I learned this when I was fourteen and learned it again from Emir Kustarica
Sneaking up on the dead: Time of th Gypsies, 1988
I had planned to go check out one of the Brooklyn Bridge Park movies with my friend Maryanna this week, but when I checked the schedule I saw that they were playing Brokeback Mountain–one of my least favorite movies of all time. Usually when I tell people how much I don’t like this movie they look at me with horror and distrust.
I agree that Brokeback Mountain is visually beautiful and the acting is great and the subject matter is important and maybe even groundbreaking–but all that isn’t enough because the movie plays one brutal, mournful, high-pitch the whole time, without acknowledging any layers, variance or contradiction of feeling. No matter how hopeless or terrifying artistic subject matter is, I never believe that it’s truthful to force and force and force the despair of it all on your audience for the duration of the piece–which I believe this movie does. That type of subject matter can speak for itself. It needs to be left to breathe once in a while.
From elementary school through high school I had an amazing acting teacher named Maura Vaughn. When given a script that was serious, we all had the inclination to affect a shaky, verge-of-years voice and play the scene at fever-pitch from start to finish. Maura continuously gave us these two pieces of advice: 1. Don’t start at maximum intensity or you have nowhere to go and the scene gets static and monotonous. 2. Play against the material.
She’d say things like: “See what happens if you smile while you say the line about your dead child.” Or: “See what happens if you touch his hair very gently while you tell him you hate him.” See what happens.
So several weeks ago I watched a movie I’d been trying to see for years: Emir Kustarica’s “Time of the Gypsies,” a 1988 film set around Sarajevo and Milan, about a Romany kid and all the shitty, beautiful trouble that befalls him and his loved ones. It seems a little ridiculous to compare and contrast this movie with Brokeback Mountain, as they clearly don’t have the same interests in mind, but I mention it because what they do have in a common in incredibly heavy subject matter–treated, of course, in opposite ways.
The protagonist of “Time of the Gypsies,” Perhan, endures a long list of violent and tragic events during the course of the movie, and many of the scenes show oppressed and enslaved children with no options. However, the experience of watching the movie is such that as a viewer I don’t focus on the tragic nature of the movie, but instead on the beauty and complexity of the characters and their lives. Kustarica has access to a magical realism that is fluent with the cultural community of the characters, which lends the subject matter a dream-like quality. Furthermore, there seems to be an underlying humor to many scenes, a musical sort of laughter-as-survival mentality that seems consistent with with the history of the Romany people.
Emir Kustarica is a master of playing against the material, and this, to me is much of what makes “Time of the Gypsies” infinitely more compelling and memorable and truthful than a movie like “Brokeback Mountain.” And it’s something that I continue to think about with every work of art.
Thoughts?
I saw Brokeback Mountain with my dad. Our birthdays are right before the Academy Awards every year, and we have a tradition of seeing everything that’s been nominated. My dad is one of those people who has no idea how loud his voice is, and despite any aspirations he has about being a modern thinker, he’s still a child of the 1950′s. During the entire movie, he kept shouting, “Jesus Christ,” or “Give me a break,” or my favorite, “This is horseshit!” People left the theater in droves and the manager had to talk to us twice. It was hilarious. I saw it again a few years later, and without my dad shouting at it like it was a football game, it had few redeeming qualities.
Melina, you said it best with, “The movie plays one brutal, mournful, high-pitch the whole time, without acknowledging any layers, variance or contradiction of feeling.” I feel that way about most of what Annie Proulx writes. The prose is always beautiful with a strange, bunched up meter, but the characters are usually the same, unaware of the direness of their situation, cardboard cutouts shifted around on a predetermined course. It kind of reminds me of Donald Barthelme’s stories. He’s so concerned with saying something that the characters aren’t important, but that’s his shtick. It seems like Proulx wanted it both ways–about character, and message. Ang Lee’s adaptation was too literal.
Scott, I’m curious what it was specifically that your dad objected to– was it at all we’re talking about here, or was it the sexual content?
In any case, yes…I’ve had little interest in getting into Annie Proulx’s work.
I agree. There has to be dynamics and contrast. When I watched that movie, I had the same feeling, but I honestly couldn’t put it to words quite like this. Now that I’m reading it here, it’s all Eureka!
You’re thoughts on “Time of the Gypsies” for some reason made me think immediately of “La vita รจ bella” (“Life is Beautiful” here in the States) and the way that movie creates the contrast of the direness of the situation with the slapstick of Benigni’s character.
Thanks, ce…and yes, though I haven’t seen Life is Beautiful for at least ten years, I’m sure you are right. The feeling stays when all the details go.