The Last
36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup, Jacques Rivette's final film, from 2009, came out in the U.S. as Around a Small Mountain, which title makes sense only as it pertains to the circus troupe's traveling shows in the vicinity of Pic Saint-Loup (elevation 2,159 feet) in the Massif Central in southern France.
Rivette's geographical title, and the director coming to rest for his last movie on a specific place (except for two scenes taking place in Paris), doesn't reveal anything specific in relation to the movie's story. It could've taken place anywhere in France, or in many other countries. Also, there aren't thirty-six locations from which we see Pic Saint-Loup, although, since I've seen the film just once and it didn't occur to me to count the number of times the mountain is shown, it could be that Rivette shows it thirty-six times.
The number thirty-six, like the use of other numbers in his films, must be significant, and yet the final reveal on such things doesn't necessarily answer my questions. In Out 1, a literary basis for the film is Balzac's three part novel, History of the Thirteen, referring to a conspiracy consisting of thirteen individuals, this premise being mirrored in Rivette's nearly thirteen hour long movie. In Out 1, I didn't know exactly what the ultimate significance of the thirteen-based plot among the film's "conspirators" really is, since it turns out to be not something sinister, but more of a "game," as one of the characters puts it. This play with numbers seems to be Rivette finding enjoyment in catching a viewer's mind.
Rivette, who died in 2016, had an extraordinary ability of drawing in a viewer, as long the viewer is willing to be led through a narrative maze. Rivette, like David Lynch whose method is similar, doesn't explain. We spend time watching his films wondering why a character does or says something, also why the director lingers on something, or moves his camera to something else, or includes a thirty or forty second shot of traffic in the middle of a movie.
As artificial and theatrical as his work is, there's also a vivid reality-based quality to it, with people behaving like people, wind in the trees sounding and looking exactly like wind in the trees, with an attention to detail that gives each moment equal weight to everything else. Each part contains the whole, as in a hologram.
There's a little traveling circus, with Jane Birkin taking part, although we never see her circus act (a tightrope performer, evidently, from one scene in which she, not a stunt double, is practicing). She has a tragic event in her past, her father having been accidentally killed during a performance. Sergio Castellitto plays Vittorio, a random stranger who fixes her car one day. He apparently has a lot of time on his hands, he's a well-off Italian (based on his sport car), and he spends the movie hanging around the circus troupe as they perform in towns near Pic Saint-Loup.
He seems intrusive to some, especially to Jane Birkin's character. There are times in the film when he seems to act as the audience trying to get to know the characters, who assert their rights to not be known. I got this impression from the frequent snatches of circus performance depicted, that we're looking at a stage upon which stylization and artifice hold court.
This element of performance (theatrical or not) exists in every Rivette film I've seen so far. In this movie, as shown by the frequent views of the eponymous mountain, the stage (or the cinematic frame) is the foreground of our experience of watching a story unfold in its meanings, while in the background looms the mountain and sky beyond, out to infinity. The film, thus, shows everything and everyone, the stage or cinematic frame (or the pages of the novel or poem, or the painter's canvas) a way in to an experience, the one experience, like in a hologram, containing the whole.
Whether or not Rivette, or his astute interpreters would agree with this idea of mine, I don't know. I just made it up, it makes sense to me right now.
Rivette's final image, his last shot in his last film, shows Pic Saint-Loup on the right at twilight, a saddleback slope to another smaller peak on the left, the nearly full moon above, looking unnaturally large and close, as if pulling at the camera lens. Birds at the end of the day sing their last, clouds pass to reveal full moonlight, then cover it up again, an image of being born, living and creating, then dying.
I'm glad I have many more Rivette films to watch. He went places with his cinema, mysterious places inside the heart and mind and soul, where no one else has gone, doing it as a matter of practice.
Vic Neptune
36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup, Jacques Rivette's final film, from 2009, came out in the U.S. as Around a Small Mountain, which title makes sense only as it pertains to the circus troupe's traveling shows in the vicinity of Pic Saint-Loup (elevation 2,159 feet) in the Massif Central in southern France.
Rivette's geographical title, and the director coming to rest for his last movie on a specific place (except for two scenes taking place in Paris), doesn't reveal anything specific in relation to the movie's story. It could've taken place anywhere in France, or in many other countries. Also, there aren't thirty-six locations from which we see Pic Saint-Loup, although, since I've seen the film just once and it didn't occur to me to count the number of times the mountain is shown, it could be that Rivette shows it thirty-six times.
The number thirty-six, like the use of other numbers in his films, must be significant, and yet the final reveal on such things doesn't necessarily answer my questions. In Out 1, a literary basis for the film is Balzac's three part novel, History of the Thirteen, referring to a conspiracy consisting of thirteen individuals, this premise being mirrored in Rivette's nearly thirteen hour long movie. In Out 1, I didn't know exactly what the ultimate significance of the thirteen-based plot among the film's "conspirators" really is, since it turns out to be not something sinister, but more of a "game," as one of the characters puts it. This play with numbers seems to be Rivette finding enjoyment in catching a viewer's mind.
Rivette, who died in 2016, had an extraordinary ability of drawing in a viewer, as long the viewer is willing to be led through a narrative maze. Rivette, like David Lynch whose method is similar, doesn't explain. We spend time watching his films wondering why a character does or says something, also why the director lingers on something, or moves his camera to something else, or includes a thirty or forty second shot of traffic in the middle of a movie.
As artificial and theatrical as his work is, there's also a vivid reality-based quality to it, with people behaving like people, wind in the trees sounding and looking exactly like wind in the trees, with an attention to detail that gives each moment equal weight to everything else. Each part contains the whole, as in a hologram.
There's a little traveling circus, with Jane Birkin taking part, although we never see her circus act (a tightrope performer, evidently, from one scene in which she, not a stunt double, is practicing). She has a tragic event in her past, her father having been accidentally killed during a performance. Sergio Castellitto plays Vittorio, a random stranger who fixes her car one day. He apparently has a lot of time on his hands, he's a well-off Italian (based on his sport car), and he spends the movie hanging around the circus troupe as they perform in towns near Pic Saint-Loup.
He seems intrusive to some, especially to Jane Birkin's character. There are times in the film when he seems to act as the audience trying to get to know the characters, who assert their rights to not be known. I got this impression from the frequent snatches of circus performance depicted, that we're looking at a stage upon which stylization and artifice hold court.
This element of performance (theatrical or not) exists in every Rivette film I've seen so far. In this movie, as shown by the frequent views of the eponymous mountain, the stage (or the cinematic frame) is the foreground of our experience of watching a story unfold in its meanings, while in the background looms the mountain and sky beyond, out to infinity. The film, thus, shows everything and everyone, the stage or cinematic frame (or the pages of the novel or poem, or the painter's canvas) a way in to an experience, the one experience, like in a hologram, containing the whole.
Whether or not Rivette, or his astute interpreters would agree with this idea of mine, I don't know. I just made it up, it makes sense to me right now.
Rivette's final image, his last shot in his last film, shows Pic Saint-Loup on the right at twilight, a saddleback slope to another smaller peak on the left, the nearly full moon above, looking unnaturally large and close, as if pulling at the camera lens. Birds at the end of the day sing their last, clouds pass to reveal full moonlight, then cover it up again, an image of being born, living and creating, then dying.
I'm glad I have many more Rivette films to watch. He went places with his cinema, mysterious places inside the heart and mind and soul, where no one else has gone, doing it as a matter of practice.
Vic Neptune
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