You Are History: The Man Who Saw Everything

‘I don’t want to talk about it now’

But you must” she said firmly ‘You are history’

There is no conceivable way to do justice to the absorbing, subtle complexity of this novel in a few, inevitably rather schematic, observations. But here goes.

All that you really need to know is that the main protagonist (Saul) suffers two traffic accidents, both on the zebra crossing made famous by the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road album. These incidents occur in 1988 just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and in 2016 just after the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. Two pivotal events in European history. 

The book is concerned with the way that the perception, experience and recollection of events is mediated between the individual and the wider world. One lives through events in both senses of the word: through in the sense of being present on the journey and through in the sense of being an actor - doing, and not doing, things during those wider events.

History happens to us and through us and there are parallels between how we behave and how the wider world is taken to behave. We may study East German dictatorships because our father was a bully. We may wish to leave East Germany for Liverpool because the Beatles offer a sense of artistic freedom which must, surely, be reflected in that city.

The way that this becomes apparent in the novel is little short of wizardry. To be ludicrously schematic about it one can see it as a series of palimpsests relating to different time periods when the external world changed markedly or was about to change. However, these palimpsests tilt and intersect vertically rather than just sitting one over another. Intersection is the product of the individual who provides the vertical connections. And the external palimpsest alters its angle depending on the relationships between the individual and other individuals who were also observing the same events.

This is dizzying particularly when past and present and future start to bleed into each other through these points of intersection within the mind of a character:

‘I’ve mixed then and now all up’

To which his girlfriend from 1988 (Jennifer) replies:

‘That’s what I do in my photographs’

And indeed photographs are crucial. There is quote from Susan Sontag in the frontispiece about how photographs turn people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. But these are for the benefit of the person taking and viewing the photographs - not the subject.

There is no reciprocal. As the 1988 Jennifer says: ‘Its not as if its my life’s work to help you see me. I’ve got other things to do’.

The belief of some animists that photography steals the soul has some resonance here as well as the sense that consent to being observed can never truly be given because the observation relating to the photograph can never be fully and consistently consented: photographs are very clearly owned throughout the novel. As the subject you can never know who owns you in the future. 

There is a huge difference between Saul mixing up time and Jennifer mixing up photographs. The latter does, however, have profound implications for the former.

Spectres and revenants haunt the novel. They populate the intersections. 

My father was sitting on a chair near the telephone

'You're dead' I whispered

He laughed 'Not yet'.

In other words people 'die' in terms of how far the impact and implications of their death have been processed.

Haunting can also alter in nature. Changed perspective in the present can alter the way that someone is perceived in the past. This may happen when there is a physical interaction in one time period. In one gorgeous, completely breathtaking moment it is said that : ‘I reached for her new older hand with my new older hand’.

There are parallels and doublings throughout the novel: the jaguar which supposedly wanders in the old East Berlin; the car accidents involve a Jaguar car. In other words the 'jaguar' is one of the points of vertical intersection: the shards of glass lodged in the brain of the victim are like the Stasi getting inside the head of the dissident making them imagine that they can be punished for their thoughts. 

To be more fanciful one also wonders if the spookiness is also quantum. In the old East Berlin there is a statue of an astronaut called: Man Overcomes Space and Time. Are these entanglements and intersections between time periods also a reference to non-local effects and the spookiness of the quantum world in which the particles that make the universe run have what in everyday terms are wholly bizarre connections. Is time, in those terms, an emergent phenomenon which reflects network effects?

These wonders are to be found in a book which could be summarised as being about crossing a road in central London. But successfully crossing a road is not only down to you. 

‘You’ve been trying to cross the road for thirty years but stuff happened on the way’.

Lockdown Throwback

The first few weeks of lockdown and the relative dearth of new films have allowed some delving back into previous decades, in particular the 1960s and 70s for reacquaintance (including the stellar MUBI retrospective of Jean-Pierre Melville including Un Flic, Le Doulos and others as well as Bresson's Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne which I haven't covered here) and new discoveries.

The Last Metro (technically 1980 but hey) which felt like such an appropriate film for the moment - the power of art to survive the worst of circumstances. Powerhouse performances from Deneuve and Depardieu and by the time the swelling romantic music rolls over the credits there's not a dry eye in the house.

The Innocents (1961) Much imitated, rarely if ever fully bettered, this is one of the great psychological horror films. The setting, direction, cinematography and foley are pitched perfectly. The casting seems inspired: Deborah Kerr conveys just the right balance of prim governess with a religious upbringing and genuinely empathetic protector which allows her to share the experience of the possessed. 

The resulting psychological inflammation is tantamount to a fever which can only be resolved by bringing everyone to crisis point. Unlike many of the imitators, The Innocents is rigorously, internally consistent which means that we view proceedings with a genuine investment in the fate of the characters.

Murmur Of The Heart (1971) This is, I think, the jazz version of growing up in the mid 1950s. Jazz is the score and it's also the tempo - with all of the dizzying changes of key and built in improvisation that implies. 

The protagonist has an ostensibly structured, provincial, bourgeois life and family but one that in practice is far from conventional. A distant father barely engages; a doting but also rather exotic mother can hardly stop herself. Finding himself between these poles, pushed away by one and pulled by the other, the son's trajectory through adolescence - or the short section that we see in this film - is both heightened and erratic. 

His sentimental education in this context is shown in a series of droll set pieces which range from the physical comedy of 'spinach tennis' which breaches decorum but little else, to much more emotionally wrought and transgressive behaviour.

The whole is suffused in a warm and safe glow. There is no sense of real peril and the family ends up in the equivalent of a group hug laughing out loud whether from relief, incomprehension or smug self-satisfaction. For all the bad behaviour on display the indulgence does not seem misplaced. This is coming of age more as farce than tragedy.

Images (1972) A largely forgotten curio with a highly committed central performance from Susannah York, Images comes across as having some of the feel of Don't Look Now, some pretensions to the psychological heft of Persona and some clear reference points in the paranoia of Repulsion. Sadly it doesn't really stand comparison with any of these apparent inspirations. 

The major failing is that one never feels remotely involved with the characters. Much of what is seen is happening inside Susannah York's head and her mental illness, schizophrenia or mania is disturbing but also distancing. That said the film does at least have an overall coherence and Altman resists just throwing everything at the wall.

Eva (1962) A Jeanne Moreau masterclass. There's an impeccable, untouchable depth to her amorality which is perfectly suited to punching all of the bruises of someone who simply pretends to amorality but harbours deep self-loathing, vulnerability and guilt and needs someone as bad as they consider themselves to be to give them consolation. Naturally she doesn't.

That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) High emotions in some very low places but 'that most important thing' remains elusive in terms of genuine reciprocity: the performer and the observer seemingly cannot truly connect. Despite the grotesqueries of plot and setting, which doubtless act as a commentary on a world seemingly in inexorable decline, the film is curiously engrossing. This undoubtedly owes a great deal to the luminous Romy Schneider who was probably incapable of being anything other than riveting.

Une Chambre En Ville (1982 yes, OK) A musical about domestic tragedy set during a workers strike in Nantes in the mid 1950s. It shouldn't work. It mostly does. 

So, that's quick survey of some of the films watched during this very strange period in our lives. Do I draw any conclusions from the choice? 

A retreat to the comfort blanket of the past. I have no doubt that for example The Last Metro reflects a sense that however bad it gets there is always resilience and hope. 

A good deal of psychological turmoil being portrayed on screen.

An opportunity to disinter some films that I haven't seen for a very long time and to see whether they still stand up. With gems like Murmur of the Heart, admittedly by one of my all time favourite directors Louis Malle, the answer is undoubtedly, resoundingly, yes. So these films retain their power  to offer some sustenance, however awful the current circumstances.