the meaning of life / not bad for 102

via

[at the time it was taken, he was only 99].

history

trailer for Manoel de Oliveira's Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura [Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl]

I am so excited.

[I don't think there's a version with English subtitles as of yet...]

um modo de filmar muito correcto

"There is a Portuguese director that I like very much, Pedro Costa, who has a very appropriate way of filming. One time, he told me that I film the rich, and he films the poor. I told him that I film souls - and there are souls as much in the rich as in the poor."
- Manoel de Oliveira

[«Há um realizador português de que gosto muito, o Pedro Costa, que tem um modo de filmar muito correcto. Uma vez, ele disse-me que eu filmava os ricos, ele filmava os pobres. Respondi-lhe que eu filmo as almas – e as almas tanto há nos ricos como nos pobres.»]

Many thanks to André for this.

Vale Abraão

Wittgenstein and Oliveira 2

"If the human artifice par excellence is language, if that is our true nature, then the word constitutes the weave of existence itself."

[...]

"If the migrations of the soul are unutterable, if the possible transgressions seem too autistic, then the other is nothing more than a pretext for complaint or for one’s reasoning; meanwhile, life escapes us inexorably, as fleeting as the water of that river which flows on the other side of the train’s window, as the film shows us again and again. In the end, of these many forms of existence, no one is able to capture more than some vague explanations offered to the wind, whose secret seems to safeguard some sort of original sin of impossible redemption, lost in the darkness of time."

- from On the Uncertain Nature of Cinema (By Way of the Work of Manoel de Oliveira) by Victor Erice

I was going to write an in-depth piece on the significance of Wittgenstein's early work in establishing language as the only way to engage meaningfully with the world, yet still entirely lacking as a tool for engagement with certain meaningful things. Instead, I stumbled across a piece that cites all the passages I had intended and then some, and makes my case as effectively as I could have hoped for. So, with my endorsement, I point you to paragraphs 2 through 7 of Wittgenstein, Hofstadter, Varela by Matthew Segall. The rest of the piece goes in directions I don't agree with - the section on Hofstadter is especially disconcerting, as I think it misunderstands some main arguments from Gödel, Escher, Bach. Though I can't speak to his thoughts on Varela's idea of autopoesis, I do find his approach to Wittgenstein very much in line with my own. On the assumption that you've read the Wittgenstein section of the piece, I will now speak of Manoel de Oliveira.

I would say that Oliveira's work rests on the supposition that by speaking, we falsely believe that language contains the whole of truth (thus falling into the trap of Logical Positivism). What Oliveira does is perhaps to add the "that which cannot be spoken of," by way of hinting at it through rhythym, through observation, and through the image. Oliveira's camera, through its steadiness, subverts the passionate assertions of truth on the part of his characters (the 'objective' camera puts 'subjective' speech in context). By letting his characters carry through their arguments to their logical possible ends, we see the limits of argument - which is to say, language. It is as if Oliveira's work is the Tractatus in its complete form, without the Logical Positivist misinterpretation, where the emphasis has been re-placed on the final sentence. Oliveira, like Wittgenstein, explores language as a possibly complete system for engaging with the world; like Wittgenstein, he gives language a full chance and still finds it lacking. Oliveira's work fully explores that which can be spoken of to give a sense of that which lies beyond the posssibilities of speech.

Proposition 7

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
("Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen")
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Oliveira and Wittgenstein

This is a comment I left on Danny's post on O Quinto Império - Ontem Como Hoje. Read my previous, more in-depth post on this film here.

"I wonder how much of Oliveira’s project is Wittgensteinian… I’m thinking not so much of the Investigations, but of his earlier work (esp the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), which asserts that the analysis of language is the only way to meaningfully discuss the facts that make up the world [”Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”]. That is the last sentence of the Tractatus, which to me means that Wittgenstein sees other things as important but they are, literally, unspeakable. Does the weighty absence of these things in Wittgenstein’s work connect to those moments in Oliveira’s work when things are not spoken (the Jesus in the tapestry, for instance)?"

The above is in need of an expansion, but not now; I'm off to see O Lucky Man! now, and If... a bit later on. Here's your bonus Wittgenstein content of the day: three clips from Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (via the new Wittgenstein blog The Wittgenstein Forum):

'Non', ou A Vã Glória de Mandar

Trailer for Manoel de Oliveira's 1990 film 'Non', ou A Vã Glória de Mandar / No, or the Vain Glory of Command:



2 IMDB user comments makes this seem like Oliveira's anti-colonialist masterpiece:

"Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973. He easily draws his comrades into philosophical musings, and the little contingent suffers badly at the hands of the local military opposition."

"The movie starts in the beginning of the end the of Portuguese Colonial Empire, illustrating the discontent of Portugueses Arm Forces concerning the development of the war in the Portuguese Colonies. At the same time, it demonstrates, in the words of a young Portuguese soldier (as a way of explaining why they are there,in the war), the evolution of the existence of Portuguese State (as a concept or an idea of building independent State). Which shows from Viriato (considered the "first Portuguese" to fight for the independence of the Roman province of Lusitania which now constitutes currently part of Porugal) passing by D. Sebastião (that was a Portuguese king that had a dream of building a Christian empire in northern Africa; from there reconquer the holy land, and after that crowned himself Pope of all Christianity and then overthrown the Pope in Rome)... It's a very profund film, and I consider it a one of the greatest achievements of the Portuguese moderno cinema."

Manoel de Oliveira's O Quinto Império - Ontem Como Hoje

"This historical and utopian obsession with the Fifth Empire seems to have become a reality again. One that has already been tried out by the U.N. and is now being carried out with deep conviction by the European Union. In the meantime, the world is today submitted to a sort of return to the Middle Ages, subjected to an implacable terrorism that victimizes the innocent and which disturbs the U.S.A. as much as Europe, attempting to destroy western civilization. This is a sort of return to an atavistic and incoherent struggle, which is also a return to the mythical Fifth Empire, to the desired one and the hidden one... These are the reasons leading me to give this film the title: THE FIFTH EMPIRE – YESTERDAY AS TODAY." – Manoel de Oliveira

Manoel de Oliveira's O Quinto Império - Ontem Como Hoje (The Fifth Empire - Yesterday As Today)

What is the Fifth Empire?

What does Camões have to do with it?
Luís de Camões, the singular Portuguese literary figure, wrote Os Lusíadas, the great Portuguese national epic. Os Lusíadas chronicles Portugal's voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries, and shares the sense of a people's great (divinely foreordained) destiny with Virgil's Aeneid. Camões printed the work in 1572, for which he received a stipend from Sebastião. Os Lusíadas, like The Aeneid, is a myth of the past that informs a near-messianic vision of the future of the nation. The poetry of Camões shows up sporadically in O Quinto Império.

"This film to which I am giving the title THE FIFTH EMPIRE - YESTERDAY AS TODAY is based on the theatre play EL-REI SEBASTIÃO, by José Régio. José Régio (1900 to 1968) was a critic, poet, playwright, novelist and essayist; he was a major figure of his time and of today, and the play, as he stated, intended to analyse the King, the Man and the mythical character of the Portuguese King Sebastião.
Sebastião, after the overwhelming defeat at the Battle of Alcácer-Kibir (1578), better known as the Battle of the Three Kings, after which his body was never identified, became the myth of the hidden one, having previously been the desired one and the one destined to receive the myth. A myth which is indeed sung and exalted in the sermons of Father António Vieira (XVII Century), by the philosopher Sampaio Bruno (XIX Century) and in the XX Century by the poet Fernando Pessoa and by the philosopher José Marinho, among other Portuguese writers and psychologists, as well as by some foreign researchers.
Curiously, this myth is also part of the Muslim mythology with the same nomenclature of the hidden one and, just like King Sebastião, the same is supposed to take place with the Muslim Imam (that of the twelfth generation) whose common belief is that he will come on a white horse on a misty morning in order to finally defeat the evil of the world and establish harmony among people." - Manoel de Oliveira

This Oliveira quote gets at why Sebastião is such an interesting figure from a Portuguese perspective, but sidesteps the actual plot of the movie. The film is the process of Sebastião deciding to embark on the crusade that leads to the Battle of Alcácer-Kibir. A bit of background:
In the 16th century, Christian Europe was in the midst of a centuries-long existential conflict with the Muslim world. In 1529 the Ottomans lay siege to Vienna (as would happen again in 1683). The Iberian peninsula had only been retaken from the Moors in 1492. In 1571, the Turkish Sultan had been defeated at Lepanto by Christian forces commanded by Don John of Austria, King Sebastião's grandfather. This film chronicles the leadup to Sebastião's 1578 campaign into Morocco (to choose sides in a civil war). Sebastião ignored the wisdom of his advisers and invaded, leading to the ruin of the Portuguese nation -- it disappeared as an independent nation from 1580 to 1640 (or, arguably, until the end of the Portuguese Restoration War in 1668).

Let's review: in the midst of a long, existential conflict with the Muslim world, a ruler tries to replicate the success of his father - sorry, grandfather - and embarks on an ill-advised mission against the advice of experienced leaders in the country, leading to the ruin of his nation. Oh, and he believes that God put him on the throne to begin with, and hears voices encouraging his actions? Perhaps now is a good time to remind you of the subtitle of the film...

It's clear, though that Oliveira is doing more than critiquing the Bush administration. His first quote tips us off that his critique is of the entire neoliberal order, and the quest to extend global capitalism. Oliveira's implication is that this extension of the values of the West - including capitalism, and even democracy and individual rights - shares essential characteristics with the religious and political aspirations of the Age of Empires. I'd argue that Oliveira doesn't oppose those values so much as recognize that the exertion of power taints both victor and victim, and thus calls into question the exercise of power in "defense" of (or rather, for the extension of) Western values -- rather than questioning the values themselves. Or perhaps I'm projecting...


Stylistically, this is very much a Manoel de Oliveira film. Oliveira uses long static shots of people seated and talking, often while not facing each other. In spite of this, the pace of the film is made (relatively) fast due to how much is being said; for Oliveira, content frequently lies in what we hear. This theatricality and staginess is important to Oliveira because he fully believes that sound is a more important storytelling mechanism than the camera.

And yet, the cinematography is stunning; the pictures I've posted do poor justice to a chiaroscuro brilliance that calls to mind the best of Rembrandt, or the most dramatic lighting of John Alcott's/Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Cinematographer Sabine Lancelin has shot 6 films with Oliveira (most of his recent output), 2 of Chantal Akerman's, and shot Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre. This film is like 3,000 frames of glorious renaissance art, full of vanishing points and shadow and candlelight.
The pace of the film and its artful use of light allow the embrace of architectural beauty; lancet arches and other Gothic forms become focal points in the frame, further historicising the film but also creating a pure formal beauty.


Portrait of Jan Six, 1654. Oil on canvas.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn


still from Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)


The Fifth Empire - Yesterday As Today [Official Site]




Further reading:
Against the Grain: On the Cinematic Vision of Manoel de Oliveira
by Randal Johnson (from 2003)