#55
Post
by Sloper » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:42 pm
That moment just after the assassination when the camera decides to jump on the back of the truck is, for me, just about the best bit of the film, though in this case I'm not sure I agree that it has a documentary feel to it. Certainly there's a freewheeling spirit at work there, a sense that the film can decide (almost on a whim) to pursue whatever seems like the most exciting avenue at any given moment, even though we might have expected it to remain with Montand and his followers to see the aftermath of the attack, or at least to cut between them a bit. There's a good reason why it doesn't happen that way, of course - later on, we'll see the assassination again from various angles, and Manuel's testimony to the magistrate shows us what happens next, heightens the sense of tragedy (through that slightly overwrought slow-motion replay of Montand falling to his knees), etc.
But when we first see the assassination, Costa-Gavras' priority is to provide those 'genre thrills' Warren mentioned earlier, by plunging us into an action set-piece (not unlike the attempted killing of Manuel that precedes his aforementioned testimony) in which the very fact that we're not able to check in on the condition of the film's erstwhile protagonist only adds to the suspense. It might seem absurd to talk about 'suspense' in that context, because we're probably supposed to know, going in, that this is a film about an assassination rather than just a mild skull fracture - but that's why Gavras' handling of this moment is so clever. By getting distracted from what seems to be the central focus of the story, the film creates the sense that there is a lot at stake here, in a way that a more focused and linear approach might not have done.
However, this thrill-chasing spirit also gave me a feeling, at times, that the film was not actually that invested in the 'message' it was trying to put across. On a first viewing, Z struck me as belligerently, thrillingly didactic, and its tremendous vitality seemed inextricable from its ideology - as if the camerawork, editing, acting and so on were all animated by righteous anger. On a second and third viewing, I noticed that 'ideological detachment' was actually one of the central running themes in the film. It begins with the very dull talk on mildew, following which Pierre Dux's character carries on flogging this silly metaphor to within an inch of its life. It's hard to take him seriously as a master-villain when he keeps saying 'mildew' over and over again. With the exception of Dux's comically sycophantic right-hand man (whose exact title I forget - Colonel de la gendarmerie?) and the poor browbeaten guy taking notes ('no need - it's in the circular'…so why are you lecturing us, then?), almost everyone in the room looks bored to tears, and this is even more true of the CROC meeting we get a glimpse of later.
Even those at the top of the pyramid come across as clowns who have no real sense of what they believe or what is driving their actions, while everyone below them is simply trying to get by from one day (or one moment) to the next. The hired thugs are all poignantly uninvested in the cause they're supporting. It's the child-like fig-seller you have to feel most sorry for - look at the way he nervously fingers the toy bear (panda?) dangling from the rear-view mirror of the Colonel's car, while the latter threatens him into doing what he wants, and then look at his pathetically grateful smile as he receives the most meagre promises of reward, a renewed permit or something.
Then there's the fascinating pair of Yago and Vago. They're opposites, in a sense: Yago a terminally repressed hulk, Vago a sort of Loki-esque extrovert. There is a really ambiguous moment, when these two are pausing just on the fringe of the demonstration, before they drive in for the kill. Yago is fiddling with the three-wheeler, and he seems to pause as if listening to Montand's speech, just at the moment when Montand is saying that people like Yago and Vago are tragically oblivious to the way they're exploited, and to the fact that 'our cause is their cause too'. Is there some dim stirring of sympathy for such views in Yago's pause there? Does this moment of weakness help to explain why he stupidly, and completely unnecessarily, tells two separate people that he's been hired to commit a murder, even specifying (to Ilya Coste) whom he is going to kill, as if he kind of wants to be stopped, or caught? Anyway, Yago has this moment of thoughtfulness, and then he notices Vago looking up at the half-dressed young man in the window. 'One-track mind', he says in the subtitle, though I think the actual line might be something like, 'You're thinking about that, even now?' (I may have this wrong). Perhaps Yago is telling his colleague to keep his mind on the job; perhaps he's surprised that Vago hasn't also been drawn in by Montand's rhetoric. In any case, Vago doesn't care about the job or the cause or anything, he's simply a hedonist. The portrayal of his character is uncomfortably homophobic in some ways, but at the same time Vago is kind of the most attractive figure in the film - a lot like Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, he has no meaningful allegiance except to his own desires.
My point is that no one involved in the conspiracy seems to really invest in what they're doing. And as for Montand and his crew, in some respects they do come across as righteous and sympathetic, but overall the emphasis seems far more on the way they bicker fruitlessly with each other, indulge in unhelpful sarcasm and unfocused diatribes (I'm thinking of Manuel, primarily), or are simply dull and ineffectual. Montand is charismatic, no doubt, but even he is brought down to earth by those flashbacks discussed above - not just the ones that show he hasn't been a particularly good husband and is still a bit of a womaniser, but also the ones that Papas has which show him in a more sympathetic light, displaying affection or humane wisdom. He's a flawed human being, capable of love and tenderness, and his wife feels his absence terribly; nice, but what does this have to do with his beliefs, his cause, all the stuff he dies for? To go back to Montand's speech, it's striking that we hear so little of it, and that so much emphasis is instead put on the tensions building outside.
Then there's the journalist. Watching the interviews on the Criterion disc, I was interested that Jacques Perrin saw his character as entering upon the story out of mercenary and exploitative reasons, but then becoming morally invested in what he's doing. This didn't ring entirely true for me… I thought he was an ambivalent figure from start to finish, curiously amoral given that he - along with the magistrate - is the most proactive and effectual 'seeker after truth' in this film. The only moment that really seemed to suggest devotion to the cause on his part was the news broadcast at the end, which as I think someone has noted has a sort of 'covert' feel to it. The moment when his voice is replaced is genuinely chilling, but I'm still left wondering whether he was fighting for the cause or just chasing a particularly exciting 'scoop'. Notice that Pirou tries to object when the journalist wants to publish the story in a popular newspaper; it's as though compromising your principles is compulsory if you want to expose the truth.
The thrust of my argument feels misguided, somehow. Of course this is a didactic film, of course it's committed to the message it's trying to put across. If it doesn't go too far into the specifics of the political issues in play here, and if it does use some distancing effects, that's hardly surprising given the controversial material being dealt with. And when Costa-Gavras says, in one of those archival interviews, that Z isn't a didactic film but simply a good story about a particular dramatic event, he's being at least a little bit disingenuous, and no doubt quite prudent. But he also says that a film should be like a monologue, manipulating the audience on an emotional level, but leaving them to think about the issues raised after the film is over. Perhaps this supports the idea that, while the film is undoubtedly polemical, its primary function is not to persuade us of something, but simply to observe and explore - in a spirit of almost impartial fascination and excitement - some aspects of the workings of power.
This, I think, is what the film is really about: specifically, it focuses on the dynamic between still, fixed points and the highly mobile 'antibodies' that swarm about them doing their bidding. Most obviously this applies to the conspirators and their minions from CROC, but it is also manifested in the relation between the impassive Montand and his nervy associates, or between the inscrutable magistrate walled off behind his tinted glasses and the puppy-eyed, gnat-like journalist.
I have a feeling that this dynamic governs the film's style as well. I'd have to watch it a few more times to back that up, but the title sequence provides one example: it begins with what looks like a cluster of dazzling suns, their light pounding down on us as Theodorakis' confrontational score sets the tone and pace; and yet, the focus shifts to reveal that we are actually just looking at a gaudy badge, a static and lifeless thing; but then the rapid montage of badges and medals imbues even these objects with a kind of dynamism; but the effect is comic, because the point of this imagery is to de-mystify these dazzling emblems of power so that they can be seen for what they are; and no sooner has the title sequence begun than we realise Theodorakis' score has not actually set the tone and pace for what is to come, because suddenly the music has vanished to a background murmur, and we're in a darkened room watching a screamingly tedious lecture about mildew, and then watching near-comatose men watching that lecture; but still, the eccentric close-ups, camera movements and low angle shots maintain that sense of momentum, and the bathos of the scene is offset by the combative non-disclaimer ('It is not coincidental - it is intentional') reminding us how much is at stake in this talk about mildew.
I'm suggesting that this all feeds into the film's observation of a particular dynamic, in which stillness is powerful, untouchable, while movement is vulnerable and exploited; but in which those still points can also, paradoxically, turn out to be comic, bathetic, standing on feet of clay, while those vulnerable and exploited antibodies might ultimately seem to possess a more effectual kind of power, precisely by virtue of their mobility and seeming insignificance.
