Inglorious what!?

 

Quentin Tarantino Inglorious Bastards (2009)

 

In some of my previous entries, the films I’ve spoken about have been valuable sources of trauma cinema since they deal with the unveiling of the repressed, they break down the façade that often surrounds such traumatic events and help audiences understand what happened by depicting seriously, brutally honest and gruesome scenes within the films.

As a change of pace I’ve decided to concentrate on a film that takes a different approach when dealing with traumatic subject matter. Quentin Tarantino uses comedy and vengeance in his film Inglorious Bastards (2009) as a way of associating with its audience and bringing pleasure in watching the Nazis suffer, in fact Lawrence Bender, one of the films many producers praised Tarantino, exclaiming that “This movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.” There no taking away from how unforgivable the actions of the Nazis were but Inglorious does well in offering an escape from the repressed memories of World War II. By combining the trauma, which is often the sobering backdrop to most World War II epics, and merging it with comedy and vengeance, it creates a different form of “working through” for its audience.

It is recognised that after an indeterminable amount of time passes, a traumatic event does becomes more socially expectable to relate to it in a comedic manner, obviously while taking care not to devalue the significance it holds. Although Inglorious doesn’t have the same symbolic merit attached to it as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) for example, it doesn’t mean to say it isn’t a potential way of working through the traumas it addresses, after all, laughter is the best medicine.

The Pianist (2002) and the value it holds.

 

Roman Polanski The Pianist (2002)

 

Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002) is the story of a Polish Jewish pianist who struggles to survive through the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazi’s, in the ghettos of Warsaw during World War II. The ghettos being a section in a city that would be physically separated from the rest of society, these ghettos would act as temporary holding for Jews before being shipped off to concentration camps. Throughout the film Polanski depicts the continuing destruction of these ghettos in a greatly detailed fashion.

The Pianist is an important historical document in the fact that it is highly accurate in accounting the events during the Holocaust in Warsaw. The film is based on and stays true to the autobiographical memoirs of a Polish-Jewish composer Władysław Szpilman. As well as this, Roman Polanski, the films director, is himself a survivor of the Krakaw ghettos, unfortunately his mother was another victim of the concentration camps. Polanski’s auteurism can be recognised in the very precise props and sets used in the movie.

The film poses questions about how awful human behaviours can be by showing practically first hand what the Nazi’s were responsible for doing, depicted in sometimes brutally graphic ways. For example when two Nazi soldiers tip an elderly man out of his wheel chair and over a balcony to the streets several floor’s below. It’s full of depressing themes such as isolation, repression and hardship but through suffering comes hope. The Pianist is symbolic in that it stands for the Jewish uprising against the Nazi’s. Szpilman’s journey of survival represents the survival of the Jewish culture and acts as a memorial to the victims of the concentration camps and Nazi rule.

 

 

9/11: Who gets to be a hero?

 

Paul Greengrass United 93 (2006)

 

Paul Greengrass’s United 93 (2006) represents the lesser-known side of September 11^th. Shot in a hand held documentary fashion, it depicts the unfolding of events that took place on the hijacked flight 93 before it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Its original target was believed to be the White House. The film incorporates the use of real airline staff and famously, various employees of the airport control towers play them selves in the film, in order to give it an even more realistic feel.

United 93 is an extremely significant film when concerning a subject as poignant as 9/11. Even though it is considered to be such a traumatic moment in history, the film can stand as a metaphor for the courage and bravery the American nation showed when faced with adversity. Also the film serves as a way of memorialising the thousands of people that lost their lives that day.

Although United 93 symbolises a nations heroicness when confronted by danger, the choices it uses to represent what actually happened in the plane that day and who got to be heroes are debatable. For instance the only non-American passenger, a German, Christian Adams, was shown to be the only one in the film to comply with the terrorist. It’s reported in the Guardian that his wife had turned down the offer to provide any information to the filmmakers. So who’s to say that Adams wasn’t a hero here? Adams is now memorilised in a poorer light through these choices the filmmakers have made. You have to remember these were real people with real lives and legacies and how you portray them through cinema is how they are going to be memorlised forever due to the hugely traumatic value it holds with people.

I’m not sure its even fair to put the brand of hero on one singular person like Todd Beamer was in United 93. The fact is they sacrificed all their lives to save what could have been countless more deaths in the American capitol. For that they should all be known as heroes.

My feelings on trauma in cinema.

 

Cinema touches people in numerous different ways. Whether you’re shedding tears watching the intro to Pixar’s Up or jumping out of your skin watching any part of The Descent, cinemas aim is to evoke emotion, hence why representing trauma in film is extremely important. It enables you to bring the past to the present and revisit certain memories of a traumatic event, allowing you to collect, evaluate and then work through any feelings and emotions you may have towards it.

Of course when dealing with the representation of national trauma on screen you’re responsible for illustrating the scars on a nations culture and the depiction of horrific subject matter but I feel that you shouldn’t hold back when accounting these types of events. In Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998), Following World War II’s Normandy Landings, involves a gruesomely detailed interpretation of the D-Day battle scenes in a true to cinema vérité style. There has been controversy over the graphic nature of the film, however I feel that without this included it would devalue the message the film is conveying to its audience. “It was the way it was.” writes Daniel Frankel for E! Entertainment, after speaking with D-Day veterans. With it, it helps you to understand immensely what conditions the soldiers were put through.

To tell an accurate account of an event I believe you can’t tip toe around what might be a taboo subject, if you are going to produce a trauma related film it is your duty as a filmmaker to shed light on the true horrors involved.

What is trauma in cinema?

There are many films out there that represent trauma in a number of different lights. The following will focus on why it is necessary for us to document global traumas in cinema and what these representations of trauma convey.

Film is acknowledged and viewed worldwide making cinema the perfect podium to adopt in order to communicate a message to a mass of people, such as an entire nation. By using trauma as a subject for film, The Holocaust for example, a filmmaker is able to represent the shocking memories of that time and have them viewed globally. In Shocking Representation Adam Lowenstein explains that in order for trauma to heal it must first be revisited, therefore, by representing the memory of The Holocaust in film it gives society an opportunity to “work through” the trauma and help with the coming to terms of the subject rather than repressing the memory.

When understanding societies approach in dealing with traumatic events, trauma cinema studies implements the same model that was devised by Freud in his book Remembering, Repeating and Working Through (Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psychoanalysis II) where he deals with trauma in the psyche:

• The Traumatic Event
• A Period Of Incubation
• The Return Of The Repressed
• The Working Through

Trauma in cinema is very much the same in that it embodies the same laws. The event, next is the latency period, which is when people try to block out the memory in an attempt to protect themselves, then finally the return of the repressed in film form, together with the working through process. The final two phases are complied into one since the film its self is the repressed and when viewed it is, at the same time, a way of working through our feelings and emotions on the subject.

*Adam Lowenstein (2005). Shocking Representation. USA: Columbia University Press. 

*Freud, S. (1914) Remembering, Repeating and Working Through (Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psychoanalysis II)