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In the opening scenes of Jennifer’s Body, we are introduced to two prisons. The first is the desolate house in which Jennifer lives alone. Save for the semblance of life she has cobbled together from teenage magazines and the inane company of late-night television, the room appears to be emptied of all animation. In fact, it will not be until the final minutes of the film that another human presence will grace her lonely abode. This shell of a home appears to have sucked the life out of Jennifer as well, since her body – having been robbed of sustenance – appears to be falling apart. As the camera moves in and allows us a closer look, we see that she’s picking at a scab that will not go away, that her lips are chapped, and her teeth’s luster has begun to turn, her body shutting down and embracing the process of deterioration and decay, as if in protest of its conditions of (non)existence.

As Jennifer listlessly passes the time doodling in the book laid out on her lap, we will also see that she has a stalker, one whose face makes an ominous appearance in the darkened window. But her fate, like what has captured her attention in her scribblings, will be withheld from us, held in abeyance until the rest of the story has been told.

The scene that immediately follows introduces us to the remainder of that story, as well as the second prison that holds the secret to what is about to unfold. The person held there – Needy – appears to be the story’s narrator, our guide through the tale that links her prison with that of the other’s. Like her counterpart, we will see that her body is marked as well, but with signs of a different kind of affliction: scars that speak of encounters with ugly instruments of violence, angry gashes (now healed) that have made a home where none should belong.

In an earlier time, these two were the best of friends – BFFs, to be exact – and were exactly what their yearbook photographs declared them to be: Jennifer, the ever-popular cheerleader, and Needy, the dork with glasses. By now, however, the introverted one has acquired a different name (“Kicker”), feared by the staff of the facility in which she is housed and respected by fellow inmates for a spirit of rebellion that will not die. Despite this admiration, her anger will not bring her any reward; neither does it provide any relief. Instead, she will find herself locked in solitary confinement, force-fed the saccharine sounds of musak, and left to huddle in a cell marked with a giant X, as if her very existence had been erased from the face of the earth.

With this narrator’s assistance, the tale that follows will trace the lines that connect the normality of high school with these two prisons, and how the fate of one girl came to be tied to that of the other. In other words, and despite the claims of an earlier posting, the story being told here belongs neither to Jennifer nor Needy alone. It is, instead, a tale of their shared fate, one that had its beginnings in childhood, cemented in an apparently innocent declaration, forever binding them, one to the other.

The Binary Code

Needy will call it “Sandbox Love.” As little girls they played together, already tussling over the twinned roles of Perfect Prom Betty and Ugly Ashley, precursors of what they would later become. But just as they are doing battle over who gets to be whom, Jennifer cries out in pain – a tack having pierced her hand – and Needy will come to her aid, cleaning the blood away with her lips, as if sealing this (new) relationship with a kiss. And just like that, the stage has been set. For a promise is also made that binds them, seemingly forever.

Jennifer: “Don’t tell my Mom about this, she’ll make me get a shot.”
Needy: “I’ll never tell on you.”

And lest we overlook the kind of secret pact made on that day, this much is clear: the apparently strong one, i.e., Jennifer, is the one that relies upon Needy’s love and protection. In fact, it could be said that Jennifer is the needy one, for reasons that probably exceed the prick of a pin. But with time, this fact will come to be obscured, as each becomes the other (perfect/ugly) identity that has been assigned to them. Despite being relegated to being the plain one, Needy clearly benefits from this relationship, and not merely by virtue of basking in Jennifer’s reflected glory. She also acquires sustenance received from the other’s hand. For if this story is about a certain kind of “vampire,” Needy is the first in that line of feeders, having already tasted another life’s blood. Protection and vampiric feeding are the two sides of this relationship and, despite her mousy appearance and willingness to be overshadowed by her extroverted partner, it is Needy that plays the dominant role.

Whether these figures are in fact two people – rather than one – will remain unclear. But, ultimately, this does not matter since the dynamic put into play remains the same. It is found among all “unlikely” pairs, whether they be found in the relationships (BFF or otherwise) that form between two souls or whether they be taken as two aspects of a single personality. It is a constellation of two – a binary system – that has a logic of its own, where each brings a certain energy, and set of limitations, to the equation, each compensating for a lack in the other. And it is precisely this complementarity of strengths and weaknesses, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, that makes it feel like love, as if they were made for each other.

But this kind of “pact” can inhabit a single personality as well, just as unconscious as that which often exists between two individuals. For the relationship, if it can be called that, operates at a level below consciousness (which is why some have come to call it participation mystique). When characteristic of an internal world, both “roles” are played by an individual pulled in two opposing directions. One highly efficient and organized, the other driven by passions that can barely be contained. One who can always be counted upon to be nurturing and understanding, the other screaming at the gods wishing that life itself would come to an end.

As it relates the two protagonists here and the story that’s being told, it’s difficult not to come to the conclusion that whatever Needy promised to provide Jennifer, she was too young and too incapable to provide.

Perhaps Jennifer had nowhere else to turn since, as far as we can tell, her mother is largely an absent figure. (No mention is made of fathers, as if they were irrelevant to our tale or completely out-of-the-picture.) As children seeking to compensate for privations they couldn’t quite understand, both suffer the blows of what life has to offer. It is the terrible fate of youth, particularly those left without adequate resources to face what comes their way, bravely finding ways to survive. Absent any choice but to embrace the frugal offerings of a world left out-of-balance.

The Limits of Understanding

The fact that Needy is incapable of living up to her promise becomes quickly evident when, on the heels of one fateful night, she is unable to see the brutality visited upon her childhood friend. Yes, the visual signs of trauma are there – and Needy “sees” them – but they do not fully register, as if it were a bad dream or cruel joke seeking to puncture the cocoon of reality upon which she had come to depend for her grounding in the world. So, instead of rushing to Jennifer’s side, she will revert to words, inquiring about what had happened, asking for an articulation of the damage suffered at others’ hands. The words she seeks will fail to come and, in their stead, the empty space will be filled with another language that leaves Needy both baffled and repelled. Inchoate grunts and screams emerge from a battered body that can only convulse in semi-consciousness. And following an aborted attempt at feeding herself on the food of humans, a torrent of sludge emerges from Jennifer’s mouth, the essence of which is so putrid that Needy would (later) come to describe as the embodiment Evil.

Clearly, something had been done to Jennifer. Her body provided unmistakable signs of that. It’s clear, too, that Jennifer came to Needy in light of their pact, seeking the help and understanding that only she could provide. But when that was not forthcoming, she is forced to seek nourishment elsewhere, at first turning to the refrigerator, wolfing down whatever it had to offer. But because this does not – and cannot – provide the sustenance she so desperately needs, it will be violently repelled, giving evidence of the dark secret which Needy is too frightened to recognize. In the absence of validation, even if nothing other than the mere recognition of her pain, Jennifer is sent into a vicious spiral, a cycle of binge-and-purge that will leave her forever unfilled.

So, faced with Needy’s incapacity to respond, Jennifer will leave. And Needy will be left with her confusion: uncertain about the events leading up to this encounter – although the signs were already there – and unsure of what kind of beast had just left its entrails on her kitchen floor.

And yet, before taking her leave and just as Needy is getting ready to call for someone else to intervene, Jennifer will push Needy to the wall, as if getting ready to inflict her own version of the violence she had suffered earlier that night. And then, as if tugged by an affection with roots deeper than her despair, she begins to caress Needy’s body. And as her hand leaves its bloody trail on her childhood friend – and her portrait hanging on the wall – we are left to wonder what else is being blotted out here. For just as Jennifer readies herself to take a bite from her friend’s neck, a different kind of nourishment available to her, she chooses to withdraw instead, and walks out the door.

And in that single moment, we can’t fail to realize that their roles have been reversed, as Needy has come to be protected by Jennifer in more ways than one. Not only has she been shielded from the awful events of that night or spared the appetite that has emerged in Jennifer as a consequence. Needy has also been saved from the knowledge of whose body had been violated and whose blood had come to stain Jennifer’s hand.

Demonic Transference

The all-important event around which the entire story revolves occurs in their hometown, Devil’s Kettle (pop. 7036), so named for a waterfall that disappears into a hole in the ground. = Apparently, what goes down there never sees the light of day. = Scientists have thrown all sorts of objects into its mouth, including a tubful of colored balls, which seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Jennifer has hauled Needy away from an evening planned with her boyfriend, Chip, to see an indie band playing at the local bar. Low Shoulder is their name and Jennifer’s especially interested in seeing their “extra salty” lead singer; she also promises that there will be lots of “salty morsels” there for Needy, too. What we are to make of this exchange, or what follows, is not clear. But once they have entered the bar, we are introduced to an entirely different side of Jennifer, one not as clearly evident before. One in which the seedy side of sex is ever on her lips. Even though she has yet to achieve the age of majority – “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get wasted” – she seems to have a knowledge of sex, or seems especially conscious about the act of copulation, that belies her apparent youthfulness. So, when Needy sees Ahmet, the foreign exchange student from India, sitting close by, all Jennifer can wonder is whether he’s circumcised or not. (“I always wanted to try sea cucumber.”) It’s also clear that she’s used to drawing the attention of boys and men, not all of it welcomed, and that some of the “edge” that we are witness to can be attributed to this effect she seems to have on them.

Strangely enough, however, when Jennifer finally meets the “salty” singer, she turns into mush, as if she were a little girl meeting her idol for the first time, and when the band begins to play, it’s as if she were in heaven. With this, we see another side of her relationship with Needy, for Jennifer seems to need a witness to this – her bliss – and Needy gets a charge out of that, too. For quite unexpectedly, in the midst of her entrancement with the band on stage, Jennifer reaches down to clasp Needy’s hand, as if this was a secret only the two of them could share. But only for just a moment. Soon, Jennifer’s attention will return to that other place, as if caught by the gravity of another planet.

This is a bitter sweet moment for Needy, and not merely because Jennifer’s eyes have turned to take in the sight of another. Rather, she had heard the members of the band talking among themselves – about Jennifer, in fact – debating whether she was a virgin. (“Listen, I grew up in a town like this. There’s always that girl: they love to show it off, but they do not give it up.”) Needy will rush to Jennifer’s defense. But rather than leave, they will stay for the show. After all, this is Jennifer’s night out and her opportunity to have a good time, despite the creepy banter Needy has overheard.

When the music begins, the bar – quite inexplicably – bursts into flame. The crowd goes into a panic and lives will be lost during the mad scramble for the door. Needy will have the presence of mind to lead Jennifer through the bathroom window, but just as they are beginning to catch their breath, the “salty” singer will mysteriously reappear, cocktail in hand, offering his assistance. (“Wanna head someplace safer, like my van?”) Predictably, it’s only Jennifer to whom the offer is made, and still in a daze – over what, exactly, it’s not clear – she agrees to go, despite Needy’s protest that they should head home, instead.

Our narrator will recount her feelings from that moment, and her certainty that nothing good could come from this kindly offer of “assistance.”

I watched her get into that van,
and I knew something awful was going to happen.
He was skinny and twisted and evil,
like this petrified tree I saw when I was a kid.

As Jennifer disappears into the dark of night, we are left with the heavy sounds of Needy gasping for breath, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this thing that has come to pass, one too momentous to fully understand. So, if it’s fair to say that Needy found herself unable to live up to her side of the relationship later that night – when Jennifer finally returns bloodied and broken – it could also be said that the fateful break occurred earlier, at this very moment, when her best friend came to be swallowed by Evil itself.

The (Insufferable) Sound of Silence

The following day, just as everyone is reeling with shock from the news of the fire and the dead that have been left in its wake, Needy is floored to see Jennifer looking as if nothing had ever happened. She is her usual chipper self, tinged as it is with her usual sarcasm and profanities. More surprising than this, however, is her appearance, virtually picture perfect, not a hair out of place, casually applying gloss to her lips.

The contrast couldn’t be more pronounced, either in comparison with the vision of hell that had visited Needy the night before or here, at school, with everyone else crumbling under the weight of the fire that killed eight members of their community.

The town will rally around the tragedy, bearing witness to the lives cut short by the fire and seeking to recover from the shock of the unwanted and uninvited. The band, Low Shoulder, will make the news – ensuring their commercial viability – by playing-up their (“unfortunate”) connection to those awful events, even donating a portion of the proceeds of their song Through the Trees to the families of those lost that night. Quite predictably, as if taken from a play book, the school will adopt the song, the very tune that had held Jennifer in thrall, as their own, an unofficial anthem and ode to the dead, and a declaration of the pained shock of having survived their fate.

Given the silence that shrouds her own experience that night, Jennifer will have little tolerance for such sentimental displays of community. For how little do they know about the nature of loss or the despair of having survived the visitation of tragedy’s hand …

This is the context in which the decay of Jennifer’s body will begin: her glow will slowly fade and her hair will begin to fall out; no longer will she be the shiny one that catches everyone’s eye. Notably, this is also the time when a new cycle of killing begins, throwing the town into an ever greater panic – and receiving even more attention from the (national) media – aghast at the number of dead accumulating within the tiny perimeter of Devil’s Kettle, wondering what they had done to deserve such a fate.

Confronting the Demon

After one of her feedings, and finally able to explain what happened on that awful night, Jennifer will return to Needy’s side, and the veil that had obscured the events following her abduction will finally be lifted. The story, however, will be coded – presented as a Satanic ritual – for there is no other way to convey the nature of what was done to her. As a result, we, like Needy, will be left to our own devices to give meaning to her recounting of what happened that awful night.

A mere stone’s throw from the bottomless pit of Devil’s Kettle and its Fall, Jennifer was bound and gagged under a waxing moon (since that’s what the ritual called for). She was to be a virgin offering made to Satan, and so her sacrifice was prepared, accompanied by the sounds of incantation and song. (Need it be said that her desperate pleadings and screams of protest fell on deaf ears?) Finally, a knife would be raised in preparation for its final descent. And then, it came. And darkness fell.

It should have killed me,
but for some reason, it didn’t.
- Maybe it did -
Anyway, I don’t really remember what happened after that.
I just know that I woke up and I found my way back to you.
- I remember -
I couldn’t bring myself to hurt you.
I mean, I’m a really good friend.
I was just so hungry.

Once again, Jennifer will try to get closer to Needy, stroking her hair before leaning forward to join lips with hers. This time, Needy will respond, finding herself drawn to her childhood friend, and no longer in a “sandbox” kind of way. The camera’s eye will linger on hands and mouths, mimicking the magnified sensations brought on by the touch of two bodies opening up to the other.

But since Needy will not be able to erase the vision of Jennifer she had seen earlier that night, this embrace will be cut short. (“Why were you covered in blood? You didn’t even look human.”) And in asking these questions, the “truth” of the situation will slowly begin dawn on her: the rash of murders at Devil’s Kettle is the work of Jennifer’s hand, that it is this to which Jennifer refers when she says she’s full, and that this explains how (and why) her appearance goes through inexplicable cycles of rejuvenation and decay.

Once again, Jennifer will leave, but this time at Needy’s bidding, and they will not speak again, at least not until the final confrontation that provides the penultimate climax for this film’s story.

But lest we consider Needy’s rejection of Jennifer as (only) a principled stand on behalf of the dead, we should think again. For there are several uncomfortable facts with which Needy must contend. Earlier that night, just as Jennifer was luring another victim for the kill and Needy was spending a quiet night of seduction with her boyfriend, blood had – quite inexplicably – begun seeping through the ceiling, as if Jennifer’s doings were not so foreign to her own. And as her head turned, she would be met by the ghost of another of Jennifer’s boy-victims over whom crouches her childhood friend, looking more feral than a child wrenched from her family and raised by wolves.

If it hadn’t dawned on her yet, it surely will have crossed the mind of those in the audience that each of Jennifer’s victims were connected to Needy in some way. The first one to experience Jennifer’s hunger that fateful night was the Indian boy, Ahmet, the same one who had caught Needy’s eye while waiting to hear Low Shoulder play. And tonight, it was the Goth boy of whom Needy had grown quite fond. (“He’s a really good writer. He’s, like, all dark and emotional and stuff.”) If Needy has been paying attention, she will surely have noticed that Jennifer has also been showing an increasing interest in Chip in recent days. It’s as if she’s been circling like a bird of prey, slowly making her way from the margins of Needy’s world to those closest and dearest to her heart.

It is for these reasons that Needy will come to be obsessed with Jennifer’s behavior, trying to better understand what is happening to her. It is also why she will refuse to go to the prom with Chip, for that place will surely be the Devil’s playground. And what other means does she have at her disposal to protect the one she loves, even if it means that, in doing so, she will also be breaking his heart?

Delving into the Paranormal

Because none of this makes any sense, Needy will turn to the occult section of the school’s library, hoping that it will help shed light on the “ritual” to which Jennifer was subject, including its frightening after effects.

She will learn what a succubus is, read about the use of virgins in satanic sacrifice, as well the procedures by which a demon can be destroyed. (“Demons are weakest when hungry. But a blade to the heart is the surest way to kill the beast.”) Quite excitedly, and with no small sense of urgency, she will try to explain what she has learned to Chip, but he will not understand. Even as she tries to explain the nature of demonic transference to him, he will balk, vacillating between wanting to believe her while remaining palpably unable to give any credence to what she has to say.

It all makes sense now!
Read this:
“If the human sacrifice is impure, the result may still be obtained,
but a demon will forever reside in the soul of the victim.
She must forever feed on flesh to sustain the demon.”
- Okay … -
She’s eating boys!

As Needy had predicted, it’s the night of the prom when Jennifer finally makes her move on Chip and, not insignificantly, its her body that tells Needy that something horrible is about to happen, just beyond her field of vision. If there had been any lingering doubt, at that moment she will finally be convinced about the nature of what it is she is doing battle against. Needy will finally be roused to act – much like the Confessor’s Blood Rage – in defense of the one she loves.

All she dare hope is that she’s not too late.

Apocalypse

If we allow ourselves pause to consider the nature of the long-standing relationship between Jennifer and Needy, including their recent falling out with each other, it’s clear that whatever love they shared, it was also shot through with ambivalence. During the course of the film, they enact this love and hate for each other, literally drawing close to while also feeling repelled by the other. Or, more precisely, it is Jennifer who wants Needy close by, while Needy is the one who pulls back. Notably, this ambivalence is also a key trait of addiction, much like the “functioning” alcoholic who yearns for the release brought on by that first drink but who also knows that as one drink becomes two (or three or five), the spirits will come to be unleashed, returning him to a haunting that knows no end. The same can be said of any addiction, evident in the alternation between compulsion and revulsion, the desire to “give in” to an unbridled desire and efforts to reign it in. This is, in fact, what we see in relation to each of Jennifer’s feedings, with Needy placed in the position of the haunted one.

Marion Woodman describes addictions such as these as “apocalyptic.” And while this word has come to signify the cataclysm of forces announcing the end of the world – and, for Needy, there’s no small part of that at work here – it’s also worth reminding ourselves that the word itself speaks to the nature of revelation (i.e., to uncover, to disclose). In other words, locked within the frightening force of addiction lies a truth submerged below the surface, one that contains the seeds of destruction … but also the possibility of insight, and a new beginning.

Whenever anything is repressed – whether it be socially (in the silence that dares not speak its shame) or psychically (a buried truth that’s too painful to bear) – it is the body that bears the brunt of these evasions. But, as if to keep the truth alive, it is also the body that acts out, refusing to comply with the conspiracy of silence that seeks to keep her contained. The fact that she appears “monstrous” is merely a reflection of the commitments that have agreed to keep her at bay, marginalized and silenced, as if ignoring the truth would make it go away. However, like a moth to flame, the body will be drawn to pain, precisely because it speaks of a reality that others are only too eager to ignore. (“I need you frightened. I need you hopeless.”) And in that pain, the addict finds the face of God, a truth long buried and banished from earthly existence. By virtue of the repressions that delimit the conditions of its being, the body of the addict contains a secret of its own: a code yearning to be broken.

So, whatever else these seeds of change may be, in the face of addiction, they are caught-up in confusion. For when Needy finally confronts Jennifer, we will see that their positions have been reversed, once again. This time, Jennifer will be dressed in white – the innocent one? – while Needy acts out a Blood Rage on behalf of the one she loves. When Jennifer is stabbed through the gut, it will not be entirely clear whose body has been penetrated, even though their body language would seem to indicate that it is Jennifer (and not Needy) who had been pierced. And should we think these confusions and reversals are merely signs of an overly convoluted story, quietly tucked away in the scene leading up to Needy’s research into the occult, we see a sign announcing the school’s production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?: The Musical. (And need we be reminded that, etymologically, “occult” merely identifies what has been occluded, covered over, and concealed?)

The fact that it is not Jennifer that’s being “killed” but something else is signaled by the symmetries and inverted pairings provided throughout the film. And when we are finally returned to the bedroom with which the movie began, in the aftermath of the final battle between Needy and Jennifer, we will find two bodies – not one – lying limp on the bed. Quite significantly, too, the mother cradling her daughter in her arms will seem oblivious to the second girl in the room, the one who would seem to be responsible for the death of the other.

Rather than death, then, it would appear that something else has happened. For it is only when the token of their pact is yanked from Jennifer’s body that their floating world comes to an end, and the force of gravity once again takes hold. And this is when, following the directions she found in her research, Needy moves in for her attack. Her chosen instrument of battle - “It’s used for cutting boxes” - will be plunged into Jennifer’s chest, and their final words will repeat the age-long confusion that has held them locked in a demonic embrace: Jennifer will believe that it’s her breast that has been the object of Needy’s aggression when, in fact, it is her heart that was the intended target.

When Needy removes her weapon and rolls over to Jennifer’s side, shattered glass (from where?) will fall to the ground, as if something vital and precious had finally been broken. Perhaps it is the protective casing of childhood – and sandbox love – that is no longer needed. Or perhaps it is the adolescent ideal that has finally been overcome, since it is Jennifer’s cheerleading magazine upon which the camera lingers, as knife and broken glass are pulled to the earth below.

Aftermath

“Hell: it’s a teenage girl.”

Perhaps, too, this is how we can give meaning to the film’s opening line. For when she is forced to choose half of herself, repressing the other that is equally her own, she becomes a fractured being, forever beholden to – while repelled by – that which is different than what she has elected (or forced) to be. So, whether this results in a psychic confusion that swings her between the poles of Good and Evil, or caught in an ambivalent relation to the inverted image she finds in the Other, she is doomed to the kind of haunting we have witnessed throughout this story.

The “hell,” in other words, is not the girl herself, but the forces with which she must contend. She is simultaneously the recipient of the gaze of admiration (and lust) of boys and men that turn her into an object to be possessed and consumed, even while she is forced to live in a world that pretends that this is not so. This silent evasion will, in turn, produce other occlusions, including ones that come to reside in herself. Quite cruelly, then, the different faces of desire – of others as well as her own, the ugly as well as the beautiful – come to be repressed, and she is compelled to construct a life that pretends that it does not exist. All the while, circuits of passion will continue to animate the world about her, and she will be left alone to find her way through the tangle of forces that compete for her affection. These are the grounds upon which addictions are born.

Perhaps this is also why there is no relief brought about after that final encounter, when Needy had stabbed Jennifer through the heart. For during the course of our story’s narration, after Needy had already become someone else (“Kicker”), another transformation was also taking place. Locked in her cell and overwhelmed by an anger that could not be contained, she discovered a method for detaching herself from what had come to define her life, including the rage that was consuming her. Left with no other choice but to claim this prison as a room of her own, and shorn of all connection to the outside world, she will revisit the events of the past in order to give a sense to them that was not available to her before. And from that meticulous and painful process, she achieves a certain kind of enlightenment.

Only then, after the transformation is complete, after Needy-Jennifer-Kicker has become someone else, does our narrator recognize that the force that had haunted her from a distance – and then later came to possess her very soul – that this force of the demon (“divinity, genius, tutelary deity”) had now come to be her own. With this recognition and insight, she is finally able to break out of her prison and return to the very world that, in her earlier existence, had produced her previous fragmentation.

As she walks toward her date with destiny, she happens upon a spring at the side of the road and, within it, she finds the objects presumed to have been lost to the pit of hell called Devil’s Kettle. Among them she will also see the instrument used by Low Shoulder in their ritual sacrifice to Satan, and she will take this to be her own, as well. For the Earth has finally given up what had been hidden in its bowels, and that weapon of destruction can now – finally – be wielded as her personal Sword of Truth.

As the film closes, we are privy to scenes from another place through images from other genres – the paparazzi, home video, crime scene photographs, and surveillance cameras – signalling our entry into a world beyond that depicted in the film. And in that world we will see our protagonist coming to terms with what had sought to steal her soul. And in that moment, we will realize, too, that she has found the strength to walk her own path, against the grain of the allures that pull so many of her contemporaries in the opposite direction.

It is appropriate, then, that the film – like many examples of great literature – begins in medias res, “in the midst of things.” For in doing so, we come to experience the torment and confusion of a world robbed of any sense and, like the protagonist, are placed in the position of having to wrest a semblance of meaning from the confusion that surrounds her. This is, after all, the world within which we live, caught between the torment of private hauntings and the seeming incoherence of the world at large, groping and grappling toward a future where that is no longer the case.

Should one succeed in that battle, as we are witness to in this story, it’s nothing short of Grace.
.

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“We read the world wrong
and say that it deceives us.”
.

If the reviews were all that we had to go by, we’d have to conclude that this one was a stinker, despite the near universal praise reserved for Michelle Williams’ turn as a mother grieving the loss of her husband and son. According to one critic, “Were it not for Williams’ Oscar-quality performance, all the more remarkable for the shambolic incompetence that surrounds her, this would be a turkey.” Another critic wrote: “This supposedly sensitive drama about terrorism and bereavement, from a novel by Chris Cleave, is sloppy enough, in every sense, to make you appreciate High School Musical 3’s professionalism. … It makes you feel embarrassed for everyone involved.”

So, we may fairly ask: Why the hostility … and embarrassment?

It’s worth considering the possibility that the reason involves the very focus of the film, and the fact that we have yet to fully understand the process of bereavement and, more importantly, the ethical dimensions of coming to terms with the kind of loss being grieved here. For Incendiary is as much concerned with the ghosts of the dead as it is about developing a conscience that can speak back to the very conditions that gave rise to those deaths in the first place. The fact that this process revolves around a young woman, and one who hails from London’s projects (i.e., the wrong side of the tracks) points to how foreign and unintelligible her musings would be, particularly to anyone already committed to the dominant discourses of the day.

Third generation of block dwellers, we are.
If you’re interested, just type in chav, pikey, or ned,
and you’ll find us in council estates all over London.
Favourite food: chicken Kiev.
Favourite TV programme: ‘Top Gear.’
Religion: Arsenal Football Club.

Clearly, the fact that her (now dead) husband worked in a bomb disposal unit and that she is later courted by one of his supervisors, a key figure in the country’s anti-terrorist police force, suggests that the “religion” that is the focus of this film – Arsenal – refers not just to a football club. It is also the logic of destruction and fortification that unites terrorist and anti-terrorist alike, and one that deploys the language of Might and Right in the name of Justice and Peace. The men in this young woman’s life, in other words, reflect and allegorize this other game of seduction to which we are all subject, one in which defenders-of-the-nation compete for our affection and allegiance. (“I wouldn’t be the first woman in my family to have her knickers charmed off her by some fella in the army.”)

Her grief, then, does not merely revolve around the loss of husband and son; this is not merely a story of personal loss. It also concerns the gaping wound of meaninglessness when confronted by the recognition that the masculine ideal to which she was (unhappily) wed is the very cause of her loss. In this sense, it’s not only the passing of the beloved that is being mourned here, but also the woman she had come to be in their eyes and, as a consequence, her own as well. When understood in this way, the process of grieving at the heart of Incendiary is not only about accepting what has passed but, equally importantly, reclaiming a sense of dignity in the face of one’s complicity in that destruction. More fundamental than this, given the story’s focus on terrorism, is the process of generating a voice that can speak to – and against – the very authority that gave rise to the violence in the first place.

A Nation Under Seige

“Man barricades against himself.”

The explosion couldn’t have been more precisely targeted, for even the Twin Towers was a symbol that acquired meaning in the terrorists’ eyes not immediately obvious to their victims. But in targeting the stadium – a secular site to which Arsenal fans made regular pilgrimage – the terrorists, knowingly or not, successfully identified the logic that locks opponents in an unending embrace. For it is the arena that invites witness and noisy celebration as two “armies” pummel the other (sport as sublimated violence), where the one most successful in extracting points from the enemy finally emerges victorious.

And how does a nation respond to such a defeat in another (but not so different) battle between forces of Good and Evil?

Following that fateful blast, and as has already become all too familiar in the real world, the media latches onto images of devastation, intercut with anonymous faces of shock, horror, and despair. Stand-ins for our own inarticulateness in the face of aggression unadorned by the decorations of mass entertainment. The images, in other words, give evidence to a fascinated and hallowed obsession with the unspeakable that can only repeat itself with nauseating frequency and, apparently, to no end.

And yet, voices are soon heard that attempt to respond to the destruction. Official pronouncements are made, religious services are held, and banners raised to the sky. Leaders, both religious and secular, will repeat the well-worn and predictable – … “senseless violence” … “victims’ families” … “our hearts go out to” … “honor the dead” … – not quite able to provide the comfort and reassurance that is so desperately sought. In voiceless despair, enlarged signs will make their urgent declarations, yearning for a message different than the one delivered by the terrorists’ bombs, bespeaking a certain kind of innocence only allowed in the face of disaster. Quite simply: unalloyed by the utilitarianism of everyday routine and untarnished by fashionable displays of cynicism, it is the language of hope. And it is a hope unable (or unwilling) to face the pain of division or conflict.

It is the inarticulate desire to return to what (never) existed before, as if the bombings had disrupted a veritable Garden of Eden, as if life until that moment was the enactment of perfect and eternal bliss. Or perhaps, if we are more generous, a craving to create such a dream, a vision of heaven on earth. And yet, the concerted efforts at “rebuilding” already belie the backward-looking impulse of that vision, covering over the rubble of destruction with the hope that life can “return to normal.”

“… Rebuilding Our Lives … Rebuilding Our Club …”

In an eerily beautiful “reenactment” of the barrage balloons used to defend against the London Blitz of World War II, a thousand balloons painted with the faces of the dead are also raised, creating a “cemetery in the sky.” Another (mute) monument that bespeaks the enormity of loss, as well as the safety of distance when it comes to confronting death, elevated to the heavens, quietly haunting those who are doomed to continue living on earth’s surface below.

In the midst of this, and during the days and months that follow, it will be the young woman’s task to discern whether these rituals – and their rhetoric – on behalf of the dead actually honor the meaning she would like to give to her loss. Her task will be made all the more difficult since she will hold herself personally responsible for the death of her husband and son. For while they were caught-up in the excitement of Arsenal’s play, unknowingly on the brink of extinction, she was seducing another man, chasing the kind of pleasure her marriage was no longer able to provide. And it was precisely at the moment of that adulterous consummation, that the bombs exploded and the earth burst into flames.

It will be her first realization of the awful ways in which sex and death commingled in defining the shape and rhythm of her life, as if conspiring to bring another truth to the surface.

Reconceiving Grief

“Death belongs to life as birth does.
The walk is in the raising of the foot
as in the laying of it down.”

It has been forty years since the publication of On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, revolutionary in so many ways but best known for delineating five stages of coming to terms with death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But hidden behind this model that emphasizes the cognitive process by which an ego confronts its own mortality is another vision of transformation, one less concerned with the mind’s reconciliation with an unwanted absence than – surprisingly – one in which the very notion of life itself undergoes a radical renewal. The quotations included here (above and below) are reproduced from that book, each penned by the famed poet-philosopher and Nobel Laureate, Rabidranath Tagore.

If we embrace this broader understanding of what it means to confront death, only then can we come to appreciate the story being told in Incendiary, especially the struggle of its main protagonist. Otherwise, for those impatiently looking for a simple message or, worse, seeking confirmation for what they already know, the film can only come across as embarrassing or incompetent, a measure of what it fails to reflect (and regurgitate) back to an audience already overfed with well-worn words that, deliberately or not, only serve to buttress against what we have yet to learn as a culture and civilization. It is this lesson that the young woman at the center of the story has to teach us, even as she willingly allows herself to be swallowed by a grief too awful to bear.

Like the rest of London, for a time she will stand entranced by the vision of the floating balloons, knowing that among them is the face of her dead son, haunted by the shrinking image of happier days when his delight was her own life’s blood. But the stillness of this entrancement can only last so long, since the fire of the intolerable will continue to burn within, compelling her to seek out something – anything – to help make sense of the gaping “boy-sized hole” that has been left in destruction’s wake.

She will come to learn the identity of one of the suicide bombers and, without quite knowing why, begin stalking his widow and son, as if their survival of the bomb’s blast holds the secret to her future or, more ominously, as if they provided the most convenient target for her pent up rage.

But the haunting sadness of this (other) boy who sneaks out of school after all the adults have disappeared tugs at something within her. And what began in the daze of confusion gains a focus, as she befriends this lost child who, unaware of what was wrought by his father’s hand, still waits for daddy’s return. It is an unlikely friendship that grows between them, even though nothing is said of what brought him to her attention, her silence ensuring that he will remain oblivious to the unspoken grief that they share. Instead, the two of them will enjoy the simple pleasures of empty time, whiling away the interminable expectancy for what will never return: he, ever on the look-out for the man she knows will never come, and she, desperate to fill the absence that tugs at her very being.

This reverie will also come to an end, and a violent one at that, since both know that it is merely a stopgap measure that lightens the load of what has been lost and a distraction against the palpable yearning for what refuses to return. And then something else arrives: the brown-skinned boy will be sent into a panic and, as a consequence, will become the target for the authorities’ vigilance. And, once again, she will be caught in the crossfire, between one she has come to care for and Arsenal’s crushing force.

It’s for this reason that one reviewer remarked that the film “beat the living hell out of her,” since she spends a significant portion of the story bloodied and broken. But it is not just her body that bears the brunt of violence but her very soul, pummeled by the recognition that her life and loves can expect no safe haven, and that those who would protect her – and her country – are as likely to puncture her sense of security as anyone else.

“Sexy Mama”

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield
but to have my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward,
feeling your mercy in my success alone;
but let me find the grasp of your hand
in my failure [too].”

Early in the film – and quite inexplicably (or, rather, without comment) – we are shown close-ups of this woman’s behind, for upon it is inscribed the identity that has been provided her and which she has gladly embraced. After all, it comes with certain pleasures and satisfactions that are easily taken as one’s own; it also provides her with an estimation of her value in others’ eyes. Regardless of what others might say, it is through this that she gave birth to a son, and found the single love and joy that had animated her young life. This is no small achievement, either for her or for the image, since it has given her a place in the world, a standard against which to measure herself, and an object for her affection. And when it works well, it’s nothing short of heaven.

But as she – and we – begin to discover, this bliss comes at a cost, not the least of which is her inability to stake a larger claim on the world which she inhabits along with the rest of humanity. Instead, like a host of others, she has been rendered a passive victim to the vicissitudes of two sets of defenders of family and nation, those who have arrogated to themselves the power to do so and who, in addition, have claimed the voice to name what it is that requires their defense in the first place.

Following the memorial service for those killed during the May Day attacks, she will come face-to-face with this dilemma as she and her new suitor ponder the Madonna and Child housed in the church’s sanctuary. For us in the audience, it will be difficult not to be struck by the different versions of what they are likely to see in such depictions of hallowed motherhood. For him, it can only be taken as a sign of what he has committed himself to defend; for her, particularly on the heels of her loss, it can only come across as a perverted idealization, particularly since her “defenders” clearly failed to protect her and her own. Despite her grief, or perhaps because of it, he will continue to court her, so much so that, when she returns home to mourn, he will be left enthralled by the hole at his side that he has decided only she is able to fill.

But in the end, this image of the holy family is one that she shares, as well. All of us have been taught to embrace it and, especially during times of war, have also learned to abhor its obverse: the alien face that would destroy “our” way of life and all that is held to be sacred. The uniformed one who seeks to win her heart will give voice to this, taking a certain pride in his blind faith -

People fool themselves that they can understand the mindset here.
At the end of the day, this is a war between two different species.
[But] I’m not paid to understand the mindset. I’m paid to defend.

- even as she grapples to understand what is supposed to mark “them” out as so radically different from herself. (“There was a Muslim nurse at the hospital. Her God wasn’t a bombing God … “) Despite this tension, she will slowly begin to imagine herself sharing a life with him. After all, he’s gentle and appears to have a good heart. His commitment to the cause is admirable, too, backed as it is by a seeming clarity of what has been violated by the terrorists and what he seeks to defend. (“Ever since May Day, it’s as if I can’t close the door anymore. I can’t leave the horrors outside. That’s what those bastards have done.”)

But this reverie will come to an end as well, especially when she discovers a secret that he has been unwilling to share: that his commitments do not – and cannot – coincide with her own. In the end, the image of Madonna and Child will come to mean different things for them. For him, it remains forever out of reach, serving as the most sacred marker of what it means to be a man, as well as the sole inspiration for his unwavering commitment to defend the nation against her enemies. In a nutshell, it is what draws him to her. On the other hand, for the young woman, it will signal the cruelty at the heart of Arsenal’s commitment, simultaneously desiring to acquire the Madonna’s holiness – through her – while continuing a crusade that violates the very sanctity of Life itself.

Another crushing blow …

(Might these “blows” be contemporary equivalents of the stations of the cross or, as is the case here, the cross that modern women are condemned to bear?)

After this, it is the “mama” to which she will finally turn. For when she returns to her empty home, she will find that her boy has miraculously reappeared, as if the bombing and its terrible aftermath were nothing but a bad dream. Without losing a beat, they fall back into the rhythm of shared love and admiration. No longer is there a need to leave the building, for all that is required is to be found in the eyes of the other.

This is, in other words, her descent into madness, a last ditch effort at recovering what has been irrevocably lost. And for one last moment, she is able to revel in its deliciousness, the memory of which has been rendered palpable, even as her surroundings mirror a different version of events: a slow and steady deterioration marked by chaos’ reign. (“We tape newspaper to the window to keep out the cold. And we found a use for all the unpaid bills.”) For one last time they will play the staring game and, as always, he will win – or she will allow this for him – since, for her, the joy comes not from their competition but the privilege of basking in the embrace of that young life and the uninterrupted witness of his untrammeled spirit.

This (last) reverie will finally be interrupted, too. The widow of the bomber, along with her son, will come to apologize for what was brought about by her husband’s hand, fumbling with words that have come before but which fail to do justice to what needs to be expressed. In the end, it will be the boy who rights the situation, reminding his mother that its her voice that needs to be heard:

Say it like you said before, like in the letter.

What follows is not particularly eloquent, but it is sufficient to break the spell that has held our protagonist captive to the ghost of her own (dead) son. For when she turns around, she will find that the boy – the love of her life – has disappeared and she is, once again, returned to that state of desperation with which the story began. But now, suspended between heaven and earth, she will come to the realization that she can no longer seek to merge herself with the spirits of the dead.

The words of another, written in a letter and delivered by a shaky hand, finally punctured the bubble that no other had been able to penetrate. For she – the other mother – sought neither to provide consolation nor to minimize the nature of her loss. Instead, in crossing the lines with which Arsenal had come to fortify the world, that absence had finally become real in the eyes of another, irreducible to the (mere) defilement of a lofty ideal that, in the end, spoke to agendas and desires that were not her own.

This is the “gift” that was exchanged between the two women: first, in the befriending of the forlorn son left bewildered and grief-stricken by an absence that remained unexplained and unaddressed, and second, in the offering of an apology that need not have been made but which, nevertheless, sought to acknowledge one’s connection to the despair of another.

And in this crossing of borders, where one widow courageously faces another, the final seed for healing is planted.

The Pregnant Virgin

“The storm of the last night has crowned
this morning with golden peace.”

When we first met her son Lenny (“lion-hearted,” and patron saint of prisoners), we saw him kneeling on the floor, asking his mother to remove Mr Rabbit from the “dizzy machine.” (“He doesn’t like going in [there]. Quick! Get him out, now!”) It’s a scene we will see more than once during the course of the film, as if it encapsulated the trauma with which she is faced, the dizzying whirl of a life gone out of control. But in this case, she will be left to face that confusion without the calming presence of a mother-figure to reassure her that everything will be all right.

So, after the terrorists’ blast, she will find herself clinging to Mr Rabbit, a reminder of – and consolation against – the death of her son. Her ever-present companion, unconcerned about what others may think. And since she no longer insists that he be clean (no more “dizzy machine” for Mr Rabbit), his body will remain forever marked by that fateful day, carrying the blood, dust, and mutilation that mirrors her own sense of having been battered to the edge of death. And for this interminable moment, she will forget the role she had played for her son: the importance of finding the strength to face the pain of separation and tolerating the confusion that, ultimately, will bring renewal against the unwanted accretions of life.

That she is (temporarily) unable to do this is no character defect; neither is it a shortcoming. It’s a natural aspect of coming to terms with death – of oneself, of another, of an ideal – that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross helped bring to our attention forty years ago. Yet, strangely, that contribution remains a symptom of the very emptiness that continues to define our civilizational moment: the absolute inability to confront the reality of one’s extinction. Entire industries have been built around denying (or softening) death’s blow, providing the “service” of distracting us from an imperative that refuses to disappear, or desperately fortifying ourselves against such an inevitability.

In another time, ceremonies and rituals were built into the very structure and rhythm of life, moments during which, quite deliberately and solemnly, initiates were removed from the demands of the living in order to renew the life of the dispirited. At first, the isolation faced by our protagonist is psychological and emotional, giving rise to her panic and desperation when confronted by the death of her family. She will, quite naturally, seek out consolation from others, some kind, any kind, of connection with another. But since each of these will fail to fill the absence that haunts her, she will – inevitably – be drawn to a different kind of isolation: an enclosure of her own making, in which the awful task is precisely coming to terms with the “dizziness” that life has dealt her. In the absence of culturally-accepted practices that enable – and validate – this process, the power and responsibility will fall on the individual to find a way out of the impasse. And in the absence of priests and shamans able to guide the bereaved, it will fall to an enlightened witness to provide the impetus for taking that lonely journey, a flash of recognition that signals that she is not alone.

The Pregnant Virgin is the phrase that Marion Woodman uses to describe this process of (self) transformation, one that applies equally to women as it does to men. By virtue of separation and self-enclosure, the “virgin” finds the courage to face the devastation alone, submitting to the yearning and despair that inevitably accompanies death, so that a new beginning can be found. What eventually emerges is a new life wrought at one’s own hand, a fertility requiring no artificial (external) insemination, where a man, or woman, or fantasy is no longer a precondition for one’s existence, much less one’s happiness.

In other words, a virgin birth.

Significantly, this provides the much needed reinterpretation of – and answer to – the hallowed place accorded to the Madonna and Child. For they are not extensions of Man. Neither are they, in the form of a wife and family, the condition for His existence that requires and demands defense. Instead, She is the (feminine) force that fights for her very survival, not through barricades or bombs, but by embracing the pain of death, the devastating blows of absence and, at times, the haunting guilt of one’s complicity in bringing an end to life … so that, following this labor through darkness, one can emerge to give birth to another life, reborn.

The voice-overs we hear during the course of this story are but the final stage of that process where she is finally able to articulate past, present, and future. No longer panic-stricken by what has been severed from her, no longer swallowed by the gaping hole of blackness or rendered mute by the senselessness of it all. Instead, a voice emerges. One that speaks of presence rather than absence, life rather than death, and love rather than justice or revenge, embodying a voice that has found a way to overcome loss without diminishing what came before, facing the future without denying the pain that came in the wake of the past’s destruction. Emerging from a womb-like tomb that has held her in safety, incubating a life that had yet to be born.

She writes to Osama bin Laden, in part because that’s what was recommended to her. At first, it felt like a silly exercise. She didn’t have his address, after all. But following the (final) disappearance of her son, and after she has found the strength to build a life without him, the words begin to flow. And the words give evidence to a fierceness that she would never have thought possible, before.

Love is not surrender, Osama.
Love is furious and brave and loud. …
That noise is the fiercest and the loudest sound on earth.
It will echo till the end of time.
It is more deafening than bombs.

Come to me
and we will blow the world back together
with incredible noise and fury.

Maybe – just maybe – Arsenal has finally found its match.
.

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There’s a telling moment about the three quarters of the way into Julie & Julia, one that puts the entire film into perspective. Without this moment, it would be a bore. For we already know the story of its two main characters: Julia Child, upon returning from France, will become a household name; and Julie Powell, blogging about her crazed experiment to cook 524 recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, will make a name for herself as well, becoming a best-selling author and even the subject of a major Hollywood motion picture.

Which is not to suggest that these stories hold no interest in themselves. There is, after all, a certain pleasure in seeing Meryl Streep’s habitation of that famous persona, and in learning about the actual life behind the iconic figure she was to become. There is also a certain fascination in following the emotional ups-and-downs associated with Julie’s mad adventure, including the minor tragedies and triumphs of her life in the kitchen.

But despite what we already know about these two women and what we come to learn about them during the course of the film, the question remains: why embark on such an experiment in the first place? Why would Julie turn Julia into an obsession, making each and every recipe in that massive tome the primary objective of her daily existence?

As the film opens, we are provided one answer to that question. Julie tells her husband that her life has no focus, that she’s been unable to finish anything. The fact that she’s uninspired and drained by her post-9/11 job answering phone calls on behalf of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation speaks as much to the lifelessness of modern bureaucracy as to her own condition. Her single accomplishment – writing a novel – has gone unrecognized and unpublished. Brunch with her “successful” friends only makes her feel like more of a failure. Even her mother is quick to dismiss this new undertaking as just another one of Julie’s “projects,” one that will most likely come to naught.

And yet, it is only after we get more than halfway through this tale that we discover another side of Julie’s conundrum. Her husband, tired of the having their life colonized by this culinary pilgrimage, and exhausted by her innumerable breakdowns, finally gives voice to an exasperation that had been silently brewing: he allows himself, finally, to vent about her indulgence in what can only be seen as a narcissistic exercise, refusing to be the “saint” she wants him to be, since taking on that moniker merely asks that he continue to tolerate what she was unable to stand in herself. Stunned, Julie will acknowledge the self-involvement at the heart of her attachment to Julia, but will also note how she’s “finally totally engaged in something …”

Therein lies the rub.

And this is where the contrast with Julia Child takes on an edifying contrast. For even though not a word is spoken of the matter, it’s clear that she’s grief-stricken over the child she’s unable to bear. It’s also clear that she (as well as her sister) have struggled with, and overcome, the loss of confidence that can come with being large women, much less being seen as loud, opinionated, and unfeminine.

In other words, we learn a whole lot more about Julia Child – about what moves her as well as what haunts her – than we are ever allowed to learn about Julie. This may have been a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers or, perhaps, a carryover from the book upon which the film is based. But this absence points us to a gaping hole, perhaps one with which Julie was struggling herself. For coming into one’s own, like Julia Child, is no small achievement, whether it be in the 1950s or the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It’s quite appropriate, then, that the film closes, not with Julie, but with Julia, as we – along with her husband – share in the delight of her (first) project’s completion. For not only did she learn a new skill relatively late in life, and neither was the writing of books her major life’s accomplishment. Rather, she discovered the alchemy’s secret for transforming Mercury’s absence into Gold, became a teacher, and found a way to share her gifts with others.

No wonder Julie wanted to live in her shadow,
not quite realizing she was a good egg, too.
.

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What most reviewers seem to have failed to recognize about this film is that the central character is Needy, not Jennifer. While Jennifer is the one who gets to act out the juicy parts – as a foul-mouthed predator – she is not the protagonist here. For in the end, the story revolves around the special relationship the two have shared since childhood but also, quite significantly, the role that Jennifer had come to serve for Needy.

Needy is, after all, a nice girl, unable to hurt a fly or even allow mild profanities to pass through her lips. As her name would suggest, this is born from a deep-seated sense of deficiency, although we are never really told why this might be so. However, the fact that she would be allied with another who embodied a completely different – and self-assured – persona should come as no surprise, since it compensates for the very lack that she perceives in herself.

Therein lies the clue to the “vampiric” elements of this story. Jennifer acts in ways that Needy cannot allow herself to be. In fact, she feeds on others in ways that attend to the needs of the introverted one. This symbiotic relation is how we’re first introduced to these two characters and which, in the eyes of one of their classmates at least, comes across as weirdly inappropriate (i.e., “lesbigay”). Should we have missed the point, the accusation is less a matter of giving voice to homophobic fears than the parasitic bond that has congealed between them. For Jennifer is attached to Needy in ways that aren’t immediately obvious, as well.

If we’re willing to loosen ourselves from the constraints of literal interpretation, we may come to recognize how Jennifer is nothing other than Needy’ alter ego, a split having its origins in childhood, in which the two “characters” are but different sides of the same person. (That this story was penned by Diablo Cody, the primary writer for “United States of Tara” is a relevant clue here.) This is what would explain the eerily close bond between the two, including Needy’s almost psychic ability to detect Jennifer’s whereabouts and doings, particularly since this seems to operate at a bodily level. During one key moment of the film, it is the sensations on Needy’s lips that signal that something is terribly wrong, as if Jennifer was using her mouth in the commission of a crime.

Whatever the cause of the original neediness, it’s clear that Jennifer-the-monster only emerges after the trauma experienced at the hands of a group of young men at the beginning of the film. The fact that the filmmakers chose to depict this scene as an eerily satanic ritual – rather than one involving a brutal rape – hides the nature of that event from us, much as it has left Needy in the dark. It also conveys the demonic extraction of soul involved. For whatever else rape might be, it is more than mere sex imposed upon another or, even, a brutal act of aggression. And while this veil which hides an unrecognized truth not only replicates Needy’s confusion, it also provides us with her point of view, allowing us a glimpse into the nature of her emotional experience, as well as how she learns to come to terms with it.

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that it is Needy – not Jennifer – who finds herself in the grips of numbed confusion: she does not know what came to pass; neither does she know what happened to her (i.e., Jennifer’s) body. And this is precisely when the gulf between the two of them grows, as Needy’s alter ego comes to be possessed, acting upon a bodily need that never quite existed before. At least not in this way. So, even as Needy continues reeling from the shock of that fateful night, Jennifer becomes increasingly driven by a hunger that can be satiated only through the blood of others, mostly boys, feeding on their desire. Quite telling, too, is the emotional neediness her victims share with her alter ego, and that this seems to be as important to her feedings as their lustful gaze.

The rest of the plot follows the contours of this mystery, as Needy attempts to piece together the reasons for Jennifer’s behavior and their estrangement from one another. Whatever closeness they may have once shared, that has all but disappeared, and Jennifer’s hunger has taken on a life of its own, following an imperative no longer tied to childhood neediness and no longer serving to bind them together. That has been broken. And it has been replaced by a voracious appetite that, in Jennifer’s mind at least, ensures her very survival.

Once Needy learns of the demonic transference involved in the “ritual” that gave rise to Jennifer’s compulsion, it is only a matter of time before she commits herself to confronting this shadow Other in order to reclaim what has been disavowed for too long. If “Jennifer” had once served a purpose, if she had provided the strength and confidence that Needy lacked, that’s no longer the case, for she has begun to go on a rampage. In light of Needy’s new imperative – that of healing the rift – it is quite appropriate that the film chooses not to emphasize fantasies of revenge, but on resolving the dynamic set in place since their childhood days and, more fundamentally, the neediness that gave rise to it in the first place. And in addressing that need, she finds that the power of the demon that had run amok in Jennifer has now found a different kind of home, in her.

The fact that the film opens after the events depicted in the film, in which Needy has acquired a new name (“Kicker”), indicates the kind of transformation that has already taken place. It also demonstrates why the relationship with Jennifer was so necessary in the first place, since the anger could not be contained. If she had been left to deal with it alone, it would have destroyed her. Only after reviewing the events leading up to the present – the same journey the film offers us, as its viewers – is she finally able to find a way to escape that which has held her captive for so long. Finally, after years of imprisonment, she finds release.

For what was once lost is now found.

Redemption:

“The action of freeing, delivering, or restoring in some way.”
“The action of redeeming oneself from punishment; ways or means of doing this; atonement made for a crime or offence.”
“The action of redeeming or buying back from another.”

From the verb, redeem:

“To buy back (a thing formerly possessed); to make payment for (a thing held or claimed by another).”

- Oxford English Dictionary

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“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:
and they shall be one flesh.”

.

Those who would call Antichrist “controversial” without offering a judgment of their own likely lack the ability to form an opinion they’re willing or able to defend. As for those who accuse the film’s director (Lars von Trier) of misogyny, at least they have the courage of their conviction, even if such a charge also belies a certain kind of laziness, latching onto the most convenient scapegoat for the discomfort elicited by the screen. Such a gesture not only replicates the violence of confusion at the heart of Antichrist’s story, it also fails to consider the trap within which the film’s protagonists are caught, the extremes to which they will go to relieve themselves of their torment, and the director’s intent in subjecting them – and us – to such pain.

In the end, the misogynist accusation can only be understood as a secular rite of (self) absolution, in which the stance of indignation is called upon to veil the far-reaching implications of the anger and mutilation put on display. For the nameless characters around whom the film revolves signal how the battle being waged is not particular to them: some might call it the war of the sexes; others would prefer the language of Good and Evil. In the end, the story’s the same. For it provides a visual – and visceral – display of the breakdown of the marital bond and the horror brought upon by this violation of their sacred union, in which the two that had become one are abruptly returned to a state of separation, alienated from the very meaning that had come to govern their lives.

We are not left unaided in the task of divining the purpose of this story. In one promotional image, the protagonists are portrayed as the blades constituting a pair of scissors, cleaved together and joined at the hip, even as she struggles under his gaze. Her closed eyes suggest a turn in their relationship, one in which she can no longer rely on his eyes as her mirror, for what is reflected there is more a measure of his imagination than anything else. Turning inward, she will seek another kind of validation, one independent of what he is able to provide. But with this shift, the pivot of their relationship will begin to resemble a prison, immobilized by what was designed to hold them together … until separated by death. The very emotional and sexual bond that had brought them together in celebration and delight will, quite cruelly, become the site of emotional and psychic torture, as a different kind of imperative comes to the fore. For what once brought them together in celebration and delight will give way to another force, just as beautiful and natural but which, because unrecognized, will take on another face.

The fact that the film’s title is drawn using a symbol to signify “woman” points to the ambiguity that lies at the center of this story: Are we to consider her the antichrist and, if so, what are we to make of such an appellation? This is the conundrum with which “He” will be faced, and it is the challenge that Antichrist puts to us. The limbs of the dead that surround the couple’s carnal embrace gesture towards the grapplings of the dispossessed and the forgotten, that which has been pushed aside in their union. It is the condition for their lovemaking as well as its aftermath, for they are the ghosts that “She” desperately has sought to escape when turning to him for comfort, and the nightmare that invariably returns.

He will be painfully oblivious to this, Her torment, for he is implicated in ways he couldn’t imagine. So, oblivious he will remain. Unless someone or something intervenes on their behalf …

The Fall

The haunting aria that opens and closes the film – Handel’s “Lascia ch’io pianga” – is another element that helps give sense to the story laid out before us. In the Prologue, shot entirely in black and white and absent any sound save for the operatic strain that fills the frame, a series of slow-motion “stills” provide us with a glimpse of the couple caught-up in the throes of passion. Swept to the side are household objects, both sign and symbol of the mundane life they have shared. With time grinding to a halt, the security and certainty of domesticity falls into earth’s orbit, toppling to the ground below.

While their coupling may occupy the center of our attention, punctuated as it is by the naked face of their conjugation, it is merely a distraction from another event more momentous and already in progress. A tragedy, in fact. One that will define all that is to follow. The earth will claim another prize, one dear to the man and woman mesmerized by the pleasures of the flesh. A toppling of another sort, and one that will bring them to their knees. Cut between picture perfect snapshots of their entrancement, we are witness to what cannot be seen. It is the death of the product of their union. The unsteady steps of what had yet to find a place in this world, emerging from an artificial prison designed for safekeeping, crashing to the ground below. As the couple will learn, fortifications built to delay the inevitable will not hold, since the effort to establish an earthly presence cannot be stayed. Protective custody only serves to delay the imperative of time, crippling that which fully deserves to blossom and grow, however painful that process may turn out to be.

The fact that their child also falls to his death is almost incidental to this other Fall, one with beginnings that long preceded this moment in time. It is the rupture in the fabric that has held their lives together, mirrored and confirmed by the death of their son. Thanks to this echo of the larger tragedy that has loomed over them unheeded and unseen, they are now finally forced to confront what had been too difficult to bear.

She will fall into a deep despair since, unbeknownst to her husband, She had already glimpsed this awful fate. He will do his level best to come to her aid, although it will become clear that his efforts, however well-meaning, bring no relief. Her “condition,” in fact, will only appear to worsen, as if He were scraping a wound unable to heal. Only then will Handel’s aria take on its full significance:

Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And sigh for my lost freedom.
May sorrow break the chains of anguish,
If only for pity’s sake.

It will be unclear whose freedom has been lost and who has come to be imprisoned since the grief of one will bleed into the other. However, as a therapist, He will take it upon himself to cure her, seemingly blind to the nature of Her fractured existence and deaf to the wisdom of children’s tales (“all the King’s horses and all the King’s men …”). For healing, if it is to occur, will require turning to an authority other than the Sovereign to whom he pays tribute, particularly since the sorrow will be ushered in by her hand. In the end, it is Her cruel fate to recognize the nature of their bondage to one another … and to find the courage to break it.

Stale-mate

Roger Ebert has said that Antichrist lacks symbolism and, in a sense, he’s right. The director makes an almost pedantic use of “The Three Beggars” as the primary organizing device for the film: each is given a name – Pain, Grief, Despair – and each is accorded a “chapter” in the film’s story. Were this insufficient to the task of identifying the film’s narrative thrust, two chapters are given subtitles (“chaos reigns” and “gynocide”), just as The Three Beggars, which we first encounter as simple figurines, are later given animal form. Flesh incarnate.

But what are we to make of these animated beings?

One clue is that they had been the object of Her obsession. An unfinished thesis examining the medieval slaughter of women accused of witchery, also called Gynocide, now sits abandoned in the attic of their country cabin – like a neglected child – because he was unable to generate enthusiasm for what she found compelling. So it is a strange but telling twist of fate when it will be Him to whom the Three Beggars will later appear, amidst the grief and confusion brought on by her return to what had been abandoned. A different experience of time and space will begin to intrude on his world, as the unfathomable begins to unsettle the certainties he had taken for granted.

But, quick to dismiss whatever might exceed logical explanation, these surreal sightings will only be permitted to exist on the margins of consciousness as his attention is turned, instead, to the task of leading his wife out of the emotional labyrinth from which she seems unable to escape. Yet, despite his best of intentions, she will call his efforts at “help” arrogant, tainted by an unwillingness to recognize that there may be matters that lie beyond his grasp. Nonetheless, and perhaps in honor of the love that still binds them, she will tolerate the exercises to which she will be subject, interventions designed to persuade her to see the world as He does. The Impossibility within which She is caught, however, will not allow such easy compliance and will instead give rise to stormy protest, and violent swings between the desperate urge for copulation and the impulse to lash out in anger.

In the midst of this – Her anguish – She will turn to the language of Good and Evil, openly wondering whether it’s Woman’s fate to become evil. Understandably, this will push her husband, champion of rational supremacy, to the edge of exasperation.

He: I’m not going to continue with this if you refuse to listen to me! (pause)
Good and Evil, they have nothing to do with therapy. Do you know how many innocent women were killed in the sixteenth century alone just for being women? l’m sure you do. Many, (and) not because they were evil.
She: I know. lt’s just that sometimes I forget.
He: The evil you talk about is an obsession. Obsessions never materialize, it’s a scientific fact. Anxieties can’t trick you into doing things you wouldn’t do otherwise. It’s like hypnotism. You can’t be hypnotized into doing something you wouldn’t normally do, something against your nature. Do you understand me?
She: Yes, I think so.
He: You think so? Well, you don’t have to understand me. Just trust me.

He will not understand her “obsession.” He will, in fact, remain steadfast in his faith that has been torn of any and all reference to the world of the spirit, ever vigilant against that which would appear to invoke forces exceeding the laws of his mechanical universe. He will, in other words, remain oblivious to how this embrace of Reason requires, even valorizes, her infantilization, just as it presumes His cerebral ascendancy. (She might as well call him Daddy.) In making her his therapeutic project, She will be reduced to an object in world shorn of mystery, a puzzle to be solved and a problem to be fixed. Never will it cross his mind that He is also part of the equation – that the Devil growing in her finds its strength in direct proportion to what He would arrogate to himself – and that this unrecognized mutuality contributes to the deadlock in which they find themselves. At least as much anything that she might be bringing to the table.

The roar of falling acorns will fill the air, a storm of the inchoate that threatens to overrun the enclosed world in which they find themselves, on the edge of annihilation, each caught in the sights of the other. For both have latched onto the fatal flaw they see in the other, tarnishing the image of the beloved that is the premise of their union. Yet, despite this stalemate, it is He who has triumphed, for He is the one who dominates, imperiously dictating acceptable terms of speech and the conditions for their intimacy. For this he can be forgiven, since he is only playing by the rules that had already been established and which seemed to have been working just fine.

And yet, in this battle of wills, the tables will be turned, and Evil will show her face in no uncertain terms. So that, finally, even He will be forced recognize its truth.

Eden

It has been said that “Woman is the symptom of Man” and the locked-horns to which we are witness would seem as good an illustration of this as anything else. Some have taken offense at this pronouncement, not fully realizing how it speaks more of Him than her. For it is a question of the meaning that She acquires in his eyes. Whether it be Madonna or Whore, it matters little, since it is symptomatic of Him, of his very being. Significantly, and as a consequence, it also raises the question of the plight of a woman who would seek to live outside the confines of His imagination. This is the ugly truth – and knowledge – elided by the objectivity He worships, and one not infrequently seen to be the work of the Devil.

The man, He, will finally rouse, as if from a deep slumber … and awaken to a nightmare. He will discover that he has been beaten and abused, drained of his life’s blood. Or so it would seem. He will also find that the pain emanating from below comes from a millstone that has been bolted there, as if the crude jokes about marriage have, quite literally, acquired material form. The pivot-point of their attachment now transformed into a foreign object fastened to him. And like those who would crumble under the demands of the matrimonial oath, He will also come to be overwhelmed by a desperate and compelling need to escape.

Her screams will pierce the air. Shouting for him. Shouting at him. When unheeded, desperate cries bemoaning her abandonment will give way to a ferocity one dare not wish unleashed upon another. He will scramble to distance himself from this fury, dragging that which weighs him down, frantically hoping to evade what would seem to be his fate. He will find temporary refuge in what can only be described as a Den but, much to his dismay, even as her muffled cries penetrate the walls of this subterranean cell, He will come face to face with the Third Beggar. In the throes of death, thrashing about noisily, yet unable or unwilling to die.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “symptom” speaks to this state of having fallen together, for the couple at the center of Antichsit has reached this pit of despair by virtue of the stalled marriage that has kept them bound together, attached to – yet repelled by – the other, only able to draw comfort from mute grapplings under cover of night. Like Him, She will struggle to find a way out of this impasse, vacillating between the impulse to give in to the visceral call for vengeance and the attempt to rescue him from his voluntary entombment. Between a certain kind of feral savageness and the self-obliterating love of a modern-day Pietà.

Earlier, in the midst of the rainstorm of acorns falling from the sky, She had given voice to a disturbing insight, one that preceded this horror and which, in many ways, can be understood as having instigated it.

“Oak trees grow to be hundreds of years old. They only have to produce one single tree every hundred years in order to perpetuate. It may sound banal to you but it was a big thing for me to realize that when I was out here with (our son).

“The acorns fell on the roof then, too.
Kept falling … and falling … and dying … and dying.

“And I understood that everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. Now I could hear what I couldn’t hear before: the cry of all the things that are to die.”

Because he doesn’t understand, he will dismiss what She has sought to explain. (“That’s all very touching, if it was a children’s book. Acorns don’t cry. You know that as well as I do.”) But she has found the courage to sustain her convictions, even in the face of His contempt. She also remains willing to bear responsibility – even if misplaced – for the fate of their marriage, as well as that of their son. Later, she will mutilate her body, just as she will provoke him, both a measure of her revulsion for what they have come to be and hatred for her complicity in its becoming. Yearning for release from the chains of anguish.

Momentarily, and just as She had predicted, the Three Beggars return to Him, appearing under a light not to be confused with the star that guided another set of three. This time, they are aligned with Her inert body, seemingly pointing to the sole cause of His pain and suffering, as if the confusion elicited by his previous sightings was finally resolving itself into an unambiguous sign of what must come next. For in those earlier visions, Pain appeared in the guise of a stillborn child, Grief as the unseen labor of self-disembowelment, and Despair as the torture of a death without release.

No longer recognized as his beloved, She has finally, and quite symptomatically, become that which defies reason, defiling his faith in the secular Sovereign. With this transformation, he has finally come face-to-face with Evil, confronting that which “exceeds due measure (and) oversteps proper limits” (OED). He has come to recognize the other face of Eden, the heart of darkness visible only to the initiated. But rather than taking responsibility for his stubborn blindness, as She had already done, the apparition of Beggars will prompt him to channel his anger and confusion in defense of a self that still refuses nature’s promise of rebirth.

Perhaps it was fated to be this way since they had already reached the point of no return. Perhaps his act of desperation provides her with the release from Eden’s hideousness for which she desperately yearned. And perhaps her provocations sought to elicit precisely this, for his benefit as much as for hers. Be that as it may, Nature will still have Her way with him. As colors fade and the world of black-and-white reappears, Handel’s aria will once again fill the frame. In the immediate aftermath of this massive confrontation, and before He can catch his breath, the ghosts of the dead will be resurrected. His visions of the Three Beggars replaced by another sight, as the spirits of the forgotten and repressed return, walking towards him.
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Addendum: On the Possibility of Redemption

“For in the day that thou eatest
[of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil] …
thou shalt surely die.”

There are two ways to interpret the end of this story, including the violence that ushers in the closing scene, neither of which conforms to what the film’s detractors would have us believe. Both revolve around the abrupt shift that accompanies his Awakening from what would appear to be a deep slumber. All that precedes this moment are mere hauntings, suggestions that all is not as it seems, the visions of the Three Beggars being the most prominent among these. All that follows is stylized in its brutal excessiveness, a reflection of the torment that has overtaken both protagonists in their struggle against the void of meaninglessness.

The heightened emotion, reflected in the exaggerated violence, is a measure of what they dare not lose – still cleaved one to the other – as well as the momentous task that summons them, something that can be achieved only after liberating themselves from what has bound them together. Despite her desperate desire to cling to Him and the love that defined their past, it is Her task to instigate this separation, thereby giving birth to what has yet to be born, a prelude to what has yet to come.

Unto the woman [the Lord God] said,
I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;
and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee.

He will also resist the inevitable, unable to muster the courage to face the reality of their separation, something which he can only experience as his personal loss. But if She is to become the giver of new life, it is His job to follow, even as it involves a different kind of labor particular to His condition: coming to terms with his previous arrogation of the Keeper of Knowledge, aspiring to the exalted position of airy omniscience.

And unto Adam [the Lord God] said …
cursed is the ground for thy sake;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

As for the death brought about by His hand, it can either be seen as a sign of his continued obliviousness to Her torment and, as a consequence, a defense of the elevated status he occupies in his own eyes, an attack on the one who would dare challenge His authority and, adding insult to injury, willfully desecrate His love for her. (How else are we to understand the battery of women at their lovers’ hands? Or, which amounts to the same thing, under the lashing of tongues?) Alternatively, and more generously, this final act can be seen as a recognition that She – the Woman who is His symptom – must be “killed” since, absent this annihilation, she will have no place to exist other than as the object of his worship.

The director does not tell us how we are to interpret this end. Perhaps his refusal to direct us to its “correct” meaning is a deliberate choice. Perhaps, too, it is because these are the two routes to salvation that are available to Man: one driven by the savage force of vengeance, the other fueled by the painful recognition that his image of Her must be extinguished. In the case of the former, he will come to be haunted by that which has the power to exceed death; in the case of the latter, he will finally see what was obscured by His imagination. Only then will the bodies of the forgotten and repressed finally gain release from their buried existence.

In order to achieve this end, She transforms into the One that would oppose Him, no longer presented as his loving partner and ally, willingly taking on the guise of Evil. Yet, it is this opposition that gives way to life renewed.

And Adam called his wife’s name Eve;
because she was the mother of all living.

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“Therefore, the Lord God banished Adam and Eve
from the Garden of Eden and placed a
flaming sword to protect the tree of life.”
- Genesis 3:24
(from the opening frames of The Fountain)

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It may not be a mortal wound to the body. Nevertheless, it threatens to bring death in its wake. For Tom’s wife is dying, or maybe she’s already dead: no matter how hard he tries, or where he looks, he cannot find his wedding ring. Caught in the unimaginable torment of a life without his Beloved, he compensates for her absence, stabbing ink into skin. A tribute to the love he has lost, and a feeble grasp at the kind of permanence life was unable to provide. Soon, this single band will multiply, spreading across his limbs, giving witness to the passage of time like an ancient tree, less a measure of his loss than a sign of the fire that consumes him, leaving him capable of only one thing: repetition, until eternity. Confronted by a gaping void and incapable of consolation. Paralyzed in the face of death.

This is the “heart” of The Fountain, a film that left most critics baffled, if not angry, even as they admired the stunning visual and aural feast laid out before them. A story of a woman’s embrace of the hereafter, and her husband’s inability to match her courageousness in the face of extinction.

The three “timelines” of the film are but narrative devices that provide a panoramic view of this awful struggle. They also hint at the promise of what is to come. Hence, despite speculation about which of these times is real and which are imaginary, the simple truth is this: none are real, for the “real” has already passed, and what we are witness to in its stead is a meditation on the painful process of discovery when faced with the Impossible. The different incarnations of this man – Tom, Tomas, Tommy – are nothing but versions of Thomas (“the twin”) attempting to wrench sense from the pit of meaningless, battling the demons of the inchoate.

The Fountain of Youth

As the film opens, we see Tomas kneeling in front of a makeshift shrine built in honor of Queen Isabel, recalling the sacred mission she had entrusted to him. As he prepares for battle, he allows himself to touch the ring he carries with him, a physical reminder – from Her – of the consecrated task that awaits him. Making the sign of the cross, he speaks the words that signal his resolve and his commitment: “Let us finish it.”

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We may call this “mythical time.” It is the story given to Tom by his wife as she lay dying, the novel on which she had been working but which remained incomplete. She had told him his job was to give it an ending, the closing chapter it still lacked. Her final request, so to speak. This charge would give him much grief, for the ending would continue to elude him. But even as her life was slowly being siphoned from the world they shared, she would counsel him against his uncertainty and the danger of becoming overwhelmed by fear: he would know how the story ends. His desperate and frantic search for that which remained beyond his grasp would come to be the source of an inside joke, one that would take him years to fully understand. For in the days immediately preceding her death, she would tease him, lovingly and tauntingly, as my conquistador, her words’ breath carrying an embrace as well as the sting of recognition. Of what he was unwilling – and, hence, unable – to see.

This is the “conquerer” that we find roaming the forests of the New World, his voyage of discovery fueled by a search of that which would bring eternal life, motivated less by an interest in endings than in the possibility of prolonging the present. However, despite his superior weaponry, this Thomas – Tomas the Conquistador - is ambushed and captured by Mayan warriors who throw him to the ground at the base of a temple, his captors indicating that he is expected to mount the staircase he finds before him, seemingly built to provide mere mortals access to the heavenly beyond.

To his death, perhaps? Is he to be sacrificed there?

Upon reaching the summit, he is greeted by the silhouette of an ornamented figure, a man we can only presume to be the high priest of this monument to the gods and keeper of the sacred knowledge of his people. But rather than being treated to an exotic display or a halting exchange of mutual respect, Tomas slowly begins to realize that this man has something else in store. Something more sinister. The priest’s headdress resembles a bird of prey and around his neck hangs a garland of skulls. As he approaches the Conquistador, he will speak in a strange tongue (translated for our benefit).

First Father sacrificed himself for the tree of life.
Enter and join his fate.
Death is the road to awe.

Before Tomas can brace himself and prepare for an armed confrontation, he finds that he has been struck. Stabbed by what would appear to be a flaming sword.

Time that Falls

A strangled cry. A startled face. As if roused from a nightmare …

Draped in the dark of night and shorn of all hair, Tom floats in mid-air, surrounded by the cosmos and sealed within a bubble ascending to a place unseen. A dying tree dominates this hermetic world, an altar (and stand-in) for the dead. The tree also serves as his only source of nourishment, even as he realizes how this can only sap it of its remaining life. But he cannot help himself. He cannot refrain from these feedings, taunted as he is by visions – of Her – that delight and torment. Snippets of time, echoes from another place. The sounds of laughter, the brush of skin. And moments of regret.

It is this with which he struggles, the knot of memories that have left him bound to another. Dwarfed – and entranced – by that which has already passed, he is consumed by what exists only in his imagination. It is a torment that draws upon and nourishes a vision of happiness, a version of himself he is unable and unwilling to relinquish: a man in possession of a loving wife.

But this is no mere escapist fantasy, for he is haunted by the one he mourns. His visions of her cannot be controlled. They intrude, even as he grieves over her absence, reminders of what has been left unfinished. Shouting at the apparitions will not make them disappear; neither will a turned back banish them to the place from whence they came. Like a recurring nightmare, they will not go away.

An elaborate and rehearsed ritual unfolds before us, as if he’s preparing to write. Black ink is extracted from the coals of a fire, and an old-fashioned pen is readied for its work. But rather than tracing the lines of an unfinished story, the pen is turned into a weapon of pain. This instrument of remembrance, his sole companion in this floating world, connects him to the world of another, giving evidence to the sweet pain of what has passed, as much an homage to what has been lost as a monument to the overwhelming absence that is his present. Stuck between the life that was and the life that has yet to come.

Yet, even as he is absorbed in this holy rite, a familiar voice calls out to him, bringing him a message. One filled less with reassurance than a gentle reprimand:

Finish it.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

We are not told much about the nature of his wife’s suffering – the film is about Tom learning to finish the story, after all – but this much we do know, told through the personage of Queen Isabel:

The beast runs amok in my kingdom.
He has isolated me,
and now he is sharpening his talons for one more fateful push.

Like Tomas the Conquistador, Tom the Scientist will do anything in his power to save her from this fate. Both seek to destroy the one that threatens her. For Tomas, it is the inquisitor who has set his sights on the Queen; for Tom, it’s the mysterious tumor that grows in Izzy’s brain, bringing her ever closer to death’s embrace. However, in each case, she dissuades him from such a manly (i.e., “heroic”) defense of his Beloved, convincing him to turn his attention to another, more difficult, pursuit.

Salvation lies in the jungles of New Spain. … Here, in the center, in the core of the once-great Mayan civilization, we will find a lost pyramid. No, not lost (but) hidden: The hidden pyramid of the Mayan myths.

The myths tell us of a holy pyramid, built upon the navel of the earth, the birthplace of life. A special tree sprouts there …

Remember, our own Bible confirms it. In Genesis, there are two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord and ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the Lord banned them from the Garden and hid the Tree of Life.

It is no wonder that Tom will struggle to finish Izzy’s story. For how can he complete a task for which he has not been trained, one for which even the best equipped laboratory cannot help? Neither does it identify a foe that the conquistador knows how to attack. Instead, the Thomas Twins are sent on a nebulous quest based on myth and rooted in the sacred. - How does one go about finding the Tree of Life? - For this awesome task, eyes must be turned away from the world of the senses, learning to trust a different form of sight.

If Tom allows himself pause, he will remember that Izzy had already pointed the way. For in the final days leading up to her death, she had quite excitedly told him about her discovery of a Mayan codex, and the words of promise the Queen was later given to speak.

That’s First Father. He’s the very first human.
- Is he dead? -
He sacrificed himself to make the world.
The Tree of Life’s bursting out of his belly.

So, what do you think?
- About? -
That idea: death as an act of creation.

Much like other spiritual traditions, this story speaks of sacrifice. First Father – specifically through his death – is the one who lays the ground for the founding of the (new) world. It is an idea that Tom the Scientist will find repellent, since his mission until now has been the preservation of life. But Izzy’s enthusiasm about this discovery will turn his world, and his life’s work, upside down … and leave him baffled, struggling against the very absence of meaning brought about by this reversal of established truth.

How can death – especially her death – be an act of creation?
And what is one to make of a tree that sprouts from the belly?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .
[ click on pictures for larger image ]

There are, however, parallels to this Mayan myth, ones that find their origins closer to Spain and with roots in a tradition more familiar to Queen Isabel and the Conquistador. One in particular concerns the Tree of Jesse, a popular subject for medieval Christian art. As with the story of the First Father, these portraits depict a tree sprouting from a man’s belly. While it’s not always clear whether he is merely resting, sleeping, or in the midst of meditation, his reclining figure is always overshadowed by that which emerges from the core of his being, peopled by a host of figures that can only be taken to represent a world different from – and more holy than – the one he currently inhabits.

Such creation stories, whether they be Mayan, Christian, or from another spiritual tradition, need not be reduced to quaint tales about the origins of the material world. Rather, they can be seen as stories about the emergence of the sacred, and the conditions under which it springs: from inner turmoil and the churning of oceans. What follows on the heels of torment can only be described as a blossoming, for it brings forth what, until that point, could only be imagined but not understood. A flowering – and a proliferation – that grows of its own accord, without human direction and independent of conscious intent.

The name the Mayans gave to the place of torment was Xibalba – “It was their underworld, the place dead souls go to be reborn” – and it served as the necessary prelude for what was yet to come. It is the dark and “empty time” in which we initially find Tom, surrounded by the ghosts of his past.

Unbeknownst to Tom, the warbles of light that fill his vision, the circles that crop up everywhere, and the tunnels inviting passage, all of which bring him endless confusion, harken back to what was there at the beginning as he sought blessing from the Queen on bended knee. It is the invisible third, the empty space-that-separates and its capacious embrace, the mysterious elixir of life that enables the marriage of soul and spirit. It will be many years before Tom, still shrouded in the dark of night, will finally give up on his crusade and turn his attention, instead, to to what was hidden … but not lost. Finally able to recognize what had already been there, he will learn to step into what – in his previous incarnation – only seemed intent on his very extinction: the void that marked the location of the pyramid built upon the navel of the earth.

Only then will he understand the words that began the Conquistador’s journey:

Will you deliver Spain from bondage?
- Upon my honor and my life. -
Then you shall take this ring to remind you of your promise.
You shall wear it when you find Eden, and when you return, I shall be your Eve.
Together, we will live forever.

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Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?
And God said … “I will bless her, and she will become the mother of nations.”

A shadow, cast from a place unseen, looms over the woman basking in the sun. Whether its owner is male or female, we can’t quite tell. Neither is it possible to discern his (or her) intentions. A voyeur, perhaps? Or a stalker? Or maybe a guardian who silently watches over the one with closed eyes, shut off from the world?

Despite the uncertainties, this much is clear: the shadow does not belong to the reclining woman, but to another. Sequestered from our field of vision, the watcher stands transfixed between water and sky, eclipsing the Sun, unable to see – or appreciate – what the young woman takes pleasure in. In this way, she serves as a screen, catching the shadow of the watcher. And, like the one who stands over her, our gaze will be directed to this woman-as-screen: she is the one from whom meaning will be sought, as if she alone were in possession of the secret around which the ensuing story will unfold.

The tagline reads “On the surface, All is calm” although it’s plain to see this isn’t quite the case. Gentle ripples animate the shadow cast over the water and threaten to dissolve the letters that spell out the silent signifier haunting the events to follow, as if it were a child’s creation unable to withstand the power of the lapping sea.

Despite the impulse to focus on the actress’ body, evident in many reviews of this film, what we are presented with here are the outlines of a mystery, perhaps the greatest one of all. The figure framed by the camera’s eye reclines in the Sun’s glory, seemingly oblivious to the world, even as we are alerted to that which lies beyond our field of vision. This unseen presence, only seemingly absent, hints at the relationship between observer and observed, yes, but also to forms of (in)sight not immediately apparent to a mind’s eye still learning how to see. Only careful investigation, and a certain kind of fearlessness, will unveil the truth that beckons from the water’s surface.

It is with this portrait of a crime already committed that the filmmakers introduce us to the world of Swimming Pool.

The Mystified Protagonist

One possible source of the shadow may be the protagonist of the film herself, Sarah Morton, who has taken a trip to France to work on her latest detective novel. But soon, and apparently out-of-the-blue, her quiet refuge is interrupted by the arrival of this young woman, unsettling the delicate balance of this barricaded retreat. The intruder will be reminded of her unwelcome presence, repeatedly and vociferously. But despite the severity of the attacks, the author’s aversion will quietly transform into fascination, mesmerized by the younger woman, as if she held the key to a mystery far more compelling than what any novel might contain.

The smallest sign of the young woman’s activity – the morning shuffle of slippers heading toward the pool, disembodied voices floating through the night – will lure Sarah to the nearest window, as if this other life held more excitement and promise than her own. The lines between voyeur, stalker, and guardian will blur, as curious glances begin to gain an urgency that colonizes the imagination. The swimming pool, initially bearing the traces of disuse and neglect, will be one site that will hold Sarah’s awe. The young woman’s bedroom will be another.

We are only provided glimpses into the life that preceded this encounter between the two women, but Sarah’s captivation is not difficult to understand. She is, after all, a writer flailing against a well of inspiration gone dry, left alone to face the desolation that has drained her of life’s blood. One suspects that the writing is not the only part of Sarah’s life that has been abandoned and left depleted, made haggard by an absence unable to replenish itself.

Such is the “barren” state in which we first meet Sarah Morton. It is also the impetus for her escape from the England in which her detective novels are set. Slouched in her publishers office, tightly wrapped in her trench coat secured and with umbrella in hand – her weapons against the elements, particularly water – she grumbles about her plight, bristling at his suggestion that she has more than enough money to keep her happy. Despite her clarity about what he does not wish to understand, she cannot find a name for what has left her bone-weary and gasping for air. All she can do is muster the strength to give voice to her misery … or attack whatever potential prey may cross her path.

“You don’t take care of me anymore …”

And to some extent, her complaints – and accusations – succeed, eliciting an invitation from the publisher to use his villa in France as a getaway. He may even come by for a visit.

The (Initial) Delight of Escape

The publisher, as it turns out, was right: except for the crucifix guarding the bed that will become her own, Sarah finds the house to be perfect. Nestled in the quiet countryside, complete with the swimming pool, open air, and the inviting caresses of the sun, it is exactly what she was looking for. The local cafe provides the simple pleasures of a quiet cup coffee and food prepared by the hands of others. Transformed as she is by this change of scene, she even allows herself to imagine how she might look in the red brocade dress hanging in the closet, flirting with the idea that such an elegant version of herself might not be so foreign, after all. There’s even an attractive man at the cafe who might be interested in her.

Words return, as well, inspired in part by the large ovoid puzzle nestled in the corner of the bedroom. (A Cosmic Egg, perhaps?) Armed with this new idea for her next novel, she begins to write. For a short time, enlivened by the energy brought on by this trip to another land, she revels in the release from the crushing torment she thought she might never escape.

But between the writing, afternoons reviewing her work in the sun, and her walks to town, we see evidence of habits that have refused to stay at home in England, stowaway routines that have shadowed her passage to this newfound Eden. Most notable is her relation to food and nourishment, her shopping list consisting entirely of yogurt and diet Coca-Cola. Whether they be instruments of penance or an attempt to maintain a slim figure is unclear. But the tub of sloppy liquid that constitutes her dinner, even if doused with generous quantities of artificial sweetener, cannot help but leave her unsatisfied. Particularly when she’s in a foul mood. For under cover of night, it gives rise to another voracious appetite, one that’s rarely allowed show its face, precisely because it has so rarely been attended to.

Evenings spent over a cocktail (or two) begin to resemble something other than the quiet retreat her stay at this villa was meant to be. In its place, we find the whisper of boredom, and the muffled screams of exasperation. Jerked to consciousness from a sprawled stupor, she stumbles to bed.

So close. And yet, so far away.

The Dark of Night vs. The Light of Day

To make matters worse, the publisher phones to tell Sarah he will not be stopping by for a visit. Too busy with work obligations – and his daughter – to make the trip, he says …

Opening the bedroom window, she breathes in the cool night air, as if to steady herself. When, all of a sudden, she hears the sound of tires crunching the gravel of the driveway and, later, thumping sounds emerging from below. With a mixture of irritation and trepidation, and armed with a table lamp, she tiptoes downstairs to investigate and, if necessary, defend herself against whatever it is that has intruded at this ungodly hour.

In place of what she might have feared, Sarah finds a woman who, under different circumstances, could easily be her own daughter: unthreatening in dress and demeanor; certainly shorter in stature and younger in years. But rather than take this as a sign to let her guard down, even if only slightly, she proceeds to interrogate the newcomer about her identity and purpose, a young woman who, in our eyes at least, only seems eager to introduce herself.

(We are told she is Julie, the publisher’s daughter.)

The contrast between the two is striking, both in appearance and in manner. For while Sarah, the elder, is armed against the lurking dangers of night, wielding an improvised club in hand, Julie, the younger, does her best to allay the frumpy woman’s fear. And unlike the ease with which Julie carries herself, Sarah can’t help but come across as rigid, devoid of light, the lampstand serving less as a weapon than an emblem of what has been extinguished.

It’s not surprising, then, that the two will not hit it off, particularly since Sarah is dead set on finishing her novel, even as she continues the silent struggle against an unnamed dread that refuses to go away. Predictably, then, Julie’s comings and goings will grate on her, especially when other sounds enter the house, evidence of a carnal life that belongs to Julie but not to her. Soon, Sarah will be unable to control the tide of anger and frustration that swells within her, Julie becoming the target of Sarah’s rage: screaming – like a child – at the young woman who has so rudely destroyed her quiet retreat.

For a while, ear plugs suffice to prevent the sounds of copulation from disrupting her night’s rest but, gradually, these nocturnal writhings begin to pique Sarah’s interest. Earplugs are allowed to remain on the nightstand as the sounds of sex are permitted to float into her room and over her inert body. It’s not long before she begins to follow the sounds coming from elsewhere, furtive peeks quickly turning into fixed fascination, as she is inexplicably drawn to what, at first, was so repelling.

In the light of day, after Julie has had her way with the older men that have been brought home, Sarah finds evidence of drunken nights strewn about the house. Her morning ritual, hunched over coffee as if she were the one recovering from a night of excess, regularly interrupted by pudgy men unconcerned that she knows of their nighttime doings. And unashamed of speaking to her in various stages of undress.

As if she were the one with whom they had spent the night.

Fantasy

Despite the acrimonious relationship between Sarah and Julie, their worlds – and bodies – begin to meld.

We see Julie swimming in the pool. Then Sarah, even though, until now, all physical contact with the water has been shunned. A woman basks in the sun. Julie. Then another. Sarah. The camera pans across a woman’s body, from feet to head. Sarah or Julie? Sarah standing over Julie. As Sarah naps in the sun, Julie standing over Sarah. Reclining bodies and the limbs of unseen figures fill the screen.

Later, we see another pair of legs, this time clearly belonging to a man, standing over a woman with eyes closed against the sun. He stands over her erect, aroused by the sight of the one laid out before him. His face. The man from the cafe who has caught Sarah’s eye. But the reclining woman is Julie, not Sarah. As he imagines what he would do to her, she enters a fantasy world of her own. Fingers come to life, animated by an urge that’s not their own, exploring the familiar expanse of her body, coaxing the flame set alight by his lustful gaze …

Sarah awakes. And having scrapped the latest installment in her Inspector Dorwell series, she begins work on another story. For she has come upon another mystery, one more gripping than anything she might have conjured on her own accord.

It is Julie who will be her (new) subject.

The Light of Day vs. The Dark of Night

“All that separates them, a secret will unite.”

While she might not be able to articulate why, until this point Sarah’s writing created a labyrinth out of which she could not escape. Focused entirely on the artifice of crime and death built from the imagination, she was left without any footing other than what had been constructed from thin air, adrift in the empty ocean of sky. Her turn away from this prison of confabulation and toward the maddening, yet mysteriously alluring, Julie provides Sarah with the first taste of something substantial and permanent, one that will exceed the transient delight provided by a mere change of scene.

It is only the first step, but it is the impetus that will help her begin to discern the outlines of a self that had long lay buried beneath layers of fabrication, one that will come to stand proudly on its own, in the light of day.

To get there, she will need to make a choice, a decision with which she has long been faced, but of which she had remained blissfully unaware. And it will be Julie who will force that decision upon her.

Sarah will begin this new quest by reconciling with Julie, inviting her to dine at the local restaurant, its palette of earthy browns a stunning contrast to the airy blues of the villa, and the swimming pool. We will suspect her motives, given the interrogation that soon follows, as if she were a disinterested reporter; our suspicion will be heightened when we later witness Sarah snooping through Julie’s belongings. But Julie will play along with Sarah’s newfound interest, even encourage it. It’s not long before they’re spending the evenings together, with the older woman eager to demonstrate she’s not as much of a prude as Julie may think she is.

Even as they seem to warm up to each other, Julie has plans of her own. She will invite the man from the cafe to the house for an evening over drinks and music. As Julie’s guest, this will make for an awkward threesome, particularly when the two of them ask Sarah about her detective novels. (They are amused by the title of the latest installment in the series: “Dorwell Wears a Quilt.”) With all of them gathered in the same room, Sarah will also see that he seems a more natural “fit” for Julie than herself.

Nevertheless, when Julie invites her to join in their dancing, Sarah will also allow herself to believe that she’s not an interloper. But after heading up to bed, the noises coming from the swimming pool will make it clear that the party has continued in her absence. Sarah will take up her usual position by the window. But – for the first time – she will refuse the furtive glances of a passive observer. As a wave of emotions surges through her, she will also resist the allure of watching from a distance. Instead, Sarah will act to disrupt their coupling …

The following morning, Sarah finds Julie asleep in bed, alone. The man from the cafe nowhere to be found. Overwhelmed by panic, she suspects something terrible may have happened. Fears he may be dead. Was his life taken at Julie’s hands? Rushing to town to check up on him up at work, and then driving to his home in a neighboring town, she desperately seeks assurance against the awful sense of dread that can only speak the name of death.

Returning from her futile search for life, Sarah finds Julie in a different sort of panic. While she was obsessing about the fate of the man from the café, Julie has worked herself into a fit of hysteria, believing that she had been abandoned, yet again. She finds Julie in her room. The same room which, during the course of their strange courtship, has witnessed the cross mysteriously reappear over her bed. As if standing watch over Sarah as she slept.

With Julie writhing on the floor in pain, Sarah rushes to cradle her in her arms. And in doing so, the two of them touch.

As if for the first time.

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As we have learned from the movies, road films are about journeys other than the ones depicted on screen. The persons and obstacles met along the way serve to challenge – and measure – the emotional growth of the protagonists, including their ability to overcome their fears about themselves and the world they inhabit. In this sense, Away We Go is no different.

However, the film also provides us with what can only be described as the couple’s archetypal journey which, in this case, is ultimately about the trip from his parents to the home of the dead that is hers. The stops along the way are almost incidental to this other journey but, in the end, are necessary steps along the way that make it possible.

Some reviewers have described the central couple of this film as overly idealized, even smug, but this overlooks the obvious problems that threaten to corrode their relationship. She refuses to marry him, despite being six months pregnant and despite his repeated requests that she reconsider. Of course, this apparent deadlock is but a symptom of other, deeper, issues that define their very being, together and apart: the idiosyncrasies he has clearly inherited from his father and, when speaking with certain others, his inability to use his own voice, recycling the artificial – and worn – language of others; for her, the nagging dissatisfaction that haunts her, manifest in her inability to actually speak about the deaths that define her past and what, as a consequence, has been lost to her.

Given this emotional terrain, her refusal to accept his marriage proposals signals her inability to bury that which haunts her, and her unwillingness to provide him the emotional security he yearns for. It is precisely these twin “neuroses” – evident in his solicitousness and in her moodiness – that impel their trek across the continent in search of a home for their unborn child.

The friends and family they meet along the way are part of this “shopping” experience, seeking people like themselves – or, more precisely, the kind of people they would like to be. What they find, instead, is the realization that their ideal will not be met and, furthermore, the recognition that the half-submerged turmoil that defines their own relationship is found “out there,” as well. In the hilarious – and obnoxious – behavior that veils a marriage long gone dry. The “lifestyle” designed to escape intolerable anger and pain. The thin veneer of the “perfect family” under which looms a deep and unremitting despair.

In the midst of such encounters, the requirement of personal transformation – a staple of the road movie – slowly creeps up on the pair. For each, the “adventure” becomes one of turning inward to examining one’s emotional constitution and figuring out how it can intertwine with that of another, absent the impositions or evasions that define far too many relationships. For him, this means relinquishing the fantasized security of the “perfect” life – and wife – and leaving his family behind. For her, it involves learning how to confront precisely what she has been trying to escape, that which has never seen the light of day and has never been permitted to grace her lips.

In the words of the well-known song, “Nice work, if you can get it.” And should that work succeed: the achievement of a lifetime.

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Devi said: ”Listen Deva, supremely blissful quintessence, the Lord of Kula,
to the very essence of knowledge … concealed by my Maya.”

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One of them is blind, the other prefers not to be seen.
It would appear to be a match made in heaven.

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But he – the blind one – is a tyrant, imprisoned in the desolate mansion he inhabits under his mother’s care, unable to tolerate those hired to tend to his needs. And she, the one who wishes to remain invisible, brought on to read for him, will shun the affection that grows between them.

The promotional images for Blind capture this emotional terrain in which she seems to hold the upper hand: on the one hand, the distance she maintains between the two of them, despite his nakedness and the intimacy they share; on the other, when she finds the courage to face him, the lingering fear of what it is he “sees” in her, an anxiety partly due to her own deceit, innocuous lies used to hide her anguish and shame.

Despite her apprehension, he finds himself pulled in the opposite direction. For while she struggles with a certain trepidation about being the object of another’s attention, he finds escape from the aggravation of being handled by others. Her willingness to let her guard down, even if briefly, permits him to explore – and delight in – the world of another on terms not dictated from without.

In the absence of (his) sight, both are given the opportunity to experience the other – and themselves – in a different light, the flow of sensations different than the strangled mass that has dominated their lives until now: for her, that which has left its ugly marks on her body; for him, a world enveloped in black, punctuated by incessant demands that come from without.

Out of darkness, comes light. And from that light emerges a radically new sense of possibility.

In My Mother’s House

But, as the film makes clear, this is not merely a love story.

Blind is more centrally concerned the young man and the world in which we find him. His name, quite appropriately, is Ruben – most commonly rendered as “Behold, a son” – but which, according to rabbinical sources, can also be taken to mean “he has seen my misery” and “he will love me.” And as we are provided with a panoramic introduction to his world, the camera lingers on a framed copy of the well-known painting “Whistler’s Mother,” originally titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, less an homage to motherhood than an exploration of light and shadow, and the contending lines of force, that surround – and frame – its central figure.

The film’s palette mirrors Whistler’s study in black and grey. The mansion itself sits fortified against a sea of muddied white, the silhouettes of naked trees wearily standing guard against a barren landscape. Inside, where darker shades predominate, heavy curtains fortify the musty retreat from the outside world. The main hallway lined with empty chairs that plaintively await the bereaved who never arrive.

It is this house, this mansion, that enshrouds both mother and son, and within which the battle to domesticate him – and his blindness – is fought. A shriek announces that the latest in a string of maidservants will march out of the premises, refusing to submit to the boy’s repeated abuse, quite literally victim to his gnashing teeth. This is the situation into which she, the “invisible” one, will join the story, oblivious to what is housed there.

Even the mother is at a loss about what to do with him, uncertain how best to face his anger. An early confrontation, also framed in black and grey, has her swallowed in darkness as he snarls from shadowed light. He does not want her comfort, particularly in the form of the faith she accords to the doctor to whom his well-being has been thrust. However, despite the obvious conditions of existence against which he rails, the root cause of his rebellion remains a mystery. Is it the “darkness” of his mother that is the object of his ire, flailing against that which threatens to swallow him too? Or is it the wintry haze that also suffuses his surroundings, less a source of consternation than one of stupendous confusion?

Just as Ruben does battle, we discover that she – the one who will become his reader and, later, his lover – is similarly mired in conflict, and possesses battle scars to prove it. At first, her struggle is apparent in relation to mirrors: fractured images that refuse to provide her with a coherent sense of self. As a result, and quite unlike Narcissus, her relation to reflective surfaces (or persons) is one of revulsion. For they open up a world in which she cannot, and does not, see herself. The only images they provide are those which she cannot bear.

Like the son, she is buried in a pit of darkness absent the kind of capaciousness provided by echoed light. No room to breathe. She has learned to prefer it that way. Upon entering the ghostly mansion, the mirrors are immediately shrouded. A routine practice, it would seem, as if she were attending a permanent wake. But whereas his unwanted companion is an inarticulate and unfocused rage, her life is lived in a permanent lock-down. Cold as ice.

We will learn that this world of hers is also connected to the mother. It is an inheritance, just like the son’s perhaps, of the kind of “mirror” provided by the one to whom she owes her existence. For in a mother’s delight, or in her anger and despair, a child acquires eyes with which to see. And much of what that child will apprehend, in others and in herself, will reflect precisely what captured the mother’s imagination, whether beautiful or not. The fact that these soon-to-be lovers are caught in worlds of shadow and dark speaks of this maternal inheritance we all share, knowingly or not.

Other Eyes with Which to See

Apart from the doctor’s occasional visits to the mansion, there is no father figure to save the day. Instead, we are introduced to the universe of words that has been the daughter’s sole consolation. It is, in fact, a relation that verges on the erotic. The touch of them – the binding, their pages, the ink – upon her skin. The whisper of paper against her face. The dusky odor acquired from years of disuse. Waiting just for her.

Her name is Marie (“Sea of Sorrow”) and these books speak of worlds which she fiercely claims as her own. It is as if the library is a sanctuary that holds secrets only she is able to hear. Her new job, reading for a blind and spoiled boy, gives her access to this holy place, and she will break him – by force if necessary – if that will ensure her continued access to that hallowed room. For the books speak of spaces different from what mirrors are able to offer. In fact, they provide nothing short of Grace.

This is the world to which she introduces him, almost inadvertently. For when she finally manages to drain the fight out of him, he begins to listen. And what she witnesses is nothing short of extraordinary. As she reads, he is transported to another world – can actually “see” it – and grapples to enter it. Or so it seems. The snowflakes of which she reads float before his eyes and, as if for the first time, he finds himself in a place other than that from which he has been struggling to escape.

It is a world he knows well. It’s the one provided by Hans Christian Andersen in The Snow Queen, which tells of a shattered mirror that turns all it reflects into ugliness, and countless fragments that shower upon the earth. Should a splinter pierce an eye, all one sees is turned into nothingness; should a shard lodge itself in a heart, it will turn to ice. Such is the fate of a young boy, Kai (“keeper of the keys”), held captive by the Snow Queen, ruler of these haunting flecks of ice. Entranced by the beauty of his frozen prison, he is fated to forever remain under the Queen’s spell, until he is able to trace the lines of eternity in its icy embrace.

It is through the reading of this story, when sorrow crosses the heart of winter, that their two worlds meet.

An Other World (to be Found)

“When the story is done, maybe we’ll know more than we do now.”
- The Snow Queen

This is the film’s set-up, taking no more than a quarter of an hour. What happens next can only be touched upon here, for it is best that viewers experience the unfolding of these stories on their own.

However, this much can be said: When she finally allows the blind one to “see” her, and he finds her knotted flesh beautiful – like “frost flowers,” he says – she is emboldened to revisit that which has caused her to run for so long. Mirrors are unveiled, and tentative glances thrown their way. Fingers are allowed to run across her own skin, wondering what it is that his touch has seen, and how that compares with what she has come to believe of herself.

His reaction to her body is stunningly similar to her relation to books. The absence of light suffuses his exploration of the continent he finds before him. The texture of her skin, a cartography of its own. Fingertips graze gently while head is bowed, alert to the whisper of night and the scent of the sky. Angry rivulets transformed into the secret language of the forest.

For a moment – just for an instant – we see a smile cross her face. But the reverie cannot last, not least of all because Ruben’s sight will be returned to him. The miracle of modern science, the doctor says.

And so she flees.

He will search for her far and wide, just as she will elude him, forever beyond his reach. Should they finally meet, their future will hinge upon how they come to understand the story of The Snow Queen. For the moment, however, he is desperate for the happy ending: he wants her to be with him. She, on the other hand, is unable to do so, for she cannot – and will not – put her faith in children’s tales.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s story, the boy is saved by his playmate and dearest friend, Gerda, who has searched the world over in order to find him. This is surely what Ruben seeks from the “invisible” Marie. And yet, in this story, we find him searching, as if he were destined to play both parts: the boy held in captivity, marooned from the world of the living, as well as the one who travels the seasons, single-minded in his determination to find the Other.

But it is worth asking: who is the Snow Queen here? In whose captivity does he find himself, and under whose spell do we find him entranced? Is it his mother, whose care and proddings he refused so violently, bellowing as if the world had come to an end? Or is it the “invisible” Marie, the one who – far away and so close – has captured his mind’s eye and without whom life has become an impossibility?

And what does it mean that the one-who-holds-the-key will remain imprisoned until, using fragments of ice, he is able to trace the lines of “eternity”?

Some have described the film’s closing as heartbreaking; others will surely describe it as breathtaking. Regardless, not only does Tamar van den Dop’s film provide us with a variation on The Snow Queen, it also provides us with a re-telling of the classic Greek myth of Oedipus and – not insignificantly – a challenge to the uses to which that tale has been put. For in sharing with us her own meditation in Grey and Black, we are offered the opportunity to explore the loss of sight in a world gone wrong, and the path to liberation from pain and suffering. Whatever else might be said, this is surely the state in which Ruben is enmeshed, one that some would rightfully call samsara.

Just as the Snow Queen did with her captive boy, Marie used to take Ruben to the middle of the frozen lake, exploring its glassy surface with him. And while Marie might not have said so, the tale of The Snow Queen makes this much absolutely clear: this lake-which-is-not-a-lake is precisely where the Queen sits whenever she is at home alone, calling it “the best thing in the world.”

She calls it The Mirror of Understanding.

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In many ways, Wanted is the complement of Martyrs, particularly since both revolve around the violence of transformation. The primary difference, of course, is that the protagonist being pummeled here is male and the one at whose hands he suffers is a woman. And unlike the horror of Martyrs, Wanted is framed as an action-thriller which, for better or worse, has the effect of obscuring the nascent similarities between these two films.

As a result, Wanted presents us with what appears to be two incompatible stories. The first is the familiar tale of initiation in which an emasculated protagonist is transformed into a virile hero. The fact that humiliation and injury are the primary tools used in his initiation should remind us of the time honored parallels found in the college fraternities, varsity and professional sports, and the military, each of which claims to transform boys into “real men.”

In contrast to this, we are presented with elements that belong to a very different – even mystical – tradition. How else are we to understand the references to Fate, the role of the sacrificial father, and the imperative of intervening on behalf of a world so desperately out of balance? If we take these different elements seriously, the transformation signaled here cannot be reduced to a noisy celebration of masculine tumescence but something else. In which case the “action” is merely a cover for a different kind of story. One in which the feminine, rather than the strut of masculinity, is the central figure.

When understood in this way, the narrative of Wanted has its feet firmly planted in two different traditions. Perhaps this is the reason why it may come across as convoluted or incomplete, as if we have witnessed a half-told tale. One critic, for example, has complained that Wanted

is a film completely lacking in two organs I always appreciate in a move: a heart and a mind. It is mindless, heartless, preposterous. By the end of the film, we can’t even believe the values the plot seems to believe, since the plot is deceived right along with us. The way to enjoy this film is put your logic on hold, along with any higher sensitivities that might be vulnerable and immerse yourself as if in a video game.

Other critics, professional and otherwise, have taken a great deal of delight in identifying – and deriding – the “most ridiculous plot points” of the film, “ridiculous” precisely because they reflect the seeming impossibility of reconciling the film’s other tradition with that of the action genre: the secret society of weavers-turned-assassins into which the protagonist is recruited, the mysterious Loom of Fate that communicates through mistakes in its woven fabric, and a healing bath that miraculously repairs bullet wounds and other assaults on the body.

But first things first.

The Life Before
“The only thing I care about is that fact that I can’t care about anything.”

As the film opens, we are introduced to Wesley Gibson who is stuck in a rut: shackled in a mind-numbing job, harried and abused by his supervisor, unable to join in the levity of an office party. His home life is equally uninspiring and insulting. Too weary and overwhelmed to do anything about his deathly existence, Wesley plods through the familiar – even if demeaning – routine, preferring the comfort of predictability, apparently believing that the assaults on mind and spirit can and should be endured.

Trudging through this life, drugged-up on prescription medication, Wesley can only conclude that he is “the most insignificant asshole of the 21st century.” Until, of course, his life is abruptly changed – in ways he could not have foreseen – by the arrival of a strange woman.

Her name, we learn, is Fox. And as a prelude to the rain of bullets that soon follows, she blurts out a fantastic tale about his father.

Enter: The Fraternity
“They silently carried out executions to restore order to a world on the brink of chaos.”

Wesley’s father, it seems, was a trained assassin – the best – and not the deadbeat father that abandoned him days after his arrival from the womb. The woman, Fox, claims to be there to protect him against the man who killed the father he never knew; she’s also there to recruit him into the secret society to which she belongs. According to her, he’s the only one able to exact revenge for the death of his father, their fellow assassin.

Outrageous? Yes, but given what ensues, apparently true.

Within moments, he is whisked away in what, for the movie audience, is a thrilling car chase but, for Wesley, is a terrifying departure from the witheringly dull – yet strangely reassuring – rhythm of his life. His whimpers and shrieks a sign of the uninitiated, a girlish counterpoint to the stony-faced Fox who, it seems, can no longer be astounded.

Once ensconced in the other-world of the Fraternity, Wesley is told that his bouts with anxiety – his panic attacks – are in fact something else, a rush of adrenalin that can be disciplined and controlled. What might have been considered a constitutional infirmity he was fated to bear, a crippling fear of the unpredictable and its crushing wake, is, in fact, the tremble of a killer’s unrecognized and untapped potential.

Wesley’s disbelief is quickly brushed aside:

No, insanity is wasting your life away when you have the blood of a killer flowing in your veins. Insanity is being shit on, beat down, coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and a key to release it.

A beautiful and enigmatic woman. The promise of an exciting life. The stage has been set.

Inculcation
“If I wanted to get beat up, I would have stayed in my cubicle, you know?”

What follows is Wesley’s initiation into the Fraternity. But rather than the glamour one might have expected – one in which he learns the top-secret tricks of the trade, and is introduced to the world of special gadgets and call signs – he is subjected to repeated beatings. Primary among these physical assaults are those he receives from the Repairman, whose job it is to fix “a lifetime of bad habits.” He is provided with no instructions; neither is he told what to expect. Simply bound to a chair, he is subjected to bone-crushing blows until the darkness of unconsciousness dampens the kind of pain he has spent his life desperately trying to avoid.

In addition to these thrashings, Wesley is trained by the Butcher, presumably in the use of knives for hand-to-hand combat. But as quickly becomes clear, this training – like his beatings – is less about the acquisition of new skills than learning how to overcome a certain kind of sensitivity, a timidity which, despite his vigorous assertions to the contrary, has nothing to do with his “respect for the human … uh … condition.” The fact that physical combat is the (violent) means by which this transformation is lured out of him is an indication of how anesthetized he had become. A big stick to “seduce” him out of his numbed existence.

What is being celebrated here, however, is not the power of brute force. Neither is it merely an homage to the liberatory effects of throwing off the shackles of civility (or, if you prefer, the superego). It is something else which his “abusers” are after.

And that something else comes at the hands of Fox. During the bulk of Wesley’s “training” she has been the passive but omnipresent observer, paying special attention to his bearing in the face of pain. Only later does she intervene, with the assistance of brass knuckles. The interrogation that follows is punctuated by a merciless pounding, and pivots around a single question, a question to which – when the fight has been beaten out of him – Wesley finds he has no adequate answer: “Why are you here?”

Much to his chagrin, he can only muster a stammering admission, one that even he hadn’t imagined possible, but which, for Fox, elicits the triumphant whisper of a smile:

“I don’t know who I am …”

The Names of the Father
“For the first time in your life, Wesley, you’re in control. … Welcome to the Fraternity.”

Abandoned by his father when he was a mere seven days old, Wesley had been living in a world of Privation, evicted from that mythical Garden of Eden, swallowed by the Absence of a loving protector. Unable to care for anything, including himself, the obligations of routine and the familiar had become king. The only measure of achievement available to him was the grace of having survived the deathly grind in a single piece, no matter the humiliation and resignation required to get there.

It is precisely this yawning emptiness from which Wesley was rescued. And it is the Fraternity that brought salvation from the crippling vacancy that had become his life. At least that is what he is led to believe. As a result, absence is replaced by its opposite, a vitality he can only comprehend in terms of muscular plenitude, a testicular triumph in service to his calling as an assassin.

Now I know why I couldn’t care about anything before this. I was living a lie. Finally, I have a chance to step into my father’s shoes. Grow a pair. Live a life I was born to live. I’ve been pissing it all away like it was another fucking billing report. I have to train harder. I have to be as good as my father.

That this understanding will later come to be challenged should not come as a surprise, as it is a simple – and easy – overcompensation for what Wesley thought he was lacking. It is the response of the boy-child desiring the power and prestige of a mythic, Omni-potent Father. And the first self-conscious act that follows dumb obeisance is the homage of emulating this virile ideal in its savage, if not overblown, glory.

By film’s end, however, a different ideal (almost) comes to replace this all-powerful Father, one characterized less by his awesome proportions or his all-mighty force than a man’s unending devotion to his son. It is a model of masculinity concerned less with the imperatives of paternal authority or the visceral gratification of revenge than an enduring commitment to the wellbeing of his child. As telescoped in the opening minutes of the film, this Father, while having mastered the beast within, operates on a scale more delicate than the martial ideal. Only after his father is long gone does Wesley discover his personal witness and protector.

He also provides a very different measure against which Wesley might imagine himself.

The Loom of Fate
“Every culture in history has a secret code. One you won’t find in traditional texts.”

The imagery of weaving has long been used as a means of speaking of the mysteries of life, of the patterns discernible only to the initiated, and of the hand of fate that gives shape and design to the fortunes of the living. It is evident in mythical (and mystical) traditions the world over, as well as the prominence of weavers (and spindles, threads, thimbles) in fairy tales. The fact that stories of the fantastic are still designated yarns is suggestive of the continuing connection between story-telling and the “hidden” meanings woven into our worldly existence.

Once initiated, Wesley is introduced to the Loom of Fate that resides in the inner sanctum of the Fraternity, normally accessible only to their supreme leader, Sloan. The exchange that follows (obliquely) outlines the elemental connections between the fabric of life, what we may perceive as misfortune, and the secret knowledge of the brotherhood.

Sloan: A thousand years ago, a clan of weavers discovered a mystical language hidden in the fabric. They called themselves the Fraternity.
Wesley: I’ll be honest with you: all I see are threads.
Sloan: Come here [and] look there. You see that one thread that missed the weave and lies on top of the others?
Wesley: Like a mistake?
Sloan: No. It’s a code.

The final test of Wesley’s preparation as the newest member of the Fraternity revolves precisely around his ability to master the threads of the loom, not merely as a test of his physical reflexes, but as a measure of his ability to discern the motion of the threads, to apprehend the pattern being spun, and to maneuver himself among the cords that threaten to entrap him.

Like all initiates to the mysteries, Wesley’s task is to re-cognize the strands of his life, including the “mistakes” that have imprisoned him, and weave a different kind of story about his existence, one that is able to account for the design that, until now, has eluded him. That this “secret” knowledge is couched in the language of Fate merely attests to the ways in which it is a form of understanding that is particular to him, one that sheds light on – and clarifies – the different stages of his life, including the yawning abyss within which he was caught, and the challenges that are yet to come. Chief among the latter, of course, is learning how to overcome the allure of the armed righteousness that appropriated his Father’s name and spirit.

The Place of the Woman
“Their world. Her rules. His destiny.”

That this film plays with – and indulges – masculine fears and fantasy is plainly evident in the taunts that suffuse Wesley’s initiation (“Pussy!”) as well as his subsequent pride in “growing a pair.” The close of the film contains more than an echo of this swagger of testicular accomplishment.

Which leads one to ask: what are we to make of the place of the woman, Fox, in this tale? While Wesley is clearly the protagonist, she is the central figure that adorns the posters advertising the film; she is also the ever-present figure that shadows him throughout this adventure, playing a fundamental role in his recruitment, training, and the life that ensues. It is “her rules” that have enabled and ennobled the different stages of his transformation.

This certainly sits uneasily with the hyper-masculine threads of this story, and raises a number of unanswered questions, among them: What is this woman’s place in the Fraternity, and what accounts for her privileged status in Wesley’s training? What are we to make of the secret society’s monastic origins and the path by which they became a brotherhood of assassins? (Might the origin of the word itself indicate that the very idea of assassin has been perverted, shorn of its historical – and mystical – roots? In which the one being “killed” is not an external enemy but one’s calcified sense of self?)

But about other matters there can be no question: Fox is a female warrior, not merely able to hold her own in a world of men, but capable of instilling fear and earning their respect. In this sense, she may be akin to Medusa or, perhaps more fittingly, given her relation to Wesley, Kali trampling Shiva beneath her feet. As her name would suggest, Fox possesses the ability to see – and know – more than what is evident to her adversaries, and act accordingly. Her tragic flaw, if it can be called one, is her alliance with men who would bend the truth for their own benefit, arrogating the power of hidden knowledge to rewrite the code of the secret society to which they belong.

A mistake, perhaps. But as she had already taught Wesley, such “errors” are but wrinkles in the fabric of Fate that point to a destiny different from the one she might have at first imagined. Or wanted.