Three questions


Ok. I saw the film and think i got it (stirring emotion has unpredictable cosequences - emotional women vs. oblivious men - mutual exploitation etc) however, there are (at least) three things i didn't get.
1. WTF is that mechanical voice uttering nonsense - How is that important or even relevant to this film?
2. why did his wife leave him after he was arrested if she believed him up to that point?
3. What's the story with the angel he meets at the cafe? i realize that the scene parallels the later scene where he meets Julie, but i didn't quite get the point there? is it to show that his ex actresses become "exterminating angels" because of the bad karma he spreads?

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Your questions raise a number of, well, I don't want to say issues, but when a film has a message (or punch) and it is not readily grasped by the viewer, it begs the question of its merit. So then, the question then becomes wrapped around the ability of the artist to deliver, vs. the integrity or veracity of the message itself. On the one hand, we can say (like the witty Lichtenberg, somewhat adapted), If a head and a film come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, it is not necessarily the film's fault. On the other hand, if the artist is lost in a spin (at the best) or completely contrived (at the worst), you could search forever and find nothing there but nonsense.

Some have attempted to go to the life of Jean-Claude Brisseau himself to look for the answers. If the second of the above were true, then that outward approach would account for a lot. But I can't help but think that we have a genuine auteur in the author and must search rather in the work itself and presume that he knows something that others don't and he wants to communicate it through this artistic medium. Many have adopted for the latter conclusion (He is contrived or the film is nonsense), but it doesn't seem so to me.

Then in order to answer your "Three questions" a fairly good grasp of the film in the sense that Jean-Claude Brisseau has intended would be essential.

1. In the large, I suppose that the author wants to suggest that there is an unseen world (spiritual in some sense) that has an influence in how events take their space around us. I am not familiar enough with the specific verse to begin to get a feel for specifically what message it may contain. It does not seem to me however that a vital detail or clue is contained in its content, so for me ( at least to start with) I am happy with the above answer. The author wants to draw our attention to a world of impulses that lie on the other side of the threshold of sense experience.

2. His wife leaving him, is but one of many events that have their origin in the same cause. For me it is enough to know that she is responding to the fact that he is trying to cross the threshold of the permissible in an "illegitimate way". He is pushing the boundary of the permissible "sensible" in order to reach the "mystical." She tries to tell him that he is playing with fire, and his naiveté will not protect him, but he disregards. In a sense of a "Tannhauser" figure, he must pay the price of transgression. He feels himself to be not accountable using his sincerity and integrity as his justification, but the consequences judge him differently. In a most radical sense, you could say that he is suggesting to others to allow themselves to push the boundaries so that he can learn, what otherwise he could not (not being a female - they are different then men, of course), but while they are spinning out of control, he finds out the hard way that he is himself responsible for what he sets in motion. For that flaw, and all the consequences that come with it, his wife sees him as bad company, and leaves.

3. It seems to me that there is a deeper "message" here which is philosophical (Theological) in character. I need, myself, to spend more time with the film to get a better feel for what he may be trying to suggest. I do think that here we are dealing with something more conceptual and less mystical. That is to say, that you could look at this detail as a "contrivance" of sorts that does not necessarily flow out of the dramatic interaction of the players. Here, he (Brisseau) has an idea(s) that forms the architecture. In this meeting the two world are joined. François is apparently fully awake in the sensible world, and at the same time is conversing with a spiritual being who appears as if she would be sensible. In all other cases where the spiritual is active in his life, he is not directly conscious of the "voices in his ear" or he is in some condition of somnambulism. So in that sense Brisseau wants to say something about either the conditions and character of such moments and their impact, or perhaps the nature of the message peculiar to the meeting itself. It may be something like you suggest about the ongoing spiritual consequences beyond the portal of death, or who knows what else? Like I said, I need to give it a little more time and thought (and another viewing).

The last thought, (concerning question 3) takes me back to where I started the post. Just how well thought out is this story? How good a command does Brisseau have on his medium? How well grounded is he in his inner life from where he seems to draw the film? Has he really learned something from his life that he is trying to share, or is he just been driven mad by his experiences?


(PRN) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id-bFpYQzXE

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Thank you for your answer. It could be that i'm not familiar enough with Brisseau's biography to fully understand his intent. from reading your answer and other posts, I suspect that the theme of the film might be somewhat self-centered rather then universal.
BTW, I loved the Lichtenberg quote.

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[deleted]

I'm sure that after all this time no one is reading this stuff but I'll take a crack at it anyway. That "mechanical voice uttering nonsense" sounds very much like the coded messages that were sent to the Resistance during WW2, from HQ in London. These messages, or some of them, directed actions, sent information about captured Resistance members, and who knows what else. The mechanical voice as you call it was a real person speaking very succinctly so he could be understood over very poor radio reception. Now that's what I THINK it is. If you watch the film The Longest Day (great WW2 war movie) you will hear these same sort of phrases.

I know this isn't as interesting as the pseudo-intellectual answer you got first, but I'm pretty sure it's correct. Now, do I understand what they mean in the context of this movie? Not a clue.

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Sbrancanet -

Unlikely as it may seem, there are folks who read these threads even after a long time has gone by, heh. I just watched this film last night, & my first thought upon hearing some of these "radio transmissions" was the same as yours, particularly of Leo Marks, who sent codes from London to Resistance organizations throughout European nations such as France & The Netherlands. Marks would often encrypt his messages to them through the use of poem codes, in which letters in the words of a specific poem corresponded to a number, which in turn could be deciphered by the hearers. Marks figured out pretty quickly that using classic poetry was too risky, since the enemy was likely to be as well-versed in these works as the friendlies were, making it a lot easier for the Nazis to crack the code. (There's even a scene in "Miracle At St Anna" where a Nazi officer is familiarizing himself with a book of Italian poetry that he'd heard Resistance members in the area were using.) So Marks ended up using mostly original poetry, probably the most famous of which was penned by him personally, called "The Life That I Have". Like you said, a lot of the phrases or lines of poetry used in that time period were delivered in a clipped, terse style very similar to the phrases in "Exterminating Angels".

Another thing which nobody has mentioned in this thread which I for one found very interesting was the fact that the voice reading these "poem codes" was the same as the narrator's, at least near as I can tell. Also, I think it's worth pointing out that the narrator's voice sounds quite a bit different than the actor playing Francois, raspier & to my mind much older sounding. It seems to me that the Francois character is relating this story some time after the events happened, sort of like the aged narrator in Haneke's "The White Ribbon". I'm not sure if this voiceover actor is even in "Exterminating Angels"' credits.

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I'm not sure why you think the first answer was "pseudo-intellectual". I think it's a very supportable position, and consistent with the events and themes of the film. Your answer isn't at all inconsistent with the prior answer, in fact. It's pretty obvious the audio clips are meant to resemble those sorts of coded messages. The question is WHY are they in there? The prior answer seems pretty spot-on to me.

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