You the Jury: Classic Cinema Explained - TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME

I’d like to introduce Bond and Beyond’s new film debating thread, ‘You the jury’, in which you get to explain the hidden meaning of famous movie scenes. The more pretentious and unlikely the explanation the better.

This week, it’s the funeral in Ken Russell’s Mahler, in which Georgina Hale gets to writhe unerotically with a gramophone horn between her legs:



What is Russell saying here? Was it just a badly disguised excuse to get a highly respected British actress to flash her crotch and tits? Or was it saying something deep and meaningful about Gustav Mahler’s oeuvre? Your views, please.

Next up: we’ll be looking at Leelee Sobieski in Eyes Wide Shut. Klassic Kubrick or thinly veiled sexploitation?

I think it's entirely consistent with Russell's portrayal of Mahler, and what we know of the man himself. A Jewish, obsessive, neurotic, driven by carnal desires. It's arguably Russell's most personal film, and is about as far from a hagiography as one can get.

That sequence also foreshadows the phantasmagorical hallucinations in his terrible ALTERED STATES. Similar technique and imagination on display, but much more substance in this.

Gustav would be proud.

P.S. It's really just a load of pretentious bollocks. j/k

I know little about Mahler's life, and haven't seen this film.

However, I dug this up on Wikipedia:

Quote :

On 9 March 1902 she married Gustav Mahler, who was nineteen years her senior and the director of the Vienna Court Opera. With him she had two daughters, Maria Anna (1902–1907), who died of scarlet fever or diphtheria, and Anna (1904–1988), who later became a sculptor. The terms of Alma's marriage with Gustav were that she would forget her own interest in composing. Artistically stifled herself, she embraced her role as a loving wife and supporter of Gustav's music.

I'm thinking that the scene above has to do with this. While it's a dream sequence, it still incorporates Mahler's death and Mahler's wife. His wife, in the sequence, doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact that he is "alive" in the coffin, and ignores it (when Mahler wakes up, he mentions this to her, as well). After Mahler is cremated, Alma moves around the area, dancing in a skimpy outfit, and kissing many of the guards--possibly a reference to her new sense of freedom, courtesy of her husband's death. There's even a bit where she's gesturing the movements of a conductor. I think this all relates to how her drive to compose music was suppressed, and with her husband dead, she can do as she pleases (even if it includes rubbing her tits against other men). Wiki also notes that she had an affair while married to Mahler, and that could relate to this as well. Also, near the end of the sequence, she's rubbing her crotch the Mahler bust and the portrait; possibly signifying that she's in control now. Finally, there's the gramophone horn. At first, I saw it as a phallic reference, but when the camera moves to the front of it and tracks forward, it turns more into an abyss. This might reference her femininity, and the camera movement/cut symbolizes the transition from Mahler being the creative force in the relationship to Alma being the creative force, due to his death.

... If any of that makes sense.

If not, then Russell just wanted to show some tits and leg-spreading. Nothing wrong with that.

This is a great thread idea, by the way.

That's a pretty good take. I think the gramophone is both a phallic reference, and Alma demonstrating how she's in charge of her own life again, not just her sexuality .Since she had to abandon her career as a composer to tend to Gustav, her suppressed creatives desires are now awakened. She's no longer as slave to his art, himself.

I think this article put it better:

Quote :

KEN RUSSELL’S MAHLER (1974)

This is Ken Russell‘s most personal film and he admirably does Gustav Mahler proud by refusing to treat the composer with phony reverence. Mahler is no plaster saint here. Instead, he is a neurotic, obsessive Jewish composer, a hen-pecked husband and an artist whose drive stems from the flesh.

Unknown to him at the time, actor Robert Powell’s role as the composer was his audition to play one Jesus of Nazareth for Franco Zeffirelli three years later. Powell’s Mahler is not the Mahler of a Mahler cult. Mahler’s writing is clearly an immense struggle, as is his relationship with his wife, family, colleagues and admirers.

Russell pays Mahler homage in not succumbing to the type of pedestrian biopic cultists tend to favor. That type of bio treatment can be seen in Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin (1992), the kind of well-intentioned but hopelessly unimaginative film one expects from a “fan.” Julie Taymor‘s Across the Universe (2007) takes the opposite approach in her stubborn insistence that the Beatles are not sacred and, thus, aptly produced a film as experimental as were the Beatles themselves (she did Stravinsky and Shakespeare the same honors with Oedipus Rex in 1993 and Titus in 1999).
Still from Mahler (1974)
Ever the renegade spirit, Russell, like Taymor, digs into his highly personal interpretation of the artist’s core. Mahler (1974) opens to the first movement of the existential Third Symphony (conducted by Bernard Haitink) juxtaposed against the composer’s hut on a lake bursting into Promethean flames. Mahler’s mummified wife, Alma (the resplendent Georgina Hale) emerges from a cocoon on the beach and crawls on jagged rocks, struggling to free herself of her bindings. Atop a rock is a bust of her husband, which she embraces and kisses. This dream imagery is explained by a terminally ill Mahler to Alma, who is not amused and misinterprets the dream as symbolic of a marital power struggle. Mahler himself fatalistically interprets the dream as one signifying her birth, made possible by his inevitable, impending death. The entire film takes place on Mahler’s final train ride and is interwoven with dreams and flashbacks, piling one existential layer upon another.

Mahler is returning home to Vienna after a disastrous season in at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Mahler was ousted for his unorthodox ways by a Big Apple accustomed to the literalism of a conductor like Toscanini. Mahler, however,is not about to publicly go into the reasons for his return home, especially with a meddlesome reporter who takes the composer’s answers strictly at face value. “Why is everyone so literal these days?” Mahler retorts, dismissing the hack interviewer.

Instead of focusing on documentary points, Russell probes the visions and a past idiosyncratically filtered through Mahlerian hues which are, in turn, filtered through Russell’s equally eccentric interpretations.

Mahler espoused big ideas and when asked his religion, he answers defiantly, “Composer.” Indeed, Russell (himself a convert) probes Mahler’s sell-out conversion to Catholicism; clearly, this was strictly a career move on the composer’s part in a blatantly anti-Semitic society. Russell does not shy away from criticism in this sequence (filmed with silent film aesthetics). The cross of Christ and the star of David are placed with the Nazi swastika in an enshrined cave. Mahler bows before money, and Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis dressed as an S & M Nazi she-devil) who rewards his rejection of Judaism with a roasted (non-kosher) pig, which Mahler bites into with wild abandon. Predictably, Mahler proves to be as agitated a Christian as he was the agitated Jew.

No suffragist, Mahler has been as demanding on his wife as he is on orchestra, insisting that she forgo her own aspirations as a composer and slave in silent servitude to his art, himself, and their children (in that order). This is a hard thing for Alma to forgive; but she also feels her husband’s composition of “Kindertotenlieder” (Songs on the Death of Children) is a case of unforgivably tempting fate that leads to the death of their beloved daughter. Alma is consistently tormented by the image of herself as pedestrian shadow of the genius Gustav. She is left at the bottom of the stairwell as fans adore her returning husband, emphasized by a funeral march movement straight out of Poe. Alma rewards Gustav for all this with an impassioned affair (one of many) and it is a feverishly ill, insecure, humiliated and desperate Mahler here who is trying to win back his wife. Powell and Hale are superb in their roles. Hale is delightfully fickle, icy, frustrated, wayward, and conveys every fiber of a woman loved by the artisans. Powell looks the very image of terminal sickness, especially in a symbolic vignette with the reaper facing him in the form of a female African passenger (in voodoo dress) who likens his music to a dance with death. In one sequence Mahler is depicted as a (Stan Laurel-like) clown, and Russell spares no one in the funeral nightmare, fittingly choreographed to what many consider Mahler’s most surreal work: the Seventh Symphony.

Russell’s film mirrors much in the Seventh. It is a five movement work which begins with an allegro that is part kitsch Viennese waltz, part grotesque military march, energetic and, finally, bittersweet. This opening is followed by the first night music: a child-like walk through the night, replete with cowbells, a giddy dance, and ending with silence. The third movement is the phantasmagoric scherzo; essentially, another night movement that is, by turns, amusing and frightening. A second, amorous night movement follows the scherzo. The Rondo finale is a psychedelic pageant which many critics feel dissipates into complete banality and can be a fitful assertion of life or a dance-til-your-death frenzy.

Naturally, Russell utilizes the scherzo for Mahler’s overheated funeral, brought on by the composer’s heart attack, but the elemental structure of the entire Seventh could be seen as kind of blue print for Russell’s film. Alma mockingly spreads her legs before her dead husband’s coffin and follows that with a nude, coarse grinding strip with Teutonic beefcakes. Her beau, Max (Richard Morant), represents all of her lovers, and he is decked from head to toe as a stormtrooper. Gustav has been buried alive, but this is of no concern to Alma who is lusted after and sensuously pawed over only now, after she has emerged from her husband’s domineering shadow. Mahler is cremated in an oven, but his eyes remain untouched to witness her having the time of her life after his demise, which climaxes with Alma having sex with a gramophone. High art, low camp, sex and death. How better to serve up Gustav Mahler? Mahler’s epic works can be tantalizing, self-absorbed, seemingly disparate mixes of banality and nobility, the profound and the asinine, the intimate and the boisterous, sincere seeking drenched with equally sincere cynicism, and, finally, insatiable curiosity permeated with a whiff of pathos, or, often, deadly bathos.

Composer Arnold Schoenberg hailed the Seventh as the death of romanticism, but he was only half correct. Mahler was still the romantic, and Russell is equally vivid in that depiction as well. Mahler truly loves his wife above all, and he casts a slight smile when he silently looks away from the train (as he often and tellingly does) to observe a couple deep in love at the terminal.

Despite our knowledge of Mahler’s imminent fate; his tumultuous relationship with his wife and his obsession with her many infidelities; his fear of his own mortality; his hallucinatory, self-indulgent expressions; his pathos-laden memories of the past; his insincere conversion; his child-like questioning of existential themes; and his fevered, zealous drive, it is the composer’s buoyant embrace of life that encapsulates Russell’s wonderfully symbolic, baroque vision of an undeniably great and influential artist.

http://366weirdmovies.com/ken-russells-mahler-1974

As you can see, I plagiarized most of my entry from that. Hey, at least I'm honest.

Damn it, Brown, you've convinced me. So maybe Russell is the genius people say he is. Despite The Lair of the White Worm.

Onto the curious case of Stanley Kubrick. What is the purpose of the Rainbow fashion scene?




Some great comments on Youtube. I give you:

Quote :

This whole scene is a blatant reference to the high powered paedo's operating in Hollywood and the geopolitical, blackmail scene.

Quote :

A lot of young ladies would have killed to be in Leelee's place in this... what is our society coming to...

Quote :

There are no metaphors in this movie - its based on fact - it's the film that got Kubrick killed...

And my favourite:

Quote :

This scene is about Zbigniew Brzezinski (hardcore high level elitist foreign policy satanist) prostituting his daughter out to Deng Xiaoping and his associates during his visit to China in the 70's. I suspected this after deciphering the symbology of the film, and I got a confirmation when I read that Mika recounts in her autobiography that she "spilled caviar" on deng's lap!

Note the Chinese food, and the similarity between the names Brzezinski and Sobieski..

Or could it be Kubrick had his own agenda? :suspect:

If you wanna laugh, look no further than critical readings of Kubrick films.

What was the good article on EYES WIDE SHUT you once posted, Harms?

Film scholarship. Where it turns out every character in cinema is gay.

Sharky wrote:

What was the good article on EYES WIDE SHUT you once posted, Harms?

Lee Siegel gets EYES WIDE SHUT pretty right in his article for Harper's. Forgive the poor formatting of the article (somebody re-typed the article, and did a shoddy job of it, but it's the only place where I can find the full article online).

This thread is not intended for general discussion of a film. We already have plenty of those. It's to discuss specific - often absurd - scenes selected one at a time by members.

It seems nobody wants to tackle the silly, bizarre and potentially inflammatory Rainbow Fashions scene from Eyes Wide Shut, and that's fair enough. Find another strange scene on youtube and post it here, but take the general film stuff elsewhere.

Erica Ambler wrote:

It seems nobody wants to tackle the silly, bizarre and potentially inflammatory Rainbow Fashions scene from Eyes Wide Shut, and that's fair enough.

I'm not sure there is a way to talk about that scene without considering the whole of the film. In the above article, Siegel writes, "every woman Bill meets is a version of Alice," and I'm inclined to agree. The scene, as is the rest of the film, is built out of dream logic, hence its sheer weirdness, but the girl at Rainbow Fashions is primarily the shadow of the gleefully promiscuous Alice that Bill imagines in the wake of Alice's confession.

Well, the girl at Rainbow Fashions is a child. Unless you're saying that the scene is an analogy - for example, promiscuity is irresponsible, and children are by definition not responsible for their actions - then I don't really see what that has to do with Alice.

I mean, if you're suggesting that the child represents promiscuity, then what does EWS's adult prostitute represent - innocence? Back to the drawing board, I think.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Well, the girl at Rainbow Fashions is a child.

Yes, but she's a still a randy XX chromosome. Hence the parallels to Alice in Bill's subconscious.

I think you could draw an interesting parallel though between the two examples you've posted. Alma is sexually and artistically awakened after Mahler's death, and flaunts her her new found freedom in Gustav's face, portrait, and coffin etc. The young girl is Bill's dream state representation of the newly liberated Alice - our dreams being a place where our inhibitions are often absent, and social taboos broken.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Back to the drawing board, I think.

Look, I doubt any of us here can outdo those Youtube loony toons, if that's what you want. We've given you the most plausible answer, though unfortunately it's a tad dull.

I'll choose a scene later this evening.

Sharky wrote:

I'll choose a scene later this evening.

No Star Wars or Star Trek, please. Keep them in their ghettos.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Well, the girl at Rainbow Fashions is a child.

I'm not sure "child" is the right word.

Erica Ambler wrote:

I mean, if you're suggesting that the child represents promiscuity, then what does EWS's adult prostitute represent - innocence?

They're all different aspects of promiscuity, different caricatures of Alice. And I'm not suggesting we read the film allegorically. We should read psychologically, as a window into Bill's mind, which does not always create a one-to-one correspondence between image and meaning. Wires often get crossed, so to speak.

Harmsway wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Well, the girl at Rainbow Fashions is a child.

I'm not sure "child" is the right word.

What would you call her then?

Erica Ambler wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Well, the girl at Rainbow Fashions is a child.

I'm not sure "child" is the right word.

What would you call her then?

Teenage girl.

The age of consent in New York is 17.

Erica Ambler wrote:

The age of consent in New York is 17.

Yes, but in my book, anyone 13-19 is a teenager. I'd never call a sexually promiscuous teenage girl a child, even though she still may be terribly naive.

Well, I can see where this is headed, so I'll try and steer into less dangerous waters.

What purpose does the scene serve in EWS? And why haven't you posted another scene anyway? :x

The latest scene is from Czech director Jan Švankmajer's 1988 stop-motion + live action masterpiece ALICE, loosely based on Lewis Caroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

“Alice thought to herself, ‘Now you will see a film made for children… perhaps. But—I nearly forgot—you must close your eyes. Otherwise, you won’t see anything.’”–Opening narration to ALICE

Some weird imagery here - i.e. the friendly skeletal animals.

Sohndesnacht wrote:

This kind of reminds me the invation of Poland during WWII :T

Heavenly Creatures. From LOTR directer Peter Jackson..

In this scene one of the 2 chacters dream about walking Mud people and thinks she be raped whyle she having (her first) sex experience with a male who she aloud to have sex with her.

Is this dead?

Sharky wrote:

The latest scene is from Czech director Jan Švankmajer's 1988 stop-motion + live action masterpiece ALICE, loosely based on Lewis Caroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

“Alice thought to herself, ‘Now you will see a film made for children… perhaps. But—I nearly forgot—you must close your eyes. Otherwise, you won’t see anything.’”–Opening narration to ALICE

Some weird imagery here - i.e. the friendly skeletal animals.

Sohndesnacht wrote:

This kind of reminds me the invation of Poland during WWII :T

I saw this as a child and had nightmares about it...

I'm fond of the literary Alice, but completely out of my depth here. That may be because I have to be dragged kicking and screaming to children's films. Which is fitting as the kids are usually kicking and screaming when I get to the cinema.

My only observation, probably completely irrelevant, is that skeletons are not sinister in all cultures. Calacas for instance.