PASSIONS,
THEMES, AND MOTIFS AS A DIRECTOR
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
Above: Coppola
In all likelihood, you have heard that in the
next few weeks, a film called “The Bling Ring” will be released across the
United States. It will be about a gang
of teenagers who robbed Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan, and Rachel
Bilson, accruing a total of three million dollars in stolen merchandise. Since it is based on a true story, it’s a
foregone conclusion how it will end—with the kids being dragged off to jail.
Nevertheless,
I feel certain that there will be surprises.
“The Bling Ring” will be the fifth film written and directed by the
great filmmaker Sofia Coppola and as such it will be particularly fascinating
to see how it will relate to her previous movies, which were “The Virgin
Suicides,” “Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette,” and “Somewhere.” Through those films, certain Coppola
conventions have been established—favored themes, recurring images, and scenes
reminiscent of each other. I, for one,
am interested to see how those motifs will fit into Ms. Coppola’s latest
project.
But that
will have to wait for another day. For
now, I thought it would be a good time to write up an exploration of this
relentlessly, boldly observant director’s work.
For too long, Ms. Coppola has been known as a director who makes movies
about hotels and won an Oscar for screenwriting. Those things are true, but it is time to move
beyond those observations and delve into the rich world that she has created in
her already masterful career.
Without a doubt, one of Ms. Coppola’s favorite
themes is the search for freedom. All her
screenplays are filled with characters who are either physically or emotionally
trapped by their circumstances, which often include personal limitations but
also society itself. As Charlotte, the
heroine of Ms. Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” says, “I’m stuck.” Those words could have been uttered by almost
any Coppola character.
In
“The Virgin Suicides,” the sensation of being trapped is quite literal—at the
end of the film, the titular girls are imprisoned permanently in their house by
their tyrannical mother. Similarly, in
“Marie Antoinette” (which chronicles the infamous reign of the doomed Queen of
France), Marie and her friends trapped by strict conventions of the French
Royal court, regulations they can only defy by shopping, partying, and
frolicking in the country. It’s the only
thing they can do to keep society from stifling them.
By
contrast, society is not the enemy in “Lost in Translation.” The film is about two characters, the
aforementioned Charlotte and Bob Harris, a washed-up movie star. In the movie, both of them are staying in the
Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo, where they form a powerful friendship. While they never experience any literal
imprisonment, they are, pun intended, lost.
Charlotte has no real passion or occupation—she can do nothing except
wander through the city’s streets and subways.
Bob, meanwhile, is more active, since he’s an actor. But he’s filming a whiskey commercial,
something which he does not have much passion for (shocker). It is experiences like these that leave both
characters are trapped in a bored, apathetic state.
For
Marie and the girls of “The Virgin Suicides,” a satisfactory escape from that
trapped state never materializes. While
the girls have a chance to flee the house, they abruptly choose to kill
themselves instead, an actions which horrifies and confuses everyone around
them. And while Marie gets out of the
suffocating and pale palace of Versailles, it’s only because the palace is
under attack. The film ends with her
departure but, well, you know what happens next.
Yet
Ms. Coppola is not a pessimistic filmmaker—far from it—and in “Lost in” and
“Somewhere,” she revives the hope of freedom.
Bob and Charlotte never leave Tokyo during the film, but they adapt—by
being together and going on adventures (they have one especially beautiful
night on the town that involves a BB gun, an arcade, and karaoke), they find
their freedom within the city. At first,
Tokyo seems like a trap—they don’t speak the language so they can’t really fit
in. Yet because it is packed with so
many sights and sounds that are new to them, it becomes a kind of heavenly,
sweeping Metropolis, a city that they embrace as their playground.
A
similar transformation takes place in “Somewhere.” The film begins with an impressively
monotonous shot—Z-grade action star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) driving in
circles in his black sports car, never going anywhere. It’s a metaphorical image, one that
symbolizes his pointless existence. Yet
over the course of the film, his bond with his daughter gives him a reason to
do more than lounge around hotels ogling strippers. Being with her breaks him out of his routine
and so the film ends with him driving not in circles, but straight down the
highway, away from the city and towards the next phase of his life.
Not
every Coppola character finds this kind of freedom. But even though her films sometimes end on a
tragic note, they all have soaring moments of escape. Think of the flirtingly poetic trip to the
prom in “Suicides” and the image of Kirsten Dunst running through gleaming
green grasses in “Marie.” They are
transcendent images, the kind I always hope for not only movies, but in life. And yet I don’t think those scenes are
worthwhile only as metaphors for human experiences—watching them is wonderful in
and of itself. The rhythm of Sofia
Coppola’s movies is one that evokes life at its most beautiful, and to feel
that rhythm is to live, to breathe, to veer away from boredom and cliché.
To
become unstuck.
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