Part of the Picture: Stranger than Fiction
STRANGER THAN FICTION
AUG 16, 2008 - AS PEDRO ALMODÓVAR’S BAD EDUCATION OPENS, Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is in the middle of a writer’s block – or, as he calls it, a “creative crisis.” He’s a filmmaker without an idea for a film, and so he’s scouring the tabloids for inspiration. A typically sensational story catches his attention. “The current spell of icy weather has claimed its first victim,” he begins to read. “A motorcyclist froze to death on Highway 4 and drove for a further 90 km after he was dead.” He looks up at Martín (Juan Fernández), his production director, his audience of one. Martín has his back to us and we cannot see his reaction to this morbid anecdote, but the outline of a couple of fingers resting against the partial profile of a chin suggests that he’s understandably riveted.
Goded continues. “Two patrolmen flagged him down, and as he didn’t react, they pursued him. They drove alongside and rebuked him for his attitude. As he didn’t move they realised something was wrong.” Martín says it’s incredible. Goded’s eyes are shining, and, in true filmmaker fashion, he’s already cottoned on to the visual possibilities. “It’s a wonderful image,” he remarks. “A dead young man drives his motorcycle across the icy plain, escorted by two patrolmen.” Martín attempts to temper this enthusiasm with a dash of inquisitive reasoning. “Where was he going in that icy dawn?” he wonders. But Goded has an answer ready, a born storyteller’s romantic extrapolation of the situation. “To see someone who couldn’t wait until the morning.”
The deliberate outlandishness of this story could make you wonder if there’s something autobiographical going on here. After all, the final title card did announce, “Guión y Dirección: Pedro Almodóvar,” and this writing-directing credit did dissolve to a poster of a film that announced, “Guión y Dirección: Enrique Goded.” The two directors – inside and outside the film – do appear to share more than just their job descriptions. (And Goded even rhymes with Godard.) They’re both drawn towards melancholic, melodramatic, romantic, outré narratives. They’re both openly homosexual. Almodóvar’s first films were shorts that were shown, according to Wikipedia, in “Madrid’s night circuit,” while a character in Bad Education informs us, through a letter, that Goded debuted with an underground film.
This theory of doppelgängers on either side of the camera is given a shot in the arm by another tabloid story that Goded zeroes in on, later in the film. That one is, improbably, even more bizarre. “A woman threw herself into a pool of hungry crocodiles in a zoo that was crowded with visitors at the time. When the first crocodile attacked, the woman hugged it, according to the witness. The crocodiles devoured the body of the woman, who never complained, in a few minutes.” Once again, Martín chimes in with his reaction. “What a horrible death!” And once again, Goded neatly cuts out this portion of the paper to file away, possibly for use during another attack of creative crisis.
Again, there seems to be something more to this, something more than just the fact that a freakish happening caught the attention of a storyteller in search of a story. A little later, Goded finds his plot and is in the middle of auditioning the actor (Gael García Bernal) who will play the protagonist of his film, titled The Visit, when he comments, “The audition worked for several months, long enough for me to throw myself into the shooting of The Visit, like the woman who threw herself to the crocodiles and hugged them as they ate her.” Suddenly, now, that incident with the woman and the reptiles that devoured her appears to function as a metaphor for the all-consuming process of filmmaking itself, a process only too well known to both Almodóvar and Goded.
But by then, enough of the serpentine plot has uncoiled before us. We’ve seen a movie-within-this-movie about a long-ago event, which also features a flashback (so that we’re now twice removed from the present day). We’ve also seen a character’s brother pretending to be that character (that is, he’s posing as his brother), while enacting the same part (that of the brother) in The Visit – the film that’s being shot within the film that is Bad Education, and which mirrors (in tone and in terms of the cast) the actors and the settings we saw in the earlier movie-within-the-movie. Throw into this dizzying mix pederast priests and boy-boy love and a transsexual heroin addict – and you wonder if the reason Almodóvar wove in those earlier stories (about the dead man on a bike, about the woman and the crocodiles) was simply to prefigure the fact that Goded’s life would soon be filled with more bizarre twists than anything the tabloids could dream up. You wonder, in other words, if Almodóvar is merely pointing out that truth is stranger than lurid fiction.
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This was one amazing movie!! Which is your favorite Almodovar movie? Apart from “Bad Education”, I have seen “Talk to Her”, “All about my mother” and “Woman on Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”. While I loved the other 3, I didn’t really take back a lot from “Woman…”. I guess comedies can’t be translated well enough.
Btw, have you seen Jeunet’s “A Very Long Engagement”? I am curious to know what you thought about that one.
Aravind: I don’t hae a favourite, but I do prefer his later “mature” stage to the early “crazy” period. I mean, those films are fun and layered and all, but the ones he’s been making recently are phenomenal, to say the least. And I loved A Very Long Engagement, though I think with that and Amelie, I’ve had about all I can have of the elfin charms of Audrey Tautou.
Indha padam suthama purla saar.
Although I liked Talk to her and Volver. Could not finish watching All About My Mother.
Have you seen Valentin? That was a cute movie.
Lol. I did see “A Very Long Engagement” and thought it was mighty nice. I should have asked you about “Delicatessan” as well I guess. And I am sucker for brilliantly shot movies (sometimes even if they have just a pea-brain) so no doubt that these 3 movies are in my “Awesome” list!
You should see “Dirty Pretty Things” and “He loves me, he loves me not” (if haven’t already). Both nice movies (the former I thought was a pretty awesome thriller) that have Tautou in charming-but-not-like-Amelie roles.
I might have asked you this before: what are your thoughts on having to watch movies on DVDs instead of theatres? Don’t you think movies (esp. such as Jeunet’s’) will be more enjoyable on the big screen? (Btw, where do YOU watch them?)
Also, what do you do to not get distracted when having to watch movies with subtitles? After “Amelie” and few others, I took French classes, but turns out that completing 3 beginner’s courses aren’t good enough to follow without subtitles (not even to the extent of watching a telugu movie with just knowing tamil). So, I started watching ALL movies with subtitles so that the text eventually becomes part of the frame. But still sometimes it is just too hard to enjoy the movie wholeheartedly. Any special tips?
Note to self: Posting comments on “less-popular” posts have a better probability of BR replying.
hariohm: Oh, I really liked All About My Mother
Have you given the early stuff a try, films like Atame and Women on the Edge…?
Aravind: I’m a sucker for well-shot films too — well-framed, well-composed, etc. If a film is badly shot, I usually find it difficult to look past that aspect.
Oh, I’ve gotten used to watching movies on a big screen TV. In the old days, I used to be a hopeless romantic about watching films on the Big Screen and all that, but today, going to the theatres is a fairly nauseating experience. Cell phone lights come up everywhere, and people keep talking all the time — even more so if they don’t follow what’s going on (i.e. “I don’t get this film, therefore I’m not going to allow others to get it either”)… DVDs are a much better option, especially considering there’s no breaking at some arbit point for a 15-minute intermission (which cuts off the flow completely) and I can re-watch it again almost immediately.
About subtitles, I’ve been seeing films like that since the days of Doordarshan, so maybe it’s now become second nature. The thing, again, with a DVD is, you can re-watch certin scenes/frames and turn off subs if you want, so if anything, you understand the film even better. This series I’m doing would be impossible without DVDs.
“people keep talking all the time — even more so if they don’t follow what’s going on”
I had such problem watching “No Smoking”, people never stopped talking after that 15-minunte intermission. So annoying.
Btw, why no Kurusawa movies yet? And Satyajit Ray’s movies eligible for this column?
BR: Something unrelated….have you seen Michael Haneke’s Cache (Hidden). I was completely blown by the film when I first saw it on a flight 2 years back, and since then I must have seen it at least a dozen times. Each time I see it, it has almost the same impact on me as the first time. Would love to read your take on it, for the film actually got fairly mized reviews.
Abubaker: Yeah, No Smoking would be the perfect example of what I was talking about. Which is why I wish they’d market these films correctly — “forbiddingly serious art film” etc. Yeah, I know. Like that’s going to happen
Aditya Pant: Cache would be good to talk about. A fantastic film. But didn’t it get raves across the board? I’ll see if I can get hold of it for this column.
BR: Here is my first take on Cache (after 2 viewings): http://urgetofly.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/07/18/cache-a-hidden-gem.html
Much more has been “revealed” in subsequent viewings