Escaping Artist

While pondering who might be the current audience for foreign films about familial drama, I found myself wondering why is that the intricate narrative of family life is considered to be a female form of entertainment. Like those books girls read as teenagers—Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Dalloway—that boys (and later men) are sure to dismiss, understanding the treacherous but fascinating web of family is of interest only to us. What is most frustrating in a post feminist society is not that our contributions are still dismissed, undervalued, and exploited. These problems in the late 20^th and 21^st century have taken on a good bit of elasticity, in that we are less dismissed, undervalued, and exploited. The problem for my generation of women is one of interest, or what seems to be a shocking inequality of it. While most women enjoy the tastes and interests of men, after centuries of having no choice, so little effort is made by men to enjoy the tastes and interests of women. In the case of filmmaking it could be said that our stories, and the perspective from which we tell them, might receive the proper critical attention—Bright Star, The Hurt Locker, Lost In Translation—but they also garner unnecessary anger and more often complete indifference from mass audiences. Preferring anger, the disinterest is a stinging snub with a subtext of, we don’t think you make bad films because we won’t even watch them. Less than nine percent of directors in Hollywood today are women, and if their movies go unwatched, be they about poetry, war, or intimacy, should we be fighting for more representation or more interest? Obviously both.

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Watching the new documentary made by and about The Yes Men forced me to remember that it is easy to confuse something’s popularity in nyc with its popularity throughout the country. For most people, The Yes Men Fix the World probably needs a lot more background explanation than most other documentaries. While nyc, especially after the New York Times prank of last winter, is full of enthusiastic supporters of their political pranks—film audiences here were lead off after certain screenings to perform late night, humor based vandalism—I usually find myself explaining the group to others elsewhere.

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Matt Tyrnauer: “There are a lot of people who say no one could replace you.”
Valentino Garavani: “Après moi, le déluge. Do you know what that means?”

I wondered as he said it if a king of France, Napoleon, or another figure of wealth and power had been the author of such a sentiment—it was Louis XV who said, “after me, the flood.” Valentino: The Last Emperor is an indulgent documentary about the Italian couturier Valentino Garavani. The film has shown with unsurprising popularity for the past few weeks at one of Gotham’s independent film houses. The screenings have been coupled with a Q & A with the director Matt Tyrnauer, and the editor at large for Vogue, André Leon Talley. Though the film itself does not address any aspect of the couturier’s life—his role in fashion history, his style, or his notions of beauty—in a deep or terribly engaging manner, Valentino’s life seems to be about two things; beauty and excess, and in that order.

Valentino’s sense of beauty reminded me of visiting Europe. I remember traveling through Italy with M, and her amazement at the obsessive and undeniably extravagant effort that went into creating the works of art, architecture, and ornament that were gloriously scattered from city to city. Watching Valentino fuss over his designs I thought of the different colored marble lining the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. Every stitch, seam, and embellishment on a Valentino dress is done carefully and thoroughly by hand. It is a certain kind of beauty that Valentino fell in love with as a young man, a certain ideal he evokes with his garments, and it is a beauty that transcends the ordinary, it is an ageless, timeless beauty. Despite his tantrums, his ego, his fussing and frustrations, it is undeniable that his dresses sometimes resemble works of art rather than new pieces of runway fashion. “I love beauty,” he says, “it’s not my fault.” But it is not simply beauty that Valentino loves, he loves a certain class, glamour, and character to go along with his sense of beauty. What do women want? “They want to be beautiful,” says Valentino, stressing all the syllables of the last word.

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What I actually know about communism, or specifically what I know about life under a communist dictator, is admittedly very little. Observing the residue of a country submitted to these circumstances while briefly visiting my in laws in Tirana, Albania, is about all I can boast of when it comes to “personal” knowledge. From an undeniably American stand point, the fascinating aspects of Albanian life are the daily conditions under which culture bends and life goes on. Tirana is an old city camouflaged by recent decades of chaos, and while life under Enver Hoxha might have been oppressive, the roads were paved and the cities infrastructure remained intact. Visiting involved walking in densely dirty streets, past stray cats and deteriorating industrial appliances, through peaceful yards and into snug, comfortable, and friendly apartments. Our American fear of poverty often excludes the fundamental fact that “things” do not necessarily grant the gift of quality, especially where the “quality” of life is concerned. Carefully dressed for a night out, wandering the violated and rocky streets toward the city center, I was surprised to find the city awake, vibrant, and seemingly carefree. In most ways the people seem to make do, and are even proud of, the history of events that befell their country.

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If San Francisco is an iconic and beloved city that defines the west coast to outsiders, then the Golden Gate Bridge is more an iconic symbol of California than the grizzly bear prowling the state flag. Like Highway 1 and the coastline it winds along, the Golden Gate Bridge is one of California’s greatest attractions. I have driven on, walked across, and taken a boat tour under, that bridge.

The 2006 documentary, The Bridge, aesthetically resembles countless postcards of the Golden Gate, and the surrounding areas it connects together. It feels as though it were filmed from every geographic point from which the looming red gate can be seen, and it captures, much like a living object, its different personalities. We see the Golden Gate from above, below, and behind surrounding parks. Time-lapse photography allows its appearance to change in seconds as fog rolls in and out of the bay, clouds linger or pass across the highest suspension points, as rare San Francisco mornings of bright blue push yesterdays clutter from the sky. Quoting an article from the New Yorker entitled “Jumpers,” on which the film was based, “there is a fatal grandeur to the place.”

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