by Leos Carax
…
Something in her changed so drastically and she was certain about it now. Maybe the same thing that made her feel like a real woman for the first time. She of course had so many moments to live that feeling but it was never the constant, calm currency of feeling of being a woman. She remembered the quote she noted from Egor “How much I would love to be a woman” and that he continued “We, men we are not good for anything. We will always try to find what in fact we will never know. We destroy our lives far from others, only to satisfy our limitless madness. The true human being is the woman. We are merely modified beings, crippled. Just because we cannot bring the world out from inside our bellies, we agonize to get it outside our head.” For a moment, she thought about how she native she was with Egor, how shallow she was. Although, she didn’t feel like going back and being with Egor. She knew she could not match his intellect only now. She wished she remembered this quote earlier when talking to those overconfident men about the movie. How she could clearly see design as the most inferior aspect of art now and how torn she was on what success means. She wished she could somehow articulate why she felt powerful art can only be Dionysian. She wished her name was Gaya.
I went to watch Annette by Leos Carax without seeing the trailer, or even knowing it’s a musical. I was part of the audience who was there because of the legacy of Holy motors. This time he was back with the largest budget he ever worked with and with the Hollywood actor Adam Driver and the academy award winner Marion Cotillard on the cast. The movie did not make much sense at the beginning and felt like a shallow musical (well or just any musicals). It seemed like a typical musical plot about a love story stylized in Carax’s narration style. This can’t be it I told myself. There had to be more into this. I was sitting through a Carax movie after all. This is when I recognize Carax starting to feed his audience subtle hints of a secondary “sub-plot”. The main plot is a love story with all the ups and downs of a typical dramatic plot. Carax is very much on the nose with following the chronological structure of a drama formula with expected settings and conflicts. My initial disgust with Carax choosing a populist medium like a musical and a typical love plot didn’t last long. I started understanding the point of him sticking with the obvious for the main plot and felt good. Well, it always feels good to be the one in the crowd who gets the joke but it gets yummy when the joke is about the rest of the audience and they don’t have a fucking clue about all the sarcasm. Carax very quickly tells his real audience he is not concerned with this main plot and that he has another story to tell. One that is personal and only “his audience” can get. And thinking about it, why not? Why not tell a love story in the most shallow medium like a musical. Isn’t the struggle all the same anyway no matter if you are an intellect or someone who is actually into watching a cheesy musical with a shallow and obvious plot? Also, Carax was playing in America now and he came to us with a musical. You see, he was about to slap me and the rest of his audience for questioning his choice of making a musical in the first place. Here is how he does it.
Carax makes it obvious he is not giving a shit about making a great musical and he is not concerned with the love story either. The realism of the story or even dialogues is not important at all and he makes that clear through the bare minimum fuck given to “how real” this world is. He is not concerned about the appropriate vocal choices for the musical either. Even the song lyrics are kept intentionally simple and excessively to the point “We love each other so much” as a nod to his audience to remind them not to worry about the musical plot and follow the other story being told beneath all this. You start seeing Adam Driver (Henry McHenry) as a stand-up artist appearing on the stage. Not a funny one to us but he gets the laughter from the audience in the movie. You also get introduced to the audience who look like they share the same intelligence as the ones out of 90s morning TV shows. You start seeing how most of them don’t even get “the jokes” except for one or two that realize this is still a play and crack up. As the movie progressed I noticed the same type of audience around me. The ones that perhaps were there for the musical. The ones who would call this a weird but interesting experience and that’s all they can get out of it. This is no ordinary cineplex, after all, I thought. This is an elite establishment for the intellect, right? So I bet the audience here resembles the one in Cannes. Yes, they do. So let’s look around for the people who are here to support the movie. To make this movie count as a “successful one”. The ones that are purely here because it’s playing at Viff. Maybe the ones who just came to see how Carax tops Holy motors :) You see, Carax was well aware of me and the rest of his audience questioning the very choice of him making a musical in the first place and he was asking us a question in return: could you make a successful movie without including the ordinary and keeping them entertained? This is when I started to see how Carax treats the main plot. How he puts minimum effort to keep it still barely engaging for such an audience to sit through it to the end. The whole thing is just an ordinary love story stylized by Carax. However, even when stylized, this first plot is still very accessible. For example, you see the mental state of an artist getting ready to go on stage as if he was getting ready for a fight. The same focus he has on his success. To kill it on the stage like a fucking boxer, blah, blah.
So wait, is this Carax himself, and are we the audience? Maybe the reason the story is told in this form and a populist tone is us. I had a second look around me when people started laughing at the scenes. Were they aware of the subplot being told here? Carax masterfully reinforces and builds the subplot of an artist who is focused on success and who is forced to surrender to the request to entertain the audience. Then he holds a mirror and shows the same audience around you and tells you the bitter truth that the ones who care about the subplot and understand it are so few in numbers. That no production would make it to Cannes or Viff if it didn’t acknowledge the ordinary and include them. That this is business after all. He was well aware that even the best of American cinema can’t go beyond Rousseau and he wasn’t even here to give them that. Instead, he was here to talk to his audience in de Sade’s language. All these being said, he made a fucking musical after all — so maybe all this was nothing more than Carax’s attempt to redeem himself. While the hyper-priming effect of the Sativa was fading away, I could see the main plot tying itself closer to the subplot. I could see the ties between the artist’s struggle to keep people entertained and how he maybe was not meant to do this at all to begin with. In the end, he focuses on this success, kills his love for it which will haunt him forever. He even loses the love of the puppet child (references to Pinocchio, and Geppetto’s art becoming alive, blah blah) the only thing left to him is to love back with the last dialogue “But I can love you right? I’m sorry but it’s not possible anymore”.
What I liked: The intelligence of Carax and how I was in agreement with him about the bitter truth. He gained my trust and somehow redeemed himself by the end. Halfway through the movie, I could follow the subplot clearly and sit back and let Carax orchestrate the shit out of this show. I also admire how he managed to include the audience around me as part of this experience and show me how they resemble the story. To top these, one of the last scenes showed the final act of Annette taking place in the Vancouver stadium which was the perfect coincidence. All those dumb audiences gathered to see a miracle of Annette but end up with disappointment. I heard one of those comments as soon as I got out of the theatre “It was pretty different but just too weird man!”.
What I didn’t like: In theory, Carax tries to achieve something noble here. To create something entertaining for the masses while talking to his own audience. The problem is, he is still not giving enough shit to achieve the first part which is “keeping the ordinary viewer entertained”. This results in a failure which he acknowledges through both plots in the movie. I also can’t call this movie successful because after getting the points of the subplot, the movie becomes unbearable to sit through, let alone watch it for the second time. He also completely leaves out everyone else who doesn’t get the reference to this sub-plot I’m talking about. Directors like Stanley Kubrick achieved what Carax aims for without the obvious snobbish attitude and on-the-nose sarcasm.
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Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (Great to watch)
