1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,074
Subtitles downloaded from www.OpenSubtitles.org

2
00:00:08,100 --> 00:00:12,267
The problem for us is not,
"Are our desires satisfied or not?"

3
00:00:14,833 --> 00:00:17,666
The problem is,
"How do we know what we desire?"

4
00:00:17,733 --> 00:00:22,600
There is nothing spontaneous,
nothing natural, about human desires.

5
00:00:24,567 --> 00:00:26,667
Our desires are artificial.

6
00:00:27,200 --> 00:00:29,633
We have to be <i>taught</i> to desire.

7
00:00:30,567 --> 00:00:33,233
Cinema is the ultimate pervert art.

8
00:00:34,300 --> 00:00:38,400
It doesn't <i>give</i> you what you desire,
it <i>tells</i> you how to desire.

9
00:00:41,100 --> 00:00:45,900
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

10
00:00:48,200 --> 00:00:50,900
Presented by
philosopher and psychoanalyst

11
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:53,100
Slavoj Žižek

12
00:01:08,139 --> 00:01:12,973
Oh, I do like you, but it just isn't good enough.

13
00:01:18,872 --> 00:01:22,372
Oh, I forgot.
Your mother asked me up for supper.

14
00:01:22,439 --> 00:01:25,705
Okay. Bring some ice cream with you, will you?

15
00:01:25,806 --> 00:01:28,306
Sure. What kind do you want,
chocolate or vanilla?

16
00:01:28,405 --> 00:01:29,905
- Chocolate.
- Okay.

17
00:01:30,006 --> 00:01:33,673
What we get
in this wonderful clip from <i>Possessed</i>

18
00:01:33,738 --> 00:01:38,639
is commentary on the magic art of cinema
within a movie.

19
00:01:39,473 --> 00:01:43,806
We have an ordinary working-class girl,
living in a drab, small provincial town.

20
00:01:43,939 --> 00:01:48,172
All of a sudden she finds herself
in a situation where reality itself

21
00:01:48,271 --> 00:01:51,539
reproduces the magic cinematic experience.

22
00:01:51,972 --> 00:01:57,639
She approaches the rail,
the train is passing, and it is <i>as if</i>

23
00:01:58,306 --> 00:02:03,472
what in reality is just a person
standing near a slowly passing train

24
00:02:04,539 --> 00:02:10,105
turns into a viewer
observing the magic of the screen.

25
00:02:51,837 --> 00:02:53,271
Have a drink?

26
00:02:55,572 --> 00:02:57,937
Oh, don't go away. Looking in?

27
00:02:59,104 --> 00:03:01,238
Wrong way. Get in and look out.

28
00:03:01,771 --> 00:03:05,037
We get a very real, ordinary scene

29
00:03:05,104 --> 00:03:08,738
onto which the heroine's inner space, as it were,

30
00:03:08,837 --> 00:03:11,138
her fantasy space is projected,

31
00:03:11,238 --> 00:03:16,072
so that, although all reality is simply there,
the train, the girl,

32
00:03:16,138 --> 00:03:20,305
part of reality in her perception
and in our viewer's perception

33
00:03:20,371 --> 00:03:25,805
is, as it were, elevated to the magic level,
becomes the screen of her dreams.

34
00:03:26,170 --> 00:03:28,704
This is cinematic art at its purest.

35
00:03:35,238 --> 00:03:39,471
This is your last chance.
After this there is no turning back.

36
00:03:40,270 --> 00:03:43,138
You take the blue pill, the story ends.

37
00:03:43,738 --> 00:03:46,971
You wake up in your bed
and believe whatever you want to believe.

38
00:03:47,071 --> 00:03:50,037
You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland

39
00:03:50,905 --> 00:03:53,871
and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

40
00:04:01,454 --> 00:04:05,020
But the choice between the blue and the red pill

41
00:04:05,121 --> 00:04:08,920
is not really a choice between illusion and reality.

42
00:04:09,321 --> 00:04:12,920
Of course, the Matrix is a machine for fictions,

43
00:04:12,988 --> 00:04:18,019
but these are fictions
which already structure our reality.

44
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:23,721
If you take away from our reality
the symbolic fictions that regulate it,

45
00:04:23,787 --> 00:04:25,753
you lose reality itself.

46
00:04:26,253 --> 00:04:30,420
I want a <i>third</i> pill. So what is the third pill?

47
00:04:31,854 --> 00:04:36,454
Definitely not some kind of
transcendental pill which enables a fake,

48
00:04:36,554 --> 00:04:41,454
fast-food religious experience,
but a pill that would enable me

49
00:04:41,754 --> 00:04:45,521
to perceive not the reality behind the illusion

50
00:04:45,587 --> 00:04:50,087
but the reality in illusion itself.

51
00:04:50,421 --> 00:04:56,987
If something gets too traumatic, too violent,
even too filled with enjoyment,

52
00:04:57,854 --> 00:05:02,820
it shatters the coordinates of our reality.
We have to fictionalise it.

53
00:05:21,187 --> 00:05:23,987
The first key to horror films is to say,

54
00:05:24,087 --> 00:05:28,354
"Let's imagine the same story
but without the horror element."

55
00:05:28,654 --> 00:05:31,387
This gives us, I think, the background.

56
00:05:34,820 --> 00:05:36,887
We're in the middle of Bodega Bay,

57
00:05:36,987 --> 00:05:40,220
where the action of Hitchcock's <i>Birds</i> takes place.

58
00:05:48,087 --> 00:05:54,387
Birds is a film about a young, rich, socialite girl

59
00:05:54,487 --> 00:05:57,620
from San Francisco who falls in love with a guy,

60
00:05:58,820 --> 00:06:00,487
goes after him to Bodega Bay,

61
00:06:00,553 --> 00:06:03,987
where she discovers
that he lives with his mother.

62
00:06:04,420 --> 00:06:07,386
Of course, it's none of my business,
but when you bring a girl like that...

63
00:06:07,453 --> 00:06:09,153
- Darling?
- Yes?

64
00:06:09,453 --> 00:06:12,553
I think I can handle Melanie Daniels by myself.

65
00:06:13,053 --> 00:06:16,586
Well, as long as you know what you want, Mitch.

66
00:06:18,486 --> 00:06:19,853
I know exactly what I want.

67
00:06:19,920 --> 00:06:23,653
And then, there is the standard oedipal imbroglio

68
00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:26,386
of incestuous tension between mother and son,

69
00:06:26,486 --> 00:06:30,720
the son split between
his possessive mother and the intrusive girl.

70
00:06:31,086 --> 00:06:34,053
- What's the matter with them?
- What's the matter with all the birds?

71
00:06:34,153 --> 00:06:37,320
- Where do you want this coffee?
- Here on the table, honey.

72
00:06:37,386 --> 00:06:39,020
Hurry up with yours, Mitch.

73
00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:41,653
I'm sure Miss Daniels wants to be on her way.

74
00:06:41,753 --> 00:06:44,086
I think you ought to stay the night, Melanie.

75
00:06:44,219 --> 00:06:46,219
We have an extra room upstairs and everything.

76
00:06:46,419 --> 00:06:50,486
The big question about The Birds,
of course, is the stupid, obvious one,

77
00:06:50,619 --> 00:06:52,853
"Why do the birds attack?"

78
00:06:54,286 --> 00:06:55,553
Mitch...

79
00:07:01,119 --> 00:07:06,986
It is not enough to say that the birds
are part of the natural set-up of reality.

80
00:07:07,153 --> 00:07:11,053
It is rather as if a foreign dimension intrudes

81
00:07:11,153 --> 00:07:14,419
that literally tears apart reality.

82
00:07:17,519 --> 00:07:21,419
We humans are not naturally born into reality.

83
00:07:21,486 --> 00:07:25,719
In order for us to act as normal people
who interact with other people

84
00:07:25,786 --> 00:07:27,986
who live in the space of social reality,

85
00:07:28,086 --> 00:07:31,186
many things should happen.
Like, we should be properly installed

86
00:07:31,286 --> 00:07:33,286
within the symbolic order and so on.

87
00:07:33,352 --> 00:07:38,619
When this, our proper dwelling
within a symbolic space, is disturbed,

88
00:07:38,719 --> 00:07:40,219
reality disintegrates.

89
00:07:43,919 --> 00:07:46,785
So, to propose the psychoanalytic formula,

90
00:07:47,619 --> 00:07:52,185
the violent attacks of the birds
are obviously explosive outbursts

91
00:07:52,285 --> 00:07:55,919
of maternal superego,
of the maternal figure preventing,

92
00:07:56,052 --> 00:07:58,985
trying to prevent sexual relationship.

93
00:07:59,885 --> 00:08:03,119
So the birds are raw, incestuous energy.

94
00:08:05,685 --> 00:08:08,485
What am I doing? I'm sorry, now I got it.

95
00:08:15,119 --> 00:08:19,219
My God, I'm thinking like Melanie.
You know what I'm thinking now?

96
00:08:20,085 --> 00:08:22,552
"I want to fuck Mitch."
That's what she was thinking.

97
00:08:22,618 --> 00:08:25,285
No. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

98
00:08:25,652 --> 00:08:29,485
Oh my God, I got this spontaneous
confusion of directions.

99
00:08:39,452 --> 00:08:40,652
Mrs Bates.

100
00:08:54,151 --> 00:08:58,618
We are in the cellar of the mother's house
from <i>Psycho</i>.

101
00:08:59,285 --> 00:09:03,685
What's so interesting is that
the very disposition of mother's house...

102
00:09:05,051 --> 00:09:09,051
Events took place in it at three levels,

103
00:09:10,151 --> 00:09:13,485
first floor, ground floor, basement.

104
00:09:14,218 --> 00:09:19,618
It is as if they reproduce the three levels
of human subjectivity.

105
00:09:21,518 --> 00:09:23,451
Ground floor is <i>ego</i>.

106
00:09:23,685 --> 00:09:26,584
Norman behaves there as a normal son,

107
00:09:27,484 --> 00:09:30,518
whatever remains of his normal ego taking over.

108
00:09:31,684 --> 00:09:33,684
Up there, it's the <i>superego</i>.

109
00:09:35,818 --> 00:09:38,484
Maternal superego, because the dead mother

110
00:09:38,551 --> 00:09:40,884
is basically a figure of superego.

111
00:09:40,951 --> 00:09:44,818
No, Mother. I'm gonna bring something up.

112
00:09:45,718 --> 00:09:49,318
I am sorry, boy,
but you do manage to look ludicrous

113
00:09:49,384 --> 00:09:52,218
when you give me orders.
- Please, Mother.

114
00:09:52,318 --> 00:09:55,151
No, I will not hide in the fruit cellar.

115
00:09:56,418 --> 00:09:58,451
You think I'm fruity, huh?

116
00:09:58,751 --> 00:10:02,717
And down in the cellar, it's the <i>id</i>,

117
00:10:03,517 --> 00:10:07,317
the reservoir of these illicit drives.

118
00:10:08,684 --> 00:10:13,917
So we can then interpret the event
in the middle of the film,

119
00:10:13,984 --> 00:10:18,084
when Norman carries the mother

120
00:10:18,151 --> 00:10:22,851
or, as we learn at the end,
mother's mummy, corpse, skeleton,

121
00:10:22,951 --> 00:10:25,317
from the first floor to the cellar.

122
00:10:25,417 --> 00:10:28,851
You won't do it again. Not ever again.
Now get out.

123
00:10:29,851 --> 00:10:32,951
- I told you to get out, boy.
- I'll carry you, Mother.

124
00:10:33,017 --> 00:10:37,850
It's as if he is transposing her in his own mind

125
00:10:37,950 --> 00:10:43,184
as the psychic agency from superego to id.

126
00:10:44,850 --> 00:10:47,750
Put me down. Put me down.
I can walk on my own...

127
00:10:47,850 --> 00:10:52,384
Of course, the lesson of it is the old lesson
elaborated already by Freud,

128
00:10:52,484 --> 00:10:56,350
that superego and id are deeply connected.

129
00:10:56,584 --> 00:10:59,584
The mother complains first,
as a figure of authority,

130
00:10:59,650 --> 00:11:03,184
"How can you be doing this to me?
Aren't you ashamed?

131
00:11:03,250 --> 00:11:08,417
"This is a fruit cellar." And then,
mother immediately turns into obscenity,

132
00:11:08,483 --> 00:11:10,583
"Do you think I'm fruity?"

133
00:11:10,650 --> 00:11:15,283
Superego is not an ethical agency.
Superego is an obscene agency,

134
00:11:15,383 --> 00:11:19,817
bombarding us with impossible orders,
laughing at us,

135
00:11:19,917 --> 00:11:24,583
when, of course, we cannot ever fulfil its demand.

136
00:11:25,117 --> 00:11:28,517
The more we obey it, the more it makes us guilty.

137
00:11:28,817 --> 00:11:33,450
There is always some aspect
of an obscene madman

138
00:11:33,550 --> 00:11:35,950
in the agency of the superego.

139
00:11:43,116 --> 00:11:47,250
We often find references to psychoanalysis

140
00:11:47,583 --> 00:11:51,283
embodied in the very relations between persons.

141
00:11:52,250 --> 00:11:54,916
For example, the three Marx Brothers,

142
00:11:54,983 --> 00:11:58,716
Groucho, Chico, Harpo.

143
00:11:58,983 --> 00:12:02,150
It's clear that Groucho, the most popular one,

144
00:12:02,216 --> 00:12:06,583
with his nervous hyper-activity, is superego.

145
00:12:06,650 --> 00:12:09,650
Well, that covers a lot of ground.
Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself.

146
00:12:09,750 --> 00:12:11,483
You better beat it.
I hear they're gonna tear you down

147
00:12:11,583 --> 00:12:13,216
and put up an office building
where you're standing.

148
00:12:13,283 --> 00:12:15,916
You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get
a taxi, you can leave in a huff.

149
00:12:16,016 --> 00:12:17,849
If that's too soon,
you can leave in a minute and a huff.

150
00:12:17,949 --> 00:12:19,849
You know you haven't stopped talking
since I came here?

151
00:12:20,083 --> 00:12:25,349
Chico, the rational guy, egotistic,
calculating all the time, is ego.

152
00:12:26,583 --> 00:12:30,583
Chicolini, you're charged with high treason,
and if found guilty, you'll be shot.

153
00:12:30,683 --> 00:12:32,849
- I object.
- Oh, <i>you</i> object?

154
00:12:32,949 --> 00:12:36,016
- On what grounds?
- I couldn't think of anything else to say.

155
00:12:36,116 --> 00:12:37,316
Objection sustained.

156
00:12:37,383 --> 00:12:42,983
And, the weirdest of them all, Harpo,
the mute guy, he doesn't talk.

157
00:12:43,283 --> 00:12:49,282
Freud said that drives are silent.
He doesn't talk. He, of course, is id.

158
00:12:49,916 --> 00:12:51,582
Who are you guys?

159
00:12:52,916 --> 00:12:54,416
What are you doing in my room?

160
00:12:54,516 --> 00:12:57,249
That's my partner.
But he no speak. He's dumb and deaf.

161
00:13:01,016 --> 00:13:03,982
The id in all its radical ambiguity.

162
00:13:09,249 --> 00:13:12,049
Namely, what is so weird
about the Harpo character

163
00:13:12,149 --> 00:13:16,849
is that he's childishly innocent,
just striving for pleasure,

164
00:13:16,949 --> 00:13:19,982
likes children, plays with children and so on.

165
00:13:20,315 --> 00:13:26,115
But, at the same time,
possessed by some kind of

166
00:13:26,249 --> 00:13:30,115
primordial evil, aggressive all the time.

167
00:13:30,182 --> 00:13:34,782
And this unique combination
of utter corruption and innocence

168
00:13:34,882 --> 00:13:37,515
is what the id is about.

169
00:13:37,782 --> 00:13:39,949
Get off there. Get off that table.

170
00:13:41,315 --> 00:13:43,315
What do you think this is here, anyway?

171
00:13:44,482 --> 00:13:45,549
Put that down.

172
00:13:45,615 --> 00:13:47,449
- Lunatic!
- Stop it.

173
00:13:47,549 --> 00:13:49,082
Stop that, here!

174
00:13:49,182 --> 00:13:51,215
- Hey, you want to break that?
- Get him out of here.

175
00:13:51,282 --> 00:13:52,415
Here, let it alone.

176
00:13:53,415 --> 00:13:56,282
- Dr Klein?
- Yes, I'm Dr Klein. This is Dr Taney.

177
00:13:56,382 --> 00:13:57,815
- How do you do?
- I'm Sharon. Things have gotten worse

178
00:13:57,915 --> 00:13:59,482
since I phoned you.
I think you better come upstairs.

179
00:13:59,582 --> 00:14:01,815
- Is she having spasms again?
- Yeah, but they've gotten violent.

180
00:14:01,915 --> 00:14:02,948
Did you give her the medication?

181
00:14:03,082 --> 00:14:08,348
Voice is not an organic part of a human body.

182
00:14:08,715 --> 00:14:12,782
It's coming from somewhere
in between your body.

183
00:14:13,382 --> 00:14:15,215
- Mother, please!
- Mrs MacNeil, this is Dr Taney.

184
00:14:15,315 --> 00:14:17,448
- Please, Mother, make it stop!
- What is it? What's happening?

185
00:14:17,548 --> 00:14:21,148
- It's burning! It's burning!
- Do something, Doctor. Please, help her!

186
00:14:21,215 --> 00:14:23,148
Whenever we talk to another person,

187
00:14:23,215 --> 00:14:27,248
there is always this minimum
of ventriloquist effect,

188
00:14:27,315 --> 00:14:30,348
as if some foreign power took possession.

189
00:14:31,381 --> 00:14:33,215
Let the enemy have no power over her.

190
00:14:33,315 --> 00:14:35,148
And the son of iniquity be powerless to harm her.

191
00:14:35,248 --> 00:14:38,548
Your mother sucks cocks in hell,
Karras, you faithless swine!

192
00:14:41,081 --> 00:14:46,448
Remember that at the beginning of the film,
this was a beautiful young girl.

193
00:14:46,915 --> 00:14:49,481
How did she become a monster that we see?

194
00:14:49,548 --> 00:14:54,048
By being possessed, but who possessed her?

195
00:14:58,381 --> 00:15:02,514
A voice. A voice in its obscene dimensions.

196
00:15:04,581 --> 00:15:08,148
See the cross of the Lord.
Begone, you hostile powers.

197
00:15:08,648 --> 00:15:13,381
The first big film
about this traumatic dimension of the voice,

198
00:15:13,848 --> 00:15:18,748
the voice which freely floats around
and is a traumatic presence, feared,

199
00:15:18,848 --> 00:15:23,514
the ultimate moment or object of anxiety
which distorts reality,

200
00:15:23,848 --> 00:15:30,281
was in '31, in Germany,
Fritz Lang's <i>The Testament of Dr Mabuse</i>.

201
00:15:30,748 --> 00:15:33,014
You and the woman

202
00:15:33,114 --> 00:15:37,147
will not leave this room alive.

203
00:15:37,381 --> 00:15:38,447
Monster!

204
00:15:39,847 --> 00:15:41,447
Stop, please!

205
00:15:52,897 --> 00:15:55,897
We do not see Mabuse till the end of the film.

206
00:15:56,364 --> 00:15:58,131
He is just a voice.

207
00:16:00,697 --> 00:16:05,797
You will not leave this room alive.

208
00:16:07,597 --> 00:16:11,430
And to redeem through your son,
who lives and reigns with you

209
00:16:11,530 --> 00:16:15,630
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

210
00:16:15,964 --> 00:16:17,830
- Amen.
- Good Lord, hear my prayer.

211
00:16:17,397 --> 00:16:21,597
So, the problem is, which is why
we have the two priests at her side,

212
00:16:21,664 --> 00:16:26,064
how to get rid of this intruder,
of this alien intruder.

213
00:16:26,797 --> 00:16:31,697
It is as if we are expecting
the famous scene from Ridley Scott's <i>Alien</i>

214
00:16:31,797 --> 00:16:33,464
to repeat itself.

215
00:16:45,397 --> 00:16:51,163
As if we just wait for some terrifying, alien,

216
00:16:51,230 --> 00:16:54,363
evil-looking, small animal to jump out.

217
00:17:00,030 --> 00:17:05,630
There is a fundamental imbalance,
gap, between our psychic energy,

218
00:17:05,694 --> 00:17:10,930
called by Freud "libido," this endless undead

219
00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:14,896
energy which persists beyond life and death,

220
00:17:14,963 --> 00:17:20,430
and the poor, finite, mortal reality of our bodies.

221
00:17:28,663 --> 00:17:33,063
This is not just the pathology
of being possessed by ghosts.

222
00:17:35,863 --> 00:17:40,896
The lesson that we should learn
and that the movies try to avoid

223
00:17:41,063 --> 00:17:45,696
is that we ourselves are the aliens controlling our bodies.

224
00:17:45,954 --> 00:17:50,954
Humanity means that the aliens are
controlling our animal bodies.

225
00:17:55,363 --> 00:18:00,996
Our ego, our psychic agency, is an alien force,

226
00:18:01,063 --> 00:18:03,563
distorting, controlling our body.

227
00:18:05,229 --> 00:18:11,529
Nobody was as fully aware of the properly
traumatic dimension of the human voice,

228
00:18:11,829 --> 00:18:16,329
the human voice
not as the sublime, ethereal medium

229
00:18:16,429 --> 00:18:19,129
for expressing the depth of human subjectivity,

230
00:18:19,196 --> 00:18:22,362
but the human voice as a foreign intruder.

231
00:18:22,696 --> 00:18:25,962
Nobody was more aware
of this than Charlie Chaplin.

232
00:18:47,762 --> 00:18:51,896
Chaplin himself plays in the film two persons,

233
00:18:52,162 --> 00:18:54,695
the good, small, Jewish barber

234
00:18:57,962 --> 00:18:59,929
and his evil double,

235
00:19:02,429 --> 00:19:05,662
Hynkel, dictator. Hitler, of course.

236
00:19:06,362 --> 00:19:08,595
- Come on. Leave me alone.
- Why, you...

237
00:19:12,895 --> 00:19:14,129
He bit my finger.

238
00:19:15,795 --> 00:19:20,529
The Jewish barber, the tramp figure,
is of course the figure of silent cinema.

239
00:19:20,929 --> 00:19:23,995
Silent figures are basically
like figures in the cartoon.

240
00:19:24,095 --> 00:19:27,362
They don't know death.
They don't know sexuality even.

241
00:19:27,462 --> 00:19:28,895
They don't know suffering.

242
00:19:28,962 --> 00:19:33,195
They just go on in their oral, egotistic striving,

243
00:19:33,328 --> 00:19:36,295
like cats and mice in a cartoon.

244
00:19:36,395 --> 00:19:38,928
You cut them into pieces, they're reconstituted.

245
00:19:39,028 --> 00:19:41,895
There is no finitude, no mortality here.

246
00:19:41,995 --> 00:19:46,062
There is evil, but a kind of naive, good evil.

247
00:19:46,128 --> 00:19:49,728
You're just egotistic, you want to eat,
you want to hit the other,

248
00:19:49,828 --> 00:19:52,062
but there is no guilt proper.

249
00:19:53,162 --> 00:19:55,462
What we get with sound is

250
00:19:56,095 --> 00:19:59,395
interiority, depth, guilt,

251
00:20:02,261 --> 00:20:03,628
culpability,

252
00:20:04,495 --> 00:20:08,361
in other words, the complex oedipal universe.

253
00:20:08,561 --> 00:20:10,495
Here you are.
Get a Hynkel button. Get a Hynkel button.

254
00:20:10,595 --> 00:20:12,795
A fine sculpture with a hooey
on each and every button.

255
00:20:19,095 --> 00:20:23,428
The problem of the film
is not only the political problem,

256
00:20:23,495 --> 00:20:26,128
how to get rid of totalitarianism,

257
00:20:26,895 --> 00:20:31,795
of its terrible seductive power,
but it's also this more formal problem,

258
00:20:31,895 --> 00:20:35,794
how to get rid of this
terrifying dimension of the voice.

259
00:20:47,028 --> 00:20:51,461
Or, since we cannot simply get rid of it,
how to domesticate it,

260
00:20:51,811 --> 00:20:54,644
how to transform this voice nonetheless

261
00:20:54,744 --> 00:20:59,378
into the means of expressing humanity,
love and so on.

262
00:21:13,844 --> 00:21:17,744
German police grabs the poor tramp
thinking this is Hitler

263
00:21:17,844 --> 00:21:21,144
and he has to address a large gathering.

264
00:21:28,677 --> 00:21:33,477
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor.
That's not my business.

265
00:21:34,344 --> 00:21:38,611
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone, if possible.

266
00:21:38,711 --> 00:21:43,410
Jew, gentile, black man, white,
we all want to help one another.

267
00:21:43,677 --> 00:21:44,977
Human beings are like that.

268
00:21:45,177 --> 00:21:48,877
There, of course, he delivers his big speech
about the need for love,

269
00:21:48,944 --> 00:21:52,444
understanding between people.
But there is a catch,

270
00:21:53,510 --> 00:21:54,844
even a double catch.

271
00:21:54,910 --> 00:21:58,744
Soldiers, in the name of democracy,
let us all unite!

272
00:22:02,810 --> 00:22:06,944
People applaud exactly in the same way
as they were applauding Hitler.

273
00:22:09,344 --> 00:22:13,377
The music that accompanies
this great humanist finale,

274
00:22:13,477 --> 00:22:16,343
the overture to Wagner's opera, <i>Lohengrin</i>,

275
00:22:16,443 --> 00:22:21,543
is the same music as the one we hear
when Hitler is daydreaming

276
00:22:21,643 --> 00:22:23,943
about conquering the entire world

277
00:22:24,010 --> 00:22:27,043
and where he has a balloon
in the shape of the globe.

278
00:22:27,977 --> 00:22:29,777
The music is the same.

279
00:22:46,877 --> 00:22:50,210
This can be read
as the ultimate redemption of music,

280
00:22:50,976 --> 00:22:53,610
that the same music which served evil purposes

281
00:22:53,710 --> 00:22:57,310
can be redeemed to serve the good.
Or it can be read,

282
00:22:57,443 --> 00:23:00,476
and I think it should be read,
in a much more ambiguous way,

283
00:23:00,576 --> 00:23:04,043
that with music, we cannot ever be sure.

284
00:23:08,543 --> 00:23:13,410
Insofar as it externalises our inner passion,

285
00:23:13,510 --> 00:23:16,743
music is potentially always a threat.

286
00:23:41,176 --> 00:23:46,343
There is a short scene
in David Lynch's <i>Mulholland Dr.</i>,

287
00:23:46,609 --> 00:23:50,109
which takes place in the theatre
where we are now,

288
00:23:50,176 --> 00:23:53,443
where behind the microphone
a woman is singing,

289
00:23:53,676 --> 00:23:56,976
then out of exhaustion or whatever,
she drops down.

290
00:23:57,409 --> 00:24:00,709
Surprisingly, the singing goes on.

291
00:24:03,709 --> 00:24:07,576
Immediately afterwards, it is explained.
It was a playback.

292
00:24:08,142 --> 00:24:11,776
But for that couple of seconds
when we are confused,

293
00:24:11,841 --> 00:24:17,709
we confront this nightmarish dimension
of an autonomous partial object.

294
00:24:21,742 --> 00:24:26,042
Like in the well-known adventure
of Cheshire Cat from <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>,

295
00:24:26,109 --> 00:24:29,442
where the cat disappears, the smile remains.

296
00:24:30,709 --> 00:24:37,575
You may have noticed
that I'm not all there myself.

297
00:24:40,875 --> 00:24:44,175
And the mome raths outgrabe.

298
00:24:48,575 --> 00:24:54,309
The fascinating thing about partial objects,
in the sense of organs without bodies,

299
00:24:54,408 --> 00:25:00,308
is that they embody
what Freud called "death drive."

300
00:25:00,542 --> 00:25:02,642
Here, we have to be very careful.

301
00:25:02,707 --> 00:25:07,808
Death drive is not kind of a Buddhist
striving for annihilation.

302
00:25:07,942 --> 00:25:12,375
"I want to find eternal peace. I want..."
No. Death drive is almost the opposite.

303
00:25:12,475 --> 00:25:16,975
Death drive is the dimension of what
in the Stephen King-like horror fiction

304
00:25:17,042 --> 00:25:20,642
is called the dimension of the undead,
of living dead,

305
00:25:20,707 --> 00:25:24,308
of something which remains alive
even after it is dead.

306
00:25:24,408 --> 00:25:28,642
And it's, in a way, immortal in its deadness itself.

307
00:25:28,707 --> 00:25:30,908
It goes on, insists. You cannot destroy it.

308
00:25:30,975 --> 00:25:34,341
The more you cut it,
the more it insists, it goes on.

309
00:25:34,475 --> 00:25:38,341
This dimension,
of a kind of diabolical undeadness,

310
00:25:38,575 --> 00:25:41,408
is what partial objects are about.

311
00:25:55,508 --> 00:25:59,640
The nicest example here for me,
I think, is Michael Powell's <i>Red Shoes</i>,

312
00:25:59,741 --> 00:26:01,541
about a ballerina.

313
00:26:10,474 --> 00:26:15,374
Her passion for dancing
is materialised in her shoes taking over.

314
00:26:15,474 --> 00:26:17,941
The shoes are literally the undead object.

315
00:26:52,941 --> 00:26:55,107
Perhaps the ultimate bodily part

316
00:26:55,174 --> 00:26:58,741
which fits this role
of the autonomous partial object

317
00:26:58,807 --> 00:27:01,307
is the fist, or rather, the hand.

318
00:27:17,307 --> 00:27:20,740
This hand, raising up,
that's the whole point of the film.

319
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:23,307
It's not simply something foreign to him.

320
00:27:23,374 --> 00:27:26,040
It's the very core of his personality out there.

321
00:27:27,706 --> 00:27:28,940
Security?

322
00:27:29,007 --> 00:27:32,474
I am Jack's smirking revenge.

323
00:27:40,307 --> 00:27:42,440
What the hell are you doing?

324
00:27:50,807 --> 00:27:52,206
That hurt.

325
00:27:52,540 --> 00:27:56,873
Far from standing
for some kind of perverted masochism

326
00:27:56,940 --> 00:27:59,940
or reactionary fantasy of violence,

327
00:28:00,072 --> 00:28:04,340
this scene is deeply liberating.

328
00:28:04,407 --> 00:28:07,473
I am here, as it were, on the side of the fist.

329
00:28:07,540 --> 00:28:10,139
I think this is what liberation means.

330
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:15,973
In order to attack the enemy, you first
have to beat the shit out of yourself.

331
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:22,473
To get rid, in yourself, of that which
in yourself attaches you to the leader,

332
00:28:22,572 --> 00:28:25,005
to the conditions of slavery, and so on and so on.

333
00:28:25,106 --> 00:28:26,673
No, please stop!

334
00:28:36,340 --> 00:28:38,005
What are you doing?

335
00:28:38,606 --> 00:28:40,440
Oh, God, no, please! No!

336
00:28:40,540 --> 00:28:44,106
For some reason,
I thought of my first fight, with Tyler.

337
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,139
There is always this conflict
between me and my double.

338
00:28:53,639 --> 00:28:55,072
Motherfucker!

339
00:28:56,606 --> 00:29:00,072
- You hit me in the ear.
- Well, Jesus. I'm sorry.

340
00:29:00,339 --> 00:29:03,806
- Christ! Why the ear, man?
- I fucked it up, kind of.

341
00:29:03,906 --> 00:29:05,706
No, that was perfect.

342
00:29:06,839 --> 00:29:10,273
It is as if the double embodies myself,

343
00:29:10,339 --> 00:29:13,706
but without the castrated dimension of myself.

344
00:29:28,039 --> 00:29:31,239
There is an episode
in the wonderful British horror classic,

345
00:29:31,306 --> 00:29:32,706
<i>Dead of Night</i>...

346
00:29:32,839 --> 00:29:35,306
I knew you wouldn't leave me, Hugo.

347
00:29:36,039 --> 00:29:37,505
I knew you'd come back.

348
00:29:37,572 --> 00:29:40,106
...in which Michael Redgrave plays a ventriloquist

349
00:29:40,206 --> 00:29:43,472
who gets jealous of his puppet.

350
00:29:43,772 --> 00:29:46,606
Now don't get excited, I was only joking.

351
00:29:47,239 --> 00:29:49,438
You know me. Maxwell!

352
00:29:50,005 --> 00:29:51,572
Maxwell.

353
00:29:51,639 --> 00:29:54,206
Maxwell! Take your hands off me!

354
00:29:54,572 --> 00:29:56,739
- Stop playing!
- Maxwell!

355
00:30:00,572 --> 00:30:02,105
Here, you fool!

356
00:30:03,239 --> 00:30:05,672
Officer, quickly, open this door.

357
00:30:06,672 --> 00:30:07,905
Quickly.

358
00:30:09,905 --> 00:30:15,472
In an outburst of violence,
he destroys the puppet, breaks down,

359
00:30:15,539 --> 00:30:18,739
then in the very last scene of the film
we see him in the hospital,

360
00:30:18,805 --> 00:30:22,339
slowly regaining consciousness,
coming back to himself.

361
00:30:22,839 --> 00:30:26,239
First his voice is stuck in the throat.

362
00:30:26,504 --> 00:30:31,705
Then, with great difficulty, finally,
he is able to talk,

363
00:30:33,672 --> 00:30:38,504
but he talks
with the distorted voice of the dummy.

364
00:30:40,105 --> 00:30:43,605
Why, hello, Sylvester.

365
00:30:43,871 --> 00:30:45,905
I've been waiting for you.

366
00:30:46,772 --> 00:30:48,738
And the lesson is clear.

367
00:30:48,805 --> 00:30:53,638
The only way for me
to get rid of this autonomous partial object

368
00:30:53,738 --> 00:30:56,038
is to become this object.

369
00:30:57,605 --> 00:30:59,572
- Any time you are ready, tell me.
- Okay, I'm ready.

370
00:30:59,638 --> 00:31:02,472
Wait a minute. So that I don't confuse them...

371
00:31:02,572 --> 00:31:04,572
Where is my key? My key is here.
This one is here.

372
00:31:04,638 --> 00:31:06,905
Okay, any... You shout when.

373
00:31:08,971 --> 00:31:12,870
I'm standing on the very balcony
where the murder,

374
00:31:12,971 --> 00:31:16,437
the traumatic murder scene,
occurs in <i>Conversation</i>.

375
00:31:17,171 --> 00:31:19,138
The murder of the husband,

376
00:31:19,271 --> 00:31:22,205
observed through the stained glass in front of me

377
00:31:22,305 --> 00:31:24,971
by the private detective, Gene Hackman.

378
00:31:30,038 --> 00:31:32,605
The detective is in the nearby room.

379
00:31:33,437 --> 00:31:37,437
Significantly, just before he sees the murder,

380
00:31:37,538 --> 00:31:41,971
he observes the balcony
through a crack in the glass wall.

381
00:31:45,571 --> 00:31:49,504
Whenever we have this famous,
proverbial peeping Tom scene

382
00:31:49,571 --> 00:31:53,803
of somebody observing traumatic events
through a crack,

383
00:31:53,904 --> 00:31:57,338
it's never as if we are dealing with two parts

384
00:31:57,471 --> 00:32:01,104
on both sides of the wall of the same reality.

385
00:32:06,071 --> 00:32:10,471
Before seeing anything
or imagining to see something,

386
00:32:11,338 --> 00:32:15,004
he tries to listen. He behaves as an eavesdropper,

387
00:32:15,704 --> 00:32:18,837
with all his private detective gadgets.

388
00:32:21,171 --> 00:32:23,137
What does this make him?

389
00:32:23,504 --> 00:32:25,370
Potentially, at least,

390
00:32:25,771 --> 00:32:29,803
it makes him into a fantasised, imagined entity.

391
00:32:32,236 --> 00:32:33,937
I can't stand it.

392
00:32:34,736 --> 00:32:36,771
I can't stand it anymore.

393
00:32:36,971 --> 00:32:38,971
You're going to make me cry.

394
00:32:39,537 --> 00:32:41,437
I know, honey. I know. Me, too.

395
00:32:41,537 --> 00:32:44,236
- No, don't.
- I have no idea what you're talking about.

396
00:32:44,337 --> 00:32:47,104
He doesn't fantasise the scene of the murder.

397
00:32:47,204 --> 00:32:50,604
He fantasises himself as a witness to the murder.

398
00:32:51,837 --> 00:32:53,270
I love you.

399
00:32:54,736 --> 00:32:58,870
What he sees on that blurred window glass,

400
00:32:58,937 --> 00:33:02,704
which effectively functions
as a kind of elementary screen,

401
00:33:03,169 --> 00:33:06,236
cinematic screen even, that should be perceived

402
00:33:06,337 --> 00:33:11,404
as a desperate attempt to visualise,
hallucinate even,

403
00:33:11,470 --> 00:33:15,070
the bodily, material support of what he hears.

404
00:33:38,003 --> 00:33:39,903
- Hello, baby.
- Shut up!

405
00:33:40,337 --> 00:33:43,236
It's "Daddy", you shithead! Where's my bourbon?

406
00:33:51,837 --> 00:33:56,235
Dorothy's apartment
is one of those hellish places

407
00:33:56,303 --> 00:33:59,303
which abound in David Lynch's films.

408
00:33:59,703 --> 00:34:03,970
A places where all moral or social inhibitions

409
00:34:04,070 --> 00:34:08,334
seem to be suspended,
where everything is possible.

410
00:34:09,869 --> 00:34:13,635
The lowest, masochistic sex, obscenities,

411
00:34:14,401 --> 00:34:17,068
the deepest level of our desires

412
00:34:17,170 --> 00:34:21,035
that we are not even ready to admit to ourselves,

413
00:34:21,135 --> 00:34:24,968
we are confronted with them in such places.

414
00:34:26,702 --> 00:34:28,401
Spread your legs.

415
00:34:39,133 --> 00:34:40,334
Wider.

416
00:34:43,135 --> 00:34:44,834
Now show it to me.

417
00:35:04,636 --> 00:35:06,867
Don't you fucking look at me.

418
00:35:14,534 --> 00:35:18,434
From what perspective
should we observe this scene?

419
00:35:26,768 --> 00:35:30,034
Imagine the scene as that of a small child,

420
00:35:30,702 --> 00:35:33,268
hidden in a closet or behind a door...

421
00:35:34,168 --> 00:35:35,202
Mommy.

422
00:35:35,268 --> 00:35:37,934
...witnessing the parental intercourse.

423
00:35:38,534 --> 00:35:42,467
He doesn't yet know what sexuality is,
how we do it.

424
00:35:42,534 --> 00:35:47,034
All he knows is what he hears,
this strange deep breathing sound,

425
00:35:47,134 --> 00:35:50,502
and then he tries to imagine what goes on.

426
00:35:51,101 --> 00:35:55,300
At the very beginning of <i>Blue Velvet</i>,
we see Jeffrey's father

427
00:35:55,367 --> 00:35:57,800
having a heart attack, falling down.

428
00:35:57,867 --> 00:36:02,569
We have the eclipse of the normal,
paternal authority.

429
00:36:12,902 --> 00:36:14,100
Mommy.

430
00:36:18,602 --> 00:36:21,899
- Mommy loves you.
- Baby wants to fuck!

431
00:36:21,999 --> 00:36:25,133
It is as if Jeffrey fantasises

432
00:36:25,232 --> 00:36:29,732
this wild parental couple of Dorothy and Frank

433
00:36:29,832 --> 00:36:35,665
as kind of a phantasmatic supplement
to the lack of the real paternal authority.

434
00:36:38,102 --> 00:36:41,865
Get ready to fuck, you fucker's fucker! You fucker!

435
00:36:44,298 --> 00:36:46,533
Don't you fucking look at me!

436
00:36:47,165 --> 00:36:52,198
Frank, not only obviously acts, but even overacts.

437
00:36:52,665 --> 00:36:57,265
It is as if his ridiculously excessive gesticulating,

438
00:36:58,298 --> 00:37:03,332
shouting and so on,
are here to cover up something.

439
00:37:03,432 --> 00:37:06,298
The point is, of course, the elementary one,

440
00:37:06,365 --> 00:37:12,499
to convince the invisible observer
that father is potent,

441
00:37:12,566 --> 00:37:14,665
to cover up father's impotence.

442
00:37:14,731 --> 00:37:18,731
So the second way to read the scene
would have been as a spectacle,

443
00:37:18,798 --> 00:37:21,131
a ridiculously violent spectacle,

444
00:37:21,231 --> 00:37:25,665
set up by the father
to convince the son of his power,

445
00:37:25,765 --> 00:37:27,798
of his over-potency.

446
00:37:39,165 --> 00:37:43,899
The third way would have been
to focus on Dorothy herself.

447
00:37:44,298 --> 00:37:50,731
Many feminists, of course, emphasise
the brutality against women in this scene,

448
00:37:50,798 --> 00:37:53,832
the abuse, how the Dorothy character is abused.

449
00:37:54,899 --> 00:37:57,432
There is obviously this dimension in it.

450
00:37:57,564 --> 00:38:03,865
But I think one should risk a more shocking
and obverse interpretation.

451
00:38:04,698 --> 00:38:08,932
What if the central, as it were, problem,

452
00:38:09,031 --> 00:38:12,932
of this entire scene is Dorothy's passivity?

453
00:38:13,165 --> 00:38:15,399
Don't you fucking look at me!

454
00:38:21,231 --> 00:38:26,897
So what if what Frank is doing
is a kind of a desperate, ridiculous,

455
00:38:26,997 --> 00:38:31,231
but nonetheless effective attempt
of trying to help Dorothy,

456
00:38:31,365 --> 00:38:35,932
to awaken her out of her lethargy,
to bring her into life?

457
00:38:44,231 --> 00:38:51,098
So if Frank is anybody's fantasy,
maybe he is Dorothy's fantasy.

458
00:38:53,698 --> 00:38:57,531
There is kind of a strange,
mutual interlocking of fantasies.

459
00:39:05,564 --> 00:39:07,665
You stay alive, baby.

460
00:39:08,631 --> 00:39:14,330
It's not only ambiguity,
but oscillation between three focal points.

461
00:39:14,431 --> 00:39:19,165
This, I think, is what accounts
for the strange reverberations of this scene.

462
00:39:31,231 --> 00:39:34,763
This brings us to our third
and maybe crucial example,

463
00:39:34,863 --> 00:39:39,298
what is for me the most beautiful
shot in the entire <i>Vertigo</i>.

464
00:39:51,763 --> 00:39:56,964
The shot in which we see Scottie
in a position of a peeping Tom,

465
00:39:57,064 --> 00:39:59,263
observing through a crack.

466
00:40:09,296 --> 00:40:13,431
It is as if Madeleine is really there
in common reality,

467
00:40:13,497 --> 00:40:19,531
while Scottie is peeping at her
from some mysterious inter-space,

468
00:40:21,431 --> 00:40:23,631
from some obscure netherworld.

469
00:40:24,663 --> 00:40:29,431
This is the location of the imagined,
fantasised gaze.

470
00:40:37,029 --> 00:40:40,997
Gaze is that obscure point, the blind spot,

471
00:40:41,064 --> 00:40:45,997
from which the object looked upon
returns the gaze.

472
00:40:52,564 --> 00:40:57,830
After suspecting that a murder
is taking place in the nearby hotel room,

473
00:40:57,931 --> 00:41:00,064
Gene Hackman, playing the private detective,

474
00:41:00,163 --> 00:41:03,863
enters this room and inspects the toilet.

475
00:41:04,564 --> 00:41:08,029
The moment he approaches
the toilet in the bathroom,

476
00:41:08,096 --> 00:41:10,662
it is clear that we are in Hitchcock territory.

477
00:41:10,729 --> 00:41:16,662
It is clear that some kind of intense,
implicit dialogue with <i>Psycho</i> is going on.

478
00:41:20,431 --> 00:41:21,962
In a very violent gesture,

479
00:41:22,096 --> 00:41:26,397
as if adopting the role of Norman Bates's
mother, the murderer in <i>Psycho</i>,

480
00:41:26,462 --> 00:41:29,631
he opens up the curtain, inspects it in detail,

481
00:41:29,729 --> 00:41:32,196
looking for traces of blood there,

482
00:41:34,796 --> 00:41:38,997
even inspecting the gap, the hole,
at the bottom of the sink.

483
00:41:40,662 --> 00:41:43,995
Which is precisely another of these focal objects,

484
00:41:44,062 --> 00:41:48,529
because in <i>Psycho</i>, the hole, through fade-out,

485
00:41:48,595 --> 00:41:52,796
the hole is morphed into the eye,
returning the gaze.

486
00:42:13,631 --> 00:42:16,995
We say the eye is the window of the soul.

487
00:42:17,062 --> 00:42:20,062
But what if there is no soul behind the eye?

488
00:42:21,928 --> 00:42:24,928
What if the eye is a crack

489
00:42:25,062 --> 00:42:29,895
through which we can perceive
just the abyss of a netherworld?

490
00:42:38,595 --> 00:42:42,662
When we look through these cracks,

491
00:42:42,845 --> 00:42:45,613
we see the dark, other side,

492
00:42:46,013 --> 00:42:48,046
where hidden forces run the show.

493
00:42:53,145 --> 00:42:57,245
It is as if Gene Hackman establishes,
"No, we are nonetheless not in <i>Psycho</i>.

494
00:42:57,345 --> 00:43:02,046
"Let's return to my first object
of fascination, the toilet bowl."

495
00:43:02,145 --> 00:43:05,645
He flushes it,
and then the terrible thing happens.

496
00:43:35,245 --> 00:43:38,412
In our most elementary experience,

497
00:43:39,678 --> 00:43:41,580
when we flush the toilet,

498
00:43:41,644 --> 00:43:47,345
excrements simply disappear
out of our reality into another space,

499
00:43:47,444 --> 00:43:52,479
which we phenomenologically perceive
as a kind of a netherworld,

500
00:43:52,544 --> 00:43:56,044
another reality, a chaotic, primordial reality.

501
00:43:56,111 --> 00:44:02,377
And the ultimate horror, of course,
is if the flushing doesn't work,

502
00:44:02,511 --> 00:44:07,944
if objects return,
if remainders, excremental remainders,

503
00:44:08,044 --> 00:44:10,245
return from that dimension.

504
00:44:10,678 --> 00:44:12,178
The bathroom.

505
00:44:12,644 --> 00:44:16,877
Hitchcock is all the time playing
with this threshold.

506
00:44:18,077 --> 00:44:22,544
Well, they've cleaned all this up now.
Big difference.

507
00:44:23,778 --> 00:44:26,044
You should've seen the blood.

508
00:44:26,377 --> 00:44:29,044
The whole place was...

509
00:44:29,111 --> 00:44:32,345
Well, it's too horrible to describe. Dreadful!

510
00:44:33,660 --> 00:44:36,127
The most effective for me

511
00:44:36,194 --> 00:44:39,894
and even the most touching scene
of the entire <i>Psycho</i>,

512
00:44:39,961 --> 00:44:42,227
is after the shower murder,

513
00:44:42,327 --> 00:44:47,528
when Norman Bates tries to clean the bathroom.

514
00:44:59,095 --> 00:45:02,327
I remember clearly when in my adolescence
I first saw the film,

515
00:45:02,428 --> 00:45:07,961
how deeply I was impressed
not only by the length of the scene,

516
00:45:08,194 --> 00:45:12,627
it goes on almost for 10 minutes,
details of cleansing and so on and so on,

517
00:45:12,727 --> 00:45:16,993
but also by the care, meticulousness,
how it is done,

518
00:45:17,060 --> 00:45:20,327
and also by our spectator's identification with it.

519
00:45:28,861 --> 00:45:33,794
I think that this tells us a lot
about the satisfaction of work,

520
00:45:33,861 --> 00:45:35,461
of a job well done.

521
00:45:35,527 --> 00:45:38,926
Which is not so much
to construct something new,

522
00:45:39,027 --> 00:45:42,926
but maybe human work at its most elementary,

523
00:45:42,993 --> 00:45:44,993
work, as it were, at the zero level,

524
00:45:45,127 --> 00:45:49,894
is the work of cleaning the traces of a stain.

525
00:45:57,194 --> 00:46:02,394
The work of erasing the stains,
keeping at bay this chaotic netherworld,

526
00:46:03,027 --> 00:46:07,727
which threatens to explode at any time
and engulf us.

527
00:46:10,859 --> 00:46:15,660
I think this is the fine sentiment
that Hitchcock's films evoke.

528
00:46:15,759 --> 00:46:20,959
It's not simply that something
horrible happens in reality.

529
00:46:21,027 --> 00:46:25,194
Something worse can happen
which undermines the very fabric

530
00:46:25,259 --> 00:46:28,060
of what we experience as reality.

531
00:46:29,660 --> 00:46:35,660
I think it's very important how the
first attack of the birds occurs in the film.

532
00:46:37,493 --> 00:46:43,060
When a fantasy object, something imagined,
an object from inner space,

533
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:50,093
enters our ordinary realty,
the texture of reality is twisted, distorted.

534
00:46:51,227 --> 00:46:56,160
This is how desire inscribes itself into reality,

535
00:46:56,259 --> 00:46:57,926
by distorting it.

536
00:47:00,227 --> 00:47:03,892
Desire is a wound of reality.

537
00:47:05,259 --> 00:47:09,593
The art of cinema consists in arousing desire,

538
00:47:10,827 --> 00:47:13,227
to play with desire.

539
00:47:14,392 --> 00:47:18,959
But, at the same time,
keeping it at a safe distance,

540
00:47:20,459 --> 00:47:23,759
domesticating it, rendering it palpable.

541
00:47:28,092 --> 00:47:30,891
When we spectators are sitting
in a movie theatre,

542
00:47:30,958 --> 00:47:33,759
looking at the screen...
You remember, at the very beginning,

543
00:47:33,859 --> 00:47:36,759
before the picture is on, it's a black, dark screen,

544
00:47:36,859 --> 00:47:38,692
and then light thrown on.

545
00:47:38,759 --> 00:47:42,159
Are we basically not staring into a toilet bowl

546
00:47:42,227 --> 00:47:45,958
and waiting for things
to reappear out of the toilet?

547
00:47:47,824 --> 00:47:53,792
And is the entire magic of a spectacle
shown on the screen

548
00:47:53,891 --> 00:47:56,792
not a kind of a deceptive lure,

549
00:47:56,859 --> 00:48:00,125
trying to conceal the fact

550
00:48:00,227 --> 00:48:02,658
that we are basically watching shit, as it were?

551
00:48:10,257 --> 00:48:15,792
There was a young lady of Ongar
Who had an affair with a conger

552
00:48:15,926 --> 00:48:19,426
They said, "How does it feel
To sleep with an eel?"

553
00:48:19,524 --> 00:48:23,158
"Well," she said, "just like a man, only longer"

554
00:48:30,606 --> 00:48:36,173
Usually, people read the lesson
of Freudian psychoanalysis

555
00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:39,740
as if the secret meaning of everything
is sexuality.

556
00:48:39,807 --> 00:48:42,277
But this is not what Freud wants to say.

557
00:48:42,374 --> 00:48:44,976
I think Freud wants to say the exact opposite.

558
00:48:45,039 --> 00:48:48,708
It's not that everything
is a metaphor for sexuality,

559
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:52,673
that whatever we are doing,
we are always thinking about that.

560
00:48:53,074 --> 00:48:57,039
The Freudian question is, but what are
we thinking when we are doing that?

561
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:12,500
In sexuality, it's never only me and my partner,

562
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:14,300
or more partners, whatever you are doing.

563
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:19,000
It's always... There has to be
always some phantasmatic element.

564
00:49:19,500 --> 00:49:22,400
There has to be some third
imagined element

565
00:49:22,500 --> 00:49:31,535
which makes me... makes it possible for me,
which enables me to engage in sexuality.

566
00:49:31,607 --> 00:49:36,540
If I may be a little bit impertinent
and relate to an unfortunate experience,

567
00:49:36,606 --> 00:49:38,172
probably known to most of us,

568
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:42,406
how it happens that while one is engaged
in sexual activity,

569
00:49:42,506 --> 00:49:45,841
all of a sudden one feels stupid.

570
00:49:45,906 --> 00:49:47,473
One loses contact with it.

571
00:49:47,573 --> 00:49:51,406
As if, "My God, what am I doing here,
doing these stupid repetitive movements?"

572
00:49:51,506 --> 00:49:52,872
And so on and so on.

573
00:49:52,939 --> 00:49:54,606
Nothing changes in reality,

574
00:49:54,707 --> 00:49:58,774
in these strange moments
where I, as it were, disconnect.

575
00:50:12,573 --> 00:50:16,106
There is an irresistible power of fascination,

576
00:50:16,207 --> 00:50:20,640
at least for me, in this terrifying scene

577
00:50:20,774 --> 00:50:26,372
when Neo awakens from his sleep
within the Matrix

578
00:50:26,437 --> 00:50:31,172
and becomes aware of what he really is
in that foetal container,

579
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:35,073
floating in liquid, connected to virtual reality,

580
00:50:35,140 --> 00:50:39,207
where you are reduced to a totally passive object

581
00:50:39,274 --> 00:50:43,040
with your energy being sucked out of you.

582
00:50:48,906 --> 00:50:53,239
So why does the Matrix need our energy?

583
00:50:59,437 --> 00:51:04,370
I think the proper way to ask this question
is to turn it around.

584
00:51:05,306 --> 00:51:10,339
Not why does the Matrix need the energy,
but why does the energy need the Matrix?

585
00:51:10,437 --> 00:51:13,870
That is to say, since I think that the energy

586
00:51:13,937 --> 00:51:17,937
we are talking about is libido, is our pleasure,

587
00:51:18,672 --> 00:51:24,506
why does our libido
need the virtual universe of fantasies?

588
00:51:24,573 --> 00:51:30,406
Why can't we simply enjoy it directly,
a sexual partner and so on?

589
00:51:30,606 --> 00:51:35,006
That's the fundamental question.
Why do we need this virtual supplement?

590
00:51:35,606 --> 00:51:40,205
Our libido needs an illusion
in order to sustain itself.

591
00:51:59,005 --> 00:52:04,806
One of the most interesting motifs
in science fiction is that of the id machine,

592
00:52:04,873 --> 00:52:08,972
an object which has the magic capacity

593
00:52:09,072 --> 00:52:14,072
of directly materialising, realising in front of us,

594
00:52:14,139 --> 00:52:19,072
our innermost dreams,
desires, even guilt feelings.

595
00:52:20,005 --> 00:52:23,036
There is a long tradition of this
in science fiction films,

596
00:52:23,139 --> 00:52:29,206
but of course the film about id machine
is Andrei Tarkovsky's, <i>Solaris</i>.

597
00:52:31,406 --> 00:52:38,271
<i>Solaris</i> is the story of Kelvin,
a psychologist, who is sent by a rocket

598
00:52:38,338 --> 00:52:43,670
to a spaceship circulating around Solaris,
a newly discovered planet.

599
00:52:46,036 --> 00:52:48,938
Strange things are reported from the spaceship.

600
00:52:49,036 --> 00:52:51,072
All the scientists there are going crazy,

601
00:52:51,139 --> 00:52:54,938
and then Kelvin discovers what is going on there.

602
00:52:58,338 --> 00:53:03,670
This planet has the magic ability
to directly realise

603
00:53:03,771 --> 00:53:07,704
your deepest traumas, dreams, fears, desires.

604
00:53:10,106 --> 00:53:12,536
The innermost of your inner space.

605
00:53:19,072 --> 00:53:22,969
The hero of the film finds one morning

606
00:53:23,072 --> 00:53:28,402
his deceased wife, who made suicide years ago.

607
00:53:30,606 --> 00:53:36,036
So he realises not so much his desire,
as his guilt feeling.

608
00:53:39,670 --> 00:53:43,371
When the hero is confronted
with the spectral clone, as it were,

609
00:53:43,438 --> 00:53:45,271
of his deceased wife,

610
00:53:48,137 --> 00:53:50,871
although he appears to be deeply sympathetic,

611
00:53:50,938 --> 00:53:53,704
spiritual, reflecting and so on,

612
00:53:53,806 --> 00:53:57,871
his basic problem is how to get rid of her.

613
00:54:12,969 --> 00:54:18,902
What makes <i>Solaris</i> so touching
is that, at least potentially,

614
00:54:19,005 --> 00:54:23,505
it confronts us with this tragic
subjective position of the woman,

615
00:54:24,137 --> 00:54:26,902
his wife, who is aware

616
00:54:27,737 --> 00:54:33,170
that she has no consistency,
no full being of her own.

617
00:54:33,268 --> 00:54:38,402
I don't even know my own self.
Who am I?

618
00:54:39,871 --> 00:54:44,170
As soon as I close my eyes I can't
recall what my face is like.

619
00:54:44,438 --> 00:54:46,938
For example, she has gaps in her memory

620
00:54:47,036 --> 00:54:50,969
because she knows only
what he knows that she knows.

621
00:54:52,036 --> 00:54:54,036
Do you know who you are?

622
00:54:54,103 --> 00:54:56,402
All humans do.

623
00:55:03,438 --> 00:55:06,768
She is just his dream realised.

624
00:55:07,835 --> 00:55:12,436
And her true love for him is expressed

625
00:55:12,505 --> 00:55:15,806
in her desperate attempts to erase herself,

626
00:55:15,936 --> 00:55:20,070
to swallow poison or whatever,
just to clear the space,

627
00:55:20,170 --> 00:55:22,835
because she guesses that he wants this.

628
00:55:27,635 --> 00:55:30,237
It's horrifying, isn't it?

629
00:55:31,005 --> 00:55:36,202
I'll never get used
to these constant resurrections!

630
00:55:36,306 --> 00:55:40,306
It's relatively easy to get rid of a real person.

631
00:55:40,402 --> 00:55:43,936
You can abandon him or her,
kill him or her, whatever.

632
00:55:44,036 --> 00:55:50,436
But a ghost, a spectral presence,
is much more difficult to get rid of.

633
00:55:50,536 --> 00:55:53,835
It sticks to you as a kind of a shadowy presence.

634
00:55:55,005 --> 00:55:57,635
-Do I disgust you?
-No.

635
00:55:57,737 --> 00:55:59,806
-You're lying!
-Stop it!

636
00:56:00,068 --> 00:56:02,170
I must be looking disgusting!

637
00:56:02,237 --> 00:56:07,369
What we get here is the lowest male mythology.

638
00:56:07,635 --> 00:56:11,402
This idea that woman doesn't exist on her own.

639
00:56:11,469 --> 00:56:15,202
That a woman is merely a man's dream realised

640
00:56:15,268 --> 00:56:20,536
or even, as radical, anti-feminists claim,
the man's guilt realised.

641
00:56:20,670 --> 00:56:23,902
Women exist because male desire got impure.

642
00:56:24,002 --> 00:56:29,936
If man cleanses his desire,
gets rid of dirty material,

643
00:56:31,202 --> 00:56:35,002
fantasies, woman ceases to exist.

644
00:56:39,502 --> 00:56:43,402
At the end of the film,
we get a kind of a Holy Communion,

645
00:56:43,469 --> 00:56:49,036
a reconciliation of him not with his wife,
but with his father.

646
00:57:11,833 --> 00:57:15,502
- Did you see Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i>?
- Sorry, I don't understand.

647
00:57:15,603 --> 00:57:18,235
Sorry. Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i>, the film.

648
00:57:18,302 --> 00:57:21,402
Alfred Hitchcock.
I think it happened here, you know.

649
00:57:21,469 --> 00:57:24,002
- Oh, you don't know the scene, okay.
- Probably.

650
00:57:36,568 --> 00:57:41,333
Often things begin as a fake,
inauthentic, artificial,

651
00:57:41,603 --> 00:57:44,766
but you get caught into your own game.

652
00:57:48,036 --> 00:57:51,202
And that is the true tragedy of <i>Vertigo</i>.

653
00:57:51,502 --> 00:57:56,702
It's a story about two people who,
each in his or her own way,

654
00:57:56,802 --> 00:58:00,135
get caught into their own game of appearances.

655
00:58:01,235 --> 00:58:04,568
For both of them, for Madeleine and for Scottie,

656
00:58:04,668 --> 00:58:07,536
appearances win over reality.

657
00:58:10,168 --> 00:58:12,101
What is the story of <i>Vertigo</i>?

658
00:58:12,168 --> 00:58:16,702
It's a story about a retired policeman
who has a pathological fear of heights

659
00:58:16,766 --> 00:58:18,902
because of an incident in his career,

660
00:58:18,969 --> 00:58:23,766
and then an old friend hires him
to follow his beautiful wife,

661
00:58:23,833 --> 00:58:25,135
played by Kim Novak.

662
00:58:25,202 --> 00:58:27,766
The wife mysteriously possessed

663
00:58:27,869 --> 00:58:32,101
by the ghost of a past deceased
Spanish beauty, Carlotta Valdes.

664
00:58:44,601 --> 00:58:45,869
The two fall in love.

665
00:58:46,601 --> 00:58:49,202
The wife kills herself.

666
00:59:07,302 --> 00:59:10,065
The first part of <i>Vertigo</i>,
with Madeleine's suicide,

667
00:59:10,168 --> 00:59:13,867
is not as shattering as it could have been,

668
00:59:13,967 --> 00:59:20,402
because it's really a terrifying loss,
but in this very loss, the ideal survives.

669
00:59:22,534 --> 00:59:26,132
The idea of the fatal woman
possesses you totally.

670
00:59:34,434 --> 00:59:38,132
What, ultimately, this image,

671
00:59:38,202 --> 00:59:41,668
fascinating image of the fatal woman
stands for is death.

672
00:59:46,735 --> 00:59:52,333
The fascination of beauty is always
the veil which covers up a nightmare.

673
00:59:52,434 --> 00:59:55,065
Like the idea of a fascinating creature,

674
00:59:55,132 --> 00:59:58,132
but if you come too close to her,

675
00:59:59,367 --> 01:00:05,367
you see shit, decay,
you see worms crawling everywhere.

676
01:00:07,300 --> 01:00:10,431
The ultimate abyss is not a physical abyss,

677
01:00:10,498 --> 01:00:14,233
but the abyss of the depth of another person.

678
01:00:17,902 --> 01:00:21,632
It's what philosophers describe
as the "Night of the World."

679
01:00:21,702 --> 01:00:26,867
Like when you see another person,
into his or her eyes, you see the abyss.

680
01:00:26,931 --> 01:00:30,202
That's the true spiral which is drawing us in.

681
01:00:40,833 --> 01:00:44,702
Scottie alone, broken down, cannot forget her,

682
01:00:44,766 --> 01:00:49,800
wanders around the city
looking for a woman, a similar woman,

683
01:00:49,902 --> 01:00:51,364
something like the deceased woman,

684
01:00:51,498 --> 01:00:55,202
discovers an ordinary, rather vulgar, common girl.

685
01:00:55,300 --> 01:01:00,101
The dénouement of the story, of course,
is along the lines of the Marx Brothers' joke,

686
01:01:00,166 --> 01:01:03,101
"This man looks like an idiot, acts like an idiot.

687
01:01:03,166 --> 01:01:05,766
"This shouldn't deceive you.
This man <i>is</i> an idiot."

688
01:01:05,833 --> 01:01:08,833
The newly found woman looks like Madeleine,

689
01:01:08,931 --> 01:01:11,601
acts like Madeleine, the fatal beauty.

690
01:01:17,233 --> 01:01:19,498
We discover she is Madeleine.

691
01:01:31,534 --> 01:01:34,431
What we learn is that Scottie's friend,

692
01:01:34,534 --> 01:01:39,034
who hired Scottie, also hired this woman, Judy,

693
01:01:39,132 --> 01:01:42,166
to impersonate Madeleine in a devilish plot

694
01:01:42,233 --> 01:01:46,233
to kill the real Madeleine, his wife,
and get her fortune.

695
01:01:54,032 --> 01:01:58,266
We could just see a lot of each other.

696
01:01:58,632 --> 01:02:03,132
Why? 'Cause I remind you of her?

697
01:02:08,231 --> 01:02:10,402
It's not very complimentary.

698
01:02:12,065 --> 01:02:16,065
The profile shot in <i>Vertigo</i> is perhaps
the key shot of the entire film.

699
01:02:16,132 --> 01:02:19,431
We have there Madeleine's, or rather Judy's,

700
01:02:19,532 --> 01:02:23,565
identity in all its tragic tension.

701
01:02:24,833 --> 01:02:30,731
It provides the dark background
for the fascinating other profile

702
01:02:30,833 --> 01:02:34,402
of Madeleine in Ernie's restaurant.

703
01:02:40,065 --> 01:02:44,364
Scottie is too ashamed,
afraid to look at her directly.

704
01:02:46,902 --> 01:02:51,632
It is as if what he sees is the stuff of his dreams,

705
01:02:51,731 --> 01:02:53,465
more real in a way for him

706
01:02:53,565 --> 01:02:57,632
than the reality of the woman behind his back.

707
01:02:59,398 --> 01:03:01,465
That's not very complimentary, either.

708
01:03:01,597 --> 01:03:04,664
I just want to be with you as much as I can, Judy.

709
01:03:05,766 --> 01:03:10,664
When we see a face,
it's basically always the half of it.

710
01:03:13,797 --> 01:03:16,297
A subject is a partial something,

711
01:03:17,333 --> 01:03:22,965
a face, something we see.
Behind it, there is a void, a nothingness.

712
01:03:23,699 --> 01:03:28,398
And of course, we spontaneously tend
to fill in that nothingness

713
01:03:28,465 --> 01:03:32,632
with our fantasies about the wealth
of human personality, and so on.

714
01:03:35,731 --> 01:03:38,431
To see what is lacking in reality,

715
01:03:38,531 --> 01:03:42,465
to see it as that, there you see subjectivity.

716
01:03:44,965 --> 01:03:50,331
To confront subjectivity means
to confront femininity.

717
01:03:51,164 --> 01:03:54,766
Woman is the subject. Masculinity is a fake.

718
01:03:55,766 --> 01:03:59,297
Masculinity is an escape from the most radical,

719
01:03:59,364 --> 01:04:02,331
nightmarish dimension of subjectivity.

720
01:04:02,431 --> 01:04:04,831
- Scottie, what are you doing?
- I'm trying to buy you a suit.

721
01:04:04,931 --> 01:04:08,797
But I love the second one she wore.

722
01:04:09,498 --> 01:04:13,297
- And this one, it's beautiful.
- No, no. They're none of them right.

723
01:04:13,597 --> 01:04:16,862
I think I know the suit you mean.
We had it some time ago.

724
01:04:16,931 --> 01:04:19,065
Let me go and see. We may still have that model.

725
01:04:19,132 --> 01:04:20,498
Thank you.

726
01:04:22,565 --> 01:04:25,565
You're looking for the suit that she wore, for me.

727
01:04:25,664 --> 01:04:28,331
- You want me to be dressed like her.
- Judy, I just want you to look nice.

728
01:04:28,398 --> 01:04:29,998
I know the kind of suit
that would look well on you.

729
01:04:30,097 --> 01:04:31,498
No, I won't do it!

730
01:04:35,199 --> 01:04:36,431
Judy.

731
01:04:37,831 --> 01:04:40,197
It can't make that much difference
to you. I just want to see what...

732
01:04:40,264 --> 01:04:42,398
No, I don't want any clothes.
I don't want anything.

733
01:04:42,498 --> 01:04:45,132
- I want to get out of here.
- Judy, do this for me.

734
01:04:45,231 --> 01:04:46,697
Here we are.

735
01:04:46,831 --> 01:04:48,531
- Yes, that's it.
- I thought so.

736
01:05:18,164 --> 01:05:21,130
When Judy, refashioned as Madeleine,

737
01:05:21,231 --> 01:05:25,664
steps out of the door, it's like fantasy realised.

738
01:05:25,731 --> 01:05:30,465
And, of course, we have
a perfect name for fantasy realised.

739
01:05:30,531 --> 01:05:32,664
It's called "nightmare."

740
01:05:33,431 --> 01:05:36,531
Fantasy realised. What does this mean?

741
01:05:36,597 --> 01:05:41,764
Of course, it is always sustained
by an extreme violence.

742
01:05:41,862 --> 01:05:48,795
The violence in this case of Scottie's
brutal refashioning of Judy,

743
01:05:49,264 --> 01:05:52,862
a real, common girl, into Madeleine.

744
01:05:52,898 --> 01:05:55,998
It's truly a process of mortification,

745
01:05:56,097 --> 01:06:00,831
which also is the mortification of woman's desire.

746
01:06:00,898 --> 01:06:04,764
It is as if in order to have her, to desire her,

747
01:06:04,862 --> 01:06:07,831
to have sexual intercourse with her,
with the woman,

748
01:06:07,898 --> 01:06:12,197
Scottie has to mortify her,
to change her into a dead woman.

749
01:06:12,295 --> 01:06:17,094
It's as if, again, for the male libidinal economy,

750
01:06:18,630 --> 01:06:22,531
to paraphrase a well-known old saying,
the only good woman is a dead woman.

751
01:06:32,295 --> 01:06:38,130
Scottie is not really fascinated by her,
but by the entire scene, the staging.

752
01:06:38,231 --> 01:06:43,531
He is looking around, checking up,
are the phantasmatic co-ordinates really here?

753
01:06:43,630 --> 01:06:48,594
At that point when the reality fully fits fantasy,

754
01:06:48,697 --> 01:06:54,896
Scottie is finally able to realise
the long-postponed sexual intercourse.

755
01:07:21,563 --> 01:07:27,896
So the result of this violence
is a perfect co-ordination

756
01:07:28,396 --> 01:07:30,795
between fantasy and reality.

757
01:07:31,089 --> 01:07:33,589
A kind of direct short-circuit.

758
01:07:48,623 --> 01:07:52,259
In Lynch's films, darkness is really dark.

759
01:07:52,355 --> 01:07:56,221
Light is really unbearable, blinding light.

760
01:07:56,288 --> 01:07:59,058
Fire really hurts, it's so hot.

761
01:08:05,922 --> 01:08:10,324
At those moments of sensual over-intensity,

762
01:08:10,391 --> 01:08:14,089
it is as if events on screen itself,

763
01:08:14,156 --> 01:08:18,421
threatens to overflow the screen
and to grab us into it,

764
01:08:18,520 --> 01:08:20,022
to reach towards us.

765
01:08:20,121 --> 01:08:23,758
It's again as if the fantasy-space,

766
01:08:23,822 --> 01:08:27,286
the fictional, narrative space, gets too intense

767
01:08:27,389 --> 01:08:34,121
and reaches out towards us spectators
so that we lose our safe distance.

768
01:08:39,621 --> 01:08:42,589
This is the proper tension
of the Lynchian universe.

769
01:08:48,389 --> 01:08:52,590
The beauty of Lynch, if you look closely,
it's never clear.

770
01:08:52,688 --> 01:08:59,621
Is it really the brutal real out there
which disturbs us, or is it our fantasy?

771
01:09:36,955 --> 01:09:39,987
At the very beginning
of David Lynch's <i>Blue Velvet</i>,

772
01:09:40,054 --> 01:09:44,022
we see an idyllic, American small town.

773
01:09:54,388 --> 01:09:56,656
What can be more normal
than father of the family,

774
01:09:56,720 --> 01:10:00,621
in front of a white clean house,
watering the lawn?

775
01:10:09,220 --> 01:10:13,354
But all of a sudden, father has a heart seizure,

776
01:10:13,421 --> 01:10:15,421
falls down to the grass.

777
01:10:19,255 --> 01:10:22,454
And then, instead of showing
the family confused,

778
01:10:22,520 --> 01:10:24,020
calling for an ambulance, whatever,

779
01:10:24,121 --> 01:10:26,688
Lynch does something typically Lynchian.

780
01:10:26,755 --> 01:10:29,889
The camera moves extremely close to the grass,

781
01:10:29,955 --> 01:10:31,589
even penetrates the grass,

782
01:10:31,688 --> 01:10:37,923
and we see what is the real
of this idyllic green lawn.

783
01:10:44,255 --> 01:10:45,423
We should not forget this,

784
01:10:45,522 --> 01:10:49,490
how this happens precisely
when father has a seizure.

785
01:10:49,621 --> 01:10:53,888
That is to say when, symbolically,
the paternal authority breaks down.

786
01:11:01,589 --> 01:11:04,357
I'll send you straight to hell, fucker!

787
01:11:07,557 --> 01:11:12,156
In dreams, I walk with you.

788
01:11:14,023 --> 01:11:18,689
In dreams, I talk to you.

789
01:11:33,557 --> 01:11:35,956
The logic here is strictly Freudian,

790
01:11:36,023 --> 01:11:39,889
that is to say we escape into dream

791
01:11:40,121 --> 01:11:44,189
to avoid a deadlock in our real life.

792
01:11:44,256 --> 01:11:48,889
But then, what we encounter in the dream
is even more horrible,

793
01:11:48,990 --> 01:11:53,857
so that at the end,
we literally escape from the dream,

794
01:11:53,923 --> 01:11:55,790
back into reality.

795
01:11:55,790 --> 01:11:59,821
It starts with, dreams are for those
who cannot endure,

796
01:11:59,923 --> 01:12:01,889
who are not strong enough for reality.

797
01:12:01,889 --> 01:12:07,389
It ends with, reality is for those
who are not strong enough to endure,

798
01:12:07,456 --> 01:12:09,490
to confront their dreams.

799
01:12:13,290 --> 01:12:19,090
<i>Lost Highway</i> and <i>Mulholland Dr.</i>
are two versions of the same film.

800
01:12:22,121 --> 01:12:27,089
What makes both films,
especially <i>Lost Highway</i>, so interesting

801
01:12:27,156 --> 01:12:31,857
is how they posit the two dimensions,

802
01:12:31,990 --> 01:12:37,656
reality and fantasy, side by side,
horizontally, as it were.

803
01:12:44,889 --> 01:12:47,121
It must be from a real estate agent.

804
01:12:47,754 --> 01:12:50,254
What we get in <i>Lost Highway</i>

805
01:12:50,490 --> 01:12:54,923
is the drab, grey,
upper-middle-class suburban reality.

806
01:12:55,187 --> 01:12:58,990
Hero, married to Patricia Arquette,

807
01:12:59,790 --> 01:13:04,687
obviously terrorised by the enigma of his wife,

808
01:13:04,790 --> 01:13:08,656
who doesn't respond properly to his advances.

809
01:13:11,357 --> 01:13:15,722
When they have sexual intercourse,
he miserably fails.

810
01:13:19,254 --> 01:13:23,920
What he gets from her is a kind
of a patronising pat on the shoulder.

811
01:13:28,222 --> 01:13:29,420
It's okay.

812
01:13:30,655 --> 01:13:31,722
It's okay.

813
01:13:31,821 --> 01:13:33,420
Total humiliation.

814
01:13:33,821 --> 01:13:34,889
It's okay.

815
01:13:37,490 --> 01:13:43,790
After killing her in an act of frustration,
the hero enters his fantasy-space,

816
01:13:49,990 --> 01:13:54,522
where he, as it were, reinvents not only himself,

817
01:13:54,620 --> 01:13:58,222
but his entire social environs.

818
01:13:59,089 --> 01:14:02,955
Captain, this is some spooky shit we got here.

819
01:14:08,986 --> 01:14:14,420
In what? In a kind of a universe
which we usually found in film noir.

820
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:34,486
The hero's wife, who is a brunette,
becomes a blonde.

821
01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:38,053
In reality, she's restrained.

822
01:14:41,955 --> 01:14:45,787
Here, she praises the hero
within the fantasy-space all the time

823
01:14:45,854 --> 01:14:48,920
for his sexual capacities and so on.

824
01:14:53,986 --> 01:15:00,920
So it seems as if the dream
is the realisation of what he was looking for.

825
01:15:01,821 --> 01:15:07,553
In reality, the obstacle was inherent.
Their sexual liaison simply didn't function.

826
01:15:08,321 --> 01:15:11,787
Within the fantasy-space,
the obstacle is externalised.

827
01:15:12,120 --> 01:15:13,620
It's a beautiful day.

828
01:15:20,220 --> 01:15:24,854
Mr Eddy is the master of Patricia Arquette

829
01:15:25,486 --> 01:15:27,486
within the fantasy-space.

830
01:15:27,653 --> 01:15:30,254
He is the obstacle to sexual intercourse.

831
01:15:30,321 --> 01:15:34,254
If I ever found out
somebody was making out with her,

832
01:15:36,954 --> 01:15:39,986
I'd take this and I'd shove it so far up his ass,

833
01:15:40,088 --> 01:15:41,920
it would come out his mouth.

834
01:15:43,120 --> 01:15:49,287
The properly uncanny moments
are those when the second shift occurs,

835
01:15:49,387 --> 01:15:55,420
when the fantasy-space, the dreamscape,
as it were, is already disintegrating,

836
01:15:56,021 --> 01:15:59,653
but we are not yet back into reality.

837
01:16:10,986 --> 01:16:12,920
This intermediate space,

838
01:16:12,986 --> 01:16:16,553
neither fantasy-space nor reality,

839
01:16:17,153 --> 01:16:21,553
this space of a kind of primordial violence,

840
01:16:21,620 --> 01:16:24,319
dispersion, ontological confusion...

841
01:16:30,287 --> 01:16:33,854
This is the most subversive moment,
the true horror of these films.

842
01:16:34,887 --> 01:16:40,086
Towards the end of this fantasy episode,
when we get the sexual act,

843
01:16:40,153 --> 01:16:46,120
there the woman also avoids the hero.

844
01:16:53,319 --> 01:16:56,053
You'll never have me.

845
01:16:57,053 --> 01:16:59,387
Whispering, "You will never have me."

846
01:17:00,053 --> 01:17:04,887
And at that traumatic point,
we are drawn back to reality,

847
01:17:05,019 --> 01:17:08,519
when the hero encounters
exactly the same deadlock.

848
01:17:13,153 --> 01:17:16,187
What the film truly is about, its focal point,

849
01:17:16,287 --> 01:17:21,019
it's not the hero, it's of course
the enigma of feminine desire.

850
01:17:22,005 --> 01:17:26,005
I'm involved in a mystery,
I'm in the middle of a mystery.

851
01:17:26,094 --> 01:17:27,794
And it's all secret.

852
01:17:29,120 --> 01:17:32,653
- You like mysteries that much?
- Yeah.

853
01:17:36,220 --> 01:17:37,885
You're a mystery.

854
01:17:39,086 --> 01:17:40,486
I like you

855
01:17:41,919 --> 01:17:43,252
very much.

856
01:17:43,852 --> 01:17:47,885
The enigma of feminine subjectivity
in David Lynch's films,

857
01:17:48,419 --> 01:17:52,120
it's a gap between cause and effect.

858
01:17:53,019 --> 01:17:54,919
You do something to a woman,

859
01:17:55,019 --> 01:17:57,986
but you never know what the reaction will be.

860
01:18:02,586 --> 01:18:05,318
Jeffrey, don't, please.

861
01:18:13,685 --> 01:18:18,685
My relationship towards tulips
is inherently Lynchian.

862
01:18:18,785 --> 01:18:23,053
I think they are disgusting.
Just imagine. Aren't these some kind of,

863
01:18:23,118 --> 01:18:27,952
how do you call it, <i>vagina dentata</i>,
dental vaginas threatening to swallow you?

864
01:18:27,952 --> 01:18:31,651
I think that flowers are something
inherently disgusting.

865
01:18:31,785 --> 01:18:36,019
I mean, are people aware
what a horrible thing these flowers are?

866
01:18:36,751 --> 01:18:38,952
I mean, basically it's an open invitation

867
01:18:39,086 --> 01:18:43,086
to all the insects and bees,
"Come and screw me," you know?

868
01:18:43,718 --> 01:18:47,086
I think that flowers
should be forbidden to children.

869
01:18:56,218 --> 01:19:01,352
Suddenly I saw two figures jumping
about on the rocks above us.

870
01:19:02,251 --> 01:19:05,519
They hid and peeped out occasionally.

871
01:19:05,852 --> 01:19:11,452
"There are two boys looking at us,"
I said to her. Her name was Katarina.

872
01:19:11,718 --> 01:19:15,919
"Well, let them look," she said,
and turned on her back.

873
01:19:16,885 --> 01:19:19,919
It was such a strange feeling.

874
01:19:20,084 --> 01:19:24,452
I wanted to run out and put on
my costume, but I just lay still...

875
01:19:24,584 --> 01:19:30,984
On my belly with my bum in the air,
totally unembarrassed, totally calm.

876
01:19:33,352 --> 01:19:38,617
We men, at least in our standard
phallogocentric mode of sexuality,

877
01:19:38,684 --> 01:19:41,084
even when we are doing it with the real woman,

878
01:19:41,151 --> 01:19:43,551
we are effectively doing it with our fantasy.

879
01:19:43,684 --> 01:19:46,218
Woman is reduced to a masturbatory prop.

880
01:19:46,318 --> 01:19:50,751
Woman arouses us in so far as
she enters our fantasy frame.

881
01:19:51,218 --> 01:19:53,352
With women, it's different.

882
01:19:53,584 --> 01:20:00,417
The true enjoyment is not in doing it
but in telling about it afterwards.

883
01:20:00,651 --> 01:20:04,285
Of course, women do enjoy sex immediately,

884
01:20:05,218 --> 01:20:09,718
but I hope I'm permitted as a man
to propose a daring hypothesis,

885
01:20:09,818 --> 01:20:12,751
that maybe, while they are doing it,

886
01:20:12,850 --> 01:20:17,818
they already enact or incorporate
this minimal narrative distance,

887
01:20:17,950 --> 01:20:20,751
so that they are already observing themselves

888
01:20:20,818 --> 01:20:22,617
and narrativising it.

889
01:20:24,385 --> 01:20:28,417
There is in Ingmar Bergman's <i>Persona</i>
a wonderful scene where

890
01:20:28,517 --> 01:20:32,751
Bibi Andersson tells to mute Liv Ullmann,

891
01:20:33,584 --> 01:20:38,285
a story about small orgy on a beach
which took place years ago.

892
01:20:38,684 --> 01:20:40,450
This scene is so erotic

893
01:20:40,517 --> 01:20:44,117
precisely because Bergman successfully resisted

894
01:20:44,218 --> 01:20:46,151
the temptation of a flashback.

895
01:20:46,251 --> 01:20:48,417
No flashback. Just words.

896
01:20:48,850 --> 01:20:53,783
Probably one of the most erotic scenes
in the entire history of cinema.

897
01:20:55,417 --> 01:20:59,017
Katarina unbuttoned his trousers
and started playing with him.

898
01:21:00,151 --> 01:21:03,417
When he came she took him in her mouth.

899
01:21:04,218 --> 01:21:07,450
He bent down and started kissing her on the back

900
01:21:07,550 --> 01:21:11,850
She turned around, took his head in
both hands and gave him her breast.

901
01:21:11,983 --> 01:21:15,816
The other boy got so excited,
so he and I started again.

902
01:21:17,483 --> 01:21:20,084
It was as nice as the first time.

903
01:21:22,050 --> 01:21:27,350
Then we swam and parted. When I
came back, Karl-Henrik had returned.

904
01:21:30,716 --> 01:21:35,416
We had dinner together and drank
the red wine he had with him.

905
01:21:36,950 --> 01:21:39,751
Then we slept together.

906
01:21:39,950 --> 01:21:44,850
It's never been as good, before or since.
Can you understand that?

907
01:21:45,117 --> 01:21:49,216
Although sexuality seems to be about bodies,

908
01:21:49,550 --> 01:21:51,649
it's not really about bodies.

909
01:21:51,716 --> 01:21:55,950
It is how bodily activity is reported in words.

910
01:21:57,883 --> 01:22:00,883
The ultimate sexual seduction resides in words.

911
01:22:02,349 --> 01:22:04,349
I can be whatever you want me to be.

912
01:22:06,032 --> 01:22:10,032
You want me to romance you,
take you to a classy restaurant, no problem.

913
01:22:10,600 --> 01:22:14,600
You want me to be your best friend
and fuck you...

914
01:22:15,070 --> 01:22:17,070
Treat you good...
Lick your pussy...

915
01:22:18,360 --> 01:22:19,524
No problem.

916
01:22:20,572 --> 01:22:26,572
Ain't much I haven't done.
The only thing I won't do is beat you up.

917
01:22:30,000 --> 01:22:36,800
The strange tension, and at the same time
interconnection, between reality and fantasy

918
01:22:37,000 --> 01:22:40,900
we can get it at its purest
in the strange case of pornography.

919
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:46,000
Pornography is, and it is, a deeply conservative genre.

920
01:22:46,000 --> 01:22:48,000
It is not a genre where everything is permitted.

921
01:22:48,000 --> 01:22:51,000
It's a genre based on the fundamental prohibition.

922
01:22:52,100 --> 01:22:54,100
We cross one threshold,
you can see everything.

923
01:22:54,110 --> 01:22:56,110
Close-ups and so on.

924
01:22:56,200 --> 01:22:58,900
But the price you pay for it is that

925
01:22:59,000 --> 01:23:06,000
the narrative which justifies the sexual activity
should not be taken seriously.

926
01:23:06,700 --> 01:23:10,200
The screenwriters for pornography cannot be so stupid.

927
01:23:10,500 --> 01:23:14,000
You know, these vulgar narratives
of a housewife alone at home...

928
01:23:14,000 --> 01:23:18,000
A plumber comes... Fixes the hole...
Then the housewife turns to him,

929
01:23:18,300 --> 01:23:21,700
"Sorry, but I have another hole to be fixed, 
can you do it?" or whatever.

930
01:23:23,000 --> 01:23:25,500
Obviously there is some kind of a censorship here.

931
01:23:25,500 --> 01:23:28,500
You have either an emotionally
engaging film

932
01:23:29,107 --> 01:23:33,607
But then you should stop,
just before showing it all: sexual act.

933
01:23:33,861 --> 01:23:36,861
Or you can see it all but
you are not allowed to

934
01:23:36,875 --> 01:23:39,675
then to be emotionally 
seriously engaged.

935
01:23:39,900 --> 01:23:42,400
So that's the tragedy of pornography.

936
01:23:42,599 --> 01:23:45,900
It tries to be as realistic as possible,

937
01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:50,599
but it has to maintain the minimum 
of phantasmatic support.

938
01:23:53,816 --> 01:23:55,249
Well...

939
01:23:57,048 --> 01:24:00,082
I first saw him that morning in the lobby.

940
01:24:01,615 --> 01:24:04,548
He was... He was checking into the hotel

941
01:24:04,648 --> 01:24:07,881
and he was following the bellboy with his luggage

942
01:24:08,416 --> 01:24:10,081
to the elevator.

943
01:24:12,548 --> 01:24:13,548
He...

944
01:24:14,682 --> 01:24:18,482
He glanced at me as he walked past.
Just a glance.

945
01:24:20,048 --> 01:24:21,515
Nothing more.

946
01:24:28,816 --> 01:24:31,615
But I could hardly

947
01:24:33,349 --> 01:24:34,515
move.

948
01:24:36,915 --> 01:24:42,615
<i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> is a film which has
an incredibly precise lesson about fantasy.

949
01:24:45,182 --> 01:24:50,881
She tells him,
not about herself effectively cheating him,

950
01:24:51,014 --> 01:24:54,014
but about fantasising about cheating him

951
01:24:54,081 --> 01:24:58,115
with some naval officer
they met in a hotel and so on and so on.

952
01:25:04,982 --> 01:25:10,381
The entire film is his desperate attempt
to catch up with her fantasy,

953
01:25:10,446 --> 01:25:12,415
which ends in a failure.

954
01:25:19,946 --> 01:25:24,746
Many people don't like, in that
mysterious rich people's castle

955
01:25:24,814 --> 01:25:26,915
where they meet for their orgies, the big orgy.

956
01:25:26,881 --> 01:25:32,648
They complain, this orgy is aseptic,
totally non-attractive, without erotic tension.

957
01:25:32,715 --> 01:25:34,946
But I think that's the point.

958
01:25:36,514 --> 01:25:41,148
This utter impotence of male fantasising.

959
01:25:48,081 --> 01:25:50,781
The film is the story of how

960
01:25:51,379 --> 01:25:55,581
the male fantasy cannot catch up
with the feminine fantasy,

961
01:25:55,648 --> 01:25:59,814
of how there is too much of desire
in feminine fantasy

962
01:25:59,982 --> 01:26:02,915
and how this is the threat to male identity.

963
01:26:03,714 --> 01:26:06,214
Where do we find this aspect in <i>Vertigo</i>?

964
01:26:06,514 --> 01:26:11,746
Isn't it that in <i>Vertigo</i>, on the contrary,
all of the activity is on the side of Scottie?

965
01:26:12,081 --> 01:26:19,081
But I think that precisely because of this,
his activity is extremely brutal, mortifying.

966
01:26:19,379 --> 01:26:22,415
He has totally to erase

967
01:26:23,781 --> 01:26:26,482
the woman as a desiring entity.

968
01:26:26,581 --> 01:26:28,746
That's for him the condition to desire.

969
01:26:28,879 --> 01:26:30,379
"Let's annihilate the woman,

970
01:26:30,514 --> 01:26:34,915
"let's mortify her so that my fantasy alone rules."

971
01:26:35,581 --> 01:26:39,714
The other solution is, of course,
the masochist solution, which is,

972
01:26:40,348 --> 01:26:45,781
"Let me maintain the appearance
of the woman, domina, as the boss.

973
01:26:45,848 --> 01:26:47,682
"I accept my inferior role

974
01:26:47,879 --> 01:26:49,615
"but secretly I am the master

975
01:26:49,682 --> 01:26:53,946
"because I write the very scenario
of my inferiority."

976
01:26:57,682 --> 01:26:58,847
But

977
01:27:00,415 --> 01:27:02,982
I do love you.

978
01:27:06,446 --> 01:27:07,915
And you know

979
01:27:09,312 --> 01:27:13,847
there is something very important
that we need to do as soon as possible.

980
01:27:15,446 --> 01:27:16,745
What's that?

981
01:27:19,879 --> 01:27:20,915
Fuck.

982
01:27:22,514 --> 01:27:28,245
It's as if our inner psychic space is too wild
and sometimes we have to make love,

983
01:27:28,312 --> 01:27:31,915
not to get the real thing
but to escape from the real,

984
01:27:32,014 --> 01:27:36,080
from the excessive real
that we encounter in our fantasising.

985
01:27:48,700 --> 01:27:50,700
But you know what, 
we also we have, don't forget

986
01:27:50,800 --> 01:27:53,500
from <i>Wild at Heart</i>, Bobby Peru, the rape.

987
01:27:53,700 --> 01:27:55,200
Say: "Fuck me."

988
01:27:55,250 --> 01:27:58,000
- And I'll leave.
- No way, get out!

989
01:27:58,200 --> 01:28:00,900
Say it!
I'll tear your fucking heart out, girl!

990
01:28:03,700 --> 01:28:06,600
Say: "Fuck me."
Say: "Fuck me."

991
01:28:07,300 --> 01:28:10,300
Then I'll leave. Say: "Fuck me."

992
01:28:10,300 --> 01:28:12,900
Whisper it. Say it.

993
01:28:13,500 --> 01:28:16,000
Say it. Say it.

994
01:28:16,900 --> 01:28:18,400
Say: "Fuck me."

995
01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:21,300
Whisper it: "Fuck me."

996
01:28:21,900 --> 01:28:24,500
Bobby Peru enters the room where

997
01:28:25,100 --> 01:28:29,800
the young girl, played by Laura Dern,
is resting and

998
01:28:30,200 --> 01:28:32,400
slowly he terrorizes her.

999
01:28:33,700 --> 01:28:35,300
"Fuck me."

1000
01:28:36,000 --> 01:28:41,000
"Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me."

1001
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:47,500
- "Fuck me. Fuck me."
- Fuck me.

1002
01:28:50,000 --> 01:28:52,700
Someday honey, I will!
But I gotta get goin'!

1003
01:28:57,200 --> 01:28:59,600
Sing!
Don't cry...

1004
01:29:05,900 --> 01:29:09,300
Bobby Peru, as it were,
changes the register.

1005
01:29:09,900 --> 01:29:14,500
All of a sudden he adopts
a nice, polite, smiling face and says:

1006
01:29:14,500 --> 01:29:18,000
"Oh, thanks for the offer, but I've got to go now,
maybe another day."

1007
01:29:19,300 --> 01:29:23,700
Just arrousing the fantasy 
and then rejecting the act

1008
01:29:24,500 --> 01:29:28,000
results in utter psychological devastation.

1009
01:29:28,800 --> 01:29:34,400
It is a case of a mental rape
which can be worse than physical rape.

1010
01:29:54,845 --> 01:29:56,279
The point is

1011
01:29:56,946 --> 01:30:02,712
the fragile balance
between reality and fantasy dimension

1012
01:30:02,779 --> 01:30:05,246
in our sexual activity.

1013
01:30:13,645 --> 01:30:19,444
Michael Haneke's <i>Piano Teacher</i>
is the story of an impossible love affair

1014
01:30:19,545 --> 01:30:24,279
between a middle-aged,
deeply traumatised woman

1015
01:30:24,344 --> 01:30:26,312
and her young student.

1016
01:30:27,712 --> 01:30:32,411
She's in a way a person
who is not yet sexually subjectivised.

1017
01:30:32,879 --> 01:30:36,312
She lacks the phantasmatic co-ordinates
of her desire.

1018
01:30:36,812 --> 01:30:40,344
This accounts for a couple of
very strange scenes in the film,

1019
01:30:40,511 --> 01:30:43,011
like when she goes to a pornographic store

1020
01:30:43,078 --> 01:30:47,844
and then watches in a closed, small room
a scene from a hardcore film.

1021
01:30:55,712 --> 01:30:58,744
The way she watches it, it's not to get aroused,

1022
01:30:58,877 --> 01:31:01,877
but she watches it as a pupil in a school.

1023
01:31:01,944 --> 01:31:05,511
She simply watches it
to get the co-ordinates of desiring,

1024
01:31:05,578 --> 01:31:08,411
to learn how to do it, how to get excited.

1025
01:31:09,744 --> 01:31:12,411
"...next take off the blindfold, please,

1026
01:31:12,645 --> 01:31:15,444
"and sit down on my face

1027
01:31:16,810 --> 01:31:19,444
"and punch me in the stomach

1028
01:31:19,645 --> 01:31:22,444
"to force me to thrust my tongue in your behind."

1029
01:31:22,511 --> 01:31:26,177
The notion of fantasy in psychoanalysis
is very ambiguous.

1030
01:31:26,677 --> 01:31:30,511
On the one hand,
we have the pacifying aspect of fantasy.

1031
01:31:31,045 --> 01:31:35,344
Piano Teacher plays with the opposite
aspect of fantasy.

1032
01:31:37,277 --> 01:31:41,045
Fantasy as the explosion of wild,
unbearable desires.

1033
01:31:42,511 --> 01:31:46,777
What we found in the middle of the film
is probably, arguably,

1034
01:31:46,877 --> 01:31:51,643
the most depressive sexual act
in the entire history of cinema.

1035
01:31:57,411 --> 01:31:58,877
As if to punish her

1036
01:31:58,978 --> 01:32:03,310
for disclosing the fantasy in her letter to him,

1037
01:32:03,377 --> 01:32:10,177
he literally enacts her fantasy
in the way he makes love to her,

1038
01:32:10,277 --> 01:32:13,210
which of course means
that fantasy is lost for her.

1039
01:32:18,777 --> 01:32:21,978
When fantasy disintegrates, you don't get reality,

1040
01:32:22,976 --> 01:32:26,043
you get some nightmarish real

1041
01:32:26,110 --> 01:32:30,576
too traumatic to be experienced
as ordinary reality.

1042
01:32:30,976 --> 01:32:34,011
That would be another definition of nightmare.

1043
01:32:41,676 --> 01:32:42,944
Hell is here.

1044
01:32:43,011 --> 01:32:47,610
Paradise, at least this perverse paradise, is hell.

1045
01:32:48,777 --> 01:32:50,543
Stop, please.

1046
01:32:50,944 --> 01:32:55,344
One cannot here just throw out the dirty water,

1047
01:32:55,511 --> 01:32:59,009
all these excessive, perverse fantasies and so on,

1048
01:32:59,109 --> 01:33:02,444
and just keep the healthy, clean baby,

1049
01:33:02,609 --> 01:33:05,643
normal, straight or even homosexual, whatever,

1050
01:33:05,777 --> 01:33:08,844
but some kind of normal, politically correct sex.

1051
01:33:09,009 --> 01:33:10,844
You cannot do that.

1052
01:33:11,143 --> 01:33:14,976
What if we throw out the baby
and keep just the dirty water?

1053
01:33:15,609 --> 01:33:19,810
And put it as a problem:
how to deal with dirty water.

1054
01:33:19,909 --> 01:33:23,844
And put some order
in the dirty water of fantasies.

1055
01:33:23,944 --> 01:33:29,277
This is I think precisely what happens
for example in Kieslowski's <i>Blue</i>.

1056
01:33:33,710 --> 01:33:36,810
During the ... were you conscious?

1057
01:33:40,076 --> 01:33:42,608
I'm sorry to have inform you...

1058
01:33:44,309 --> 01:33:45,476
Do you know?

1059
01:33:48,608 --> 01:33:50,342
Your husband...

1060
01:33:50,410 --> 01:33:52,343
died in the accident.

1061
01:33:59,175 --> 01:34:01,608
You must have been unconscious.

1062
01:34:04,942 --> 01:34:06,308
Anna?

1063
01:34:09,209 --> 01:34:11,410
Yes, your daughter, too.

1064
01:34:13,974 --> 01:34:18,442
You can organise, people do it,
your life in mourning the lost object.

1065
01:34:19,009 --> 01:34:21,210
Julie, in <i>Blue</i>, discovers that

1066
01:34:21,908 --> 01:34:24,774
her husband wasn't what she thought he was.

1067
01:34:25,341 --> 01:34:29,341
That he was cheating her,
that he had a mistress who is pregnant.

1068
01:34:32,509 --> 01:34:34,274
This is the most terrifying loss,

1069
01:34:34,341 --> 01:34:38,707
where all the co-ordinates of your reality
disintegrate.

1070
01:34:45,907 --> 01:34:49,341
The problem is how to reconstitute yourself.

1071
01:34:53,542 --> 01:34:58,542
In a wonderful short scene,
the heroine of <i>Blue</i>, after returning home,

1072
01:34:59,676 --> 01:35:01,676
finds there on the floor

1073
01:35:02,574 --> 01:35:06,975
a group of newly-born mice,
crawling around their mother.

1074
01:35:11,109 --> 01:35:13,109
This scene terrifies her.

1075
01:35:13,507 --> 01:35:20,275
She is too excessively exposed
to life in its brutal meaninglessness.

1076
01:35:29,908 --> 01:35:32,775
What she is able to do at the end

1077
01:35:32,874 --> 01:35:36,176
is to acquire a proper distance towards reality.

1078
01:35:48,940 --> 01:35:53,007
This is what happens in the famous circular shot

1079
01:35:53,208 --> 01:35:57,641
where we pass from Julie's face,
while she is making love.

1080
01:36:00,074 --> 01:36:04,873
This magical suspension
of temporal and spatial limitations,

1081
01:36:04,940 --> 01:36:08,173
this free floating in a fantasy-space,

1082
01:36:08,475 --> 01:36:11,609
far from distancing us from reality

1083
01:36:13,740 --> 01:36:17,207
enables us to approach reality.

1084
01:36:21,440 --> 01:36:24,240
She is putting together the co-ordinates

1085
01:36:24,806 --> 01:36:29,806
which enable her to experience her reality
as meaningful again.

1086
01:36:57,274 --> 01:37:01,140
As if the lesson is,
not only for men but also for women,

1087
01:37:01,239 --> 01:37:06,440
that you can sustain sexual intercourse,
sexual relationship,

1088
01:37:06,673 --> 01:37:09,173
only through the support of fantasy.

1089
01:37:55,471 --> 01:37:59,771
The problem of course is,
is this fantasy reconstituted?

1090
01:37:59,971 --> 01:38:03,704
Is this the ultimate horizon of our experience?

1091
01:38:10,641 --> 01:38:15,672
The function of music here
is precisely that of a fetish,

1092
01:38:15,771 --> 01:38:18,239
of some fascinating presence

1093
01:38:18,838 --> 01:38:23,404
whose function it is
to conceal the abyss of anxiety.

1094
01:38:26,940 --> 01:38:30,672
Music is here what, according to Marx, religion is,

1095
01:38:30,739 --> 01:38:33,074
a kind of opium for the people.

1096
01:38:33,137 --> 01:38:39,538
Opium which should put us asleep,
put us into a kind of a false beatitude,

1097
01:38:39,605 --> 01:38:44,806
which allows us to avoid
the abyss of unbearable anxiety.

1098
01:38:59,904 --> 01:39:03,704
We see Julie crying, but through a glass.

1099
01:39:04,269 --> 01:39:07,704
This glass stands for, I think,
fantasy reconstituted.

1100
01:39:12,137 --> 01:39:15,373
These are, I'm tempted to say,
the tears of happiness.

1101
01:39:15,440 --> 01:39:19,837
"I can mourn now because
it no longer immediately affects me."

1102
01:39:21,007 --> 01:39:25,269
<i>Blue</i> proposes this mystical communion,

1103
01:39:25,337 --> 01:39:29,007
reconstituted fantasy,
as sustaining our relation to the world.

1104
01:39:29,070 --> 01:39:31,269
But the price we pay is that

1105
01:39:31,904 --> 01:39:37,269
some radically authentic moment
of accepting the anxiety

1106
01:39:37,570 --> 01:39:42,007
at the very foundation of human condition
is lost there.

1107
01:39:50,072 --> 01:39:53,505
If anything, anxiety at the vocal level

1108
01:39:53,670 --> 01:39:55,769
is silence.

1109
01:39:56,304 --> 01:39:58,769
It's silence. It's a silent scream.

1110
01:40:03,304 --> 01:40:05,237
In Hitchcock's <i>The Birds</i>,

1111
01:40:05,304 --> 01:40:08,404
when the mother, of course who but the mother,

1112
01:40:08,572 --> 01:40:12,969
finds the neighbour dead,
his eyes picked out by the birds,

1113
01:40:16,037 --> 01:40:21,206
she shouts, but the shout
literally remains stuck in her throat.

1114
01:40:31,904 --> 01:40:37,505
To return from cinema to so-called real life,
the ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis

1115
01:40:37,572 --> 01:40:42,737
is that exactly the same
goes for our real life experience,

1116
01:40:43,604 --> 01:40:47,206
that emotions as such are deceiving.

1117
01:40:48,304 --> 01:40:54,737
There are no specifically fake emotions
because, as Freud puts it literally,

1118
01:40:55,170 --> 01:40:59,037
the only emotion which doesn't deceive
is anxiety.

1119
01:40:59,269 --> 01:41:01,505
All other emotions are fake.

1120
01:41:03,537 --> 01:41:09,304
So, of course, the problem here is, are we able to

1121
01:41:09,969 --> 01:41:15,170
encounter in cinema the emotion of anxiety,

1122
01:41:15,304 --> 01:41:19,139
or is cinema as such a fake?

1123
01:41:36,904 --> 01:41:42,769
Cinema, as the art of appearances,
tells us something about reality itself.

1124
01:41:46,367 --> 01:41:51,437
It tells us something
about how reality constitutes itself.

1125
01:41:53,000 --> 01:41:53,200
Not that way!

1126
01:42:00,604 --> 01:42:01,937
Ripley.

1127
01:42:08,737 --> 01:42:10,404
Ripley, come on.

1128
01:42:12,837 --> 01:42:16,037
Ripley, we've got no time for sightseeing here.

1129
01:42:20,269 --> 01:42:21,800
Ripley, don't.

1130
01:42:21,904 --> 01:42:26,769
There is an old Gnostic theory
that our world was not perfectly created,

1131
01:42:26,969 --> 01:42:31,300
that the god who created our world
was an idiot who bungled the job,

1132
01:42:31,437 --> 01:42:36,202
so that our world is a half-finished creation.

1133
01:42:36,537 --> 01:42:39,469
There are voids, openings, gaps.

1134
01:42:40,837 --> 01:42:44,300
It's not fully real, fully constituted.

1135
01:42:51,504 --> 01:42:56,604
In the wonderful scene
in the last instalment of the <i>Alien</i> saga,

1136
01:42:56,769 --> 01:42:59,604
<i>Alien Resurrection</i>, when Ripley,

1137
01:42:59,702 --> 01:43:03,904
the cloned Ripley, enters a mysterious room,

1138
01:43:03,967 --> 01:43:10,004
she encounters
the previous failed version of herself,

1139
01:43:10,800 --> 01:43:12,769
of cloning herself.

1140
01:43:15,604 --> 01:43:17,501
Just a horrified creature,

1141
01:43:17,599 --> 01:43:21,068
a small foetus-like entity,
then more developed forms.

1142
01:43:25,501 --> 01:43:28,037
Finally, a creature which almost looks like her,

1143
01:43:28,135 --> 01:43:30,967
but her limbs are like that of the monster.

1144
01:43:35,967 --> 01:43:37,800
Kill me.

1145
01:43:39,202 --> 01:43:44,269
This means that all the time
our previous alternate embodiments,

1146
01:43:45,568 --> 01:43:48,666
what we might have been but are not,

1147
01:43:49,001 --> 01:43:52,833
that these alternate versions of ourselves
are haunting us.

1148
01:43:55,568 --> 01:44:01,501
That's the ontological view of reality
that we get here,

1149
01:44:02,400 --> 01:44:04,934
as if it's an unfinished universe.

1150
01:44:07,733 --> 01:44:09,934
This is, I think, a very modern feeling.

1151
01:44:10,001 --> 01:44:13,300
It is through such ontology of unfinished reality

1152
01:44:13,400 --> 01:44:16,532
that cinema became a truly modern art.

1153
01:44:25,066 --> 01:44:27,966
All modern films are ultimately films about

1154
01:44:28,066 --> 01:44:31,200
the possibility or impossibility to make a film.

1155
01:44:40,000 --> 01:44:43,000
This is the sad tale
of the township of Dogville.

1156
01:44:44,768 --> 01:44:48,500
Dogville was in the Rocky Mountains
in the US of A,

1157
01:44:48,701 --> 01:44:51,532
up here where the road came to its definitive end

1158
01:44:51,598 --> 01:44:55,000
near the entrance to the old,
abandoned silver mine.

1159
01:44:55,232 --> 01:45:00,165
The residents of Dogville were good,
honest folks and they liked their township.

1160
01:45:00,465 --> 01:45:03,366
With Von Trier, it's not only the problem of belief

1161
01:45:03,433 --> 01:45:06,335
in the sense of,
do people generally still believe today

1162
01:45:06,433 --> 01:45:08,598
the place of religion today, and so on.

1163
01:45:08,665 --> 01:45:12,465
It's also reflectively or allegorically

1164
01:45:12,532 --> 01:45:15,701
the question of believing in cinema itself.

1165
01:45:15,768 --> 01:45:22,465
How to make today people still believe
in the magic of cinema?

1166
01:45:24,098 --> 01:45:27,866
In <i>Dogville</i>, all of it is staged on a set.

1167
01:45:27,933 --> 01:45:33,701
Okay, this is often the case in cinema,
but here the set is seen as the set.

1168
01:45:34,299 --> 01:45:36,768
The action takes place in Dogville, a small town,

1169
01:45:36,831 --> 01:45:41,331
but there are no houses.
There are just lines on the floor,

1170
01:45:41,398 --> 01:45:44,768
signalling that this is the house,
this is the street.

1171
01:45:46,933 --> 01:45:50,964
The mysterious thing is
that this does not prevent our identification.

1172
01:45:51,067 --> 01:45:57,433
If anything, it makes us even more thrown
into the tensions of the inner life.

1173
01:46:00,866 --> 01:46:02,764
Have you seen Grace?

1174
01:46:03,000 --> 01:46:04,732
She's at my place.

1175
01:46:05,201 --> 01:46:08,598
- Is she busy?
- Not any more. Go right in.

1176
01:46:18,433 --> 01:46:23,433
It's not that naive belief is undermined,
deconstructed through irony.

1177
01:46:23,567 --> 01:46:26,933
Von Trier wants to be serious with the magic.

1178
01:46:27,232 --> 01:46:30,331
Irony is put into service to make us believe.

1179
01:46:32,500 --> 01:46:36,464
Yet again, Grace had made
a miraculous escape from her pursuers

1180
01:46:36,531 --> 01:46:39,197
with the aid of the people of Dogville.

1181
01:46:39,299 --> 01:46:43,567
Everyone had covered up for her,
including Chuck, who had to admit

1182
01:46:43,634 --> 01:46:48,397
that it was probably Tom's hat
he'd mistakenly considered so suspicious.

1183
01:46:52,799 --> 01:46:56,799
The mystery is that even if we know
that it's only staged, that it's a fiction,

1184
01:46:56,866 --> 01:46:58,232
it still fascinates us.

1185
01:46:58,330 --> 01:47:00,799
That's the fundamental magic of it.

1186
01:47:00,964 --> 01:47:04,165
You witness a certain seductive scene,

1187
01:47:04,264 --> 01:47:08,697
then you are shown that it's just a fake,
stage machinery behind,

1188
01:47:08,799 --> 01:47:12,732
but you are still fascinated by it. Illusion persists.

1189
01:47:12,799 --> 01:47:17,567
There is something real in the illusion,
more real than in the reality behind it.

1190
01:47:17,897 --> 01:47:21,830
Do not arouse the wrath
of the great and powerful Oz!

1191
01:47:21,897 --> 01:47:24,598
I said come back tomorrow!

1192
01:47:24,665 --> 01:47:28,000
If you were really great and powerful,
you'd keep your promises.

1193
01:47:28,063 --> 01:47:31,630
Do you presume to criticise the great Oz?

1194
01:47:31,732 --> 01:47:34,130
You ungrateful creatures!

1195
01:47:34,197 --> 01:47:38,165
Think yourselves lucky
that I'm giving you audience tomorrow

1196
01:47:38,299 --> 01:47:40,732
instead of 20 years from now!

1197
01:47:42,500 --> 01:47:45,433
The great Oz has spoken.

1198
01:47:46,866 --> 01:47:50,165
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

1199
01:47:50,563 --> 01:47:53,897
The great and... Oz has spoken.

1200
01:47:54,098 --> 01:47:56,263
- Who are you?
- Well, I...

1201
01:47:56,330 --> 01:47:59,697
I am the great and powerful Wizard of Oz.

1202
01:47:59,866 --> 01:48:03,098
What we can learn from a film like <i>Wizard of Oz</i>

1203
01:48:03,165 --> 01:48:08,964
is how the logic of de-mystification
is not enough.

1204
01:48:09,031 --> 01:48:13,496
It's not enough to say, "Okay, it's just
a big show spectacle to impress the people.

1205
01:48:13,598 --> 01:48:17,598
"What is behind is just a modest old guy,"
and so on and so on.

1206
01:48:17,665 --> 01:48:22,464
It is that rather, in a way,
there is more truth in this appearance.

1207
01:48:22,563 --> 01:48:26,232
Appearance has an effectivity, a truth of its own.

1208
01:48:26,299 --> 01:48:28,330
What about the heart that you promised Tin Man?

1209
01:48:28,433 --> 01:48:29,433
Well...

1210
01:48:29,496 --> 01:48:31,232
And the courage
that you promised Cowardly Lion?

1211
01:48:31,299 --> 01:48:32,897
- And Scarecrow's brain?
- And Scarecrow's brain?

1212
01:48:32,996 --> 01:48:36,531
Why, anybody can have a brain.
That's a very mediocre commodity.

1213
01:48:36,629 --> 01:48:39,464
Every pusillanimous creature
that crawls on the earth

1214
01:48:39,563 --> 01:48:42,665
or slinks through slimy seas has a brain.

1215
01:48:42,763 --> 01:48:46,563
Back where I come from,
we have universities, seats of great learning

1216
01:48:46,629 --> 01:48:48,598
where men go to become great thinkers.

1217
01:48:48,732 --> 01:48:50,996
And when they come out,
they think deep thoughts

1218
01:48:51,063 --> 01:48:52,830
and with no more brains than you have.

1219
01:48:52,897 --> 01:48:56,563
But they have one thing you haven't got.
A diploma!

1220
01:48:56,665 --> 01:49:00,732
Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me

1221
01:49:00,830 --> 01:49:04,665
by the Universitatus Committeeatum
e plurbis unum,

1222
01:49:04,732 --> 01:49:09,929
I hereby confer upon you
the honorary degree of Th.D.

1223
01:49:10,531 --> 01:49:14,232
- Th.D.?
- That's Doctor of Thinkology.

1224
01:49:14,362 --> 01:49:17,196
The sum of the square roots
of any two sides of an isosceles triangle

1225
01:49:17,263 --> 01:49:20,062
is equal to the square root of the remaining side.

1226
01:49:21,196 --> 01:49:24,696
Oh, joy, rapture! I've got a brain!

1227
01:49:24,830 --> 01:49:28,665
And that's the paradox of cinema,
the paradox of belief.

1228
01:49:28,799 --> 01:49:32,531
We don't simply believe or do not believe.

1229
01:49:32,665 --> 01:49:36,629
We always believe
in a kind of a conditional mode.

1230
01:49:36,732 --> 01:49:41,830
I know very well it's a fake but, nonetheless,
I let myself be emotionally affected.

1231
01:49:42,897 --> 01:49:44,129
How do you do?

1232
01:49:47,232 --> 01:49:50,763
Mr Carl Laemmle feels it would be
a little unkind to present this picture

1233
01:49:50,862 --> 01:49:53,964
without just a word of friendly warning.

1234
01:49:54,196 --> 01:49:57,464
We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein,

1235
01:49:57,830 --> 01:50:02,862
a man of science, who sought to create
a man after his own image

1236
01:50:03,330 --> 01:50:06,031
without reckoning upon God.

1237
01:50:06,562 --> 01:50:12,295
Somebody tells us
you have to experience horror, we do it.

1238
01:50:13,665 --> 01:50:18,129
So if any of you feel that you do not care
to subject your nerves to such a strain,

1239
01:50:18,229 --> 01:50:22,763
now is your chance to... Well, we've warned you.

1240
01:50:29,795 --> 01:50:32,929
Ladies and gentlemen, young and old,

1241
01:50:33,629 --> 01:50:39,330
this may seem an unusual procedure,
speaking to you before the picture begins.

1242
01:50:39,929 --> 01:50:42,263
But we have an unusual subject.

1243
01:50:43,263 --> 01:50:46,795
Behind, not red, this is Hollywood,
but black curtain,

1244
01:50:46,897 --> 01:50:48,897
Cecil DeMille himself appears,

1245
01:50:48,964 --> 01:50:52,964
giving us a lesson of how
the story of ten commandments and Moses

1246
01:50:53,062 --> 01:50:55,531
has great relevance today where we are fighting

1247
01:50:55,629 --> 01:50:59,897
communist, totalitarian danger
and so on, giving us all the clues.

1248
01:51:00,862 --> 01:51:03,429
Are men the property of the state?

1249
01:51:04,229 --> 01:51:06,662
Or are they free souls under God?

1250
01:51:07,098 --> 01:51:11,929
This same battle continues
throughout the world today.

1251
01:51:12,263 --> 01:51:16,129
This hidden master who controls the events

1252
01:51:16,295 --> 01:51:20,598
can also be defined as ideology embodied,

1253
01:51:20,696 --> 01:51:26,531
in the sense of the space
which organises our desires.

1254
01:51:28,263 --> 01:51:32,196
And your name? What the fuck is your name?

1255
01:51:36,397 --> 01:51:40,062
In David Lynch's <i>Lost Highway</i>,
we have the Mystery Man,

1256
01:51:40,129 --> 01:51:44,362
who stands for the very cinematographer,
even director.

1257
01:51:49,794 --> 01:51:55,696
Imagine somebody who has
a direct access to your inner life,

1258
01:51:56,763 --> 01:51:58,964
to your innermost fantasies,

1259
01:51:59,062 --> 01:52:03,531
to what even you don't want to know
about yourself.

1260
01:52:04,429 --> 01:52:06,763
We've met before, haven't we?

1261
01:52:10,294 --> 01:52:11,995
I don't think so.

1262
01:52:14,897 --> 01:52:17,429
Where was it that you think we met?

1263
01:52:18,330 --> 01:52:20,429
At your house, don't you remember?

1264
01:52:20,830 --> 01:52:23,696
The best way to imagine what Mystery Man is,

1265
01:52:23,763 --> 01:52:27,330
is to imagine somebody
who doesn't want anything from us.

1266
01:52:27,397 --> 01:52:30,294
What do you mean? You're where right now?

1267
01:52:32,330 --> 01:52:33,794
At your house.

1268
01:52:38,495 --> 01:52:40,662
That's fucking crazy, man.

1269
01:52:48,929 --> 01:52:50,495
Call me.

1270
01:52:53,031 --> 01:52:55,562
That's the true horror of this Mystery Man.

1271
01:52:55,662 --> 01:52:59,729
Not any evil, demoniac intentions and so on.

1272
01:52:59,794 --> 01:53:05,562
Just the fact that when he is in front of you,
he, as it were, sees through you.

1273
01:53:12,062 --> 01:53:14,393
I told you I was here.

1274
01:53:17,830 --> 01:53:19,594
How'd you do that?

1275
01:53:23,129 --> 01:53:24,862
Ask me.

1276
01:53:30,662 --> 01:53:33,929
- How'd you get inside my house?
- You invited me.

1277
01:53:33,995 --> 01:53:37,294
It is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted.

1278
01:53:37,362 --> 01:53:40,229
It's like the court in Kafka's novels,

1279
01:53:40,362 --> 01:53:43,929
where the court, or the Law,
only comes when you ask for it.

1280
01:53:44,964 --> 01:53:47,929
Oh! Now, why would he do that?

1281
01:53:50,196 --> 01:53:52,862
Most peculiar. What on Earth?

1282
01:53:53,129 --> 01:53:57,629
Hitchcock was obsessed
with this topic of manipulating emotions.

1283
01:53:57,763 --> 01:54:00,263
His dream was even that once in the future,

1284
01:54:00,329 --> 01:54:03,662
we would no longer have to shoot narratives,

1285
01:54:04,129 --> 01:54:07,362
our brains will be directly connected
to some machine

1286
01:54:07,429 --> 01:54:11,527
and the director would only have to press
different buttons there

1287
01:54:11,594 --> 01:54:15,362
and the appropriate emotions
will be awakened in our mind.

1288
01:54:17,762 --> 01:54:19,696
They're coming. They're coming!

1289
01:54:22,929 --> 01:54:27,460
What do directors like Hitchcock,
Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Lynch

1290
01:54:27,527 --> 01:54:28,862
have in common?

1291
01:54:29,027 --> 01:54:32,929
A certain autonomy of cinematic form.

1292
01:54:33,862 --> 01:54:37,460
Form is not here simply
to express, articulate content.

1293
01:54:37,527 --> 01:54:40,229
It has a message of its own.

1294
01:54:41,429 --> 01:54:47,594
In Hitchcock, we have
the motif of a person hanging from an abyss

1295
01:54:47,692 --> 01:54:49,562
by the hand of another person.

1296
01:54:50,162 --> 01:54:52,829
The first example, <i>Saboteur</i>.

1297
01:54:54,062 --> 01:54:55,594
<i>Rear Window</i>.

1298
01:54:58,794 --> 01:55:00,662
Then we have in <i>To Catch a Thief</i>.

1299
01:55:00,729 --> 01:55:03,129
You've got a full house down there.
Begin the performance.

1300
01:55:03,229 --> 01:55:04,960
Then in <i>North by Northwest</i>.

1301
01:55:07,329 --> 01:55:09,893
Then, of course, in <i>Vertigo</i>.

1302
01:55:12,094 --> 01:55:16,960
So we see here
the same visual motif repeating itself.

1303
01:55:21,794 --> 01:55:26,362
I think it's wrong to look
for a common, deeper meaning.

1304
01:55:26,460 --> 01:55:29,527
Some French theorists claimed that

1305
01:55:29,625 --> 01:55:32,929
what we are dealing here with
is the motif of fall and redemption.

1306
01:55:33,027 --> 01:55:35,762
I think this is already saying too much.

1307
01:55:35,862 --> 01:55:40,594
I think that what we are dealing with
is with a kind of a cinematic materialism,

1308
01:55:40,692 --> 01:55:43,995
that beneath the level of meaning,

1309
01:55:44,094 --> 01:55:47,594
spiritual meaning
but also simple narrative meaning,

1310
01:55:47,829 --> 01:55:53,429
we get a more elementary level
of forms themselves,

1311
01:55:53,558 --> 01:55:58,893
communicating with each other,
interacting, reverberating, echoing,

1312
01:55:59,027 --> 01:56:01,729
morphing, transforming one into the other.

1313
01:56:01,829 --> 01:56:07,862
And it is this background,
this background of proto-reality,

1314
01:56:07,929 --> 01:56:13,692
a real which is more dense,
more fundamental than the narrative reality,

1315
01:56:14,058 --> 01:56:15,362
the story that we observe.

1316
01:56:15,460 --> 01:56:21,192
It is this that provides the proper density
of the cinematic experience.

1317
01:56:26,362 --> 01:56:31,625
It's the gigantic tree where, in <i>Vertigo</i>,
Madeleine and Scottie get together,

1318
01:56:31,862 --> 01:56:36,625
almost embrace, where their erotic tension
becomes unbearable.

1319
01:56:37,027 --> 01:56:38,625
What is this tree?

1320
01:56:38,692 --> 01:56:43,429
I think it's another
in the series of "Hitchcockian Big Things,"

1321
01:56:43,491 --> 01:56:48,791
like the Mount Rushmore statues,
or take another example, like Moby-Dick.

1322
01:56:49,262 --> 01:56:51,893
This tree is not simply a natural object.

1323
01:56:51,960 --> 01:56:54,558
It is, within our mental space,

1324
01:56:54,625 --> 01:56:57,791
what in psychoanalysis is called "the Thing".

1325
01:56:57,991 --> 01:57:04,393
It's effectively as if this tree,
in its very extra-large distortion,

1326
01:57:04,893 --> 01:57:08,826
embodies something
that comes out of our inner space,

1327
01:57:09,424 --> 01:57:13,826
libido, the excessive energy of our mind.

1328
01:57:14,527 --> 01:57:17,594
So here I think

1329
01:57:18,991 --> 01:57:24,326
we can see how films and philosophy
are coming together.

1330
01:57:24,424 --> 01:57:30,094
How great cinematographers really
enable us to think in visual terms.

1331
01:57:36,791 --> 01:57:38,326
After the birds attack the city,

1332
01:57:38,424 --> 01:57:41,326
there is a fire which breaks out
at a gasoline station,

1333
01:57:41,393 --> 01:57:44,393
where a guy throws a match on the gasoline.

1334
01:57:44,594 --> 01:57:48,224
Hey, you! Look out! Don't drop that match!
Look out! Get out of there!

1335
01:57:48,393 --> 01:57:50,224
- Mister, run!
- Watch out!

1336
01:57:50,291 --> 01:57:53,192
The first part of this short scene
is the standard one.

1337
01:57:53,259 --> 01:57:56,657
We get the standard exchange of shots of the fire

1338
01:57:56,724 --> 01:58:01,590
and shots of the person,
Melanie in this case, who looks at it.

1339
01:58:05,157 --> 01:58:07,625
Then something strange happens.

1340
01:58:07,759 --> 01:58:12,357
We cut to way above the city.
We see the entire town.

1341
01:58:13,027 --> 01:58:18,590
We automatically take this shot
as a standard establishing shot.

1342
01:58:18,657 --> 01:58:20,657
Like after details which perplex you,

1343
01:58:20,759 --> 01:58:23,157
which prevent you
from getting a clear orientation,

1344
01:58:23,224 --> 01:58:27,790
you need a shot which enables you
some kind of a cognitive mapping,

1345
01:58:27,857 --> 01:58:29,393
that you know what's going on.

1346
01:58:29,460 --> 01:58:33,991
But then, precisely following that logic
of the Thing from inner space

1347
01:58:34,058 --> 01:58:36,692
which emerges from within you,

1348
01:58:38,157 --> 01:58:41,259
first we hear these ominous sounds,
which are sounds of the birds,

1349
01:58:41,357 --> 01:58:44,759
then one bird enters, another bird enters...

1350
01:58:44,826 --> 01:58:49,759
The shot which was taken as a neutral,
God's view shot,

1351
01:58:49,857 --> 01:58:53,759
all of a sudden changes into an evil gaze.

1352
01:58:55,960 --> 01:58:58,625
The gaze of the very birds attacking.

1353
01:59:00,290 --> 01:59:02,991
And we are thrown into that position.

1354
01:59:03,090 --> 01:59:07,590
And again, we can use here
<i>The Birds</i> as the final instalment

1355
01:59:07,692 --> 01:59:12,990
and read backwards other classical
Hitchcock scenes in the same way.

1356
01:59:14,959 --> 01:59:17,790
Isn't exactly the same thing happening

1357
01:59:17,892 --> 01:59:21,290
in what I consider the ultimate scene in <i>Psycho</i>,

1358
01:59:21,356 --> 01:59:24,423
the second murder,
the murder of the detective Arbogast?

1359
01:59:26,423 --> 01:59:30,191
Hitchcock manipulates here in a very refined way

1360
01:59:30,258 --> 01:59:33,423
the logic of so-called fetishist disavowal.

1361
01:59:33,490 --> 01:59:36,825
The logic of, "I know very well, but..."

1362
01:59:37,124 --> 01:59:40,856
We know very well some things,
but we don't really believe in them,

1363
01:59:40,923 --> 01:59:46,156
so although we know they will happen,
we are no less surprised when they happen.

1364
01:59:48,789 --> 01:59:52,258
In this case,
everything points towards the murder

1365
01:59:52,325 --> 01:59:57,526
and, nonetheless, when it happens,
the surprise is, if anything, stronger.

1366
02:00:02,458 --> 02:00:05,592
It begins in a standard Hitchcockian way.

1367
02:00:08,092 --> 02:00:10,690
He looks up the stairs.

1368
02:00:11,226 --> 02:00:15,222
This exchange creates the Hitchcockian tension

1369
02:00:15,422 --> 02:00:17,958
between the subject's look

1370
02:00:18,659 --> 02:00:23,257
and the stairs themselves,
or rather the void on the top of the stairs

1371
02:00:23,356 --> 02:00:24,856
returning the gaze,

1372
02:00:24,958 --> 02:00:29,222
emanating some kind of
a weird unfathomable threat.

1373
02:00:45,824 --> 02:00:48,222
The camera then provides

1374
02:00:48,525 --> 02:00:53,655
a kind of a geometrically clear
God's point of view shot image

1375
02:00:53,757 --> 02:00:55,789
of the entire scene.

1376
02:01:00,391 --> 02:01:05,025
It is as if here we pass
from God as neutral creator,

1377
02:01:05,123 --> 02:01:09,056
to God in his unbearable divine rage.

1378
02:01:10,355 --> 02:01:14,422
This murderer is for us an unfathomable monster.

1379
02:01:14,489 --> 02:01:16,891
We don't know who he is,

1380
02:01:16,989 --> 02:01:21,855
but because we are forced
to assume the murderer's position,

1381
02:01:21,922 --> 02:01:23,855
in a way we don't know who we are.

1382
02:01:23,922 --> 02:01:26,989
As if we discover
a terrifying dimension in ourselves.

1383
02:01:27,123 --> 02:01:30,257
As if we are forced to act as a doll,

1384
02:01:30,355 --> 02:01:34,623
as a tool of another evil divinity's will.

1385
02:01:43,025 --> 02:01:45,922
It's not as classical metaphysics thinks,

1386
02:01:46,722 --> 02:01:50,391
"We are too terrified to accept
the fact that we are mortal beings,

1387
02:01:50,458 --> 02:01:52,525
"we would like to be immortal." No.

1388
02:01:52,623 --> 02:01:55,556
The truly horrible thing is to be immortal.

1389
02:01:58,690 --> 02:02:01,155
Immortality is the true nightmare, not death.

1390
02:02:01,221 --> 02:02:02,355
Lord Vader,

1391
02:02:03,891 --> 02:02:05,324
can you hear me?

1392
02:02:08,922 --> 02:02:14,855
We should remember the exact moment
when the normal, everyday person,

1393
02:02:14,958 --> 02:02:18,891
okay not quite everyday,
but ordinary person of Anakin Skywalker

1394
02:02:18,989 --> 02:02:21,190
changes into Darth Vader.

1395
02:02:23,721 --> 02:02:27,021
This scene when the Emperor's doctors

1396
02:02:27,088 --> 02:02:31,788
are reconstituting him after heavy wounds
into Darth Vader,

1397
02:02:31,891 --> 02:02:34,824
that these scenes are inter-cut

1398
02:02:34,922 --> 02:02:39,257
with the scenes of Princess Padmé,
Anakin's wife, giving birth.

1399
02:02:43,824 --> 02:02:44,954
Luke.

1400
02:02:45,623 --> 02:02:51,324
So it is as if we are witnessing
the transformation of Anakin into father.

1401
02:02:54,855 --> 02:02:56,891
But what kind of father?

1402
02:02:58,489 --> 02:03:02,922
A monster of a father
who doesn't want to be dead.

1403
02:03:20,587 --> 02:03:25,221
His deep breathing is the sound of the father,

1404
02:03:25,288 --> 02:03:30,324
the Freudian, primordial father,
this obscene over-potent father,

1405
02:03:30,454 --> 02:03:32,954
the father who doesn't want to die.

1406
02:03:33,056 --> 02:03:36,654
This, I think, is for all of us the most

1407
02:03:38,320 --> 02:03:40,587
obscene threat that we witness.

1408
02:03:40,721 --> 02:03:45,056
We don't want our fathers alive.
We want them dead.

1409
02:03:46,019 --> 02:03:51,556
The ultimate object of anxiety is a living father.

1410
02:03:51,623 --> 02:03:56,820
This brings us to what we should really
be attentive about in David Lynch's film.

1411
02:03:56,887 --> 02:04:01,587
Namely, what is to be taken seriously
and not seriously in his films.

1412
02:04:02,056 --> 02:04:04,623
- We love Ben.
- We love Ben.

1413
02:04:04,690 --> 02:04:07,056
- Here's to Ben.
- Here's to Ben.

1414
02:04:10,887 --> 02:04:12,690
Here's to Ben.

1415
02:04:14,355 --> 02:04:16,721
- Here's to Ben.
- Be polite!

1416
02:04:18,154 --> 02:04:19,221
Here's to Ben.

1417
02:04:19,355 --> 02:04:24,989
Frank is one of these terrifying,
ridiculously obscene paternal figures.

1418
02:04:25,989 --> 02:04:29,820
Apart from Frank in <i>Blue Velvet</i>,
we have Baron Harkonnen in <i>Dune</i>,

1419
02:04:29,887 --> 02:04:32,623
we have Willem Dafoe in <i>Wild at Heart</i>,

1420
02:04:32,690 --> 02:04:35,123
we have Mr Eddy in <i>Lost Highway</i>.

1421
02:04:36,754 --> 02:04:41,387
Don't you ever fucking tailgate! Ever!

1422
02:04:41,489 --> 02:04:43,654
- Tell him you won't tailgate.
- Ever!

1423
02:04:43,721 --> 02:04:45,254
I won't ever tailgate...

1424
02:04:45,355 --> 02:04:50,254
Do you know how many fucking car lengths
it takes to stop a car at 35 miles an hour?

1425
02:04:50,355 --> 02:04:54,587
Six fucking car lengths!
That's 106 fucking feet, mister!

1426
02:04:54,654 --> 02:04:57,387
If I had to stop suddenly, you would have hit me!

1427
02:04:57,454 --> 02:05:01,855
I want you to get a fucking driver's manual
and I want you to study that motherfucker!

1428
02:05:02,320 --> 02:05:04,519
I want to spit once on your head.

1429
02:05:05,422 --> 02:05:07,721
Just some spittle in your face.

1430
02:05:11,489 --> 02:05:12,820
What a luxury.

1431
02:05:12,989 --> 02:05:19,721
But I think that this very appearance
of ridiculously violent comedy is deceiving.

1432
02:05:20,019 --> 02:05:25,489
I think that these ridiculous paternal figures
are the ethical focus,

1433
02:05:26,987 --> 02:05:30,954
the topic of practically all David Lynch's films.

1434
02:05:34,318 --> 02:05:36,018
Let's fuck!

1435
02:05:36,719 --> 02:05:39,920
I'll fuck anything that moves!

1436
02:05:57,088 --> 02:06:00,718
A normal, paternal authority is an ordinary man

1437
02:06:01,987 --> 02:06:05,619
who, as it were, wears phallus as an insignia.

1438
02:06:05,718 --> 02:06:07,353
He has something

1439
02:06:08,887 --> 02:06:12,754
which provides his symbolic authority.

1440
02:06:14,353 --> 02:06:16,754
This is, in psychoanalytic theory, phallus.

1441
02:06:16,820 --> 02:06:20,554
You are not phallus. You possess phallus.

1442
02:06:20,619 --> 02:06:26,119
Phallus is something attached to you,
like the King's crown is his phallus.

1443
02:06:26,254 --> 02:06:31,254
Something you put on
and this gives you authority.

1444
02:06:31,353 --> 02:06:35,054
So that when you talk it's not simply
you as a common person who is talking,

1445
02:06:35,119 --> 02:06:39,521
it's symbolic authority itself,
the Law, the state, talking through you.

1446
02:06:39,588 --> 02:06:43,254
So these excessively ridiculous paternal figures,

1447
02:06:45,119 --> 02:06:48,718
it's not simply that they possess phallus,

1448
02:06:48,918 --> 02:06:52,487
that they have phallus
as the insignia of their authority,

1449
02:06:52,655 --> 02:06:56,718
in a way, they immediately are phallus.

1450
02:06:57,119 --> 02:07:01,320
This is for, if they still exist,
a normal male subject...

1451
02:07:01,718 --> 02:07:06,218
This is the most terrorising experience
you can imagine,

1452
02:07:06,320 --> 02:07:11,418
to directly being the thing itself,
to assume that I am a phallus.

1453
02:07:11,517 --> 02:07:13,754
And the provocative greatness

1454
02:07:13,820 --> 02:07:17,554
of these Lynchian, obscene, paternal figures,

1455
02:07:17,619 --> 02:07:23,187
is that not only they don't have any anxiety,
not only they are not afraid of it,

1456
02:07:23,418 --> 02:07:26,088
they fully enjoy being it.

1457
02:07:26,187 --> 02:07:30,218
They are truly fearless entities
beyond life and death,

1458
02:07:30,619 --> 02:07:33,887
gladly assuming, as it were, their immortality,

1459
02:07:34,017 --> 02:07:37,954
their non-castrated life energy.

1460
02:07:41,151 --> 02:07:42,187
Okay.

1461
02:07:42,286 --> 02:07:45,218
This is indicated in a very nice way

1462
02:07:45,320 --> 02:07:47,387
in the scene towards the end of <i>Wild at Heart</i>

1463
02:07:47,487 --> 02:07:49,554
where Bobby Peru is killed.

1464
02:07:49,651 --> 02:07:51,853
Stop, you sons of bitches!

1465
02:07:51,954 --> 02:07:53,517
This is the police!

1466
02:07:53,718 --> 02:07:58,454
He accepts the mortal danger he is in
with, kind of, exuberant vitality,

1467
02:07:58,554 --> 02:08:01,218
and it's truly that when his head explodes,

1468
02:08:01,286 --> 02:08:05,119
it's as if we see the head of the penis
being torn apart.

1469
02:08:08,187 --> 02:08:09,853
Oh, for Christ sakes.

1470
02:08:12,254 --> 02:08:13,651
That poor bastard.

1471
02:08:14,651 --> 02:08:17,820
And then at the end, these figures are sacrificed.

1472
02:08:34,454 --> 02:08:35,619
Oh, Jeffrey.

1473
02:08:44,517 --> 02:08:46,187
It's all over, Jeffrey.

1474
02:09:21,353 --> 02:09:26,887
Joseph Stalin's favourite cinematic genre
were musicals.

1475
02:09:26,954 --> 02:09:30,316
Not only Hollywood musicals,
but also Soviet musicals.

1476
02:09:30,387 --> 02:09:33,853
There was a whole series
of so-called <i>kolkhoz</i> musicals.

1477
02:09:40,853 --> 02:09:42,749
Why? We should find this strange,

1478
02:09:42,816 --> 02:09:47,682
Stalin who personifies communist austerity,
terror and musicals.

1479
02:09:52,554 --> 02:09:56,584
The answer again is
the psychoanalytic notion of superego.

1480
02:09:56,682 --> 02:09:59,816
Superego is not only excessive terror,

1481
02:10:00,218 --> 02:10:04,151
unconditional injunction,
demand of utter sacrifice,

1482
02:10:04,218 --> 02:10:07,316
but at the same time, obscenity, laughter.

1483
02:10:07,554 --> 02:10:13,151
And it is Sergei Eisenstein's genius
to guess at this link.

1484
02:10:21,816 --> 02:10:27,182
In his last film,
which is a coded portrait of the Stalin era,

1485
02:10:27,651 --> 02:10:29,387
<i>Ivan the Terrible: Part 2</i>,

1486
02:10:29,487 --> 02:10:32,816
which because of all this
was immediately prohibited.

1487
02:10:33,615 --> 02:10:36,786
In the unique scene towards the end of the film,

1488
02:10:36,887 --> 02:10:39,517
we see the Czar, Ivan,

1489
02:10:40,517 --> 02:10:45,286
throwing a party, amusing himself,
with his so-called Oprichniki,

1490
02:10:45,954 --> 02:10:50,682
his private guards, who were used
to torture and kill his enemies,

1491
02:10:50,786 --> 02:10:56,316
his, if you want, KGB, secret police,
are seen performing a musical.

1492
02:10:59,084 --> 02:11:04,517
An obscene musical,
which tells precisely the story

1493
02:11:04,584 --> 02:11:09,517
about killing the rich boyars,
Ivan's main enemies.

1494
02:11:09,584 --> 02:11:10,987
Let the axes drop!

1495
02:11:13,548 --> 02:11:16,915
So terror itself is staged as a musical.

1496
02:11:20,084 --> 02:11:24,348
And the gates fell to the ground

1497
02:11:26,017 --> 02:11:30,481
Now, what has all this
to do with the reality of political terror?

1498
02:11:30,615 --> 02:11:33,615
Isn't this just art, imagination? No.

1499
02:11:33,848 --> 02:11:40,348
Not only were the political show trials
in Moscow in the mid- and late-1930s

1500
02:11:41,151 --> 02:11:44,017
theatrical performances,
we should not forget this,

1501
02:11:44,115 --> 02:11:46,981
they were well staged, rehearsed and so on.

1502
02:11:47,548 --> 02:11:51,182
Even more, there is, horrible as it may sound,

1503
02:11:51,249 --> 02:11:53,415
something comical about them.

1504
02:11:53,481 --> 02:11:56,883
The horror was so ruthless that the victims,

1505
02:11:56,981 --> 02:12:00,950
those who had to confess and demand
death penalty for themselves and so on,

1506
02:12:01,048 --> 02:12:04,450
were deprived of the minimum of their dignity,

1507
02:12:04,517 --> 02:12:08,481
so that they behaved as puppets,
they engaged in dialogues

1508
02:12:08,584 --> 02:12:12,115
which really sound like
out of <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>.

1509
02:12:12,950 --> 02:12:16,182
They behaved as persons from a cartoon.

1510
02:12:22,615 --> 02:12:24,981
Public enemy number one.

1511
02:12:27,084 --> 02:12:30,548
You're on trial today
for the crimes that you've committed.

1512
02:12:30,615 --> 02:12:32,548
We're gonna prove you're guilty.

1513
02:12:32,647 --> 02:12:34,682
Just try and get acquitted.

1514
02:12:37,347 --> 02:12:38,981
In the mid-'30s,

1515
02:12:39,084 --> 02:12:43,781
Walt Disney Studios produced
an unbelievable cartoon

1516
02:12:44,048 --> 02:12:46,383
called <i>Pluto's Judgement Day</i>...

1517
02:12:46,847 --> 02:12:47,883
Shut up!

1518
02:12:47,981 --> 02:12:53,816
...in which the dog, well-known Pluto,
falls asleep, and in his sleep

1519
02:12:54,450 --> 02:12:58,316
is persecuted by, haunted by the dream

1520
02:12:59,383 --> 02:13:04,280
of cats who were all in the past
his victims, molested by him,

1521
02:13:04,383 --> 02:13:09,847
dragging him to the court,
where a proper, truly Stalinist political trial

1522
02:13:09,914 --> 02:13:11,816
is in process against him.

1523
02:13:12,017 --> 02:13:13,517
We've seen and heard enough.

1524
02:13:13,647 --> 02:13:15,347
Jury, do your duty.

1525
02:13:15,548 --> 02:13:17,017
Just watch us do our stuff

1526
02:13:29,249 --> 02:13:33,383
We find the defendant guilty
He's guilty, he's guilty

1527
02:13:37,013 --> 02:13:38,414
Hooray!

1528
02:13:38,481 --> 02:13:42,115
The Law is not only severe, ruthless, blind,

1529
02:13:42,481 --> 02:13:44,847
at the same time, it mocks us.

1530
02:13:46,115 --> 02:13:50,249
There is an obscene pleasure
in practising the Law.

1531
02:13:54,580 --> 02:13:59,316
Our fundamental delusion today is not to believe

1532
02:13:59,981 --> 02:14:03,647
in what is only a fiction,
to take fictions too seriously.

1533
02:14:04,013 --> 02:14:08,615
It's, on the contrary,
not to take fictions seriously enough.

1534
02:14:08,914 --> 02:14:14,080
You think it's just a game? It's reality.
It's more real than it appears to you.

1535
02:14:14,847 --> 02:14:18,249
For example, people who play video games,

1536
02:14:18,316 --> 02:14:23,182
they adopt a screen persona
of a sadist, rapist, whatever.

1537
02:14:23,513 --> 02:14:26,513
The idea is, in reality I'm a weak person,

1538
02:14:27,682 --> 02:14:29,146
so in order to

1539
02:14:30,383 --> 02:14:36,213
supplement my real life weakness,
I adopt the false image

1540
02:14:36,316 --> 02:14:41,146
of a strong, sexually promiscuous person,
and so on and so on.

1541
02:14:42,316 --> 02:14:44,481
So this would be the naive reading.

1542
02:14:44,579 --> 02:14:48,816
I want to appear stronger, more active,
because in real life, I'm a weak person.

1543
02:14:48,914 --> 02:14:51,446
But what if we read it in the opposite way?

1544
02:14:51,548 --> 02:14:57,780
That this strong, brutal rapist,
whatever, identity is my true self.

1545
02:14:57,879 --> 02:15:01,280
In the sense that this is
the psychic truth of myself

1546
02:15:01,513 --> 02:15:05,379
and that in real life,
because of social constraints and so on,

1547
02:15:05,481 --> 02:15:07,548
I'm not able to enact it.

1548
02:15:07,615 --> 02:15:10,981
So that, precisely because I think
it's only a game,

1549
02:15:11,249 --> 02:15:15,012
it's only a persona,
a self-image I adopt in virtual space,

1550
02:15:15,115 --> 02:15:18,812
I can be there much more truthful.

1551
02:15:19,379 --> 02:15:25,213
I can enact there an identity
which is much closer to my true self.

1552
02:15:27,879 --> 02:15:33,146
We need the excuse of a fiction
to stage what we truly are.

1553
02:15:43,312 --> 02:15:46,379
<i>Stalker</i> is a film about a zone,

1554
02:15:46,446 --> 02:15:53,048
a prohibited space where there are debris,
remainders of aliens visiting us.

1555
02:15:53,312 --> 02:15:55,280
And stalkers are people

1556
02:15:55,512 --> 02:16:00,245
who specialised in smuggling foreigners
who want to visit into this space

1557
02:16:00,312 --> 02:16:02,548
where you get many magical objects.

1558
02:16:02,646 --> 02:16:07,048
But the main among them
is the room in the middle of this space,

1559
02:16:07,115 --> 02:16:11,780
where it is claimed your desires will be realised.

1560
02:16:11,879 --> 02:16:13,945
I know you're going to get mad.

1561
02:16:16,914 --> 02:16:18,945
Anyway, I must tell you...

1562
02:16:25,480 --> 02:16:30,146
We are now... on the threshold...

1563
02:16:37,677 --> 02:16:42,312
This is the most important moment in your life.

1564
02:16:45,743 --> 02:16:47,145
You must know that.

1565
02:16:48,945 --> 02:16:53,645
Your innermost wishes will be made real here.

1566
02:16:55,511 --> 02:17:00,877
Your most sincere wish. Born of suffering.

1567
02:17:03,243 --> 02:17:06,243
The contrast between <i>Solaris</i> and <i>Stalker</i> is clear.

1568
02:17:06,347 --> 02:17:08,913
In <i>Solaris</i>, we get id-machine

1569
02:17:09,011 --> 02:17:13,713
as an object which realises
your nightmares, desires, fears,

1570
02:17:14,047 --> 02:17:16,743
even before you ask for it, as it were.

1571
02:17:19,445 --> 02:17:22,145
In <i>Stalker</i> it's the opposite,

1572
02:17:22,377 --> 02:17:28,413
a zone where your desires,
deepest wishes get realised

1573
02:17:28,511 --> 02:17:32,645
on condition that you are able to formulate them.

1574
02:17:32,743 --> 02:17:34,847
Which, of course, you are never able,

1575
02:17:34,981 --> 02:17:40,377
which is why everybody fails
once you get there in the centre of the zone.

1576
02:17:41,445 --> 02:17:46,712
You just make money, using our... anguish!

1577
02:17:47,079 --> 02:17:48,346
It's not even the money.

1578
02:17:48,645 --> 02:17:51,543
You're enjoying yourself here.
You're like God Almighty here.

1579
02:17:52,177 --> 02:17:55,811
You, a hypocritical louse, decide
who is to live and who is to die

1580
02:17:56,677 --> 02:17:58,609
He deliberates!

1581
02:18:00,279 --> 02:18:04,212
Now I see why you stalkers
never enter the room yourselves.

1582
02:18:04,579 --> 02:18:09,511
You revel in all that power,
that mystery, your authority!

1583
02:18:09,877 --> 02:18:11,445
What else is there to wish for?

1584
02:18:11,811 --> 02:18:14,846
It's not true! You... you're mistaken.

1585
02:18:16,677 --> 02:18:22,475
Tarkovsky's solution to this tension
is that of religious obscurantism.

1586
02:18:23,000 --> 02:18:26,900
The way out of this deadlock
is a gesture of self-sacrifice.

1587
02:18:27,000 --> 02:18:35,200
His last two films, <i>Nostalghia</i> and <i>Sacrifice</i>,
both end up with some suicidal gesture of the hero.

1588
02:18:35,579 --> 02:18:39,445
...for the great day of His wrath has come,

1589
02:18:39,779 --> 02:18:43,877
and who is able to stand?

1590
02:18:48,109 --> 02:18:51,609
But I don't think this is
what makes Tarkovsky interesting.

1591
02:18:51,677 --> 02:18:56,177
What makes him interesting
is the very form of his films.

1592
02:18:59,645 --> 02:19:04,511
Tarkovsky uses as this material element

1593
02:19:04,677 --> 02:19:07,346
of pre-narrative density, time itself.

1594
02:19:09,511 --> 02:19:16,475
All of a sudden we are made to feel
this inertia, drabness of time.

1595
02:19:16,677 --> 02:19:21,841
Time is not just a neutral, light medium
within which things happen.

1596
02:19:21,909 --> 02:19:24,445
We feel the density of time itself.

1597
02:19:28,841 --> 02:19:32,377
Things that we see are more markers of time.

1598
02:19:38,945 --> 02:19:41,677
He treats even humans in this way.

1599
02:19:41,743 --> 02:19:45,243
If we look at the unique face of Stalker himself,

1600
02:19:45,341 --> 02:19:48,841
it's a face of somebody
exposed to too much radiation

1601
02:19:48,975 --> 02:19:51,945
and, as it were, rotting, falling apart alive.

1602
02:19:53,177 --> 02:19:58,543
It is this disintegration
of the very material texture of reality

1603
02:19:58,641 --> 02:20:02,342
which provides the spiritual depth.

1604
02:20:02,744 --> 02:20:07,579
Tarkovskian subjects, when they pray,
they don't look up, they look down.

1605
02:20:07,677 --> 02:20:13,012
They even sometimes, as in <i>Stalker</i>,
put their head directly onto the earth.

1606
02:20:24,043 --> 02:20:27,876
Here, I think, Tarkovsky affects us at a level

1607
02:20:27,976 --> 02:20:32,445
which is much deeper,
much more crucial for our experience

1608
02:20:32,643 --> 02:20:35,610
than all the standard, spiritual motives

1609
02:20:35,677 --> 02:20:39,279
of elevating ourselves
above material reality and so on.

1610
02:20:57,279 --> 02:21:00,244
There is nothing specific about the zone.

1611
02:21:00,641 --> 02:21:04,012
It's purely a place where a certain limit is set.

1612
02:21:04,811 --> 02:21:09,043
You set a limit, you put a certain zone off-limit,

1613
02:21:09,112 --> 02:21:12,909
and although things remain
exactly the way they were,

1614
02:21:13,079 --> 02:21:15,842
it's perceived as another place.

1615
02:21:18,811 --> 02:21:22,612
Precisely as the place onto which you can project

1616
02:21:22,712 --> 02:21:27,177
your beliefs, your fears,
things from your inner space.

1617
02:21:33,275 --> 02:21:36,909
In other words, the zone is ultimately

1618
02:21:37,014 --> 02:21:41,212
the very whiteness of the cinematic screen.

1619
02:21:48,411 --> 02:21:57,510
"To the people of this city we donate
this monument; 'Peace and Prosperity'."

1620
02:22:07,174 --> 02:22:10,808
Chaplin's <i>City Lights</i> is one of those masterpieces

1621
02:22:10,876 --> 02:22:14,608
which are really too sophisticated
for the sophisticated.

1622
02:22:14,674 --> 02:22:17,474
It's a deceptively simple movie.

1623
02:22:17,539 --> 02:22:19,942
When we are enraptured by it,

1624
02:22:20,074 --> 02:22:24,375
we tend to miss
its complexity and extreme finesse.

1625
02:22:33,474 --> 02:22:37,908
Already, the first scene of the movie
provides the co-ordinates.

1626
02:22:37,974 --> 02:22:40,908
It's kind of a microcosm of Chaplin's entire art.

1627
02:22:40,974 --> 02:22:44,107
What's the source of Chaplin's comic genius?

1628
02:22:44,171 --> 02:22:47,840
What's the archetypal
comic situation in Chaplin's films?

1629
02:22:49,408 --> 02:22:56,208
It's being mistaken for somebody
or functioning as a disturbing spot,

1630
02:22:57,574 --> 02:22:59,408
as a disturbing stain.

1631
02:23:03,507 --> 02:23:05,438
He distorts the vision.

1632
02:23:18,171 --> 02:23:22,107
So he wants to erase himself,
to get out of the picture.

1633
02:23:31,269 --> 02:23:34,574
Or people don't even note him, take note of him,

1634
02:23:34,635 --> 02:23:36,839
so he wants to be noted.

1635
02:23:36,908 --> 02:23:43,007
Or, if they perceive him, he's misperceived,
identified for what he is not.

1636
02:24:00,305 --> 02:24:03,438
The tramp is wrongly identified,

1637
02:24:03,538 --> 02:24:08,074
by a beautiful blind girl
who is selling flowers on a street corner,

1638
02:24:08,938 --> 02:24:10,601
as a millionaire.

1639
02:24:32,172 --> 02:24:35,408
He accepts the game, helps her,

1640
02:24:35,507 --> 02:24:39,967
even steals money to pay for her operation
to restore her sight,

1641
02:24:40,038 --> 02:24:45,601
then after he serves the punishment
and returns, he tries to find her.

1642
02:25:15,873 --> 02:25:20,067
And I think that this is the metaphor
of our predicament.

1643
02:25:21,833 --> 02:25:24,467
All too often, when we love somebody,

1644
02:25:24,567 --> 02:25:30,235
we don't accept him or her
as what the person effectively is.

1645
02:25:30,467 --> 02:25:36,938
We accept him or her insofar as this person
fits the co-ordinates of our fantasy.

1646
02:25:37,171 --> 02:25:41,438
We misidentify, wrongly identify him or her,

1647
02:25:41,538 --> 02:25:44,007
which is why, when we discover
that we were wrong,

1648
02:25:44,101 --> 02:25:46,671
love can quickly turn into violence.

1649
02:25:47,274 --> 02:25:51,137
There is nothing more dangerous,

1650
02:25:51,199 --> 02:25:54,433
more lethal for the loved person

1651
02:25:54,601 --> 02:25:58,699
than to be loved, as it were,
for not what he or she is,

1652
02:25:58,833 --> 02:26:01,537
but for fitting the ideal.

1653
02:26:01,735 --> 02:26:04,699
In this case, love is always mortifying love.

1654
02:26:11,537 --> 02:26:16,408
Here it's not only the tramp
as the figure within the film's narrative

1655
02:26:16,507 --> 02:26:19,139
exposing himself to his beloved girl,

1656
02:26:19,201 --> 02:26:22,835
it's at the same time Chaplin as actor/director

1657
02:26:23,408 --> 02:26:26,274
exposing himself to us, the public.

1658
02:26:26,936 --> 02:26:29,639
"I am shameless. I am offering myself to you,

1659
02:26:29,737 --> 02:26:32,274
"but at the same time, I am afraid."

1660
02:26:36,567 --> 02:26:40,007
The true genius of Chaplin

1661
02:26:40,507 --> 02:26:44,672
resides in the way he was able to stage

1662
02:26:44,737 --> 02:26:48,038
this psychological moment of recognition

1663
02:26:49,038 --> 02:26:53,737
at the level of form, music, visual aspect,

1664
02:26:54,139 --> 02:26:57,139
and at the same time, at the level of acting.

1665
02:27:03,469 --> 02:27:05,302
When the two hands meet,

1666
02:27:05,408 --> 02:27:10,039
the girl finally recognises him for what he is.

1667
02:27:19,574 --> 02:27:24,103
This moment
is always extremely dangerous, pathetic.

1668
02:27:29,335 --> 02:27:33,835
The beloved falls out of the frame
of the idealised co-ordinates,

1669
02:27:34,335 --> 02:27:38,969
finally there
exposed in his psychological nakedness.

1670
02:27:40,139 --> 02:27:42,639
"Here I am as what I really am."

1671
02:27:46,469 --> 02:27:49,408
And I don't think we have to read it
as a happy ending.

1672
02:27:49,507 --> 02:27:51,969
We don't know what will happen.

1673
02:27:55,938 --> 02:27:59,103
We have the letters, "the end", the black screen,

1674
02:27:59,172 --> 02:28:01,172
but the singing goes on.

1675
02:28:02,774 --> 02:28:05,969
As if the emotion is now too strong,

1676
02:28:06,469 --> 02:28:09,507
it spills over the very frame.

1677
02:28:25,172 --> 02:28:31,335
In order to understand today's world,
we need cinema, literally.

1678
02:28:31,835 --> 02:28:34,538
It's only in cinema that we get

1679
02:28:35,103 --> 02:28:39,969
that crucial dimension which
we are not ready to confront in our reality.

1680
02:28:40,438 --> 02:28:46,404
If you are looking for what is in reality
more real than reality itself,

1681
02:28:47,237 --> 02:28:49,639
look into the cinematic fiction.

1682
02:29:00,000 --> 02:29:06,000
Transcripted by unknown
Corrected and additional transcription by Le Chef Gaspard

1683
02:29:07,000 --> 02:29:10,073
Download Movie Subtitles Searcher from www.OpenSubtitles.org