Capricious is a series of experimental scripts on the arbitrary disappearance of irrational objects
ca⋅pri・ci・ous, adj (kə'prɪʃəs) 2020 -
{
{impulsive; unpredictable; determined by chance or whim rather than by necessity or reason;
lacking firmness, purpose or devotion; implies an incapacity for steadiness and an inherent tendency to change "a capricious summer breeze"
given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour.
changing according to no discernible rules;
“I don't believe in random occurrences or blind chance, though I know the patterns of this world are capricious and terribly complex. " — Leslie Marmon Silko, letter, 21 Aug. 1979”}
In the film Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014), fiction and reality become ambiguous and fluid. Boundaries, identity and time are transient concepts.
/ Where Are They now?
epilogue
Juliette Binoche plays Maria Enters, a successful veteran actress who began her career as a protagonist in the play "Maloja Snake", by writer Wilhelm Melchior, and in its film adaptation. The play surrounds a young woman, Sigrid, whose cruelty and eroticism lead her older Elena to suicide. Twenty years after her success as Sigrid, which has followed her throughout her career, an aspiring young director convinces Maria to star in a revival of "Maloja Snake", only this time the middle-aged Maria is invited to play the second role of Elena.
Reluctantly, to prepare for the upcoming reversal of roles, Maria isolates herself in a mountain cottage in the village of Sils Maria in Switzerland, with her young assistant Valentine (played by Kristen Stewart). Valentine, practical, sensitive, insightful, serves in part as the actress' life line with reality and the outside world. Valentine absorbs most of Maria's frustration as she reads Sigrid's lines.
Maria immerses herself in rehearsal, denial and grief for her lost greatness. As she reluctantly tries Elena's skin, the process becomes intense and stressful. Maria oscillates between herself, her past role as Sigrid that she refuses to shake off and the role she is called to play. The isolation, nostalgia, conflict, the plot of the play and the intensity of the rehearsals inform the complex interactions between the actress and her assistant. It becomes obvious that they have started to play the theatrical. Their identities merge with their roles, and the dynamics between them make the boundaries blurred.
EXCERPT FROM THE SCRIPT FOR CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
FADE IN:
EXT. SNOW HILLS AROUND MALOJA. - EARLY MORNING
(Beautiful landscape scenes of the lake, in a moody, cold morning light. It's snowing lightly. Maria and Val are hiking along a narrow rocky path, with Val leading the way with an open map in front of her. They are going to finally witness the Maloja Snake)
MARIA
I spent all night thinking about Helena's death.
VAL
Her death? She doesn't necessarily die, she just- she disappears.
MARIA
That's your interpretation.
VAL
Well it's- it's pretty ambiguous.
MARIA
She goes out for a hike and never comes back, seems clear enough to me.
VAL
You don't know that. She could reinvent herself somewhere else, there's really no way of knowing.
MARIA
Annoyed, impatient.
You can imagine whatever you want. Are we going the right way? I mean I- I don't mind waking up at the crack of dawn, but not to get lost in the mountains and miss the snake.
VAL
Well, we're basically here. You happy?
MARIA
What makes you think we're here?
VAL
Val seems to be nearing her limit. She raises the map in the snow.
I've got a map! You want me to show you? Come here. This is the bend we just went around 10 minutes ago and just around there is the view of the valley. See that?
MARIA
How do you know?
VAL
How d- ?
She looks Maria in the eye for a moment, incredulous, then quickly moves away, murmuring under her breath. She decisively resumes the path.
You're a pain in the ass, Jesus Christ.
MARIA
I don't know why you're so dead set on making this play say the opposite of what it was meant to say.
VAL
At twenty you saw Sigrid's ambition and you saw her violence, because you felt it in yourself.
MARIA
So?
VAL
So, it's what I'm saying. The text is like an object. It's going to change perspective based on where you're standing.
MARIA
I don't know.
VAL
She draws a sharp breath, run out of patience for the unmovable, stubborn Maria. She realises she's speaking in vain.
We should go, we're gonna miss the snake.
MARIA
There won't be any snake.
VAL
Fuck it.
They start walking again, under the newly uncovered sun. We see that the view to the valley is near. Maria's leading them now, following the drop of the mountain. The camera faces the women walking down a small hill, disappearing under the edge of the adjascent climb. A second later, Maria ascends by herself and rushes through the remaining meters to the edge, overlooking the sunlit valley and the river. She drops to the dry grass and points to the distance, where a heavy, almost liquid cloud formation is pouring out among the mountains.
MARIA
Look there! Is that the snake? No. No it's just mist. Or fog. But it breaks up.Still pretty beautiful, though, huh? It's like it's gathering and pouring out into the valley. Or maybe it is the snake. We'll have to be patient. No, it's not the snake, it- Oh yes! I think it's turning into the snake! How about you?
She turns around, searching for her companion. Val is nowhere to be found. Maria frantically gets up from the ground, looks around.
Val? What the hell are you doing?
Maria takes off, screaming Val's name. She misses the snake.
FADE OUT
Val?! VAL! Answer me! Val?!
It was the last time we saw Valentine. The text, as it describes itself ("The text is like an object"), remains motionless and is left to be examined and challenged from all sides. What happened to Val? The logical explanation remains that Val dropped Maria on the spot, unable to continue working with her. Or he could have been injured or accidentally fallen down a steep hill without Maria realizing. However, there is in fact no assuming, since the moment the text stops giving answers, beyond speculations, the character ceases to exist, having served its purpose in the hereby story. Val, exhausted with Maria, takes advantage of her fictional quality, her being a fabrication - an irrational being, defects and vanishes.
The overall structure of the cinematic piece includes not only itself and a play within the film, but also a film within the film, because the play blurs its relation to real life. There are parallels, concurrences, that stand next to each other and multiply the depths of fiction, interweaving several consciousnesses inside the protagonists. Roles, characters, identities merge in such a way that their nature expands trying to cover multiple levels of existence: two realities (ours and theirs) and two fictions (ours and theirs). Their nature, which is mythical and therefore already given in a way groundless, fleeting, becomes stretched and debauched. The entanglement of realities destroys their integrity. With the form of fiction molded in this way, the sudden disappearance of Valentine doesn’t seem at all strange or unrealistic. The form itself - not the content - is unrealistic.
Valentine, in an act of breaking the fourth wall, testifies that she is fake, fictional. She disappears and thus she admits her multiple consciousness and her imaginary nature. She says the unspoken, reveals her true identity, as material of the fiction that includes her. The form is unrealistic. Her disappearance, before the last act of the play, also functions as an epilogue. Valentine breaks the convention of fiction, brushes off the axiom of identification, and disappears unhindered, as if addressing the audience. After her confession, Valentine triumphantly solemnly dives into non-existence.
Valentine's spontaneous disappearance raises the question: What happens to fictional characters, these irrational objects, when the story ends?
All fiction is always already laid down, it has happened a long time ago and very far away, at an indescribable distance from us. Its fait accompli nature is impenetrable - the events within it cannot be changed. The ephemeral fabricated world does not give in, it’s entrenched -and beyond its limits there are no new events, only implosion and return to the beginning.
The temporal end of the medium (text, cinema, theater) marks the very end of the narrated space, time and of all the characters, "dead" or "alive". Irrational objects, fabrication, can’t be reproached. "This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear on screen". See the book Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. Mythical nature is always given as already elusive.
The events of every fiction have already happened, but at the same time, they are happening right now, right at the moment of reading and in every reading. Fabricated objects exist when we address them, look at them, read them - only external observation keeps them intact. Our advocacy, our witnessing of them sets in motion what is to happen. The time of their existence is exactly the time during which this existence is being witnessed - and the context is the framework of the fictional canon. Irrational objects are condemned from the beginning, but for the same reason they are absolut. "The tragic hero is complete. You can call him unhappy (miserable, utterly broken) even before he is dead. For an instant he is something like divine. And then he dies, because there’s nothing left to do. The center of every tragedy is the image of a human being who has already died but keeps talking, someone whose face is a mask". See the text "The Gods Show Up", by Michael Kinnucan. The acceptance of their fictitiousness, their temporary nature, their dependence on witnesses, demystifies them through their mystification. Once we witness the last scene of a fictional character, we can only wait for their existence to expire.
Hypothesis
EXT. A CROWDED BAR - NIGHT
I’m with my friend, S. we’re having a glass of wine and at some point, during the night, I tell her that I’ll pop in at the kiosk to get cigarettes (a pretense). I have some cash on me and I get up and leave. In fact though, I walk past the kiosk, leave the kiosk behind, and keep walking. I walk for hours. I run into no acquaintances. Nobody knows me, and those who do are not around. Those who remember me are not around to place me (only in the past, only in the past). It so happens that there’s no one observing my actions, my presence.
EXT. A WARMLY LIT CROWDED STREET - NIGHT
I’ve drifted far and surely S. will be looking for me (she’s not going to find me). I'm not completely lost, but I can’t for sure say where I am. I’m among people - I do exist. Their eyes are closed and no one knows me - at the end of the countdown begins the moment that lasts, the moment when my existence is now confirmed only by its self-confirmation. So I shout, I exist. The eyes of my witnesses are closed. I shout regularly every few meters, I still exist, I still exist. My cries, that I am, in fact, still existent, become irregular, until it’s been a while since I’ve shouted. A little later, I’ve disappeared.
Can something that is not perceived exist? In reality, I disappeared much earlier, the moment my last witness took their eyes off me, the moment of the last failed confirmation of my existence.
An unconfirmed existence that is nothing but a semblance, the testimony that gives substance.
--The identity that remains unconfirmed makes for a fleeting existence--