Melody of words From now on I am the only one that is forbidden to you.
- My wife...
Marguerite Duras, "Baxter." I liked Vera Baxter and decided to get to know her. It turned out that she was not only a director, but also a screenwriter (for example, the script of the film “Hiroshima, My Love” – her handiwork), and an actress, and a writer. Many of her novels have been translated into Russian, but I have not yet appreciated Duras’ literary talent, I will try to do it soon, but I have watched the debut film Music. It’s also a conversational movie, which I was expecting. This time it’s a conversation between a man and a woman. If in two sentences, the plot is as follows: A man of forty meets a girl in his twenties in a cafe, and spends a day with her - they talk a lot. After they break up, he meets another woman at the hotel, his ex-wife, and they talk even more. This is basically the whole thing.
Words. They are created for communication, but they divide, even the most truthful of them “speak lies”, what to say about those who are called to hide the truth. First of all, from myself. To reach it, you need to say a thousand words and listen to no less. It is necessary to live a life with a person (first happy, then unhappy), lose him in a divorce, do not see each other for three years, meet again to understand that you are not exactly happy now.
In the film “Vera Baxter” the music behind the scenes did not stop, in “Music”, contrary to the name, it almost does not. But it permeates the whole film. On the opening credits a cappella sounds one of the songs of the cycle “Winter way” by Franz Schubert. Then the same melody is sung by the girl in the car (and the attentive viewer realizes that she sang it at the beginning of the film), and later plays it on the piano in the hotel lobby. But, despite the seeming insignificance of these episodes (if you do not listen attentively and do not try to delve into what is hidden behind the words - any of the episodes will seem insignificant, and the film itself - boring), this music is the key to understanding the whole picture, which its title hints at.
The song cycle “Winter Way”, written by Schubert on the poems of the romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, consists of 24 songs that are united by one lyrical hero, but do not have a strict plot link with each other. Meanwhile, the connection here is different, and the listener observes the development of not the plot, but the emotional intensity. The order of the songs in the cycle is strictly built - they are like stairs down to the bottom of despair. Betrayal becomes the starting point from which the fall of the hero begins, he is betrayed, he is crushed and goes on a journey from which he is not going to return. The natural result of sad wanderings is an unknown death.
Schubert clothed this story in a beautiful cycle, Marguerite Duras made a film about it. But, of course, Duras told her story, in no case repeating the composer, sometimes even clearly arguing with him (even if the composer has a male view of the tragedy, the director has a female one). But this is a contradiction of approaches, and on a deep sensory level, the statements of both creators are very consonant. Only Duras has letters instead of notes, from which the tragedy of mutual loneliness grows. When two people love, but can never be together, not for any objective reason, but because of their inner nature.
PS. If in the theater hanging on the wall gun necessarily shoots, the movie appeared in the frame of the gun may not sound.
PPP. Marguerite Duras gives a particularly poignant tone to her story, drawing on works of art that have become classics. In addition to “Winter Way” Schubert organically woven into the narrative painting by Eugene Boudin “Ladies on the beach”.
9 out of 10