Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley's 2011 film, is not an easy film to write about. In general, but especially because it hits me so terribly close.

In the beginning of the film, Margot (Michelle Williams) watches a reenactment of an adulterer being brought to the gallows. She is asked to participate in the charade by whipping the adulterous pilgrim, which she shamefully performs. There, a man laughs at her and eggs her on. That man turns out to be her neighbor on the plane home and her new real neighbor, Daniel. She instantly likes him. This is problematic, because Margot is married to Lou. She's also, at 28, scared. When Daniel asks her why she was pushed through the airport in a wheelchair despite her ability to walk, she admits, "I'm afraid of connections. In airports. The running, the stress, the not knowing, the trying to figure it out, wondering if I'm going to make it. I don't like being in between things."

Even more than scared, Margot is restless. While the film emits a quietness that's not stifling but subtly beautiful, Margot is figuratively unable to sit still. She giggles with Lou like a child, picking at his face and biting his shoulder in a marriage that's friendly and non-sexual. She wants to write but can't seem to do it. At the same time, she's melancholy. All of this pulls her towards Daniel, who is new, persistent, and infatuated. But he notices her restlessness too upon their second meeting: "You seem restless. Not just now, but in a kind of permanent way."

I, too, have this permanent restlessness. It's so strong that a film professor recently suggested, out of the blue, that I try yoga to calm my nerves. This restlessness has helped me move to Paris, Brittany, Boston, and Copenhagen all within the last five years, never more than a year in each place. I desire the new and shiny opportunities that await overseas, in foreign languages.  Even film fuels this consumption of newness--I can throw myself into a new world even several times a day if am bored with my own. New experiences are my form of adultery; I cheat on the old ones when they become ordinary.

But as one of the women in Take This Waltz so simply says, "new things get old." What Margot and I are actually scared of is this change from new to old in our lives. As a result, we avoid having a deep intimacy with the everyday. We want to spin so fast, like she does at one point with Daniel on a fairground ride, but we end up turning in circles. I think this is partly a product of our age, where the desire for adventure has a certain immediacy. We can travel the globe at will if we have the means, or connect to it from our computers. But it's also just me. I end up speeding through life with a sense of urgency because I don't know how to actually hunker down and live it.

A Danish friend once told me that a year, now, feels like the same amount of time to him as when he was five. This gave me pause. It amazed me that he wasn't counting down the days and years until some distant future became his Life, where that projection of how he imagined things would go finally, magically came true. I could blame my '90s optimism or the economic cushion when I came of age that told the world that kids like me could have their dream job. I could accuse my tiny liberal arts college of demanding its students to be exceptional in a niche, not just laudable enough with a clear conscience. But instead of blaming, I want to fix. I want to learn to sit still, to stop climbing, to see what's there, to rely on myself for happiness.

At the moment outside my window, bundles of snow weigh on the trees in a post-snowfall stillness that muffles all sound. Tonight I'll wrap myself in the snow's weight, to hold in its quiet. Perhaps that will make it last.

On Flying

Flying has become commonplace. It’s a cramped experience, with our legs stuck under the seat in front of us, and our ears and eyes stuck to consoles. Whoever described airplane passengers as cattle had it right – we are corralled, spoon-fed, plugged in and complacent. No one complains about the food, while everyone looks motionless and unmoved. Only during moments of turbulence do we feel alive again, alerted to our mortality when the plane jolts back and forth in the sky. Everything on a plane feeds fluid, like liquid, like we’re moving in slow motion. I feel like I’m non-existent above the clouds, straddling countries and identities (travelling across the Atlantic always makes me feel like I’m negotiating my American-ness).

I miss soaring. I am too seldom weightless. Sometimes, on my bike in the evenings in Copenhagen, riding back from work, I peddle hard to see if I can break the complacency barrier. I remember moments of soaring as a kid, like my stomach dropping when Emma and I egged our dad on to drive a little too fast on “the bumpy road,” or when I pumped as high as I could on a swing just to get to that split second right as I began to fall again. A plane is now the closest I get to physically soaring (I’m not the rollercoaster type), or maybe dancing to a really good song.

But thanks to the movies, I do get to soar, as often as I like. Some people say that movies are manipulation; I say they help us fly. This is why it gave me much great pleasure to watch Hugo today, as I was on a plane, flying home for the holidays. The air turbulence was jolting only for a few minutes, but the film helped me feel alive long afterwards. Hugo is a movie lover’s movie – under the guise of telling the story of a children’s adventure, Martin Scorsese is really paying homage to the magician who gave the world its first moving pictures, Georges Meliès. Hugo, the boy who helps Meliès restore his own faith in the magic of the movies, is like the uninitiated cinephile, and I am a bit envious that he gets to experience Meliès’ wonders for the first time. On the other hand, I also feel as though I’m taking a fresh look at his magic by seeing it through Hugo’s eyes.

It’s quite funny, but also perfect, that Hugo was made using the most advanced digital equipment and tools out there, when Meliès only had analog film to work with. It’s a testament to Meliès that his cinematic spectacles are still awe-inspiring, and that his sleight of hand still works today. I’m sure Scorsese has his own sleight of hand in Hugo, but in an age of digital effects, we as audiences are immune to how they work. We are all believing and complacent with our effects these days, consuming them without notice on those small screens on the back of our airplane seats. So I’m super glad to see Scorsese put Meliès back on his pedestal, because when we soar during a movie, we have Meliès to thank. 

The Intouchables and Cinephiliac Moments

Yesterday I read this article by Christian Keathley called "The Cinephiliac Moment," in which he writes about the distinct ability of cinematic moments to take hold on our emotions and never let go. We all have moments from movies that have particularly ensnared our hearts. One example from my own cinephilia is the instant Jesse catches Céline's eye in a Paris bookshop in Before Sunset, where flashbacks of their fortuitous one-night romance nine years earlier in Before Sunrise wrap the moment in a decade of history, instantaneously.

If I had to think of one film that has recently afforded me a cinephiliac moment, it's 2011's The Intouchables, the French comedy that's reminded the world why France is so good at uplifting, truthful cinema.

Philippe, a millionaire who has become quadriplegic after a paragliding accident, employs Driss, a charismatic black man from the banlieue, as his caretaker. Philippe wants no pity from him, and Driss instead offers a pragmatic and lighthearted approach to life. Throughout their exchange, Philippe helps Driss see the finer things in life, while Driss gives Philippe some vestiges of adventure. The film watches them become unlikely but hilarious friends, and the appropriate life lessons are spooned out for us as they learn from each other.

Already the entire premise is cinephiliac - that people can come from difference to help each other - so our emotional heartstrings are already taut at the beginning of the film. And with a tasteful script, an expressive soundtrack and elegant cinematography, the film is visually and aurally easy to love.

But there is one sequence in particular in which I felt that my vast love of the cinema funneled into a sharp and emotional cinephiliac moment. Philippe needs relief from his claustrophobic body, so he and Driss drive to the Swiss Alps for some fresh air, which they get in the form of tandem-paragliding.

The beauty of cinema is almost overwhelming in this paragliding scene.  Colorful parachutes outlined against snow-topped mountains, sweeping birds-eye views, perspective shots in the open air, monumental music - we feel weightless ourselves, overcome by the joy that Philippe and Driss also feel.

Moments like these in cinema close the gap between viewer and film, so that our bodies feel transported into the diegesis and we intensely identify with the characters' experiences. Vivian Sobchack describes this relationship as a "carnal" one, where what's on screen is reproduced in our own skin. I think this is possible because of the sensory complexity of film; the magnitudes of sight and sound make us feel them physically, through touch and memory. The result is a momentary bliss, where we escape our own bodily presence and replace it with the feelings that come directly from the screen.

The escapism only ever lasts a moment, but that's another thing I love about it. If you try to hold on to it, it loses its power. So, I head back to the cinema as often as I can, seeking my next emotional and sensory thrill. If you do too, try The Intouchables, and embrace the moment when it surely comes.