Eric Rohmer and the article’s author’s bewilderment that such a talented man was fascinated “with bizarre right wing politics” (or as non-synchronistic people call it: being conservative). Not like those well-balanced American directors like Oliver Stone who is just liberal, right? Not a wacko who is fascinated by banana republic dictators, regularly drives his car into trees on Sunset Blvd., and tries to justify Stalin?

Rohmer actually symbolizes everything that the average American movie-lover hates about European and especially French movies. Rohmer’s movies are long, actionless, and overwhelmed with words. In fact, his movies are about words. But if one cuts through the prejudice developed by years of the manipulative flow of images and fast-paced fake editing, one discovers that Rohmer is closer to real freedom than most of our contemporary American independent and studio directors. Could that be because of Rohmer’s “bizarre fascination with right wing politics,” or is it because of his lack of fascination with paranoid megalomaniacs like Chavez and Castro? Or could it be that just being born in a free country and ripping its benefits does not automatically bestow one with a free spirit?

Speaking of free spirits–as my synchronistic venture into European cinema continued, I had the privilege to conduct a phone interview with great Italian screenwriter Tonnino Guerra for Armenian TV in Los Angeles. For a screenwriter of my caliber to talk to Tonnino Guerra is like a 99-seat-theatre playwright talking with William Shakespeare. So I was naturally intimidated, plus I had to talk to a certified master wordsmith of modern Italian language in my far-from-perfect Italian. After a minute of conversation, though, he made me feel at such ease and freedom that I was emboldened to disagree and challenge him. Only after I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, a stupid youth, that I was arguing with the modern Petrarch. You see, Mr. Guerra, before getting into writing with Fellini and Antonioni and DeSica, spent some time in concentration camps, where he learnt the real value of freedom. Real freedom is not communicated through megaphones and teleprompters, but through things simple like a phone interview for a local ethnic station in LA.

Real freedom is also not in criticizing big corporations , like George Clooney does, but allowing an unknown filmmaker 60 years younger than you to challenge you when you are an internationally acknowledged luminary like Tonnino Guerra. Now, can I freely oppose Sean Penn without being dismissed by him as a nobody? Forget about challenging Sean Penn, I can’t even get to Sean Penn. I can’t even get to Sean Penn’s dog’s walker without the right agent.

During the aforementioned Q&A at the Egyptian, Haneke claimed that real cinema cannot be national, that in spite of being grounded in specific cultures, it is essentially universal. Who could disagree with that? There are great artists and free spirits that live all over the globe and there are mediocre souls that merely swing with the pendulum, which is currently to the left. Whether free souls walk on the Champs D’Elysees or Sunset Blvd will influence their art but will not affect their freedom. Anyway, everything is so interchangeable. Wasn’t the revolutionary French Wave influenced in part by the works of super-conservative American directors like John Ford? Or wasn’t it another Austrian director that gave us the American classic Sunset Blvd.?

Speaking of actual Sunset Blvd., it’s been congested for three months now due to this endless construction. Being one of the main arteries of LA, any prolonged construction results in epic jams throughout the city, so, as a rule, constructions on Sunset Blvd. take only a day or two and mostly are done at night.

So the length and inefficiency of this construction (which is still going on, by the way) had been really puzzling for me until I saw the sign: “Putting America to Work, Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Yep, that’s the stimulus package and, bingo, it is a government-funded construction.

So here is a great subject for a documentary for our freedom-loving anti-establishment young directors at the NY Film Academy. Move off healthcare films (they are so March 2010, anyway) and make a movie about how government-funded construction has been screwing up the traffic on Sunset Blvd. for whole three months with no end on the horizon. And just like I don’t need a thousand-page health care bill to understand that even the people who wrote it don’t get it, I don’t need to see ten films in a row to get the point; one film will do. I am really looking forward to it! Let’s stick it to the man, whatever that’s supposed to mean these days . . . otherwise, there are always those Tea Parties that can be synchronistically mocked!