Alain Resnais’ “La guerre est finie/The War Is Over” (1966) – When Cultural (Symbolic And Sublime) Transcendence Is Impossible, Then Politics Becomes Purely Instrumental Political Fight Without Cultural (Philosophically And Artistically) Agenda Becomes As Anti-humanistic As (Conservative/Authoritarian) Status Quo Brother, friend, I want to barter Your house for my stallion, saddle for your mirror, Change my dagger for your blanket. By Federico Garcia Lorca The population will all be petty bourgeois, the workers having been anthropologically eliminated by the bourgeoisie. Pierre Paolo Pasolini, “Lutheran Letters”, p. 39 Between 1961 and 1975 something essential changed: genocide took place. A whole population was culturally destroyed… The young boys, deprived of their values and their models as if of their blood, have become ghostly copies of a different way and concept of life – that of the middle class. Pierre Paolo Pasolioni, Ibid, p. 101 – 102 Something was happening in the democratic West at the time when Resnais made his “La guerre est finie”. He was one of the first to notice it. Pasolini was, may be, even closer to be the first who understood that the progressive energies of the Western democracies become progressively flattened and exhausted. He talked about bourgeoisiefication of the population at large. Resnais’ film elaborates how the changing conditions of life (development of cheap pseudo-prosperity) fixates the population on consumption and entertainment, and this fact pulls the rug from under people like the main character of the film – a professional revolutionary in the tradition of Spanish Civil War, who dedicated his whole life to fighting for the interests of the poor. In US during the same period Herbert Marcuse noticed the same cultural-political mutation and registered the changes in his “One-dimensional Man”. Many intelligent and well educated in humanistic sciences people in Europe and US saw that the matter-of-factly idea that future life in democratic societies will be better – not only more materially prosperous, but more democratic and humane, was nearing its last breath. But the intellectual elite reacted in two opposite ways. One group, Americans and Europeans, quickly learned a new, depoliticized language, and developed euphemistic and pleonastic lexicon of dissertations and publications. Another group, mainly, students of liberal arts in both Europe and US, tried to battle without the larger population. It is this outburst of idealistic enthusiasm “in spite of the desert around” brought about May 68 student revolts. Resnais depicts students like this in “The War is Over”, with neat idealism of smart and angelic leaders believing that the students will be the new revolutionary “proletariat”. There is a third group – radicalized intellectuals and knights of truth reacting against the success of repressive desublimation in democratic societies, the whistle blowers and exceptional reporters and journalists who, in spite of the inertia and political degradation of the population and selling out of academics, tried again and again to explain what‘s really going on in the Western democracies, with the hope that scientific truth will pull people away from pop-singers, athletic events and discounted cheeseburgers. Nobody expected this “complication” in the very progressive political orientation of the democratic societies – that more and more people “on the bottom” will become corrupted by the cheap consumerism, which in the 21st century is under the menace of disappearing because of frivolous globalist wars, Wall Street financial speculations and collapses and “austerity” for the population inspired and promoted by neocon politicians*. When today’s conformists/consumerists were honestly poor there was always something else in the souls of these people beside the desire to get richer. It was disinterested vitality (DV) as a form of spirituality, a question of human dignity. While today the dignity aspect is in a process of being forgotten and what left is compulsive consumerism and daydreaming about riding the white horse of wealth, before existed the pathos of fight for justice and equality as principles, not only for improving personal material condition. It is this spiritual disinterested passion which was shattered by the experience of pseudo-prosperity in consumerist period of democratic societies. And this precious disinterestedness as a cultural asset is very difficult to recover. Without interest for otherness, disinterested truth, ability for empathy and sympathy, and critical thinking real democratic progress cannot continue. Fight based on righteous hatred, even a justified one, cannot be the way to a more democratic future. The hero of Resnais’ film understood this, but the students – friends of Nadine, who are themselves are disinterested idealists, made a fetish (with plumage of feathers) from extreme forms of political struggle and their fight is doomed to be in an existential vacuum. The masses in the West mixing consumerism with prosperity, are rich by the mythical unconscious identification with wealthy. The film is an analysis of how Diego Mora (Ives Montand) comes to horrifying – discouraging understanding that the very basic reason for his fight of a professional revolutionary is disappearing like snow during spring or yellow-red leafs in late autumn. Successful fight is possible only when it is intelligent – when intelligence dominates passion, when human mind overrides the technical (strategic – calculative-manipulative) mind. How many people then and today are able to accept this primate of humanistic intelligence over technical intelligence, of intelligence over narcissistic stubbornness supported by dogmatism as a bulwark? Of course, there are deadly risks to “abandon” the new, philistine masses to their wealthy manipulators and their conservative propagandists-politicians. Hungry philistines are only one step (or half-a-step) away from psychologically turning into full-fledged fascists. Already less and less people to continue to think that needy are deserved to be helped. They are more and more supporting the neo-cons who try to eliminate Medicare and Medicate and reduce Social Security. But Diego intends to continue his fight even for people who are becoming more corrupt than before. Diego is fortunate to have a wife (Ingrid Thulin) who shares his understanding of a change of a political and cultural situation in the West and is ready to start a new life with completely different forms of resistance than before. But the Spanish and French right wing bureaucrats and enthusiasts continue to collect materials about Mora and Marianne. Will our heroic couple be able to start a new life in Spain, with new paths of struggle, will they get the chance to invent new forms of political fight? Resnais leaves us uncertain about these matters, as life does. Even in 21st century the issue of the necessity of changing the forms of political resistance is still completely uncertain. People who are ready to do all they can for farther democratization of the Western countries, have to think, to create, to become progressives in a new sense. They have to invent a new sense of the word “fight”, when the words “difficult” and “dangerous” can mean something else than before. At the end of the film when Ingrid Thulin walking long way to the airplane terminal, is the image-premonition of how long it may take for history to change from militant fight for justice to existential one. The fact that she for the first time during the film wears a head-scarf, tells us how difficult it will be to materially survive for those who will pursue an existentially-spiritual strategy of fighting for a more democratic life. *Factual pauperization, the first steps of which we are experiencing today, will not return us to the previous – a pre-consumerist condition of a political fight, because people are already have been changed by the period of consumerist fever. People with petit bourgeois psychology will not react on austerity and pauperization like pre-bourgeois masses – they can react with a fascist blindness, in righteously and solemnly extremely violent manner.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:38:33 +0000
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