| |
How far
has humankind grown from its origin?
Allegro non Troppo, L’age D’or, and
Un Chien Andalou: films about human nature
By
Maya Zaydman
"In
the beginning there was Coca Cola". This is Bruno Bozzetto’s idea of our creation.
Our first ancestors were carbohydrates, caffeine and sugar. Come to think of
it, we are not that far away from our ancestors. Or are we?
The sparkling fluid in the coke
bottle does not remind us of the refreshing beverage that we know. It looks more
like thick, bubbling mud. One can think of it as the existentialist mud that is
actually ‘being’ – existence, as Sartre’s protagonist in "Nausea"
describes it:
"…And then, all of a sudden, there it was,
clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless
look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things… This veneer had melted, leaving
soft, monstrous masses all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene
nakedness."
According to Bozzetto, that muddy
coke, that very paste of things, is our origin. He takes
At first, we were mushy, brown, and
a bit monstrous – close to the substance that we came from. But, there was still
something that made us different from it. We developed the capability of
intelligence. Humankind has evolved to be an intellectually advanced creature.
This sentence carries an underlying hypothesis that this is a good thing: that
human beings are benefited by their distinguishing abilities. But, experience
shows us that this is not always the case. The capability of knowing can be a
curse. Knowledge, or too much knowledge, can lead us to bad places. By this, I
refer to the atom bomb, to technology that harms nature, to asking too many
questions about oneself – digging in the soul, going crazy. It is not merely
the capability of knowing itself that brings people to bad places. It has to do
with the desire to know more, to innovate, and to achieve benefits out of
knowledge. It seems as though sometimes our mind is abused, instead of used.
This leads us to turn against ourselves and against our origin – nature itself.
"Allegro Non Troppo" turns
our attention to those weak aspects of human nature. The animated parts, (as
well as live parts), illustrate humanity as greedy, obsessive, and indifferent
to its surroundings; arrogant and, sometimes, just pathetic. However, the film
does not criticize humanity severely. The point of view is more of a warm and
amused one. By putting a slightly distorted mirror in front of us, Bruno
Bozzetto does not tell us that things have to be different, or that it would be
better if we had not had the ability to know at all. He just asks us to look
and think for a while. Despite that, one cannot ignore the negative points that
the film raises. Knowledge is displayed as one of the chronic diseases of
humankind. Modernity, the consequence of the use of knowledge, is described in
grotesque, sometimes frightening colors.
Another section of animation in the
movie, which is set to Stravinsky’s "The Firebird Suite,"
demonstrates this very concept. The scene starts with a big eye, representing
God trying to design a creature out of a lump of clay. So many associations
arise with that image – the eye of Big Brother in "1984," the lovers
from Jan Svankmajer’s "Passionate Discourse" and the idea of
existence as a mass of protoplasm. The biblical version of creation is brought
into it in a slightly modified form, as we shall soon see. After unsuccessfully
tempting Eve to eat the apple, the serpent eats the apple itself. Having eaten
from the tree of knowledge, its eyes are opened and something is changed. The
music suddenly gets stronger and more frightening. Knowledge in the form of the
devil starts hunting the serpent. Hundreds of cars chase it; technology
products surround it; naked women, straight out of hard-core magazines call to
it from so many television sets; a laundry machine swallows it and then vomits
it out. All the electrical devices turn into bills, which then turn into gold
coins, pouring down onto the helpless creature, drowning it. A coffin is built
around the serpent and, as it tries to escape, the devil dresses it / him to
look like a typical lawyer. Finally, the serpent is brought ‘down to earth’.
Terrified and shivering it throws the whole apple up, takes off its clothes,
and leaves the place
Allegro
Non Troppo / The Firebird Suite
The serpent does not want to know.
Knowledge, consciousness and thinking are all the sons of the devil. Humankind,
the knowledge holder, is the son of the devil in a way, making a deal with him
while leaving its true creator, (God / nature) far behind.
There is another piece of animation
in the film that demonstrates how far we are from our beginning and how close.
It is the part described at the beginning of this paper – Ravel’s Bolero
(and Coca Colevolution). Throughout the long march of time and the progressive
evolution of all the creatures, the monkey always manages to precede them. When
those creatures arrive in areas that the monkey has already ‘conquered,’ they
find highways crossing the land (their land) and skyscrapers emerging from the
ground, stretching so high that one realizes how far we are from nature.
Humankind is ugliness incarnate, painted with dark colors (unlike the preceding
colorful and exotic creatures), frightening and threatening.
One of the scenes in this sequence
shows an encounter between the less developed creatures and a cross. From their
point of view (they are short and the cross is gigantic), the cross is as scary
as hell. In my eyes, it has something to say about religion and where it
brought us. In a way, religion has developed in order to answer questions.
People needed to know the answers to fundamental questions: Who are we? What is
the purpose of our existence? Why do events happen the way they do? God was one
answer. By leaning on the idea of a supreme being, some of the responsibility
of our existence has been shifted. Another problem has to do with the rules
that are embedded in religion. If there is a supreme being, to whom we owe our
existence, we should listen to its wishes and obey its will. Sometimes ‘God’s
will’ (or what some people thought should be God’s will) was, ironically, set
against humanity’s will, or that of nature.
A cross that is very similar to
Bozzeto’s cross appears in Luis Bunuel’s "L’age D’or." In the final
scene of that film, we the viewers are informed about a big, sadistic orgy that
is being held in a castle. One of the participants in that orgy is Jesus. When
the last survivor of the orgy, a young woman, tries to escape, Jesus escorts
her back into the castle and closes the door. Then, a scream is heard. He walks
back out without her and without his beard (is that because he doesn’t want
anyone to recognize him?). This scene ends with a giant cross, standing in the
middle of nowhere, deserted by the crucified.
The irony! The son himself, walking
out on his father, leaving the cross behind, only to get some good, sadistic
sex.
Both crosses stand out in their
glorious emptiness, symbolizing the isolation between humanity and nature, at
least in the eyes of Bozzetto and Bunuel. Bunuel’s films are full of symbols
that mock religion. In "Un Chien Andalou," two priests are dragged
along the floor, tied to two pianos with two dead donkeys. In "L’age
D’or", the bishops are literally rotting while mumbling their prayers. In
the same movie, a man throws a priest from the window. Of course, this is a
surrealist use of the moving image: employing exaggerated elements (such as
throwing a man from a window) as a part of a regular scene (the man throws some
regular objects from the window, too). Regarding the exaggerated as obvious
makes the viewers wondrous, intrigued.
Bunuel’s criticism of religion can
be taken as a part of the surreal movement’s religious criticism in general.
The surrealists tried to shatter every ‘classic’ (and therefore out of date and
boring) concept, and to reconstruct an art that was fresh and not committed to
old values. Their purpose was to take the aesthetic and logical variables out
of the art equation. One of the main concepts in their doctrine concerned the
unconscious mind. The surrealists were interested in the part of the mind that
is not controlled by moral and aesthetical values, or by social rules. No
wonder religion and religious rules were under attack for limiting the freedom
of the mind / spirit. We can accept or deny the surrealist movement and its
ideas, but we cannot ignore the call for a substantial change in people’s
concepts. The reason for this need lies in the problems that were raised above:
the wrong use of mind and especially the wrong use of knowledge. Artists,
religious people, scholars, have all sinned that particular sin. According to
surrealist ideas, people need to free themselves by getting closer to who they
really are, by getting in touch with the unconscious dimensions of their own
minds.
It seems as though Bruno Bozzetto
uses the cross in a less dramatic tone. However, just like every other point
that he makes in the film, it is intended to inform, to alter the viewer’s
attention. The crucified in "L’age D’or" is a hard-core hero. The
cross in "Allegro non Troppo" ‘belongs’ to a former monkey. This
demonstrates the difference between Bunuel’s strong, surrealistic images and
Bozzetto’s cynical, bittersweet images.
Bozzetto is just a witness, who
happens to be a part of this big herd called humankind. The witnessing part of
his narrative illuminates dark aspects of our existence, while the fact that he
is a part of the herd makes him do it in a warm and empathic way.
The animation to Dvorak’s Slavonic
dance No. 7, is a ‘praise song’ to the herd mentality. A man tries to stand out
and do things differently, but everyone else persists in imitating him. He
decides to fool them into a final imitation – to inspire them into jumping off
a cliff after him (while he catches a branch that hangs just below the ledge).
When he realizes that no one has jumped after him, he climbs back up and, on
the edge of the cliff, he is greeted by the herd with a global
"mooning". As funny as this is, the herd mentality has led humankind
into terrible and inconceivable eras, such as World War II. The utilization of
extensive propaganda, including the medium of film, for the purpose of
brainwashing, has led people in
Allegro
Non Troppo / Slavonic Dance No.7
Bruno Bozzetto’s "Allegro non
Troppo" and Luis Bunuel’s surrealistic films, as all films, have something
to say about people. Both directors bring a unique way of expressing their
ideas about what has become of humankind. Both directors criticize the abuse of
the property that distinguishes humanity from other species – intelligence and
the ability to gather knowledge. They make us use this very property (our mind)
while watching their films in order to encourage introspection – to look within
ourselves as private people and, also, as a group.
The
origin of humankind lies in the substances of nature. However, there is a
qualitative difference between human beings and those substances. One
conclusion that suggests itself from the films that have been discussed above
is that the qualitative difference has led to an ongoing withdrawal from this
origin. In my eyes – this does not say anything good about human nature.
Philosophy and the Moving Image
Lecturer: Dr. Louis Sandowsky
Submitted by: Maya Zaydman.
22.04.2001