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Yvonne Rainer (1934-)



“No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make believe no to glamour and transcendency of the star image no to the heroic no to the anti-heroic no to trash imagery no to involvement of performer or spectator no to style no to camp no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity no to moving or being moved.”

”Dance is hard to see. It must either be made less fancy or the fact of that intrinsic difficulty must be emphasized to the point that it becomes almost impossible to see.”

Filmography

Features
Lives of Performers (1972)
Film About a Woman Who… (1974)
Kristina Talking Pictures (1976)
Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980)
The Man Who Envied Women (1985)
Privilege (1990)
MURDER and murder (1996)
Rainer Variations (2002)
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002)

Shorts
“Hand Film” (1966)
“Volleyball” (1967)
“Rhode Island Red” (1968)
“Trio Film” (1968)
“Line” (1969)
“Trio A” (1978)

Dance Choreography (Incomplete)
Three Satie Spoons (1961)
Three Seascapes (1961)
Ordinary Dance (1962)
Terrain (1962)
We Shall Run (1963)
Trio A/The Mind is a Muscle (Part 1) (1966)
Continuous Project-Altered Daily (1970)
War (1970)
Street Action (1970)
This is the Story of a Woman Who... (1973)
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (2000)
AG Indexical, with a Little Help from H.M. (2006)
RoS Indexical (2007)
Spiraling Down (2010)
Assisted Living: Good Sports 2 (2010)
Assisted Living: Do You Have Any Money? (2013)
The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there's nothing left to move? (2015)

Written Works
Work 1961-73, Yvonne Rainer (1974)
The films of Yvonne Rainer, Yvonne Rainer (1989)
Talking pictures: Filme, Feminismus, Psychoanalyse, Avantgarde, Yvonne Rainer (1994)
A Woman Who--: Essays, Interviews, Scripts, Yvonne Rainer (1999)
Feelings are Facts, Yvonne Rainer (2006)
Yvonne Rainer, Catherine Wood and Yvonne Rainer (2007)
Poems, Tim Griffin and Yvonne Rainer (2011)
Revisions: Essays by Apollo Musagète, Yvonne Rainer, and Others, Various (2011)

Web Resources
Feelings are Facts
Senses of Cinema
Step by Step Guide to Dance, The Guardian
Narcissism and Pleasure: An Interview with Yvonne Rainer
Dance Mom: Yvonne Rainer (Interview)
Screen Time with Yvonne Rainer (Interview)
In Terms of Performance (Interview)
The White Review: Interview with Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer on Reviving an Iconic Work of the 1960s for Performa 19
"Filming the Unspeakable: The Cinema of Yvonne Rainer" by Dana Reinoos

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 4:30 pm After reading a few interviews and watching two of Yvonne Rainer's early films, I'm pretty smitten with her philosophies and artistic merits (not surprising, given how she transparently flaunts influences from Godard's more esoteric qualities, naming him as directly as an inspiration for her art in both films I've seen).

Has anyone read her autobiography, Feelings are Facts? The core idea of subjectivity as objective in the specific way she highlights this philosophy is exactly in step with my own beliefs and I'm tempted to buy it based on that symbiosis alone (much gratitude to senseabove for turning me onto her!)

Happy to hear she clicked for you! Which two did you watch? (And maybe we should get this moved to a Rainer thread now, even if it's just us two talking to each other...) Sounds like Film About a Woman Who... was probably one of them?

I've been keeping an eye out for the autobiography in used stores when I venture out and figure I'll order it eventually if it doesn't show up there soon, but I haven't read it yet. Given how much I enjoyed the intro and what I've read of the journal excerpts in Works, though, I fully expect it to be excellent.

senseabove wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 8:09 pm Happy to hear she clicked for you! Which two did you watch? (And maybe we should get this moved to a Rainer thread now, even if it's just us two talking to each other...) Sounds like Film About a Woman Who... was probably one of them?

First I got my hands on the one you recommended (Privilege, which I'll probably check out tonight) but decided to watch her first feature Lives of Performers to get a taste of her movement from dance into film, and then actually skipped Film About a Woman Who... (because I've heard it's her best, and I kinda wanted something early to return to after going through the rest for context, or that's the best rationalization I have for 'why' I'm trying to save the (potentially) best for last, in a fashion that would make it (potentially) even better!) and went to her third feature Kristina Talking Pictures.

Both reference Godard by name and in spirit. Lives of Performers essentially takes the melodrama and subverts any narrative expectations in image and sound to tell a story (if you can even call it that, certainly not in a traditional sense!) that's mostly comprised of conversations that sound scripted but some are autobiographical, and it's all orbiting a dance performance. Kristina Talking Pictures doubles down on this style with unpredictable editing techniques, more people coming in and out, and seemingly disconnected vignettes ethereally passing through lending themselves to a greater enigmatic tone. The opening monologue celebrating empowered women as heroes is one of the best openings to any film, though it's incredibly dense linguistically and makes one appreciate Godard for having subtitles to take in complex information in the written word! I watched it three times before moving onto the rest of the feature, two to really soak in the content and a third because, well, it's great.

Rainer's approach to cinema is, like Godard, best supported by supplemental material to highlight how her philosophies translate into her art. In particular, I think this interview from the Paris Review is an excellent read that clarifies many of her themes and intents, though I've now read a handful of interviews and sadly can't find the rest in a quick search at the moment. [I'd also happily take the time to formulate the necessities for a thread start to help with that burden if deemed appropriate by mods]

senseabove wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 8:09 pm I've been keeping an eye out for the autobiography in used stores when I venture out and figure I'll order it eventually if it doesn't show up there soon, but I haven't read it yet. Given how much I enjoyed the intro and what I've read of the journal excerpts in Works, though, I fully expect it to be excellent.

I may just pay the $40 on Amazon for a copy, though we'll see how high I am on her stuff after running through her cinematic oeuvre and reading the Work 1961-73 book. I wound up cancelling my Amazon order that contained a Christmas gift for my sister I wasn't as enthused about and ordered extra copies of the Rainer and Snow books for she and her girlfriend since this is right up their alley as members of the lit publishing world, so double thanks- let's just hope USPS shipping to the Bay area doesn't take a million years.

Also, for those interested, you can watch Rainer's famous Trio A in many iterations across YT, but the "official" film version of the performance from '78 is up in its entirety here

So I just watched Rainer's five early shorts and found them all at least somewhat interesting (again, they'll bore anyone not familiar with her philosophies and intentions for her art) even if the middle three failed to actually stimulate me in any way beyond connecting them to her thematic interests. Rainer's first film, Hand Film, I fully expected to hate, but it's so directly modeled on her ethos (Rainer, confined to a hospital bed, makes her hand move in prosaic minimalism like one of her dances) that I found it beautifully inspiring for how one can find opportunities for artistic expression in places most of us wouldn't consider.

I was less enamored with Volleyball and Rhode Island Red, which both play with a similar idea. The former focuses on different ways to film a body, action, and movement, as different in each instance- even when a basic action is repeated, it's not actually repetition. Rhode Island Red felt like an experimental filmmaker shot a chicken coop waiting for a Tati film to spring to life, but I can appreciate that the film functions as a deeper footnote to Rainer's aversion to repetition. These chickens are essentially behaving in a manner that appears to be repeating but never is in the same way, and noticing small differences initiates a revelation that even when we think we're in a cycle of repetition, we're usually doing something a little bit differently, and that these novelties are worthy of acknowledgement as such, and not to be branded as recycling. It's another look at the opportunities for spirit in the mundane, just less successful for me.

The last two films also tackled a related interest of Rainer's. Trio Film subverts expectations of exhibitionism, something Rainer avoided often but here portrays with nudists engaging in mostly emotionless banal tasks. There's no repetition though, and there are even some smiles hidden in the increasingly inventive editing choices- though Rainer ensures equality given to each movement like her dance routines. Line was a much more fun exercise in this area of exhibitionism because of the inconsistencies and emotion shown in brief breaks from Rainer's own belief of avoiding eye contact with the voyeur to erase the narcissism/pleasure line (Rainer was a disciple of Laura Mulvey's 70s work, but even in the 60s was considering similar ideas). The woman here is turned around away from us, but continues to look back and giggle, as if the line and circular object are the quotidian elements juxtaposed with this beautiful woman's unpredictability. The omission of sound renders us impotent though, and when she talks to an unknown person behind the camera (after several instances of seemingly flirty looks at us) we are reminded that the object of her affection is not us- her physical expressive delivery moves in a manner that screams sensuality, which we are robbed from, and then she's gone, taken from us, and we're right back to the line!

Well then I'm very pleased the two you liked are two I haven't seen! That makes me slightly less fearful that I struck gold and will be let down. Lives sounds like it's working in the same arena as FAaWW..., so it'll be interesting to hear your reaction going forward while I go in the other direction. I'm also intrigued that you have the preemptive impression FAaWW... is her best, as I'd say that while it's the more ambitious of the two of seen, Privilege is more successful—but maybe I'll change my mind on a revisit, as the earlier film is just so expansive there's no way to take it in in one go (not that Privilege is exactly a piece of cake—but maybe it's more digestible for being closer to a contemporary framing, with a major focus on something akin to intersectionality as a part of Rainer's interest in embodied, socialized subjectivity).

As for her dance work as supplement to her films, I thought this performance of "Diagonal", the first part of her first full solo show, Terrain, was incredibly interesting (but maybe only if you're the type who found the workshop scenes in Out 1 tortuously fascinating). That same Vimeo channel has several other Rainer pieces, though I haven't gotten around to watching them yet.

senseabove wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 7:28 am I'm also intrigued that you have the preemptive impression FAaWW... is her best, as I'd say that while it's the more ambitious of the two of seen, Privilege is more successful—but maybe I'll change my mind on a revisit, as the earlier film is just so expansive there's no way to take it in in one go (not that Privilege is exactly a piece of cake—but maybe it's more digestible for being closer to a contemporary framing, with a major focus on something akin to intersectionality as a part of Rainer's interest in embodied, socialized subjectivity).

I guess it depends how one measures "successful"- I definitely expect FAaWW... to be as esoteric as its neighboring works, but I really enjoy the unpolished experimental density of ideas expressed through the lens of a youthful emerging feminist Godard-convert.

Having now seen Privilege, I definitely think it's the most refined and digestible work of hers I've seen thus far by a long shot, which is saying a lot! The film begins with a thesis speech that serves as a nice companion piece with (of all things) the recent Promising Young Woman in its radical argument that women are at fault for not trying hard enough to dedicate their lives completely to achieving equality. This isn't a film about blame, but Rainer is indiscriminately confrontational in challenging complacency and examining the intersectionality of psychology and socio-cultural engagement. She explores the distinctions and similarities of racism, ageism, and sexism, using abstract didactic avenues arriving at new deeper questions rather than revelations, and not only around the female experience. Sometimes these expand into concrete subjects like menopause signifying a dilution of female identity across physiological, psychological, and social consequences- and acknowledging that the relationship between a woman basing her self-worth off of how men see her sexually with attention, and how her self-esteem functions as a part of how she feels internally, are interlinked problematically and validly. I appreciate how Rainer ousts the defensiveness in a radical feminist declaring she doesn’t care about what men say about her beauty, when she herself has actively desired to hold this position, thereby being honest with her socially-ingrained inescapable narcissism/pleasure drive, and hold onto her ideals at once. The act of exposing hypocrisy doesn't need to be mean-spirited, but must be motivated from a burning passion in order to become conscious.

The common denominator of cultural oppression is woven loosely through transitioning meditations, and the disconnect and futility at creating any final word is evoked with humor (such as when the black and latino men are jokingly provoking the other’s framework of ethnic identity from their removed vantage point; cue to a white woman asking why the interviewer is interrupting her flashback- though we find out she wasn’t referring to this previous scene- again pulling one over on the viewer in an editing-gag that makes us laugh at ourselves for thinking any continuity could exist in an explanatory way between diverse people!) The film continually exposes the contradictions and responsibilities of women especially (as a form of empowerment by women) to identify their desires for simplification and ignorance, and the commentary on marginalized conglomeration as an indictment of the incongruous forging of dissimilitudes is bold, poignant, and refreshing in accepting non-answers. It seems that while being objectified, or adopting the self-imposed prison of basing one’s identify off of this objectification, is labeled as a “chronic disease”, it’s also a complicit process to be damned and accepted at once, yet also critiquing both our complacent acceptance and ignorant damnation of it! Rainer, like Godard, is a challenging filmmaking, who challenges and provokes endless contradictions even while clearly having a position herself on the matters at hand. She even calls herself out for being in a safe position behind the camera when she runs out of material after disemboweling her friends with analysis! The final allegory of hot flashes to microaggressions across marginalizations into specificity is a perfect ending to a great quasi-documentary.

In other, irritating news, it appears the Rainer’s films are available in DVD collections from Zeitgeist films through KL, but only at expensive rates for educational use? Why not make them available to the masses… am I missing something?

senseabove wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 7:28 am As for her dance work as supplement to her films, I thought this performance of "Diagonal", the first part of her first full solo show, Terrain, was incredibly interesting (but maybe only if you're the type who found the workshop scenes in Out 1 tortuously fascinating). That same Vimeo channel has several other Rainer pieces, though I haven't gotten around to watching them yet.

Thanks for that link! I like it a lot though I think the key difference between her work and Out 1's experimental movements (from what I recall from my viewing five-ish years back) is that Rainer's elimination of drama in "phrasing" deliberately finds grace in not drawing attention to any one player or movement vs another, so even if she has used sound and language unexpectedly to destroy conventions, her work is more humbly minimalist than the provocative wailings in Out 1. I'm interested in revisiting that film after delving more into these avant-garde postmodern dances, but I recall hating those parts of the Rivette film (yet liking the other parts and the entire composite as a whole enough to be a booster) and I immediately liked Rainer's dance work, for whatever that's worth.

The Man Who Envied Power is the most emulative-of-a-Godard-essay-film I’ve seen yet, but it's also Rainer's densest and paradoxically most accessible work based on the way she lays out her ideas in a relatively direct, full form, which in turn makes it intellectually-stimulating while maintaining satisfying digestibility. I love how she delves into philosophical and sociopolitical concerns as deeply as Godard but brings her focus a bit more acutely into the realm of psychology, and this is the most effective version of that strength based on the four features I've seen thus far. She continues to rhetorically induce juxtapositions, here more nakedly between sexes, and makes a rare move by presenting a man in the flesh as a physical subject flaunting his perspective and power, showing at times how his progressive ideas are at odds with his cognitive dissonance and innate blind spots, though not belittling or invalidating his experience with cheap satire. Rainer’s voiceover offers radical defeatist and empowered responses on sexual politics and how they influence world affairs on globally-tangible and intrapersonally-abstract levels.

One of her theses this time around is how femininity is bound to the acknowledgement of, and participation in, the patriarchy and how running from this truth is counterintuitive to feminist advocacy. Rainer believes that accepting and engaging in the culture by which women formulate their identity in relation to maleness, including analyzing male issues with empathy, is critical to the feminist cause, which is a very interesting and unexpected lens to take in relation to more female-centered works that disregarded a total selfless process of identification with the dominant group. Of course Rainer uses this as an opportunity to explore and expose the ironies in what she's saying per usual, to establish and toy with contradictory parts of her competing and harmonizing at various points, since she's working with the glaring exterior subject of her perceived oppression, caustically addressing her ethos with friction. Rainer expresses this idea of "female privilege," and meditates on how men are themselves oppressed from the ability to cry. Rainer draws an affinity between sexes beyond social constructionism, highlighting an "indiscriminate destruction of life and purpose," the harm of which is perpetuated by the myth that one's purpose is innately-extracted rather than created through involvement with their milieu. She examines masculinity as defined as not caring or feeling, and relates this all the way to foreign policy(!), with a plea for women to include this compassion and attention to the feminist cause (a specific investment absent in Privilege, though pointed there in a more internal direction) as a responsibility, since this is crucial to making sociological changes. It's a realist position to take from a radical anti-traditionalist, and one that Rainer herself takes seriously on its respective plateau but also leaves as subject to critique in other layers.

One of the more interesting parts of the film is when Rainer analyses news clippings where women are portrayed as disorders and defined as being perpetually diseased, and contrasts this with masculine public complexity; yet she then proposes a return to that other layer of raw skin where men want the 'ability' to feel without the 'necessity' to feel (meaning hormonal lability), and in that moment, Rainer finds herself able to be sensitive and humanistic while also empowering women as the only beings who are strong enough to tune into this empathy at once. It's reframing the task of women picking up after men as a gift and recognition of power rather than subservient role-diffusion. I sense that throughout this film Rainer is wondering out loud if the idea of making men the enemy is discounting the systemic forces influencing both sexes toward their extremes, and thus doing so is going after the wrong target to self-defeating lengths.

I think this is my favorite Rainer film yet, but I also feel like it’s one that I need to return to multiple times in order to get a handle on all the intricate ideas she’s putting forth, of which I've only addressed a small fraction (the lectures early on are phenomenal though I need to revisit to unpack them and they're probably left speaking for themselves). The film is also playful in a way that reminds me of her earlier 70s work’s rugged experimentalism, and is the perfect fusion of her philosophies, interests, and passions for challenging norms even within "counterculture" attitudes, as a novel path toward subjectification. I really can’t stress this enough: Yvonne Rainer is the feminist Godard.

Journeys from Berlin/1971: I feel like every time I see a new Rainer film, I declare it her densest work, and so here we go again. Rainer’s philosophy of “Living with contradiction” is, per usual, named outright and applied to politics and personal lives on micro and macro scales; contradictions amongst acceptable actions and beliefs as applied to gender or social position within these countries and communities, almost arbitrary based on who has power and the looming threat of community organization to challenge weak, illogically-earned dominant positions. Rainer explores her own philosophies therapeutically, interrogating the value and psychology of radicalism and reform, in objective attempts that of course gravitate back down towards the subjective like the inevitable quicksand of her own mental journeys.

Early on Rainer discusses finding wisdom to lie about emotionality pertaining to a rape case where she was honest and said she couldn't be impartial. This admission of systemic barriers to justice by failing to reinforce validation of universal subjectivity finds Rainer at a crossroads between compromise to play by the system's game to do good, and fighting said system. This isn't directly connected to later events but its integral to her exploration of more expansive issues, as she goes on to contrast the emotional motive of personal revenge with social justice, while also feeding into the paradox of separating what at times cannot be. Early experiences of inequality and injustice are outright stated to shape worldviews from a subjectively limited space that makes the cause personal but at times makes this the greatest weapon. “It’s not a case of what we grow out of, but we we do with that once we’re grown.” Rainer knows she cannot segregate herself from her skewed scope, but trying and conversing and empowering oneself because of these invaluable personal truths, whilst challenging the self simultaneously, is crucial to meshing the growth that stems from critical thinking toward self-assessment and passionate propagation. There is a simplified reading where this film is a call for us to stall in a mindful present-focus more, as opposed to distract ourselves to the future so as not to confront what is tolerable yet still needs work, in order to avoid complacency and the harm that seeps from a fugue state of avoidance.

I enjoyed the segment where Annette Michelson is taking to a male official to express a confrontational lens to acute issues at hand using factual and abstract rhetoric, ending with a dreamy allegory of living forever- to which the man laughs, and she quickly breaks from that dramatic state to retort that West Berlin has the highest suicide rate in the world. The subsequent cut to historical information on how the educated rebels were ostracized is a reminder of how this woman’s education allowed her to express earnest defenses utilizing multiple forms of education- from austere facts and creative poetics- and the eclecticism of such knowledge seems to be the greatest fear from the shallow scope of a one-note fascist cause. Education breeds a more diverse arsenal.

There is so much wisdom here that to begin to describe it would be ruinous to the experience of consumption, and I found myself surprisingly less able to write anything down about the late-act deconstruction of psychoanalysis, which is best to be experienced on its own. One terrific bit professes that true equality is uncertainty while the dissection of what a totalitarian regime grants its population (absolving moral responsibility, and providing validation of worth for “breathing”) as well as what the debilitating psychological consequences are from that (demeriting individuality and erasing empowerment from skills forming identity, leading to a fear of expendability) recognize the allure of certainty and the difficulty of abandoning the tangible tools of it. The intellectualization on the problems with social equality using mother-child dynamics at the film’s halfway mark is fascinating in its contradictory frustration that blocks intimacy with psychological defensiveness. It’s one of the most interesting essay-rants Rainer has ever done.

The Godardian dissonance between image and text is most affecting in this film, particularly a scene where Rainer is making statements of heated advocacy, speaking from the perspective of allegedly actual first-person accounts from citizens experiencing these horrors, but from a helicopter or airplane looking down at a distant Berlin. This naturally contextualizes the barriers and restrictions to actually understand or help via this visualization, but also translates a desperate yearning to make then attempt anyways.

Metrograph is streaming Journeys from Berlin on Saturday, followed by a Q&A with Rainer. ($5 monthly membership required.)

senseabove wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 6:16 pm Metrograph is streaming Journeys from Berlin on Saturday, followed by a Q&A with Rainer. ($5 monthly membership required.)

I was just thinking I need to see this again to unpack it some more before jumping to another Rainer, and I love how she's still actively participating in Q&As at her age- thanks for the info!

Well, I was waiting for the 70s project to give Rainer's most famous film a viewing, but didn't feel like delaying gratification for yet another year after the unexpected delay. I'm glad I didn't, as Film About a Woman Who... is in all likelihood her magnum opus.

The film comically simplifies itself as being thematically comprised of "social interactions about seduction"- but this self-reflexively only grasps a piece of the surface, and a misinterpreted one at that; a misinterpretation likely born as much from Rainer's surrogate's own delusions as the audience's inability to fully grasp the intangible expressions of her consciousness.

Like all her films, this film is centered around ambivalence: from confused internal psychological parts vying with a complex social environment, and a puzzling ambiguity around the intrinsic or externally-produced value of emotions, memory, tactile or observed experience and their signifiers. Feelings are facts, but also insular and subjective truths. The idea of “performing” for oneself and others is a recurring motif, indicating an ambivalence over the woman expressing herself to others or hiding, to be a dominant or submissive force in a partnership, or any of the infinite binary lines of thinking and behavior that serve as prisons, breeding secondary emotions of resentment directed at the self and others. Rainer concocts an abstract study of how we respond to all stressors that trigger our discomfort - though they're not entirely negative, as the pleasure and acknowledgement of strengths coexist with the dysphoria. This is a demonstration of our deviation towards the louder parts that ‘hurt’ and reinforces a problem-focused western mentality, but doesn’t pitch it in a vacuum in actuality. There is a recognition of a 'moment' as timeless and valuable, of a 'feeling' as total, and unconditionally worth ruminating on to squeeze it of all its juice.

This film embarks on Rainer's favorite subject of a gay feminist's identity existing under the pervasive influences of a heteronormative and toxically masculine world, so these feelings and thoughts are often birthed into orbit already deterministically-conditional on how they relate to the opposite sex. At the beginning, a woman's voice often narrates a man’s internal monologues and a man narrates a woman's, jokingly nudging this out-of-body equivocation. The sexual politics are the playing field for exploration of far broader ideas - the experience of desiring to be independent from coupling, but also wanted by a man, are torn apart as this ambivalence tears her apart. The nebulous, conflicted state of wanting radical independence with intimate harmony and social acceptance rooted in another’s utility, ingrained by the self’s need as well as society’s larger expectation, all boil down to explicitly detailed scenes as specimens, where the medium’s many possibilities of silent-film title cards and voiceover and image and music elusively attempt to define this raw experience. I love how, along with the tunnel-vision of frustration at the unknowability of one’s partner’s thoughts and feelings born from fear, comes a genuine wonder and thrill meditated on regarding this curiosity. The oscillation between mood lability is riveting in a meld of vaguely clinical and acutely poetic expression.

There’s a tragic beauty in the immediacy of this engagement, voiding the rigid harping on the futility of attempting to contain these feelings with practicality because at least she’s trying. In the process, Rainer is creating a deeply intimate relationship between viewer and content, and thus the viewer and themselves, through postmodern tactics of abstract art that channels the specific into the ubiquitous, and vice versa. Through her examination of sexual dissatisfaction in females towards men, Rainer is cueing her own confusion over her sexuality, as she would only come to fully realize and embrace her lesbianism later in life following an exhausting and depressive rejection of sex after disappointing heterosexual relationships with men, mirroring the events in this film. Even if she wasn't fully aware of her sexual preferences at this time, there is at least a subconscious hint at peripheral awareness- as Rainer directs some of this bifurcated extremism of resentment and wonder at a woman as well! A monologue about laughing at a movie and then questioning her right to do so -keeping it a secret, embarrassed about a positive internal experience with material- is devastating for its implications for a woman's insecurity when feeling feelings and thinking thoughts in the privacy of her mind, experiencing guilt in seeing herself as belonging to men and a man's world. I doubt this is implicitly metaphorically about sexuality but rather take it at face value, extending to all things- including something as trivial as having an authentic and majectic moment of laughter only to be crushed by the mass of self-doubt over the right to do so.

The list of rules near the end encapsulates all the varied and contradictory yet true emotions, and feels both empowered by and critical of them at once, just like the spectrum of self-consciousness populating the fabric of this film, and Rainer’s always-developing lifelong ethos. She allows herself the wish fulfillment of breaking free from the submission to men literally and abstractly, and this is never more hilariously and directly conveyed than the final title card prior to the film’s denouement (spoiler-boxed for size, but also NSFW language), before two paired silent scenes of pulsating seriousness and playful laughter

Spoiler

The spirited clips juxtaposing movement in running and dance vs. shots of characters stagnantly sitting leans heavily in favor of the former assertions of agility, an optimistic pronouncement of the ethos through a commitment to continuous engagement. Rainer has liberated herself to fight another day and lean into gratitude for minute by encapsulating moments through art, and therapeutically grown a little in the process- though a particular invasive face that briefly disrupts the rhythm of observed movement shows, with increased acceptance but not surrender, that this feeling is not a permanent escape, and progress is not linear; hence the need to exercise these philosophical and psychosocial muscles indefinitely. Oh, hey Godard! The important piece is that Rainer returns to the movement.

The 'actual' ending though is rather cynical, irreverently pairing freedom with ignorance; specifically the ignorance of believing an objective sustained truth of 'feeling' love for a partner that's just abused you with the freedom to remain static in a problematic situation. Rainer appears to be admitting her own enticement with the simple tangibility of taking her identified role in a man's world, remaining complacent in deplorable heterosexual unions. There is an understandable allure to resisting the pain from going against the grain of friction on a hazy path towards an unknown catharsis- remembering that accounts suggest Rainer was not aware of her sexual preferences in '74; or more generally, the serenity of assuming a 'non-thinking' position offers reprieve from mental self-flagellation, and yet Rainer finds thought art that she is tormented by this in practice. She cannot evade her predicament for now, but in this sobriety can work towards the goal. In the meantime, we can always find a happy ending of ephemeral sublime in an image of the ocean. That is, if we end the film there, but who wants to do that when we can keep on going?

Unfortunately Rainer's final film, MURDER and murder, is easily her weakest. It's also her most outwardly playful, operating as a kind of carnivalesque declaration of what it feels like to be aging as a gay woman in a heteronormative landscape that also recalls youthful experience. The film hits on many of Rainer's favorite themes, most strikingly in soft blink-and-you-miss-them moments like when one of the women tells the audience that if her partner says anything about how she's thinking or feeling, it's probably not true. This nonchalant point contains more pathos than Rainer's earlier work, because it stresses the unknowability of our most intimate 'other' as a fact, where -in the last act of one's life- there is less hope for working on this immovable truth towards either utopian lengths or more harmonic checkpoints. A surreal scene where a present-day member of the couple appears to her younger childhood self to explain why she can't be a lesbian right away in 1960, and must instead engage in heterosexual relationships (even going so far as to alleviating this frustrating incongruity of true identity and practicality by saying that it's okay because some men will treat her well...) is quite powerful, even if played up as a silly magical blip in tone.

Unfortunately this juxtaposition of tone and content isn't as effective elsewhere. Rainer pops in as narrator to give facts and feelings on breast cancer, institutional ethics in western society, and puzzling assertion on Stanley Kubrick's wife's approach to her wifely role in contrast with more general lesbians' roles (wut). The collocation of these dry ideas with jarring perverse terms or visually slapstick antics don't gel most of the time, even if the intent is admirable. The erraticism doesn't agree with the most impactful aims of the film, perfectly bookended with a banal routine as the two women eat together in the end. It's a moment of both surrender and active living in tranquility, and an excellent way to end an excellent career in filmmaking. This is because it's the most understated scene Rainer may have ever shot, after making a career out of her relentlessly busy cognitive whirlwind, regurgitated at a speed that might make Godard nauseous, yet one only a wise person admitting she's as close to self-actualization as she'll likely ever get could shoot.