Duras. [Musical Writing]
I was 20 years old when I first learned of the existence of the film "The Lover."
I recently learned that the lead actress, Jane March, is from my own generation, but at the time, I thought she was about 15. Needless to say, this film was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud based on Marguerite Duras's novel, and as a "French film geek" who used to go to Le Cinéma in Shibuya's Bunkamura every time a new French film was released, there was no reason for me not to go see it (in fact, I really wanted to). However, perhaps because the film was preceded by sensationalist talk about non-essential topics like its love scenes, I missed my chance to see it, and I didn't actually watch it until after I went to France.
If I were to name the most wonderful thing about this film, aside from its visual beauty, I cannot forget the narration by the voice of the late, great French actress Jeanne Moreau, who also had a connection with the author Duras.
A voice like velvet. Husky, deep, and rich like fine brandy, that voice contains somewhere within it the innocence of a child. A single voice with dual elements, it permeates deep into the listener's body and spreads like ripples. The texture of her voice gives even more depth to the film's beautiful imagery.
Among the many roles Moreau played, the Jeanne in "Jules and Jim," which is now synonymous with femme fatale*, was also a heroine who lived solely for love while toying with two men using this unique voice. In another of her representative works, Louis Malle's "Elevator to the Gallows," Moreau's figure wandering through the night in Paris with an empty gaze across the monochrome screen, accompanied by the stylish jazz of Miles Davis, was captured with a shocking coolness, and the intensity of a woman ruining herself for a forbidden love came through vividly. Moreau's voice is undoubtedly a "seductive voice." Could there be any voice more suitable for reading Duras's works? In fact, the bond between the author Duras and Moreau was deep. Duras also directed several films, and Moreau starred in three of them.
Duras's film "India Song" is like a "play" in the form of a film. If one were to view this entire work as a single piece of "music," the languid "India Song" that plays as the theme seems to symbolize this decadent 1930s era and the nihilism of the upper class as a basso continuo, and the voice of Delphine Seyrig, which seems to exist somewhere beyond the function of language, captivates us like the rich tone of a violin. The "lines" spoken there are stripped of all thick, muddy emotions and are now closer to "symbols." Therefore, here, only the subtle eye expressions and gestures of the characters captured by the camera serve as theatrical elements to convey the reality of what is happening.
Whether in plays or novels, I always feel "music" in her writing style. That unique atmosphere does not change even when translated into Japanese. Below, I have translated excerpts from "The Lover" and "Hiroshima mon amour" in my own way.
The elegant man gets out of the limousine and is smoking an English cigarette.
The man looks at the girl wearing a man's felt hat and gold sandals.
He slowly approaches the girl.
Clearly, he is nervous.
He does not smile at first. First, he offers the girl a cigarette.
His hand is trembling.
This difference in race, because the man is not white
He must overcome it
That is why he is trembling - from "The Lover"
He: Is that why you let me come up to your room last night? Because it was your last day in Hiroshima?
She: No, that's not it. I didn't even think about that.
He: When you speak, I ask myself. Are you lying, or are you telling the truth?
She: I am lying, and I am telling the truth. But I have no reason to lie to you. Why? - from "Hiroshima mon amour"
In Duras's writing style, which uses concise French where each phrase is short but captures the heart and won't let go, words are extracted through a subjective gaze that is sharpened to the point of coldness. Those extremely simple words feel as vivid as if they were images, as if they were perfectly one with the sorrow and pain of the protagonists.
Like weaving a piece of cloth with words, sometimes like a poem accompanied by a faint pain, and at other times like a requiem for a "soul" destroyed by the Great War, her literature and films, with doors thrown open in every direction, lightly transcend the barriers between two worlds, constructing a one-of-a-kind "Durasian" world.
For example, as a musician, I am driven by the urge to describe Duras's writing as having "perfect pitch." In that writing, elements that are "out of tune," that is, elements that impair the balance of the overall beauty, are eliminated to the extreme, as if words were carefully chosen according to the golden ratio.
When I want to be inspired by "words," I open a Duras book. There, like Picasso's "Guernica," even the deepest pain, despair, and sometimes emotions like desire are quietly abstracted, and sometimes they hold their breath in the translucent algae of the protagonists' memories until we find their "true weight."
She: I will forget you! I have already forgotten you! Look, how I forget you! Look!
She: Hiroshima.
She: Hiroshima. That is your name. - They look at each other without seeing. Forever - He: Yes. That is my name. Your name is Nevers. In France, Nevers. - from "Hiroshima mon amour"
*Femme fatale - Refers to a "woman of destiny" for a man, and at the same time, it is often used to mean a bewitching woman who drives a man's destiny to ruin.