Where do they call come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?”
- The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby”
In Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed, latest novel, 1Q84, his character Aomame makes a distinction between being lonely and being alone. That passage, among many others, resonated with me on a deeply personal level. There have been times in my life in which I have felt incredibly alone and incredibly lonely, yet the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. One can feel lonely while being surrounded by friends and acquaintances, and in the reverse, one can be alone yet not feel the sting and pain of loneliness. When I was a teenager, prone to bouts of loneliness and depression, a wise man told me that I had to make a friend of loneliness. While at the time it seemed esoteric and nonsensical advice, that phrase stuck with me. As I grew older, that piece of advice became a mantra for me. The three films in this post all, in some way or another, made me recall the feelings of loneliness, as each director amazingly and heartbreakingly captures it in words, sounds, and images.
Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)
Vivre Sa Vie, Jean-Luc Godard’s fourth film, starts with an epigraph from Montaigne that was eerily similar to the advice I mention above. “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.” What follows is a tragic tale of a woman struggling in the modern era, a victim of a changing world that values money and fame but objectifies people, especially women, in the process. Anna Karina is Nana, a young girl with aspirations of becoming an actress. Told in twelve separate vignettes, we follow episodes of Nana’s life, seeing her with different jobs, different men, and in some hopeless situations. Godard specifically shoots from behind Karina’s head, sometimes not allowing us to see whom she is talking to. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. We are Nana. We connect with her in her attempt to navigate a pop culture world that could easily, and does, chew her up and spit her out.
Like many of Godard’s films, Vivre Sa Vie is incredibly meta and has only become more so in recent years thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s homage. While Godard was paying homage with Karina's bob haircut to Louise Brooks, Tarantino was paying homage to Godard with Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction. In his own inimitable style, however, Godard tends to blur the lines between reality, play acting, real acting, and everything in between. Failing to make her dream come true as an actress, a direct contrast with the real Anna Karina, we see Nana’s dreams dashed in increments amidst a world of consumerism. It is a brave new world that idolizes Americana, pop music, films, and gangsters. Particularly relevant to the story are references to Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Poe’s short story, "The Oval Portrait," which somehow seems to reveal the nature of Godard and Karina’s on and off screen relationship. Nana works at a record store, essentially selling art as product. Eventually, Nana resorts to prostitution, feeling it is the only path to take in order to make ends meet. It is a searing indictment of the treatment of women in a capitalist world. If that weren’t convincing in and of itself, Nana is sold from one pimp to another, as a piece of property, as an object, as product.
Through it all, Nana stoically traverses her life, but her loneliness, desperation, and crippling sadness are there, just under the surface. At one point, Nana has a dance number, hoofing it to up-tempo jazz music in a pool hall. The men simply ignore her joyous dance, and she ends by embracing a pillar in the room. One can’t help but sense that “look at me” desperation and subsequently feel your heart slowly cracking. Godard’s choice of filming from behind Karina’s head, so that she eclipses whomever she may be conversing with, forces us to see her and only her. We don’t see her face, because that would allow us to personalize her loneliness and not actually experience it for ourselves. It is as if, even though she has people with whom she interacts, they don’t exist. She is utterly alone. There are two moments that are crushingly heartbreaking, bringing me to tears. One is the inevitable end of the film, awful, stark, and yet incredibly true to the character Godard and Karina have created together. The other moment comes when Nana goes to see Carl Dreyer’s Joan of Arc in the movie theater. As she sits watching this tale of a martyr, essentially alone against the English, Nana weeps openly, tears streaming down her face. What is amazing about this scene, at least in my mind, is that Godard truly captures the connections we make with art, how we see ourselves: our fears, grief, joy, and pain in artistic representation. This is what great art should do, and I certainly saw many aspects of myself in Nana.
The Fire Within (1963, Louis Malle)
Maurice Ronet is Alain Leroy. Alain has a crippling depression due to his alcoholism. He has been staying at a rehab clinic, often calling himself “cured,” but his cure seems to only have power while his is sheltered in the clinic. He hasn’t talked to his wife of two years. She fled to America and this event only further fueled his sense of shame and regret. In a great scene, we see Alain getting ready to visit the city for the first time in a long while. He picks out his shirt, a tie, cufflinks, and rehearses a telegram to his wife. He does not know how to interact with the outside world anymore. This is merely a precursor for a Homeric journey that will lead to a somewhat inevitable end. We soon realize that this is not an attempt to insert himself once again into the real world, to dip his toes in the water of reality, but is a “farewell tour” before leaving the world entirely.
Once back in the city, he decides to visit his old stomping grounds, including his old hotel apartment. He has been “replaced” by a young soldier back from the Algerian war. He has stepped in to his old apartment, and representatively, his old life. He goes to see old friends, one of which, played by the luminous Jeanne Moreau, could have been more than a friend in the past. She is the only one who seems generally comforting to him, the rest having either moved on without him and preoccupied with their own lives to give him any notice. Eventually, after feeling the emptiness of his life, he resorts once again to drinking. Ironically, at one point, he is even saved from being hit by a car. One could read into these events that he is being given reasons to live over and over again, but he cannot see them. This is what depression is. Despite the good that may be present, you simply can’t see past the darkness enveloping you.
Even though his friends know that he is an alcoholic, they allow him to drink, even commenting at one point that his first drink after detox will make him sick. Some friends. The men in his life are selfish enablers with no compassion. The women in his life have compassion, but are ultimately ineffectual. He finally breaks down and admits that he is scared of the women around him and he cannot feel desire. He says, “I can’t reach out with my hands. I can’t touch things,” and “I wanted so much to be loved.” Toward the end, he is seen reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is resoundingly relevant for a number of reasons. For one, it is set during the prohibition and Alain is in detox. Gatsby is an enigmatic man who people can’t seem to figure out. Alain’s friends can’t seem to figure him out, nor do they seem to want to, and he can’t figure himself out. While Gatsby longs for Daisy Buchanan, Alain longs for his departed wife, who has gone off to America. The parallels could continue. And while the novel ends tragically for Gatsby, it likewise does for Alain. Upon returning to his room at the clinic, he shoots himself, unable to live with the loneliness that surrounded him.
Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)
By 1965, Federico Fellini already had a number of films under his belt, including the now celebrated 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, both masterpieces. Juliet of the Spirits is yet another visual stunner, and yet another film that continues Fellini’s streak of surrealism and strangeness. His wife, Giulietta Masina, plays the title role, and due to the fact that the actor and character have the same name, we can possibly read into the subtext of reality within the film. Fans of Fellini and Masina will also start to make connections between the sadness of this title character and that of the title character in the exquisite, Nights of Cabiria. We start the film at the anniversary party of Giulietta and Giorgio, which is “crashed” by neighbors and friends at the invitation of Giorgio, who we soon discover is a philanderer. We can see from Giulietta’s preparations that she desperately wants to be alone with Giorgio. We often see her face obscured by darkness, indicating the loneliness she feels in her marriage. Of course, his later actions show that he wants the opposite, desperate to be around people and take up the mantle of the object of desire. The party soon becomes the requisite dreamlike landscape that Fellini is known for, but this time in vivid color.
Giulietta is soon captivated by their glamorous neighbor, Gabriela. Gabriela is the epitome of independence, and thus the antithesis of Giulietta. Gabriela is somewhat flighty, new-agey, and at times, just plain ridiculously inane. Giulietta is taken to a Buddhist seminar that, like the party, takes a turn for the surreal. Fellini once again shows himself a master of the frame as he puts Masina against a bright red wall with a fan blowing in the corner, the two objects miniscule against the overwhelming presence of the wall. It is one of many ways that Fellini uses the camera to display her feelings of loneliness and being subservient to emotion. Eventually, she begins to see images and prophecies of what will or could come to pass, namely, being visited or haunted by spirits who will guide her in her near future.
One of these possible spirits is José, who gives her bullfighting lessons, telling her that the monster (read: husband) will be defeated. But, despite the repeated visits, the religious, philosophical, and mere friendly advice that she gets throughout the film, she still cannot resort to playing her husband’s game and cheat on him in return. Rather, still feeling hurt, she hires detectives to look into his cheating. At the close of the film, Giorgio tells her that he has not had sex with another woman, but instead has a deep and meaningful friendship with another woman. I honestly don’t know which is worse. I have been in this position, and it is not a comfort. The truly odd thing about this film is that Fellini intended it to be a “gift” to his wife, Masina. This gift seems to find excuses for his own possible philandering and encouraging Giulietta to become more independent. One also has to question the urgings from the last spirit that she must take her own life. This is just one interpretation, and anyone who has seen Fellini’s films will know that meanings are hard to come by. What is clear throughout is Giulietta’s pain and loneliness, which Fellini has captured exquisitely.
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