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Jules
and Jim
Viewed 7/14/99 on video
i've
watched jules and jim three times, the first time was
like a dream, the second a distraction, and this last
time, like watching my fantasies and wishes whirl in a
hands-held dance of joy and despair.
the first time was alone on video during high
school, and it filled me with fantasies of filmmaking
that danced around my head for years with nowhere to go,
until they just faded.
the second time, while working the late shift at
the foreign language lab in college, was on a small
screen whose size fit the scope of my dreams at the
time, but the energy of the movie still shot out and
took me from my monitoring duties for a good hour.
but this last time, i finally paid attention to
the second hour and what it was trying to tell me.
it's not about dreams. it's
responsibilities.
each
time I watch the first half movie i want to make movies
so bad my body tightens, ready to leap into the screen.
The opening hour is a rush of cinema, events and
characters moving from one surprise to another.
Two friends who love each other through their
books and general zeal for the ideas and theories of the
world and women. The
woman who whisks into their life like a much needed
breeze (after the third viewing, I realize how much
Truffaut was actually mocking the men's romantic ideals,
the same ideals that captivate me and hordes of
collegiates) and
plays her role in the destruction of all lives
involved and the ideals that run them.
Jeanne Moreau is gorgeous -- one scene she is a
classic beauty unveiled in while, the next she is a
moustachioed tomboy outrunning her male counterparts,
and finally the sensual but frustrated, pouty-mouthed
housewife.
the
three are so engrossed in their ideas of how life should
be, all of their ideas noble-minded but not quite
complete in themselves.
had they given a little leeway to each other...
well, even then we can't be quite sure of the result.
but we do see that even when they make gestures
of generosity, it's in the wrong direction, it fits into
their own perceptions and desires, not for the other.
jules gives his wife to jim hoping, "in that
way, she'll
still be OURS" but only reinforces the bourgeois
chauvinism she's trying to overthrow.
misunderstandings and the worst good intentions,
just like that other french phenomenon The Rules of the
Game, make the world go round, round and round until
everything collapses.
We're
carried away with the energy of the film at the
beginning, it's such a release, the catharsis that
movies are supposed to be.
The first minute montage alone gives you a sense
of the possibilites of movies, all the images of joyous
life flashing by almost incomprehensibly except through
some logic of velocity and spirit that propels us into
anticipation as to how the images will come together in
the narrative, or if they will come at all.
Truffaut keeps this up for a good hour, then
smashes it with extended footage of warfare, and from
then it's a different tone.
More subdued, and, i now realize, more masterful.
calmer, staking itself more into the filmmaking, not as
freewheeling but just as provocative.
instead of rapid editing, there are drawn out
scenes that stop the show: Catherine's song, that
resonates through the rest of the movie and long after;
that girl's manic recollection of her post-Jules
romances, which, in the second half, make us realize how
crazy the first half was, and suddenly we feel how much
we've aged with the characters in only an hour and a
half of mimetic time.
It's in the second half that film students should
concentrate -- this is mature, spirited filmmaking.
Can
you believe that this movie was denounced by French
authorities as being lacking in moral content?
This movie opened the 60s, in some ways
prophesied not only its spirit, but its demise.
My last viewing of this movie has taught me a lot
about what movies can say about ideals that are in my
life, and how urgent it is to remain in control of one's
ideals, as wonderful as they are in fueling the dreams
of days. I
am at a point in my life that my ideas are slipping into
the routines of reality -- i could use the juice of the
first hour to help make my life amount to something.
but i could use a dose of the secnod hour's
control and wisdom too.
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