Kudos to the Producer’s Committee

Themes and memes

 

When we film club members get together casually for coffee and conversation, the discussion of movies easily turns to what one or another thinks a film was about, the central theme or main point.  Some of us have often noticed that, in the three films chosen for our month’s viewing and discussion by a committee of three “Producers,” a common theme has emerged or can be drawn out of them through our inquiry and analysis.  It is quite amazing at times because the films usually have not been picked on the principle of a common theme.  Lately, I am beginning to sense a thematic commonality that may be there consciously in the Producers Committee’s choices.  The choices are all admirable and it’s obvious you Producers have put concerted effort into making them, for which you deserve our thanks.  April’s discussion night was scintillating, going much further, I felt, beneath the surface layers of interest than we usually do. 

 

Last month we viewed Campbell Scott’s 2003 release Off the Map, Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1993), and the Academy Awards winner in the Foreign Language category, The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, released 2006) by the magnificently-named, new director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.  On the surface none of the three seem to have much in common—one German set in 1980s East Berlin, another British set in 1990s Ireland and London, and the third in 1970s New Mexico, off in a desert location. Each of the films, very different from one another in conception and representation of late 20^th century cultures, has much to say about dramatic, significant changes in characters’ lives, the rites of passage or transformations from one state of being into another.  In each of the films the change in characters is one of marked improvement or growth, from a static, depressive condition to one more vital, dynamic, and sensate, although in varying degrees of  coming to one’s senses.  For instance, in Lives of Others, the change of heart in the Spartan Stasi agent Gert Wiesler (played by sober-faced Ulrich Mühe) is less obviously life-enhancing than in, say, Stephen Rea’s Fergus in Crying Game or Sam Elliott’s Charlie Grodon and Jim True-Frost’s William Gibbs in Off the Map.  Also noticeable is the outsider nature of the main characters, people living on the margins, beyond the pall of ordinary citizens’ customs.  Many movies deal with marginalized characters and extraordinary life situations; therefore, it’s not saying much to explain that a film’s about outsiders.  Explaining a theme would have to include what a story reveals about such characters and their experiences in facing life’s trials and tribulations. 

 

In the three films mentioned, a subtle, unconscious idea might have been at work among the Producers. Or perhaps this was a real fluke and the digging we do in our analysis brought out the thematic element.  Of course, something more has to be described with some elaboration in each of the transformations of character to say how thematically salient the changes are for the meanings and perhaps purposes the filmmakers and writers intended.  It is hardly a statement of theme to say: This film’s about character transformation, a metamorphosis, a change of heart, etc.  Seldom does a single word or phrase explain theme.  The conditions under which and actions through which changes take place are important for a full statement of what the theme is, not to mention who or what the catalyst for change is. 

 

This month’s choices (May 2007) are also evocative of a common thematic element:  Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1970),  John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966).  Without much thought, the importance of spying or surveillance is obvious in the three of them.  Exactly what discoveries are made through different kinds of spying open each film up to a different expression of the over-arching theme.  It seems quite obvious, following on The Lives of Others, an influential meme was working in the Producers’ minds; something was elicited by that powerful German film.  We Americans live in times when knowledge of our government’s spying and intrusion into citizen’s lives has been revealed.  With today’s technologies it is ever so much easier for some agency, legitimate or not, to gather information that could be the undoing of one’s career and life.  With this comparative condition brought to light by von Donnersmarck’s brilliant story of the cold Orwellian world in Lives, the choices listed above look like direct corollaries drawn from fascination with different means of surveillance and the nature of discoveries.  The thoughtfulness of Tacoma Film Club’s Producers Committee is much appreciated by me and I’d imagine many others could find praise for the serious consideration you have put into decision-making.  You are helping us all to dig deeper into the enjoyment and meaning of films and at the same time elucidating diverse cultural attitudes through which we can discover common traits.  I can’t wait for our discussion on May 16^th, 2007 at Kings Books.

 

David