By Keith Uhlich
It is a mistake to privilege any one of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales over another, though the temptation exists and is easily indulged, especially if one takes the disparate, yet complementary viewpoints of this inimitable sextet as entirely representative of its creator's own principles. Strange that auteurism should fail us so completely in the case of one of its founding practitioners, but Rohmer was always something of an odd man out among his contemporaries, if not in the remove of years (a decade older than most of his nouvelle vague brethren) then in the deceptive placidity of his art. His revolutions, in other words, were quiet ones, couched in a perpetual remove and observation. He shall perhaps forever be categorized by My Night at Maud's, his greatest popular success and one of the films presented in The Criterion Collection's superb box set.
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To read the rest of the Slant Magazine review, click here.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
An inclusive gaze: Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales
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2 comments:
It’s my failing, honestly I know it is, but Rohmer still comes off to me as the definition of eat-your-vegetables filmmaking, undeniably worthy and essential, but capable of putting me right off. I’d guess CLAIRE’S KNEE is the perfect Rohmer film, in its serene, sincere unpacking of the moral complexities involved in a seeming triviality, and it bores me to tears. There are Rohmer’s I love—THE GREEN RAY is charmingly melancholic and believe it or not I’m quite fond of the willfully naïve PERCEVAL—but they’re pretty few and far between. Still, I’ll be checking out this collection for the shorts, none of which I’ve seen, and might give the features another shot. You’ve certainly made a fine argument for them, Keith.
“[D]eceptive placidity”? Rohmer gets these kind of formulations quite a bit. It’s all under the surface, understated, there for the audience to absorb if they’re attentive enough or willing to probe. Very admirable. But I could use just a hint now and then that the films are being made by someone who named himself after the creator of Fu Manchu, you know?
Did I just end two separate posts on two separate threads with the archly colloquial "you know"? (I've already deleted the originals and can't remember for sure.) If so, I apologize.
Or rather, argue that the echo was intended to link those posts as the opening one-two punch in my eight-post series "Digressions and Epigrammatic Assertions". Watch this space!
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