The New World
Pocahontas, Smith, and Rolfe. The film is a perfect visual expression of the truth of marriage. Smith the settler intrudes upon the Powatan territory, gets almost killed, and is saved by Pocahontas. Her decision to save Smith comes in a flash like a miracle, and she herself does not know why she is doing it. She throws her body upon Smith's and the ritual is broken. However, the Powatan social order is instantly recovered -- the center now shifts to Pocahontas, she is the new individual representative of the ethical substance. Thus, Smith is welcomed, deceptively naturally.
After a while, the utopian life of Smith with the Powatan community ends. It becomes now Pocahontas' turn to visit Smith's fortress and undergo the same conversion process. She is taught how to be an English woman, just as Smith was taught how to be a Powatan man.
Smith decides to leave, however, and Pocahontas is left in a permanent state of mourning. Rolfe approaches her and they eventually get married. However, Pocahontas' heart is not in it, and her detachment continues over many years. Rolfe bears with it. Yet when Pocahontas hears the news that Smith is still alive, she tells Rolfe clearly that she has always been "married" to Smith. "You don't understand what marriage means, do you?" asks Rolfe. At this point, Rolfe's remark sounds like a pathetic patronization by a pious Christian husband, and it probably really is just that.
Pocahontas and Smith meet again. Smith talks to Pocahontas, but Pocahontas stays silent and her expression hardens. At the end, she decides to go back to Rolfe and to her "home." It is not as if she had now stopped loving Smith; it was just that she really did decide to put herself into the other side, the external, seemingly dry and empty side of marriage, which really is its truth.
On one level, this truth is a very familiar one. Two people love each other, and yet in time they break up due to external circumstances. One then marries another person whom one does not necessarily love. After a while, the old lover returns. Until then, it seems as if there is a real conflict between love (the old lover) and marriage (the new partner). The decision of Pocahontas is to live with the partner rather than with the lover. Yet the partner becomes at the same time a lover -- although love was not explicit in their actions, the decision to live with the partner brings out the truth of these "empty" gestures, which is love. This is because love itself is, objectively speaking, totally empty. After all, neither Smith nor Pocahontas did anything out of the ordinary -- their seemingly exceptional conversions were fully re-integrated into their respective social order. Behind the absolutely romantic strings and scenery dominating the screen, this cold emptiness of love persists.
Days of Heaven
Bill, Abbey, the Farm Owner -- the story is about marriage and ethical love again, but this time with a twist: the narration is done by the teenage Linda.
There is a scene where Linda learns tap-dancing from her fellow farmer. As an empty vessel -- an eye detached from the body, to use Tawada's motif -- Linda's role is to observe and mimic.
The expressions of Linda and Abbey have a striking resemblance. Yet Abbey, unlike Linda, cannot be a pure eye, and she has to be part of the scene, in fact in the middle of it all. There is nonetheless a strange detachment that lets Abbey's position overlap with Linda's. Abbey is not attached to Bill, nor is she attached to Linda, nor to the Farm Owner. Things happen just before real attachment turns Abbey into a particular.
Antagonisms which exist in the worker-hirer relation or the husband-wife-lover relation are flattened out by the eyes of Linda.
The Thin Red Line
Oh Jack.
The Tree of Life
The film's structure is: First, there is the archetypical modern Christian family. Second, there is the sublime imagery of the creation of the world. Third, there is the hymns that weave the two together. The finale is the merging of the first with the second.
Depicting a misfortune is much easier compared to depicting fortune. The death of the second son is followed by the creation of the world, and the sublime-ness of the imagery almost entirely erases the mother's grief for her son. In this way the death sinks into the unconscious of the film, and it does not explicitly set the tone. What follows is a momentary illusion of pure good family life. And then the father enters, and everything starts to go wrong. This is true of the modern family. For the modern family, as a rule, the father is someone who is not needed, is only superfluous, to the family. The father, unable to realize his fantasies on his own, trains his sons to become his heir and to realize said fantasies. Yet the sons do not obey, and the father becomes utterly destroyed in his role as absolute authority.
Unlike the other films, here there is no grand decision. Everything just "happens" to the father, just as is the case with Job. In both cases, the "punishment" or "misfortune" is itself also redemption. The father does not receive anything in exchange for his paternal authority and fantasies. Giving them up is itself the gift.
Which is all very fine, but then the ending comes along. Family members move around like marionettes and act our their roles. The scene is clearly lacking in spirit and fantasy, it takes place in a dead land, where the inner and the outer merge. There is nothing in this scene, it is pure gesture. Then, this scene is followed by the mother's decision -- the only real decision -- to hand over her son to God. And then the screen goes dark, and a light flickers, hinting at the new beginning of a new world, which makes sense in the context of the preceding scene in its utter emptiness.
The film leaves the viewers off at a point where they actually are -- the modern Christian family fantasy is over, and a new light has just been lit; where to take it from here? The film does not say. I guess it nonetheless depicts the fortune in the misfortune.
