Front Row Geek: Juliet of the Spirits: Dangerous Nightmare Poetry

June 21, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Preface

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t daunted with the task of writing anything about Fellini’s Juliet. There is nearly fifty years of criticism on the film, preceding my own, so forgive me the insolence it takes to even put fingers to keys on the subject. If there is a pantheon of directors surely Fellini resides there. In danger of sounding like a film snob, I argue there is a difference between movies and cinema. An idea expressed many times before, a Movies is entertainment, while Cinema is art. As such I’d call this my first attempt at a critique of cinema, coming hours after my first viewing of the film.

Storytelling takes many forms. Within one culture there are multiple styles and techniques for conveying a story, so to begin comparing storytelling techniques from different countries would be pointless. However I find it necessary to address this here because this story is told in a fashion unlike that which American audiences are accustomed. Not only is the storytelling foreign to American Hollywood conventions but also the images chosen to convey that story are composed and captured in a way quite contrary to most American films. Lastly this film comes from an era of filmmaking several generations removed from our own, and I believe this may be the largest gap with which a modern audience would have to contend in order to fully appreciate Fellini’s film.

Juliet of the Spirits: Dangerous Nightmare Poetry

W.B. Preston

Frontrowgeek

@frontrowgeek

The establishing shot is captured by a floating camera. It glides and hovers, ethereal, as in a dream. Rarely is the frame static, it rocks to and fro, like a motorized crib, gently lulling us to sleep. Horns, drums, strings blast us awake again, as the invisible orchestra ushers us into our dream. His dream. I’d like to mention this now as I wish not to spend much time in comparison, especially in light of the preface, Inception is purportedly a film about dreams, yet very rarely does it feel very dream like. There are a few visual gags here and there, but for the most part it felt like a reality in which I was waiting for the dream to begin. With Fellini’s Juliet, I felt myself in a fevered dream, waiting for scenes of reality to anchor me, to steady the ship.

This should prove once and for all that all the money and cgi in the world cannot replace proper use of a camera, editing, actors, and a set. Not a spinning, water filling set, but a normal set, in which editing and camera work provide all the special effects needed.

I was quite disturbed by this film at several points throughout, some of the images are quite haunting, and I found myself, and still find myself, unable to shake them from my minds eye. Soaring through a play land, suddenly the camera passes through a nightmare, filled with demons and ghosts. The music often changes to a haunting repetition, unmistakably similar to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. In fact there are many images between the two films that seem to share a common core. Clearly Kubrick attempted to use Fellini as a template for his own dream, or nightmare, film.

However it is not merely an exhibition of slick camera movements and editing. There is a story being told here on the surface, a melodrama about a housewife suspicious of her husband’s infidelity. However the film weaves in and out of this story culminating in Juliet’s realization of her true self. With this realization is she freed or dammed? We do not know, as she walks her own path, either to her death, or having been reborn, towards a new life.

The dream like qualities of the film are created by a sense of madcap illusions, a framing device which allows for reappearing and disappearing characters, and scenes. There is a pervading sense that anything can happen at any time, while we here in 2013 know that with the limits of technology in 1964 it would be impossible for just anything to happen, the sense that it could is more powerful than anything that can be rendered with CGI. There is a constant investigation that is simultaneously text as well as sub textual, into the human psyche and our perception of what reality truly is, and having found this truth, what is it exactly we are supposed to do with this information? Fellini is scouring his own consciousness for hints at uncovering his subconscious for answers, while juxtaposing his own ideas against those of his heroine, concurrently struggling with conveying this information through text and film aesthetics. The snake eats its own tail.

Juliet is a bit of a cipher; however she occasionally strikes out and makes decisions with repercussions reverberating throughout the film. She mostly serves to be the dreamer, whose ghoulish subconscious jumps out at her in multiple forms, many of them sexual gods and goddesses, representing temptation and her own sexual repression. As with many dreams, they happen to the dreamer, rarely, unless focused and trained, is the dream steered by the dreamer. And so it is with Juliet as she is led to many different locations by a parade of characters, colorful and bright. Some are smiling and happy, others are in immense pain and sorrow, representing the dichotomy of life. Perhaps her final romp is upon the middle path, neither ecstatic nor tormented.

The traveling circus, the misfit troubadours, which are a staple in mid-sixties culture, are found here throughout the film. In a way they carry Juliet from one dreamscape to the next, laughing and jumping and singing. Yet there is a dark troupe that bookends the film. On a trip to the beach Juliet envisions a boat full of ghastly warriors, some kind of Vikings or conquerors who died on the shores of Italy. She is frightened greatly and recoils at the sight, as it is shocking and full of death.

It is interesting that Fellini chose to begin her entrance into the spiritual realm with the ancients. Those whose souls were full, and more than likely were exposed to all sorts of magic and witchcraft that Juliet encounters to begin her journey. Her husband brings a medium to their house for their anniversary; a sign of his romantic qualities, and this medium opens up not only Juliet but also the house to the spirit realm. This marks the beginning of her journey outward and inward. Upon the medium’s entrance we hear him speak of the ancient occult magic practiced by the Egyptians and other ancient civilizations. Thus the ancient warriors on the beach. Her entry, as I suspect all entry into the spirit realm, begins in the ancient world.

I feel Fellini was dealing with some of his own fears and doubts about his life, somehow finding comfort in creating images of his nightmares, and chronicling his own investigations of our reality. There are three modes of investigation he details, loosely the three acts. The first is séance. The séance opens up her soul and prepares her for all that is to come. She begins to question reality and look for signs of truth behind the masks of existence. This séance is also where she meets the ghost that will haunt her, till the end of the film, or presumably for the rest of her life. It serves as her conscience, although it is unclear if the voice is only her own memories, however I took it as the voice of a mischievous ghost, leading her down paths, some to dead ends.

The second mode of investigation is through sex, or the body. She is taught about the Kama Sutra, and told to release herself physically and to truly please her husband to end his infidelity. A shaman hermaphrodite teaches her this, in a hotel of some sort with impossible architecture. The shifting walls, hallways, doors and stairwells, entering a room through one door then exiting it through another, never to return from whence we came, adds to the dream like quality of the film. And this shaman of sex is a nightmare ghoul from the depths of Juliet’s, or Fellini’s subconscious. Sex frightens her fully, and she never opens up this side of her self, at least we never witness her open up sexually. There is a moment where it seems she might, but she is burdened by her religious youth. This is a major point of her frustrations and sadness yet she never realizes it. Or possibly she does and rejects its healing powers.

I do not feel the auteur agrees with our heroine here. The film is full of sexual images and models of physical youth perfected. The human body is on display here and celebrated, and engaged in the act freely. Yet our heroine must remain pure if we are to fully invest in her struggle. Her religiosity is furthered when she confesses to private eye whom disguises himself as a priest. Her sin is the mistrust of her husband, her father, her God. She has lost her faith in her marriage and must confess this transgression to the private eye in order to know the truth. She rebukes her faith in a scene of passion and fire that we rarely see from Juliet who is usually passive and quiet. Her demand to know that her faith is being honored is the end of faith.

Once the private eye shows her the truth, she is truly lost, and follows her neighbor to an orgy party, where she very nearly succumbs to her sexual desires. She is haunted by images of a religious ritualistic play, in which she is demanded by a Roman Emperor to renounce her faith. She refuses and is burned on a pyre. As she is about to give herself to some random man, the image of herself, or her friend whom committed suicide for a lost love, is recalled burning on the pyre. She flees from the orgy and continues her search, as now she realizes that the truth of her husband’s infidelity was not the truth of which she sought.

Finally the third mode of investigation is psychoanalysis, or the mind. She must open up her thoughts to the possibilities of what she truly is. Her own history revealed to her, she sees her father as a man whom replaced God. Her father then replaced by her husband. She never allowed herself to worship her own thought. Through this final investigation she must unshackle herself from her religious repression, physically manifested in the form of her father, whom she had previously replaced with her husband. With him now out of the picture due to his unfaithfulness, she again turned to the image of her father, a memory, a specter, whom informs her that he is only a figment of her imagination and she must let him go. She does and is released to find her own path.

None of this is explicitly said in the text, all of this is my own gathering from an oddly musical and esoteric film, which I found both intriguing and disturbing, profoundly. I am confident that anyone can see whatever they want to see in this film, the same can be said of any film, but this film asks the viewer to dig into his or her own experience and psyche and search for your own answers. I encourage the same, for this jewel of a film, and this type of film making is sorely lacking in American cinema, and begs to be explored and perpetuated.

5 out of 5 stars