Maybe you’ve heard, but AT&T approached Mbird favorite Werner Herzog to do a public service announcement on the dangers of texting while driving. Rather than a short commercial-length announcement, Herzog made a 36-minute short film, interviewing both the victims and the guilty. It is not an easy watch by any stretch, but worth it. As always, what Herzog is so adept at is the direct emotional resonance he pulls from all of his subjects. He levels these stories into the inner-lives of us all. This is also why he chose not to use graphic imagery in his PSA, as he tells NPR’s David Greene:
What was proposed to me immediately made sense. It immediately gave me the feeling I’m the right person because I don’t need to show blood and gore and wrecked cars. What I wanted to do was show the interior side of the catastrophes…It’s a deep raw emotion — the kind of deep wounds that are in those who were victims of accidents and also in those who were the perpetrators.Their life has changed and they are suffering forever. They have this sense of guilt that pervades every single action, every single day, every single dream and nightmare.
One of the more powerful moments is the story of Chandler Gerber (around the 7-minute mark), who killed three in an Amish family while texting “I love you” to his wife. The mother and two children were killed. Herzog captures both the acceptance of Gerber’s culpability, the weight of a perpetrator’s guilt, as well as an impossible letter from the father in the family. As Herzog says of one of the perpetrators, the man saying, “Look at me, look at me, no one should have this on their shoulders,” there is an inner-landscape to these people that make them like you or me:
Originally I was supposed to do four spots, 30 seconds long, but I immediately said these deep emotions, this inner landscape can only be shown if you have more time. You have to know the persons. You have to allow silences, for example, deep silences of great suffering.
Kenneth Lonergan set the final moments of his 2011 film, Margaret, in the orchestra section at the Metropolitan Opera, during Act 3, Scene 1 of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman - a scene that opens with the lovely duet, "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour."
I think this was another of Longeran's long-and-dramatically-drawn-out movie-release events. From what I know and remember, there's always some huge drama with Lonergan's production process; it takes forever to settle on rights or editing or something before his work gets out there. All that is to say that I'm not exactly sure when this film was originally made or released; 2011 is the date given at IMDB (I know it had a short theater release sometime last year - like, 2 weeks or something, and then it died), and I saw it on streaming video last night.
For me, this last scene was one of the most compelling in the movie - primarily, I think, because of the sheer beauty of the music, but also because of the way it was staged and shot. I'm still working out what I think and feel about this film overall; Lonergan is brilliant at packing just a ton of stuff into movies, some of which you don't fully absorb and can't articulate at first. My test of a great movie these days is: does it stay with you? Do you still think about it months and years later? Does all that stuff you can't articulate still whisper to your heart, even when you're not quite sure what it's saying? That's a good movie - but it takes some time to evaluate. (Lonergan's 2000 movie, You Can Count on Me, was like that - and was terrifically entertaining as well; it's one of my all-time favorite films.)
My immediate interpretive takeway from Margaret is that it's an enacted parable about "the return of the repressed." (Yes, that's right.) I will have more to say about this later, I think - but this post is about the song in particular.
I believe that in this last scene in Margaret, Rene Fleming sings the role of Giulietta (I'm not sure about this); I don't know who the other woman was, nor do I understand at all what is happening in the scene - and Wikipedia hasn't been much help so far. Certainly you could see what's going on as strong "lesbian subtext" - or, really, as "lesbian surtext"! However you view it, though, it was all pretty wonderful, and beautifully and expertly filmed. The movie was great to look at in other parts as well.
I don't know Tales of Hoffman, but the video below is another perfectly exquisite rendering of the duet; the singers are Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca. The song is a "barcarole" - "a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style" - and "characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier's stroke, almost invariably a moderate tempo 6/8 meter." Yes, indeed.
Here are the French lyrics:
Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, Souris à nos ivresses, Nuit plus douce que le jour, Ô belle nuit d'amour!
Le temps fuit et sans retour Emporte nos tendresses, Loin de cet heureux séjour Le temps fuit sans retour.
Zéphyrs embrasés, Versez-nous vos caresses, Zéphyrs embrasés, Donnez-nous vos baisers! Vos baisers! vos baisers! Ah! Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, Souris à nos ivresses.
And here is how I would translate that (seeing as how I speak French, more or less):
Lovely night, O night of love Smiles at our intoxication, Night sweeter than the day O lovely night of love!
Time flees and does not return And carries our tendernesses Far from this happy moment. Time flees and does not return.
Burning breezes Pour on us us your caresses, Burning breezes Give us your kisses!
Your kisses, your kisses! Ah! Lovely night, O night of love Smiles at our intoxication.
The film's title, BTW, is taken from one of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems, "Spring and Fall":
MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves, líke the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Áh! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
