Julie and I got a babysitter yesterday afternoon and sneaked out to see "Summer Hours," the new Olivier Assayas film that's getting lots of acclaim. I blogged about it the other day, based on David Edelstein's rave review (scroll down past his Angels & Demons piece). Now that I've seen the film myself, I have a few more remarks. First, Edelstein gives the basic set-up:
[H]ats off to Olivier Assayas's plain yet hauntingly beautiful Summer Hours, a true--albeit nonsecular--meditation on art and eternal life. The first half hour belongs to a time-honored genre, the country-house reunion drama. A 75-year-old widow, Hélène (Edith Scob), welcomes her three children and their families to the estate outside Paris she inherited from her loving (perhaps in both senses) uncle, a famous artist. We can tell she's dying--death is in the air. The question hovers: What will happen to the house, the Corot paintings, the nineteenth-century glassware, the etched silver, the Viennese armoire? Frédéric (Charles Berling), the eldest sibling, assumes it will all remain in the family so his children and their children can swim, climb trees, and live among the works of art--simply displayed but pervasive in their aura. But businessman Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) plans to relocate to China with his wife and kids and needs money; and Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), a designer, has little use for France, dividing her time between Japan and New York, where she lives with her boyfriend. Despite Frédéric's sorrow, there isn't much to debate. Bring on the appraisers and auctioneers.
"Summer Hours" is a complex, layered, ambiguous film about modernity -- or, I should say, contemporaneity -- and our response to it. It poses more questions than it answers, and is the kind of movie you want to sit around and talk about for hours. I thought I would come out of the movie strongly on the side of Frederic, who wants to preserve the house and everything in it for the young generation. But things are more complicated than that (as they are in real life, of course).
The film dwells on the slipperiness of value -- I mean, the value we assign to material objects (houses, vases, paintings, etc.). No thing has intrinsic value; it's only worth what people think it's worth. Helene's deceased uncle, an artist named Paul Berthier, collected Art Nouveau pieces, before anybody knew they were worth anything. Now they're cherished and immensely valuable. But why, and to whom? We see an Art Nouveau desk that has been in the Berthier family house for ages, later displayed in a museum. Frederic and his wife can't get used to seeing it outside of the context of the house, and the family that lived with it. What does it mean to take an object outside of that context, and display it in a museum? We may mourn the loss to the family and its sense of self-definition the dispersal of that desk and other objects from the house means, but we reflect too that the only reason we have museums at all to enjoy is because families and individuals have decided to divest themselves of their private art and artifacts. Can there be a moral imperative to turn an art object over from a private collection to the public, for the enjoyment of all? What claim does the collective have over individuals, when it comes to art and other things of great value? There are no easy answers, but these are the kinds of questions that come up whenever a neighborhood argues over historical preservation. Where are the moral lines between the individual's rights over his property, and his obligation to preserve it for public purpose?
I tell you, the first 40 minutes or so of the film, set in a French country house on a summer's day, were so lyrical that they made me want to go straightaway to France. You think: how could any family want to give this house up? But Adrienne and Jeremie have chosen to have their lives elsewhere. I liked how Adrienne, a New York designer, is terrified of being trapped in the past, but there are strong hints that all her talent is derivative of the past to which she was exposed in that house. The past tells her who she is, and refuses to let her accept the myth that she is a self-defined person. So she runs from it. Jeremie is a businessman, not an artist, and he sees his future in terms of commercial success. It isn't important to him that his French children will grow up in China, not French, but also not Chinese (they go to English-speaking schools, and are headed for a thoroughly deracinated existence). What matters is that he's getting ahead in his exciting career. To me, it seems a terrible waste. Why would you leave France, for heaven's sake?! But what if he was leaving a less romantic and sensual place and culture, like, say, suburban New Jersey? Would that change things, make the choice he's making for his children to deprive them of being from their family's birthplace be so great?
[Read on, past the jump...]
Do I disapprove of the fact that Jeremie has left France for China, or do I disapprove of the fact that Jeremie has left the land of his family's heritage? What if he were coming to America? (N.B., after the movie, I e-mailed some friends in northern California who are leaving to return to Europe to care for family after seven or eight very successful Silicon Valley years there, to tell them that I'm glad they're going back, in light of this movie). How does my own decision to leave Louisiana behind to chase my own career goals look? Would it be different if my family in Louisiana lived in a beautiful old country house instead of a plain red brick ranch house built in 1968? Why or why not?
[You see what I mean: more questions than answers.]
Frederic is, to my mind, the most sympathetic character, because his viewpoint resonates with mine. He's an economist who has written a book decrying the idolization of the global economy, but we see that he's unsure of himself, and his own co-optation by that economy. At one point, we see that he's so caught up in a sentimental, nostalgic ideal of family that he's neglecting his children, and their needs. Though someone of my sensibilities have no trouble seeing what's wrong with Adrienne's and Jeremie's choices, the case of Frederic raises discomfiting questions about the extent to which the past, and felt familial obligation, imposes an unjust burden on those living in the present. We also learn late in the film that the dead Helene, who seemed to be the epitome of nobly preserving the house and its contents for posterity, had far more ambiguous and even disreputable personal reasons for treating the house and its artifacts as a shrine.
I was reminded of my friend's dad, O., who gave up the opportunity to take a great job in Australia in the 1960s, because he felt an obligation to stay behind in his hometown and be of service to his extended family. O. now is doubtful that he made the right choice, as his extended family apparently took advantage of him, and, according to my friend, O. can be legitimately accused of having neglected his wife and kids to a certain extent whenever his parents or wider family called on him for help. So, O. sacrificed for the sake of the ideal of Family and Home, but because things didn't work out as he had hoped, he now wonders if his choice was the right one. I bet if O. had moved with his wife to Oz, and started his family there, he might now be in retirement wondering what meaningful things he had sacrificed for his own career and dreams. How can we measure these things, and choose wisely when the time comes to choose? We know we must choose, but again, how do we know the difference between what we want to do and what we ought to do?
The film ends on a note that took me a while to understand, but that I now think is really profound, if melancholy. I won't say what happens, obviously, but it struck me as a beautifully rendered portrait of the individual under globalized liberalism. It suggests that we really do feel the pains of nostalgia for the world we have given up, but that in the end, nostalgia and sentiment are not enough to keep us from moving forward into a world of privatized pleasure. We will climb over any wall, and respect no boundaries of custom or memory, for the cause of putting distance between ourselves and anything -- places, things, other people -- that would keep us from doing what we want to do. That is what it means to be modern, and all of us -- certainly your correspondent here -- are far more compromised by it than we may care to think.
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I hope to come back with a more substantive response after I see the film, but just wanted to say this is a beautiful post, Rod. Also, Best Wishes and Congrats on your Templeton Fellowship!
I haven't seen this film, but Rod's comments about it evoke a sense of loss within me, nonetheless.
My father was the kid who left the family farm, joined the Army, and then came home to train as an aircraft mechanic with his G.I. Bill benefits. He eventually got a job with a government contractor's field service team, which had our little branch of the family moving frequently to follow the contracts. (I attended 23 schools, K-12. As a result of that unsettling experience, I am now a great supporter of homeschooling!) Summers often saw my father laid-off, and our family back at my grandparents' farm, until another contract was secured. So, one could say that this farm was really the only STATIONARY home I had, growing up, even though I was there infrequently. Of course, "home" is more than a place; it's essentially the people sheltered there, and my brother and I were thankfully secure in having loving, sacrificing parents, wherever we happened to be living. As a teenager and adult, however, I dreamed that I would one day be able to build a small house somewhere on the farm property, and surround it with roses, lilac bushes, and apple trees.
A couple of years ago, my parents, the last inheritors of our family's farm, had to sell the property, as they could not afford the property taxes alone, and none of the grandchildren's families were in any financial position to help preserve it. Our family home is gone, and we all feel its loss deeply. (To add insult to that injury, much of the money from the sale then had to be paid to two state governments in "death taxes," so my parents didn't really benefit, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)
What the experience taught me is that we are to be detached from the things of this world, as they are really transitory. Our true Home is in heaven with our Creator, and my main business here is to be sure I find my way THERE.
Rod - I do appreciate your thoughtful response. I did see your ambiguity and my response did not appear to recognize that. I would also say that I expect I would love this film too.
I am on the other side of this issue - I had a chance in my twenties to take a very good job and move to England to a very lovely place I really liked. I was not married then - but still - the prospect of not really being involved in my nieces and nephews lives, the loss of my contact with my sister and cousins, my concerns about my widowed mom, made it impossible for me to take that job. I live in the proverbial colonial era farmhouse near my family now. We are all still close and I have not a single regret over deciding to stay at home (Rod - I have been to Dallas - it is not like northwest NJ).
Part of what made it possible for me to make this decision is that I could still get a very good job here in NJ and still find an intellectually and spiritually satisfying life. Now that I am older though - I would love to sell this charming country house and get a smaller, easier and cheaper to maintain, less ancient house that would not necessarily be so close to the family.
I do think you are too hard on yourself - your willingness to keep on checking your POV is so admirable but give yourself a break on this.
I do not think the circumstances that result in something being created determine its value - but it does affect our perception of the value of an object. There are elements of social control that result in people looking down on their humble circumstances and admiring those above them. I am not a fan of pink flamingos on the lawn - but I would reject anyone deriding those who have pink flamingos on the lawn. That derision reflects an elitism that is part and parcel of the mechanisms for social control.
I suspect we have lost something in that process of immigration because those immigrant cultures were so despised at that time - the immigrants abandoned that culture - and now their descendants have regrets about those losses. Which is why I don't think we should give in to the new prejudice - despising red brick ranch house or pink flamingos on the lawn. Ultimately that sort of cultural elitism is about discrediting other aspects of etnic, working and middle class culture - like faith, tradition and the desire to resist the whole family moving all over the country.
I think you hit the nail on the head about technology - it is TV - mass media - the ease of getting from one place to another which facilitates all this rootlessness and destroys the "local". But I know within my own family - especially as so many of us face retirement - the debate about moving from where we have been planted for several generations - is not an easy one and acknowledges the losses involved. People may appear to accept something with ease on the surface but most families I know deeply regret how seperated they are, I witness constantly the anguish of families uprooted over and over again by corporate transfers. In fact - if we wanted to create a more stable society - impacting on the coporate philosophy of moving workers and their families all over the place is an important factor. So sometimes it is not so much individual desire as the belief that we cannot stop the economic and social forces which cause this.
" I DO think that, to some degree, the exploitativeness of origins affects the aesthetics of a building. "
I do, too. The hot cramped ticky tacky houses and the spacious gracious mansions are twinned, rising from the same circumstances.
The most beautiful places are full of love, simplicity, and respect for the surrounding world, not taking too much or rising high above what is possible for everyone.
The most beautiful art reflects a similar sensibility. Versailles, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the homes of the de Medicis in Florence--and the grand living quarters of rich folks in New Jersey and California, full of antiquary--display a distorted aesthetic.
I find this discussion very enlightening, and I'm looking forward to watching the film.
We need to make sure we d not hold grudges an leave what others have done in the past exactly where they belong, in the past! If I buy or inherit a home or property I should not have to worry about it's past. I believe in New Beginnings, forgiving and moving on to positive, loving attitudes and relationships... Some of the slave owners were really good people and loved their slaves more than a lot of rich and poor people love their own children and parents. Please try not to be so judgemental. Love and Prayers, Suzie
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