Sep 09 2007
The Death of Intimacy
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“The Bourne Ultimatum is the latest iteration of a nightmare haunting the Western mind. Jason Bourne struggles to wake up from a trance that has made him into a thing rather than a person. This theme, which is echoed in everything from the X Men films to the Matrix series and their extensive progeny, speaks directly to the reification phenomenon we’ve been discussing in this dialogue. A variant of the Frankenstein myth from the Romantic era, I suspect this particular strain first developed in the cold war thrillers such as North by Northwest and The Manchurian Candidate when Ludlum first wrote his Bourne novels.”
by Guy Zimmerman
9/9/07
I flew into L.A. on Tuesday after being gone for three weeks. To escape the heat I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum at the Cinerama Dome. Later that night, at home, I watched Bergman’s The Silence. Viewed back to back, the two films made clear to me how radically the culture of the West has shifted during the course of my lifetime. While I was away I’d read J.M. Coetzee’s collection of essays Inner Workings. The book is full of compelling insights about the literary figures of the early part of the 20th century, many of whom were destroyed by the cataclysms in Europe that brought the (relatively) stable 19th century bourgeois paradise to a close. Stepping out of the terminal at LAX and feeling the tight air and seeing the tight worried expressions on the face of the American middle class, it seemed clear to me that, as we’ve mentioned many times, we are at the cusp of a similar world-ending conflagration. Watching The Bourne Ultimatum the image came to me of a culture strapped into the passenger seat of a car that has already left the road. The eyes are screwed tightly shut. No light can enter.
The Silence is among the most erotic films I’ve ever seen. Considered too risque for its time, the film is an astonishing achievement. The opening images in a train compartment are potent, unsettling - the camera pans from a strangely oblique high angle shot of a boy looking off, to a voluptuous woman staring straight ahead. Head thrown back, mouth open, with a vacant, ravaged blankness in her eyes, she appears stunned or comatose, perhaps even dead. But then, slowly, she fans herself and looks around. Beside her is another woman, this one regal, pristine. As the camera reaches this second woman, she tenses mysteriously, closing her eyes. Moments later she coughs blood into a handkerchief. The boy moves out into the passageway, mesmerized by a long line of tanks passing on the road. We’re in transit across a war-torn country. Each image adds weight and momentum; something specific is being delineated that does justice to the time that passes as you watch it. Care is being taken to speak the truth about events that are no less urgent for being entirely invented.
The Bourne Ultimatum is the latest iteration of a nightmare haunting the Western mind. Jason Bourne struggles to wake up from a trance that has made him into a thing rather than a person. This theme, which is echoed in everything from the X Men films to the Matrix series and their extensive progeny, speaks directly to the reification phenomenon we’ve been discussing in this dialogue. A variant of the Frankenstein myth from the Romantic era, I suspect this particular strain first developed in the cold war thrillers such as North by Northwest and The Manchurian Candidate when Ludlum first wrote his Bourne novels. This is also when the American corporate oligarchy was just beginning to discover the cultural benefits of militarization and overt mind control, putting the behavioral insights of modern psychology to new uses. What is at stake here is exactly the capacity for intimacy that is underscored so clearly in the Bergman film. After the “death of God” we can’t bear the complex vulnerabilities of intimacy, which now confuse us. We lack an adequate explanation for what we encounter in the Other, yet we know that without that encounter we are less than human.
The director of the Bourne Ultimatum, Paul Greengrass, made Bloody Sunday, which is a study in historical accuracy and painstaking detail. In the Bourne movie millions are spent making big crowded set pieces work the way they would “in the real world.” I share the politics behind the film, and it’s enjoyable to see the iconography of black hoods, renditions, CIA assassinations and NSA intercepts reach the forefront of pop culture. Albert Finney has a good time making himself into a physically repellent Republican archetype in the Denny Hastert mold. Ditto David Strathairn exploring the reptilian end of the corporate spectrum. But at the same time, as we’ve pointed out many times, entertainment can only takes you so far before putting you to sleep again. The political sympathies of the technicians creating the film make no difference. You leave the theater feeling certain that, like Jason Bourne, you will emerge victorious in the end, vanquishing the forces of darkness and restoring justice to the world. This certainty renders you inert as an agent of change. Bergman, by contrast, is a little more truthful about our situation and where the real dangers and challenges lie.
Guy Zimmerman is the Artistic Director of Padua Playwrights. Since 2001, he has staged award-winning productions of new plays by numerous contemporary playwrights (including John Steppling’s Dog Mouth) in Los Angeles and New York. He also serves as Supervising Editor of Padua Press, publishing anthologies of new work that are distributed nationally through TCG. Zimmerman studied poetry with Katha Pollit, Nicholas Christopher and Thomas Lux. His own plays include La Clarita, Hide, Vagrant and The Inside Job.
To read more of Guy’s lively online conversations with fellow playwright and cultural analyst, John Steppling, visit the VoxPop section of Cyrano’s by clicking here.
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I had given Bourne the cold shoulder thinking it another FX marathon for juveniles (the trailers concentrate on the superman qualities of Bourne…) but Zimmerman’s critique, so fluid and beautifully written, piqued my curiosity, so off to the cineplex I go. And by the way that closing para:
The political sympathies of the technicians creating the film make no difference. You leave the theater feeling certain that, like Jason Bourne, you will emerge victorious in the end, vanquishing the forces of darkness and restoring justice to the world. This certainty renders you inert as an agent of change. Bergman, by contrast, is a little more truthful about our situation and where the real dangers and challenges lie.
surely resonates plenty. It deserves lots of rumination by those amongst us bent on trying some social change on this confused nation. When the carefully constructed fantasies on TV and the big screen are so effective that they replace and stymie our own realities…we gotta admit the system has an awesome weapon in its illusion factories.
Talking of style, I’ve been checking out the Voxpop section of Cyrano and sure enough these two guys are just amazing. For would-be writers anywhere their exchanges must be like a buried treasure… Sometimes I get a bit lost in the references—my trips to the Wiki and Google have become indispensable and frequent—and I suppose I also miss some of the deeper meanings, as the dialogue is never condescending and demands “work.” But, I have discovered in just a few days, the payoff is a much more astute view of society than we could obtain in other websites—and I am a well travelled Internaut! Speaking of which, this site is so large and diverse that I’m still trying to catch up with T Paine’s Corner…and more articles are fired every day, so, frankly I never knew (duh!) until I read these essays that Voxpop was part of Cyrano.
By the way, I’m still savoring this line,
“Ditto David Strathairn exploring the reptilian end of the corporate spectrum.”
The “reptilian end of the corporate spectrum…” That takes the full measure of this despicable stratum.
I called that movie “Bored Ultimatum”. There is nothing in that movie, which was not already said in two previous installments. My teenage son even fell asleep…