Red Desert

Tomorrow, perhaps, I will do my usual thing. Right now, I’m a wreck, and I want to capture that as nearly as possible… Few films (this is perhaps in a class with Marienbad, Zerkalo, and no more) have engaged me on this level: head swimming, completely drained (this is not an emotional intelligence to which I am accustomed to relating…) This is how I viewed Red Desert. Screencapping compelling images began immediately, and 20 minutes in I began taking these notes, which are nonsense… This is a bit much, yet not nearly enough. Anyway:

Final, irrevocable dissociation of self.
No longer able to form any connections to people.
Verbal expression has lost all sense.

She poses questions in non sequiturs.
They try to answer her concretely.

Wilderness vs. technology/objects.
Artifice.

Ambient noise: steamboat whistle vs. waves.

Others believe in work, conscience, vice: definite ideas.

“It’s never still, never, never, never…”

“I can’t look at the sea for long and not lose interest in what happened on land.”

“My eyes are wet — I think — what should I use my eyes for? What should I look at?”

Uncertainty; multiple interpretations of an event.
“Maybe you read it.”
No certainty, no agreed-upon reality.
Would require relationship, harmony, which is not possible.

(fog, construction)

Compassion is not possible. Linda cries, not for Giuliana’s suffering, but her own terror.

Dissociation of self. “The girl in the hospital.”

“Who was singing?”
“Everybody. Everything.”

Utter betrayal. Senseless acts.

“What do you mean whose?… The name?”
Naming, definite reality –> abject terror.

“How do you know what things you need? Will the things, the people, be the same when you return?”

“You don’t love me, do you?”

“Why do I always need people?”

“I’d like all the people who ever loved me here, like a wall…”

“We all suffer from it. We all need help.”

This isn’t understanding. It’s isolation.
Shared malaise is not sharing.

Escape — any place in this world to chart a life?

Judgmental, isolating gaze.

“Help me, please.”

Hell yes this is of a piece with the ‘trilogy.’ Eros is fucking sick.

“There’s something horrible about reality and I don’t know what. No one tells me.”

Words fail utterly.

“I can’t decide. I’m not a single woman. But at times — I feel — separated…”

“I have to think that all that happens to me is my life. That’s it!”