2024 Top Ten List #6 Scarlet (L’envol)

 

Director Pietro Marcello

Russian writer Alexander Grin

SCARLET (L’envol)              A                                                                                                     aka: The Flight                                                                                                                               Italy  France  Germany  (100 mi)  2022  d: Pietro Marcello

Swallow coming from the stormy cloud,                                                                               Faithful swallow, where are you going? Tell me.                                                                       What breeze carries you away, wandering traveler?                                                                  Listen, I would like to go away with you,

Little swallow, far away, far away from here, to immense shores,                                         Towards barren boulders, rocky shores, deserts.

—excerpt from Les Hirondelles (The Swallows) by exiled anarchist writer Louise Michel, 1861, Hirondelle - YouTube YouTube (2:25)    

This often subtle and charming film has an old-school look and feel about it, dark, slow, and contemplative, with undeniable formal beauty, initially feeling like a cross between Terrence Malick and Bruno Dumont, where the lead male protagonist has such a uniquely primitive look about him, physically imposing with a craggy, ravaged face like he lives in a cave, the kind of raw, subhuman figure Dumont loves to find, while the sublime poetic elegance can feel cinematically transcendent, yet the real surprise comes when the female protagonist breaks out into song, recalling the the breezy, sophisticated charm of Jacques Demy or Christophe Honoré’s DANS PARIS (2006), LOVE SONGS (2007), La Belle Personne (The Beautiful Person) (2008), Beloved (Les Bien-Aimés) (2011), and On a Magical Night (Chambre 212) (2019).  A depiction of an almost archaic rural world, a reflection of a simple life and the magic of nature, the film announces the gradual disappearance of this world, where there is a longing for love, for art, but also a distinct recognition of a past.  The first film not in his native Italian, characters here speak French, where a primary concern is overcoming rigidly set social barriers, paying tribute to rejected artists from the past whose spirit the director resurrects. Premiering in the Director’s Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, with a screenplay by Marcello, Maurizio Braucci, Maud Amelin, and Geneviève Brisac, the film is a reshaped period fable adaptation of Scarlet Sails, the 1923 romantic fantasy novella of Russian writer Alexander Grin (Alexander Grin. CRIMSON SAILS), a rejected and heavily censored artist who died in extreme poverty (the director studied in Moscow), opening with the epigraph, “You can do so-called miracles with your own hands.”  Set in the aftermath of WWI, using vintage 16mm documentary footage of the destructive wreckage, a limping war veteran Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry, a French visual artist, painter, sculptor, and illustrator) wearily returns home from the frontlines, where we quickly discover he is a widower whose beloved wife died not long after childbirth under horribly tragic circumstances involving someone in the village, leaving behind an infant daughter named Juliette.  Among the many pleasant surprises in this film is the appearance of French director and screenwriter Noémie Lvovsky, an actress with the most nominations for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress with seven, whose lighthearted, dialog-driven French comedies FORGET ME (Oublie-Moi) (1994) and LIFE DOESN’T SCARE ME (1999) were among the best French films of the 90’s.  She appears here as the impoverished widow Adeline, a feisty older woman on a rural farm in Normandy who has been taking care of Juliette, bringing loads of personality into the role, giving her the lively effervescence missing from the more downbeat Raphaël, a glum man of few words who walks like a lumbering giant, but he’s a woodcarver with a unique ability to craft almost anything, as she proudly demonstrates when she shows off his heavily calloused hands to the site manager (Bernard Blancan) of a small shipping and furniture business in town where there’s little work to be had, yet his talent surpasses any of the other paid craftsmen, Scarlet (L'Envol) new clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2022 YouTube (1:07). 

From the maker of The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo) (2009), Lost and Beautiful (Bella e perduta) (2015), and 2020 Top Ten List #1 Martin Eden (2019), Marcello’s films are known for their painterly visual detail, with the director doing his own framing, where each image is perfectly composed, in this film featuring the astonishing cinematography of Marco Graziaplena, who worked as a camera assistant on Spike Lee’s MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (2008), but working in collaboration with this director allows his talent to really shine, shot on 35mm and Super 16mm, primarily with handheld cameras, shaped by a trust in natural light.  Recalling the French provincial life of Claude Berri’s JEAN DE FLORETTE (1986) and its companion MANON OF THE SPRING (1986), ghosts of the past seem to hover over this bucolic landscape as men’s bodies were brutally disfigured from the war, while women faced unending sexual assaults during their absence, each indelibly scarred from the experience, creating an alarming suspicion and a lack of trust.  When Raphaël notices Adeline never responds to the friendly greetings from one particular villager, Fernand (François Négret), a prominent saloonkeeper in town, her coldness has a cascading effect, with other villagers also looking suspiciously upon him.  When he angrily confronts her about it, Scarlet (L'Envol) new clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2022 YouTube (1:56), he’s shocked to discover Fernand raped his wife, who had nothing but smiles for everyone in the entire community beforehand, spending the night in the forest afterwards where she literally froze to death, yet he’s never acknowledged his crime, passing the offense onto this rural family instead, calling them a bunch of misfits.  This sets the stage for the gloom that seems to hang over Raphaël and his daughter, the subject of malicious gossip, with rumors casting doubt on his daughter’s paternity, both viewed as outsiders and a threat to the well-being of those living in town, who are mostly uneducated and have a way of holding onto grudges and superstitions while despising the lower working class, yet Raphaël never forgets the beauty and innocence of his lost wife, transferring that unconditional love to his daughter.  Juliette is a free spirit, given the run of the place, seen at different ages growing up, played by three different child actresses, before blossoming into a beautiful young woman (Juliette Jouan, an accomplished musician and composer in her own right), who is so good here it’s utterly surprising she hasn’t appeared in another film.  Raphaël plays the accordion and pulls an old piano out of Adeline’s storage, showing an ability to repair and tune it, gifting it to his daughter, who sings, draws, reads poetry, and helps him with his work, subsequently becoming a musician, writing her own songs, or setting poems to music, actually composed by Gabriel Yared, with some lyrics written by the director, which add an elegiac flourish to this picture.  Her artistic inclinations become synonymous with the director’s own embellished film aesthetic, where art can be minimized and disparaged, often misunderstood, but its special magic of generating warmth and hope may be the saving grace in this astonishingly lyrical film, a strange love story where dreams and reality merge to rebuild a new life.

There’s a Beauty and the Beast component to this mirroring the father and daughter, beginning with his story, but the narrative shifts to hers, while also entering a quasi fairy tale element mixed with a bitter realism.  Juliette is an innocent dreamer who believes in the power of possibilities, shunned by the hostile villagers who cruelly mock and taunt her, finding solace in the nearby woods where she communes with animals and reads under shady trees, seeking harmony and peace in nature, discovering an aging sorceress (Yolande Moreau) who tells her “No one in the village believes in magic anymore. No one sings anymore, except you,” and prophesizes that one day a ship with red sails will take her away into a better life.  Similarly, the woodcarver aspect of Raphaël is reminiscent of Geppetto, where it’s his daughter who yearns for a real life, rejecting the opportunity to pursue an education in the city, choosing instead to stay near her father, a scorned artist who loses his job, ostrasized by Fernand and his equally lascivious son, Renaud (Ernst Umhauer), with the entire town following their lead, shouting “You should’ve died in the war,” so he takes his business elsewhere to a Parisian toy-shop owner, making wooden toys for children, but the changing world soon has little use for them, preferring electric objects that move.  While there is a sorrowful aspect of the film that resembles the postwar trauma of Miyazaki, like his recent The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), but also earlier films like The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014), HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), and Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta) (1992), capturing that same generational melancholy and struggle for hope, there is also a whimsical aspect the music brings, recalling the French movie musical tradition of Jacques Demy (the director is a devoted fan), as young girls dream of going to Paris, beautifully rendered as a kind of idyllic monochrome fantasy, with Marcello cleverly inserting Juliette into a department store scene from Julien Duvivier’s LADIES’ PARADISE (Au Bonheur des Dames) from 1930, Scarlet (L'Envol) new clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2022 YouTube (1:25).  Like the answer to her prayer, who should show up as the handsome prince, none other than Louis Garrel as the adventurer Jean, who’s a bit of a cad, initially seen gambling away his airplane, but then literally falls out of the sky, making an emergency landing crashing in a nearby field, where they improbably meet, as if out of a dream, where the sounds of her singing in a lake beckons him to come closer, like the Sirens in The Odyssey, becoming an intoxicating moment immersed in an exquisite allure of romanticism, Scarlet – Clip: "A Drop of Dew" – Juliette Jouan, Louis Garrel ... YouTube (1:39).  Initially enraptured with each other, she angrily and just as abruptly walks away from him after he reveals her tarnished reputation in the village, a decision she later regrets, as she continues to sing about being swept off her feet and taken to faraway lands.  Juliette narrowly escapes her mother’s fate and manages to carve out a life for herself, but must ultimately face up to the harshness of life’s tragedies, told with an extreme degree of intimacy, where the haunting beauty is just breathtaking.  A rebuke to the hurried pace of modern life, with all its conveniences at your fingertips, this is a film about the value of what can be created by human hands, such as farming, woodworking, shipmaking, painting, playing a musical instrument, or even writing the musical notes on paper, yet it’s also a film of sharp contrasts, featuring a quiet domestic life in the face of a rapidly progressing modernization, a fairy tale in the forest in the face of the oppressive patriarchal reality of the community, and the rough appearance of Raphaël in the face of the delicacy of his art.  Weaving together a mix of music, fantasy, history, folklore, and romance, this is a film where we’re literally being transported through time, as Marcello has crafted an ode to freedom, a timeless story of a young woman in pursuit of her own destiny, exerting a subversive emphasis on the self-determination and empowerment of the heroine who does not really need a charming prince, finding instead a collaborative world enriched by music, books, and art, reminiscent of the artistic community depicted in Kelly Reichard’s 2023 Top Ten List #4 Showing Up.

Lost and Beautiful (Bella e perduta)

 

Director Pietro Marcello

LOST AND BEAUTIFUL (Bella e perduta)             B                                                              Italy  France  (87 mi)  2015  d:  Pietro Marcello

Dreams and fables, although imaginary, should tell the truth.                                               —Sarchiapone (Elio Germano)

Winner of two awards at the Locarno Film Festival, including a Junior Jury Award and an Ecumenical Jury Prize, this is an overly somber, life cycle, changing seasons film that becomes embellished, resorting to fantasy, reconstructed into a montage essay revolving around the subject of death, where the life of a local shepherd, Tommaso Cestrone, becomes intertwined with a newborn buffalo calf in the Campania farmlands of Southern Italy.  While ostensibly a documentary on the life of Tommaso, something of a local hero when he voluntarily takes it upon himself to inhabit and resuscitate the abandoned royal estate of Carditello, an 18th century palace once used as a royal hunting lodge, belonging to the Neapolitan Bourbon Monarchy, which combined the kingdoms of Sicily with Naples.  Both were overthrown by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860, where the castle would fall into disuse after the unification of Italy, when it was left to the local head of the camorra, a crime syndicate, initially using it as a stash house before neglecting the property, which became used as a refuse center, overrun by garbage and junk, gradually stripped of its interior fixtures over time, occupied by both German and American troops during the war, left in a state of degradation and decay, reacquired by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage in 2014.   Yet it was Tommaso who became something of a local legend, standing up to the threats and intimidation from the camorra, where locals (enjoying the protection) take to the streets with placards reading “The Camorra is honest!  The State steals money!” singlehandedly preserving the grounds and dedicating himself to this thankless task of cleanup and restoration.  When Tommaso died inexplicably late in 2013 during the middle of the shoot, Marcello altered his vision, turning this into a metaphysical exercise that combines Italian myth with mortality, creating a replacement character borrowed from the commedia dell’arte from 17th century theater where a masked Pulcinella character (Sergio Vitolo), is raised from the dead in order to communicate with the living, immediately taking Tommaso’s place.  His first order of business is rescuing an unwanted buffalo calf that Tommaso rescued from the side of the road, where strangely and mysteriously, the animal (Sarchiapone) has the power of voice (Elio Germano), becoming an observing prescient figure and part of the narrative thread, literally taking on a life of its own, describing his inner thoughts and feelings, revealing the story of his life, yet only Pulcinella can hear and understand him, viewers as well, giving him an existential presence, turning this into a strange and exotic tale, Excerpt from Bella e Perduta (2015) by Pietro Marcello YouTube (3:44).  Shot on a budget of €470,000, using expired 16mm film stock, while regularly intermixing archival footage, there is a darkened and degraded look to this film, shot by Salvatore Landi and the director himself, given a neorealist look accented by dream language and theater of the absurd, also given compelling 18th and 19th century musical themes from Caterllieri and Donizetto in Antonio Casimir Caterllieri (1772-1807) - Adagio pastorale for ... YouTube (5:32) and Donizetto’s Clarinet Concerto in B-Flat Major: Andante sostenuto  YouTube (4:10), and an early 20th century work from Respighi, Andrea Cappelletti "Concerto all`antica" Respighi (2. Mov ... YouTube (8:49), adding a pastoral grace to what we see. 

In the same vein as Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) or Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (2010), though not nearly as transcendentally poetic or sublime, this oddly stylized road movie has a harder edge to it, particularly the opening scene subjectively taking place in a slaughterhouse, and can be difficult to watch, where the Pulcinella character is not nearly as affable or as engaging as the original Tommaso, who is mostly spoken of in the past tense, revered by one and all, viewed in death with compassion as a patron saint, calling him the Angel of Carditello.  Arguably the sequence of the film expresses his passing, announced and narrated by Sarchiapone, showing us Tommaso’s wedding photo before solemnly asking, “How long is a life?  It’s like the sheltered rest of a traveler along the road.”  With a final look straight at the camera, he is given a powerful sendoff, beautifully captured by a haunting song of death sung by the immortal voice of Italian tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, Giuseppe di Stefano. Fenesta ca lucive. (Cottrau) YouTube (2:47), which literally sends chills down your spine in its transfixing effect, mixed with political street protests of the missing or dead girls and women killed by the camorra, followed by serene and bucolic views of a once beautiful countryside under siege from fires, known as Terra dei Fuochi (Land of Fires), where the camorra notoriously burn illegal trash fires, releasing illegally buried toxic industrial waste into the atmosphere, with garbage lining deserted city streets, (The Camorra and the garbage racket in the 'Land of Fires ...), leading back to an empty and abandoned palace, which serves as his tomb, with horses running or grazing peacefully outside on the lawn.  Pulcinella assumes the mission of saving the calf, leading him out of the region that would only slaughter him, having no other use for a male calf.  As they wander the countryside, they come upon a farm owned by a brother and sister, allowing him to rest his calf while offering him a room upstairs, which they completely avoid since the passing of their parents, claiming they will live and die in this same farmhouse.  In a mysterious dream sequence of a herd of buffalos out in the wild, a single bull is separated and paraded in the streets, taunted and teased with by a drunken crowd that takes extraordinary pleasure in humiliating and eventually dominating the animal, calling into question our human relationship with animals, viewed as beasts or secondary creatures that exist only for man’s benefits, having no soul of their own.  As somber organ music plays, Scarlatti - Sonata K. 109 in D minor - Gerard van Reenen YouTube (9:00), this film suggests otherwise, with Sarchiapone’s narration challenging the pompous arrogance of mankind, offering itself as an example of a sentient creature, capable of viewing its own life in context to the world around him, including being subject to routine dehumanizing techniques, which are not lost on this creature.  Accordingly, there are multiple images of herds of buffalo occupying the landscape, living in complete harmony with nature, co-habiting on the planet in peace, where there’s a wonderful scene of buffalos wandering into the sea, all in unison, as the waves simply wash over them to the calming, pastoral music of Lekeu’s Ophélie, V.22, 2e version (Seconde étude symphonique) YouTube (9:31).   

The film title comes from a line from Va, pensiero (chorus of Hebrew slaves) in Verdi’s Nabucco, “O my homeland, so beautiful and lost,” Verdi: Nabucco / Act 3 - "Va', pensiero, sull'ali dorate" - YouTube 4:24), which may as well be an anthem for the nation.  However, the film is loosely based on the writings of Guido Piovene, an ardent fascist in his youth who grew to appreciate Marxism, who wrote highly subjective, self-evaluation travel books that examined human nature and the force of traditions while emphasizing the moral predicament of mankind, where common themes exhibited are the absence of personal responsibility in modern man, egotism, passivity, with a growing despair over the submerged transience of all traditional values, public and private, believing a writer is tasked with “the memory of the world,” where his artistic reach concerned the mythical as well.  In his 1970 novel, Le Stelle Fredde (The Cold Stars), which won the Strega Prize, the most prestigious Italian literary award, the novelist Dostoyevsky returns from the afterlife to carry on a series of remarkable conversations.  Perhaps even more ambitious than his other remarkable films, The Mouth of the Wolf (La bocca del lupo) (2009) and 2020 Top Ten List #1 Martin Eden, this lacks the grabbing immediacy and natural beauty of those films while attempting something that is entirely unique.  But it feels jumbled and chaotic, on significantly murkier grounds, never transparently clear or understood, yet all his films are an assessment of 20th century Italy, making a closer inspection of the land here, observing peasants who wish to throw away the chains of servitude, embodied by a farm animal with a visible conscience, as we hear him philosophize about his plight on earth, imagining a world without humans, finally escaping the laws of man, even dreaming of living on a distant star where humans sprout wings and fly out to mythical celestial lands.  According to the director, “Carditello is the symbol of a lost beauty and the struggle of an individual, an orphan who refuses to surrender to a rotten mechanism of destruction and decay.  And at the same time this story, deeply rooted in our country’s history, examines a subject which has never been so universal:  the relationship between man and nature.”  After wandering through a “lost and beautiful” countryside filled with forests and streams, with suggestions that Italy has lost connection with its pastoral roots, showing a blatant exploitation and disrespect for nature, they venture to Tuscia and come upon an irascible soul, Gesuino (Gesuino Pittalis), an oversized giant of a man who apparently lives in a cave while also tending to his sheep.  Gesuino introduces Pulcinella to a Tree of Death and a magical pond that allows him to remove his mask and change back into human form, but when he does, he loses his ability to communicate with Sarchiapone, who is suddenly viewed as nothing special, just another animal, where Gesuino leaves him with a local farmer who eventually ships him off to the slaughterhouse.  Despite the promise of so much more, allowing a glimpse into an idyllic rural world governed by the seasons, where nature and man coexist peacefully, humans being who and what they are, Sarchiapone ultimately must resign himself to his own fate, which is extremely difficult to watch, returning back to the opening scene, making an eloquent plea, “Despite everything, I’m proud of being a buffalo.  In a world that denies we have a soul, being a buffalo is an art.”  Even while offering what amounts to a cow’s lens, having his own unique vantage point, the film never plays out like a fairy tale, more like a tragedy, which seems to suggest we all need to liberate ourselves from the slavery of ignorance.