The Duke of Burgundy: Oneiric Cinema and the Children of De Sade (and Buñuel)

 

(Note: this was written in 2014)

Increasingly, we hear the term "Lynchian" used to describe film with a dreamlike sensibility or disturbing (to some) sexual overtones, typically involving sadomasochistic themes. Not to diminish David Lynch's immense contributions to world cinema, but a corrective or perhaps merely a call for greater historical accuracy may be in order. 

 

Having said that, knowing that this was directed by Peter Strickland who helmed "Berberian Sound System". I was expecting something Buñuelian/Lynchian but hopefully, with a unique approach in some degree.

 

I was pleasantly surprised. If anything, the film reminded me more of Jean Rollin's atmospheric vampire films from the late sixties/early seventies. The songs and soundtrack by Cat's Eyes enhanced the feeling of an artifact from that era (to say nothing of the cinematography, the single-speed bicycles, and the typewriter). While the film was dreamlike, it was less disturbing than sensual, less portentous than insightful, and in places, touching and witty. 

 

Admittedly, few would regard piss play, submission and domination, and a look at power dynamics in a relationship that expresses itself through these media as playful, but you might be surprised. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going between Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna) and Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), I was gently set straight (!). Rather than review the plot and the characters alone, I want to address the larger context of films like this and why they continue to draw us in.

 

It's simple, really. We don't live fully awake lives; daily reality is a sequence of mundane moments in which we find ourselves passive actors at best, automatons at worst. Things happen to us over which we've no control and our reactions to events are shaped by our conditioning. But when something unusual, unexpected, or jarring occurs, large or small, we are shaken out of our complacency. We are shocked into another state, however briefly.

 

Thus dreams befuddle us, optical illusions fascinate and perplex us and the loss of a loved one or a bomb exploding traumatizes us. Each of these events can wake us up from our hugely unconscious, uncritical existence or render us mute or debilitated. A film like "Un Chien Andalou", "El Topo", or "Eraserhead" challenges expectations and frustrates the logic of an existence that is accustomed to linear time and straightforward causal relationships between events.

 

The history of film is replete with wonder and nightmare and we return to these works because they remain fresh, poetic, shocking, or disturbing or all of that or some combination thereof. For a couple of hours we enter another's dream state and experience it as our own, and in that experience, we call into question our identity and how we perceive reality.

 

To some degree, all of cinema is like this. The most banal Adam Sandler comedy can be experienced as a nightmare; gaudy, loud, abrasive, ugly, with random events and meaningless relationships. However, because we are creatures of context, we come to such frivolities with other sets of assumptions. "Happy Gilmore" may be funny in places, but it's not poetic. "Grown-Ups" might very well be disturbing but not because it plunders the depths of the unconscious (well, unless we really want go deep into the psychopathology of incredibly stupid humor.) No one would confuse Sandler with Cocteau.

 

That said, there are elements of the dream state in Hitchcock, Lang, Welles, and others. They were well aware of the power of cinema to evoke feelings of unease and wonder in the service of a narrative. The tales they told may well have wrapped up neatly, but often, one leaves "Vertigo", "Lady from Shanghai", and certainly, "M" with something more and other than the sense of the story well told. Any single image from any of these films could provoke gut responses of wonder or awe, simply as compositions in their own right. Nevertheless, these are stories that are self-contained. They certainly have meta-textual dimensions, but they aren't open-ended.

 

This last may be the principal or one of the principal elements in why more dreamlike works stick with us. They have no tidy wrap-up, the sequential unfolding of events is usually bordering on non-sequitur, and like a dream, we walk into the day as if we were waking up from the darkness.

 

The foregoing may account for the general sense of atmospherics, but what about content? To some degree, all such fantastical cinema is about sex, sexuality, the underlying turbulence of emotions just below the surface of the masks we wear, and the threat if violence if or as any of these are given expression. 

 

The Sadean aspects of cinema are present from the beginning. Many of the silent melodramas are birthed from hugely unequal power relations that erupt into shrieking catharsis. Yes, especially in the silents, you can practically feel the terror of the oppressed, the beaten, the humiliated. The operatic acting only adds to the tension that explodes in everything from "Intolerance" to "The Gold Rush." Because the images are unaccompanied by sound, the dread of not hearing or being heard is subtly amplified, as is the humor of Chaplin or the pathos of Griffith. 

 

But in many cases, the unforeseen tragedy comes unbidden to the good repeatedly and this is the first shock. Let's also not pretend that there isn't some id-like glee that comes with seeing the villain inflict tortures and suffering upon the Pickfords and Swansons and their swains. Overwhelmingly, the victims of evil doers in the silent era were women. This may say as much about cultural conditions as about the masculine gaze and mentality behind the camera. 

 

Did I say "gleeful"? I did. It would be disingenuous to claim that cinema doesn't appeal to the voyeur and fetishist in the audience. There is a thrill - vicarious for most - of bearing witness to and thereby, being complicit in - something naughty. That something might be as innocuous as stealing an apple from a market or as dastardly as tying the heroine to the railroad tracks (again, the woman is the victim; the patriarchy's vision of purity laid low and debased - when not portrayed as the key element in a hero's downfall (almost surely a male).

 

To be sure, the gender bias isn't absolute, but let's face it, it is preponderant. To come back to the idea of complicity, we see it in all narrative forms and depending on the aims of the authors, we tend to identify with the plight of the beleaguered victim. Yet, there are some protagonists toward whom we aren't so sympathetic. Indeed, sometimes they are so simpering, we feel they deserve the lash and this was De Sade's driving insight in his work. He was astutely aware that we don't always have one another's best interests at heart. Indeed, he bridled at the hypocrisy that people  - especially power holders - ever have anyone's best interests, save their own, at heart. 

 

We see this played out repeatedly, both in art and in life, but the genius of art is that it provides a working space to understand these motivations that lie restless, just below the surface and hog-tied and inarticulate. A Sadean component to cinema may be as overt as "Belle Du Jour" or "Blue Velvet" or a bit more subtle, as in any entertainment where the trials of the protagonist are amplified to a degree where we aren't astonished, but may actually find ourselves (hopefully, even) expecting them to continue (looking at you, Joel and Ethan Coen).

 

So where does this leave us? The Sadean vision in film (or literature or any of the arts) seems pervasive, but mostly or mainly, if we tend to the Freudian. I don't; but it's helpful to be aware of and acknowledge that many of our light entertainments are vessels for expressing the unease of existence and coping with the dread of an uncertain future and fragile present. 

 

We are left with not merely coping, but coming to understand -in contradistinction to - this talk of dreaming and dream states, the possibility that we can awaken to a more vivid state. We may become more at ease with that ever shifting existence and take a perspective that may aid us in seeing the self as dynamic and identity as shifting and ephemeral as the shadows on the wall or the flickering images on the screen.

 

All of this fed into my appreciation of the film. Is it a masterwork? I don't know, but it's a well-made stroll into the realm of the psyche and the aforementioned dynamics of a relationship that expresses itself in terms of submission and dominance, particularly, when the boundaries blur. 

 

It's been opined that submissives are the ultimate power possessors in these types of relationships and the film makers address that here with a surprising amount if tenderness. There is a genuine love between the two women, and we see the toll it takes on a top to meet the needs of her submissive lover.

 

Leading up to that, though, we are taken on one of the more convincingly sensual and erotic journeys I've seen in film in a very long time. More often than not, directors just don't get it. This is one of those times when it's gotten. 

 

There's no dearth of metaphor in the roles that both Cynthia and Evelyn play outside. Both are lepidopterists, who do their research at an institute in England. All the other attendees to lectures are women (and a couple of mannequins, Strickland perhaps emphasizing the artifice/artificiality while adding to the surreality underpinning the movie). Evelyn may simply be Cynthia's student, but it's Evelyn who has provided Cynthia with the dominant role (and wardrobe) and who studies her older lover sometimes more than caring for her, as when Cynthia strains her back. 

 

I don't necessarily care to explore the butterfly motif, though. I'm more interested in how beautifully the specimens are filmed and how the visuals are used as punctuation at different points in the tale. They seem to presage the passages when a scene is re-enacted or replayed, as signposts that the chronology will be reset and we will start anew with a different perspective. There is remarkable sequence toward the denoument as Evelyn (or is it Cynthia?) is walking down a hallway in an increasingly dense cloud of moths. 

 

Both actresses provide performances of stunning depth through mere expressions. Caring alternates with frustration and desire with betrayal. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but the bedroom scenes are among the truest I've seen, from Cynthia snoring, to the cuddling and yes, sex play. The artifice of fulfilling Evelyn's masochistic scenarios is played against these, but you see in Cynthia's eyes such a warmth to see her lover's wishes fulfilled. 

 

Eventually, all this takes a toll on Cynthia, and in lesser, far more clumsy hands, this could come off as a kind of moralizing. In the context of the relationship, it's a genuine expression of fatigue. 

 

The institute where they do their research and Cynthia lectures closes for the winter, and we see the sign "Closed for the winter" about to be applied, the film ends with the women retiring the box Evelyn slept in as part of their play and there's a sense that maybe this will only be temporary. The scene that led up to this, where Evelyn simply can't continue the scripted role of domination and Evelyn's immediate grasp of what it's taken Cynthia to have gone this far for so long is one of the most touching I've seen. 

 

The film owes much to Buñuel in terms of a sensibility and structure, but the eye is much more sympathetic and regarding the Sadean pieces in the relationship, it's not as exploitative as a Sadean politics would have it. At the end of the day, I was left with a sweet film about the love two women have for each other. And that you really want to clear it with your lover if you're considering buying a human toilet.

 

Note: a duke of burgundy is a butterfly. See following:

 

"Scientific name: Hamearis lucina

 

A small, springtime butterfly that frequents scrubby grassland and sunny woodland clearings. One of the most rapidly declining butterflies in the UK.

 

Small and orange and brown, like a tiny fritillary. Undersides of hind wings have rows of white spots. Lives in small colonies on grassland or woodland clearings.

 

This small butterfly frequents scrubby grassland and sunny woodland clearings, typically in very low numbers. The adults rarely visit flowers and most sightings are of the territorial males as they perch on a prominent leaf at the edge of scrub. The females are elusive and spend much of their time resting or flying low to the ground looking for suitable egg-laying sites.

 

The Duke of Burgundy is found in England only with a stronghold in central-southern areas and more isolated colonies in the southern Lake District and the North York Moors.

 

It has declined substantially in recent decades, especially in woodlands where it is reduced to fewer than 20 sites." Source: http://butterfly-conservation.org/679-1100/duke-of-burgundy.html.

 

Postscript: Good interview with Peter Strickland, http://thedissolve.com/features/interview/915-peter-strickland-on-the-heartbreak-and-kinks-of-th/.