Just watched Querelle by fassbinder based on jean genets novel of the same name. and also watched the year of thirteen moons by fassbinder a while ago. intense
DVD blurb at back:
Adapted from Jean Genet's homoerotic novel, the final film of director Fassbinder's career is a surreal tale of sex and murder that has become a cult favourite. Brad Davis stars as Querelle, an enigmatic, drug-dealing sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest. Amidst the sultry, highly charged atmosphere, he embarks on a journey of sexual self-discovery.
With its striking, iconic imagery, set against the orange glow of a permanent sunset, Querelle is a dreamlike experience and a unique piece of filmmaking.
Adapted from Jean Genet's homoerotic novel, the final film of director Fassbinder's career is a surreal tale of sex and murder that has become a cult favourite. Brad Davis stars as Querelle, an enigmatic, drug-dealing sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest. Amidst the sultry, highly charged atmosphere, he embarks on a journey of sexual self-discovery.
With its striking, iconic imagery, set against the orange glow of a permanent sunset, Querelle is a dreamlike experience and a unique piece of filmmaking.
Well, i've been reading the comments about Fastbeenthere's film, and i think the deep religious character and mood of this moving film it's strangely overshadowed. So let's state it clear: Querelle, a pact with the devil, is mostly concerned with religion - from Latin RELIGARE: rebind -, in times when the churches are some kind of agents of the Control Flux - and sorry for these Borroughsian vocabulary -. The quest Querelle undertakes, is the same quest that we found in the poems by San Juan of the Cruz, or in the desert exile of Simon Stilytes, or in Siddharta's long journey... But in Querelle's case there's something more, something inhuman, because this angel-man is forced to develop an absolutely new series of values - Nietzsche -. All these themes are already in Genet works, and also, as an example, in Yikuo Mishima's works: Descensus ad Inferos as a form to rich the realms of heaven. So this devil which Querelle approaches is nothing but an outcast god - and gods are only gods if they are outcasts -, the only possible god for the rejected, for those confined at the end of the world - let's remember here the fight between Querelle and his brother, Robert, and we'll see that the road where this fight occurs takes to nowhere, well, yes, it takes to a dying sun, to the vacuum, the void, the infinite falling -. Concerning the queerness of the film, i would say that this is something really complex: again, the sexual scene between Querelle and Nono has a sacramental mood, and ritual characteristics - as the assassination of the sailor by Querelle - which make of this scene something else: not only an exposition of human, maybe depraved, desires, but of a desire to reach the unreachable: god or devil, never mind. In this scene, Querelle is baptized, and Dodo, the black monster, plays the role of John the Baptist. All is rebound to religion, even the music, and the "nomansland's" aspects of the xerography in this crazy and beautiful film.
No comments:
Post a Comment