Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
A veil to conceal and to beautify, a frame to display, a face just beyond touch, a flirtation, a seduction, a vision and ineffable emotion through a glass darkly, a mystery with a hint of danger...
Apocalypse Now Redux
Medea (Lars Von Trier) - New Wife
Let the Right One In - Something strange and fascinating
Romeo + Juliet - Through an aquarium
Superman Returns - X Ray view : Lois in the lift
Tree of Life
What stands between two people can be symbolic, too, of a witch's web of seduction (Day of Wrath), of the natural and pure (Romeo + Juliet). These flimsy walls may be used to represent an infinitesimal but often uncrossable distance to the magical other. Can we ever fully understand someone else?
Interesting motif, and you've managed to pick a few of the "veil" moments I'd have noted, myself. The "Medea" mention is especially nice, one of my favorite scenes of Von Trier's career, an unexpectedly tender, intimate and yet also rather cruel and dangerous, fro what it leads to. The "Superman Returns" one is also an interesting find.
ReplyDeleteSome of the others I'd think of-- things like "Star Wars" and "Evangelion" are sort of cliche for me at this point, but my mind immediately goes to the laser-gateways of the duel at the end of TPM, where the reddish shieldings take on the appearance of film-grain in front of the Jedi and Sith's faces (one could also say the same for the translucent holograms throughout the series). In NGE, you also have a fine motif of "shooting" through the screens the various NERV personel look at through the battles, their faces obscured through the HUD display.
I wonder if it's a little too obvious/not exactly what you have in mind, but there's also the well-worn trope of setting a scene in a prison and shooting through the bars. "Manhunter" has that cool bit where Will Graham goes to see Lecter, and it looks like they're both in their own cells.
A favorite image of mine from "American Psycho"-- Patrick Bateman sitting in the back seat of a New York taxi-cab, his face shot through both the windshield of the car and the plastic window between himself and the backseat, rendering the yuppie/killer's face nothing but a blur in the sea of skyscrapers.
There's also a backseat image like this in "Se7en", where the villainous John Doe is shot through the grill of the police-car's bars, engaging a battle of words with the detectives en route to the desert.
Bob,
ReplyDeleteYour examples are of a different nature to what I was concentrating on here but the use of a veil in The Phantom Menace is a good one.
There needn't be any particular reason for putting something between us and the character (and there is a distinction to be made between the veil being for another character to see through and not just the audience). I can see symbolic reasons for doing this in Neon Genesis Evangelion but, when it comes down to it, it also makes a composition more interesting regardless.
I don't know if this is exactly like the image you mention in American Psycho but there are many many films that shoot a character in the back seat from outside the car with neon reflections of skyscrapers sliding over their faces. It seems to be used especially to emphasise melancholy, of time passing, things being lost. Or, upon arrival in the big city, a bright-light fascination at the shiny and new.
Thanks Bob.
I understand what you're getting at with the "veil" being a romantic cinematic gesture for the characters, which is obviously something that isn't entirely present in the examples I have above. There is a kind of intimacy between enemies, though, and I find it interesting how often the use of these kinds of screens/shields/curtains are put up between adversaries. Sometimes in the same work you can find love-interests separated in the same way (it happens between Shinji and all of the girls in "Evangelion").
ReplyDeleteThough he doesn't use them in quite this way all the time, I wonder if this helps inform why Lynch is so obsessed with curtains in his work. Yes, they're clearly a theatrical trope, but very often they're also emblems of privacy, of a kind of voyeurism. You pull away the curtains to see what's behind, what's forbidden like the "Wizard" of Oz or the cardboard cutout of "Dr. Mabuse". The things hidden by curtains are often illusions, especially romantic ones. Henry of "Eraserhead" dreams of the Girl in the Radiator; Jeffrey Beaumont hides in Dorothy Vallen's closet and spies on her through the venetian-blind slats; Cooper dreams of Laura Palmer and becomes lost in the red-curtained rooms of the Black Lodge. In every case there's an element of eroticism and danger, something we shouldn't see but want to.
With "American Psycho", what interests me is more the screen that blocks his face from us, the viewers. It has a slight fit into your motif, because he's on a date with a girl, but one that he really couldn't care less about the only girls he cares about being the ones he kills, I suppose. That reminds me of one of the classic examples of romantic/adversarial veils in cinema-- "Mother" pulling away the shower-curtains in "Psycho".
"There is a kind of intimacy between enemies, though, and I find it interesting how often the use of these kinds of screens/shields/curtains are put up between adversaries."
ReplyDeleteYes, I can see that.
Maybe these barriers through which a gaze can pass represent the greater barriers that separate the characters, barriers often unable to hold back love.
I like what you say regarding Psycho and David Lynch's films. I like this point too: "The things hidden by curtains are often illusions, especially romantic ones."
When it comes to intimacy and separation in one, and of the sharing of a sworn secret, how about the real-life situation of a church confessional which is used to various, especially erotic, effect in fiction and film. Forbidden and yet so close.
"Maybe these barriers through which a gaze can pass represent the greater barriers that separate the characters, barriers often unable to hold back love."
ReplyDeleteI meant "barrier often STILL unable to hold back love"
A propos of the Confessional, I have seen quite a few films where it is the place in which a long-hunted criminal is finally caught and/or shot.
Ah, the confessional booth, good one. A good lapsed Catholic like me should've thought of that. I'd like to think that there's something of a motif to be found there, as well. The first thing that comes to mind is Charlie Brown sitting at Lucy's psychiatrist booth for a nickel.
ReplyDeleteThe "barriers through which a gaze can pass" is something you see a lot in sci-fi, and is something that gets taken advantage of as an external-expression of emotional barriers a little too infrequently. It's a great metaphor.
"The first thing that comes to mind is Charlie Brown sitting at Lucy's psychiatrist booth for a nickel."
ReplyDeleteI'm quite unfamiliar with Peanuts even though I read a bit of it when I was younger.
"...is something that gets taken advantage of as an external-expression of emotional barriers a little too infrequently. It's a great metaphor."
Yes, it can be.