They say one gains wisdom as one gets older; the wisdom of experience. No doubt, this is true; if you have ever been hit forcibly on the head by a mallet, you will have a tendency to avoid a repeat occurrence. However, this is not the most important thing that you acquire; you also gain a knowledge of 'self' which, to a greater or lesser extent, differs from how you remember that 'self' in the past. It is difficult to disentangle the threads of who you might have been and who you are now; is this 'change' a result of the experience you have had or has this 'self' lain dormant, but ever present, just waiting for the opportunity to explode, as chance dictates, upon your consciousness.
Nowhere is this brought into the light more forcefully than in one's appreciation of art (or what passes for 'art'). What explains the differences of your reactions to Grünewald's 'Isenheim Alterpiece'*, with its harrowing and stark depiction of the 'Crucifiction' and the sublime beauty and serenity of the 'Birth of Christ' and the 'Resurrection'? Do you remember pain and the tranquillity and peace that follows its cessation? Do you remember the joy that occasions the first-born? Do you remember the anguish of a mother who loses a child, or a lover who loses one so loved, and their final, reluctant acceptance of that death? Do we see in 'art' a reflection of our own experience, and thereby gain some semblance of meaning to our lives, or do we see truth; that ultimate reflection of life given to but a few privileged souls, artists?
Strange to tell but I was reminded of this by an insubstantial, but nonetheless iconic, piece of Hollywood schmaltz; 'Dirty Dancing'. I well remember being dragged, kicking and screaming, to see this movie on its release by my then partner who had acquired a certain fascination with Patrick Swayze, which I have to admit I could understand, he does, after all, have 'most of the chops'; attractive, in a 'pretty boy' sort of way, tall and masculine, a body honed to almost physical perfection and an acting talent that was at least adequate, if not stratospheric.
I came out of the cinema feeling mildly cheated out of my money (It was, of course, my money!). "Fodder for the emotionally immature," I intoned. "A simple fairy story of a down-trodden princess-in-waiting for little girls who have yet to grow up!" I ranted. "The worst kind of wish-fulfilment," I shouted. I calmed down eventually but for many years, I failed to see the attraction in this movie; why was it so popular amongst the VHS and DVD buying public? In the end, I finally succumbed to its lure by purchasing a 'two disc' DVD copy, replete with copius extras; surely I would now finally understand what it was that attracted so many people, although I suppose that, in the final analysis, I bought it because I had money to waste and I wanted to be disappointed and, perhaps, a little nostalgic about how little humility I used to have as a young man..
In many ways, it has the same 'feel' as 'Casablanca'. Another insubstantial, throwaway film which, in some respects, deserves anonymity; a film scarcely deserving of its iconic, hallowed status; a film with flimsy sets; a film with a trite, hackneyed storyline and a film with the 'usual suspects' going through the motions of trying to act. Yet for all this, I never fail to derive a visceral, pure enjoyment from the movie; each scene feels like a pair of old slippers, well worn but strangely comfortable; the feeling of pregnant anticipation for the line that you know is coming, "If she can stand it, then so can I. Play it, Sam!"; the look in Bergman's eyes at the airport, when you realise that she so desperately wants to stay in Casablanca but cannot for a multitude of unfathomable reasons; finally the all pervading truth of Tennyson's words, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
Since buying the DVD, I have now watched the movie of 'Dirty Dancing' four or five times and each time that I view it, I am more and more amazed at how shallow my initial reaction to the film was. It is a film steeped in nostaglia for a bygone age; an age of innocence; an age when Viet Nam was an unknown country on a map; an age before sexual promiscuity, when you preserved your virginity until your wedding night; an age when you took your holidays with your parents; an age when your independence took far longer to blossom.
And yes, this is a 'fairy tale' romance, How the 'prince' gets the 'girl of his dreams', a girl destined forever to be out of his reach; 'wish fulfilment' indeed. And yet it is not. It is a tale of a young woman who, despite the obstacles, mostly entrenched male attitudes, is prepared to go to extraorinary lengths to achieve what she desires; she does, after all, initiate the sexual encounter with 'Jonney'.
This is a 'post-feminist' film, in the sense that 'feminism' had already happened by the time that the film was made, and yet it speaks to us with a voice not of the political radicals of the Sixties but with the voice of an ordinary young woman of the time (or so we suppose); the voices of Alison Krause and Sandra Scheuer**, a woman who is no longer prepared to live in the shadows of her (real and metaphorical) fathers..
Oh, balderdash and piffle, MG. You don't like, love, 'Dirty Dancing' because of its high ethical content; you love it because it reminds you what it feels like to 'be in love with someone' not just to 'love someone', there is a difference.
And Jennifer Grey is so 'beautiful'; the architypcal 'girl- next-door, albeit Jewish!
* There is a small reproduction here (http://www.artbible.info/art/isenheim-altar.html) but no reproduction can prepare you for the reality of the actual altarpiece. Painted by Mathis Gothart Nithart, known as 'Matthais Grünewald' ('Matthew Greenwood') in the early sixteenth century, it represents the last flowering of 'Gothic art', a style already being supplanted by the 'renaissance art' emanating from Italy; while Dürer was painting works such as the 'Heller alterpiece' in 'high renaissance' style not 150 miles away, Grunewald stoically adhered to his Germanic heritage. The altarpiece was commissioned by the Monastery of St Anthony at Colmar which specialised in the kind of palliative care of the poor now undertaken by 'Macmillan nurses'. The dying inmates would be wheeled out to view the altarpiece with its graphic description, in visual terms, of Jesus' suffering on the cross, and the attendant anguish of Jesus' mother (comforted by John the Baptist) and the 'Magdelaine' who wrings her hands in her despair, only to be lifted by the transcendental image of the resurrection and the quiet peace of the nativity and the 'Annunciation' on the inner panels. Long dismissed, until the twentieth century, as a jobbing artist, Grunewald's artistic vision of Christ's final hours is almost unique; it is sad that so few of his works survive.
** Two students shot, and killed, by the Ohio National Guard, in a protest about the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. If there was ever a 'riff' which encapsulate a 'thing', a 'feeling', some indefinable quantity, then Neil Young's opening to 'Ohio', a song about the shooting at Kent State University, does that; in spades! (Although it may be that Stephen Stills generated the opening; wouldn't surprise me!)
No comments:
Post a Comment