“To want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep. To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. To waste your time. To have no projects, to feel no impatience. To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt.”
― Georges Perec
The Man Who Sleeps, from which the above quote is taken, is a 1974 film directed by the French director Bernard Queysanne and the author Georges Perec, based on the latter’s 1967 novel of the same name (Un homme qui dort). It’s rather strange for a good film to have little character development & plot progression, and only two actors: a nameless “protagonist” and a narrator who describes the inner monologue of the protagonist throughout the film, with the narrator’s voice being the only coherent one to be heard in the film that lasts for only a little more than an hour.
It should be clear that it’s quite easy to summarize the film’s plot: A young college student decides to cut off all interaction with society except that which would minimally sustain his life―he cuts off all his friends, stops attending classes, abandons all his academic projects, stops reading and writing or listening to music, and leads a life with no human interaction―maybe he was tired of an automated, machine-like life, which is an irony because after becoming indifferent, his life becomes as automated as before, if not more. He might have realised the sheer meaninglessness of modern (or post-modern?) life that led to him being indifferent to the world, but as the film ends, he realizes his indifference was as futile as his existence and goes back to living a normal life.
The entire plot is narrated by a female voice referring to the protagonist as "you," which certainly was done to place the viewer in the protagonist’s shoes, but there is more to it―the narration is not only telling the thoughts of some alienated young boy who is just suffering from depression, but also some heavy-to-bear nihilistic truths of contemporary society that most people are simply too ignorant to realize. Perhaps it was the protagonist’s realization that the individual will always be a slave to the chains of society that led to his indifference, and perhaps he was thinking that this indifference would set him free, or maybe it was a revolutionary act in his mind, but one thing is clear―he certainly gained a whole lot of clarity about the world around him that triggered his existential ennui.
“It is on a day like this one, a little later, a little earlier, that you discover, without surprise, that something is wrong, that you don't know how to live and that you never will. Something has broken. You no longer feel something which until then fortified you. The feeling of your existence, the impression of belonging to or being in the world, is starting to slip away from you. Your past, your present and your future merge into one. You have 500 francs a month to live on, a few books you no longer read, a few records you no longer play. You don't want to remember anything else. Here you sit, and you only want to wait, just to wait until there's nothing left to wait.”
Merging both the past and the present, the loneliness in a big, seemingly awe-inspiring city like Paris, the boringness of life and (post-)modern society, the sentiment of emptiness, the apparent freedom of indifference, and the utter nihilism of it all, The Man Who Sleeps deals with not only existential and psychological but also social and political themes by portraying the reality of contemporary capitalist society.
Talking about the more technical aspects, the film doesn’t follow a traditional narrative structure as discussed before and is shot in black and white, something certainly not uncommon in the 1970s, but I think it was done on purpose to create a gloomy environment (and also because of Perec’s repetitive portrayal of Paris as a “grey” city in most of his books). The film would not have the same impact on the viewer if it were shot in colour. The cinematography and production of the film are also minimalist, like its plot—one can analyze a scene in excruciating detail, and every minor choice or decision has been actively decided upon. The film wants to portray a feeling of nothingness through its minimalist nature.
The film and the corresponding 1967 novel can certainly be seen as products of their time. In the late 1960s, many student and worker uprisings were taking place in France, most notably the May 1968 civil unrest. Perec’s works might be both inspired by and reacting against these socio-political conditions.
For most people, the ending of the film is hopeful as the protagonist goes back to becoming a normal, functioning member of society. But I think it’s quite the opposite, as it was the protagonist’s realization that it was not only his life in the contemporary world that was meaningless, but even his indifference was as futile as his existence, if not more. His total indifference was neither revolutionary nor liberating; it changed neither the world nor himself; it did not make society collapse, and it certainly did not set him free in the long term. The protagonist's going back to normal life was based on his realization that he was such a small entity in this big world that no act of his would change anything, so I think the film’s ending is very hopeless, depressing, and nihlist.
The narrator’s ending lines quite precisely capture the uselessness of the protagonist’s isolation and indifference:
“You were waiting: for everything to collapse—the walls, the church towers and ceilings, for birds to fall to the ground one by one, for wood to turn to dust, for buildings to be silently flattened, for floods to wash the paint from every surface, squeeze out the pegs of century-old cabinets, dissolve the ink of newspapers, for a flameless fire to eat away the planks of staircases, for streets to give way at their midpoint and reveal the gaping labyrinth of the sewers, for the mist to overrun the city.
You’re no wiser, and you've learned nothing except that solitude teaches nothing and indifference teaches nothing. You were alone; you wanted the links between you and the world permanently severed, but you're such a small thing that you never did anything.
Indifference is useless, your refusal is useless, your uncommittedness means nothing. You thought you were passing through, going down avenues, drifting across the city, following the pads of crowds, unlocking the secrets of cracks and shadows, but nothing happened—no miracle, no explosion—each counted day has only eroded your patience.
You thought time should have stopped altogether, but no one is strong enough to do battle with time. You were able to cheat, to win a few crumbs and a few seconds, but the bells of the neighboring church, the alternation of traffic lights at the intersection below, the predictable drip of water from the faucet of the water outlet on the landing have never stopped measuring the hours, minutes, days, and seasons.
You could, perhaps for a long while, still go on lying to yourself and dulling yourself, but the game's over, the world is still there, and you haven't changed; indifference has not made you different, you haven't died, you haven't gone crazy, no curse weighs on your shoulders, no ordeal awaits you. No one condemns you, and you've committed no offense. In spite of you, time, which watches over everything, has gone on passing.
It's on a day like this—a little later, a little sooner—that everything starts again. Everything starts, and everything goes on. Stop speaking like a man in a dream, and look, look at them, there they stand, posted around the town like silent sentinels, thousands upon thousands of mortal men.
You're no longer the nameless master of the world, the one on whom history had no grip, the one who didn't feel the rain fall, the one who never saw the light draw on; you're no longer the inaccessible translucent transparent one.
You were afraid, and you waited until there was nothing left to wait for.”
No comments:
Post a Comment