The Write Thing

I have just finished watching James Gray’s movie Two Lovers at home, curled up on the sofa after a heavy day of rain and work. While this might not probably go down in history as the best movie I have ever seen, I must confess I was impressed at the accuracy with which hysteria was portrayed in Michelle, the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow. I am not sure that the screenwriters actually wanted to design such a perfect embodiment of a hysterical heterosexual female (well, hysteria also runs in the L-world, let me tell you). If they did not, I would presume that at least they were well acquainted with the type.

The story is about Leonard, a charming and hyper-sensitive heartbroken man living with his parents after being hospitalized a couple of times following a few suicidal attempts. Leonard’s woes apparently originated in a former relationship that bound him to a woman he loved but was forced to abandon due to their condition of carriers of a severe neurological pathology, Tay-Sachs disease. After a while alone, Leonard happens to meet Sandra, a woman who seems to be ready to commit and love him for what he is. However, life is generous to our leading man and bestows him the gift of a peculiar neighbor, Michelle, whom he meets in the corridor one evening as she tries to escape a father that yells at her from inside her apartment.

The story unfolds as a simple tale of conventional dramatic impact, but I found myself astonished at the precise depiction of hysteria in Michelle. You see, Michelle is in love with a married man that is never there for her because he has “a wife”. Although he pays for Michelle’s apartment, one floor above Leonard’s, he gives her the lover treatment, which she obviously protests — hysteria is exclusive…remember this. Michelle finds comfort in Leonard, whom she obviously sees as a friend when all the audience can realize even with their eyes closed that he is head over heels for her, and he’ll pay for it. In all fairness to Michelle, she never really plays the seduction game to him openly, but rather in the hysterical way — that is, preferring to remain blind to the sheepish looks he gives her non-stop. However, completely in line with the hysterical mind, out of the blue she will call him in the small hours of the morning, invite him to meet her on the roof in the freezing cold, and then simply ask him what he thought of her married boyfriend, whom he met earlier at dinner. Does that sound familiar? To the hysterical mind, number three is minimum…two is not even a number. Typical hysterical behavior…let’s put good love to the service or our own petty interests.

Michelle’s selfishness knows no extremes, and she will not stop at anything…unless someone stops her. But Leonard won’t. Why? Because she is beautiful, young and desired, and Leonard wants a minute with her even if it means hell later, when he goes back to his room without having been able to lay a hand on her because he was simply there to help her get what she wanted — and that is not him, but his opinion of her boyfriend. Yet he wants her, like a desperate dog ready to eat the breadcrumbs that fall off her plate, waiting to be acknowledged at least with the leftovers of whoever had her before him.

That is hysteria, which the dictionary describes as ” a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses “. Fear and excesses, yes, but also absolute selfishness that blinds the hysterical being to anybody or anything that is not her, what she wants, what she needs, right the minute her mind tells her so.

Good movie to see if you are about to fall for the “Michelle” type and you want to have a chance. And mind you, the world is full of them.

There are stories that come to us without warning. One moment we think we have everything under control, and the next we are hopelessly itching with desire for that same thing we were formerly indifferent to. These days, images of an old movie I saw long ago have been playing constantly on my mind: David Lean’s Brief Encounter.

The story is a typical case of untimely love, in those days when some people at least questioned themselves before being unfaithful to their spouses. As the protagonists Alec and Laura gradually realize that their innocent meetings are leading into something far deeper than a mere acquaintance, they decide to put an end to the affair — actually, to its potential. The film is based on a play by Noel Coward called, more accurately, Still Life.

I saw the film at least over ten years ago, so relying on my memory completely might prove risky. However, I have the vivid impression that it is Alec who voices the palpable passion that dwells in both of the never-to-be lovers. In a memorable scene — or a fictitious invention, my memory will tell — he looks at her and says…”you know what’s happening, don’t you…”

I know what’s happening. Here, there are no husband or wives to cheat. There is only a distance, which in the modern world planes travel more frequently than I help myself to meals. Further favoring dramatic momentum is the fact that obstacles make excellent dramatic opportunities, facing protagonists with their tests of love and courage as the story they tell us unfolds.

Jeanette Winterson would probably start this account with a phrase such as “I would like to tell a story”. I am afraid I am already telling one, even if not as deftly as Ms Winterson. Better yet, we are telling a story, as we have told each other so many during the wonderful days we have just spent together. I must admit that it is simply very easy to flow when in company of a writer, something I had not yet experienced.

When I get to editing my own story, the one I am yet to tell, perhaps I should also mull my first line very carefully — after all, incipits are key. A good story must be subtle and yet solid enough to carry its own weight without wearing the reader down. Preferably, the protagonists should reveal their motives gradually, or let the reader find them around the corner of a gesture, or in the minimal expression of a misleading word. Stories can be written alone, in pairs or even in teams. Regardless of the number of hands assigned to the task, action and pace must flow as if only one single pen had written it.

I do not know if my story will flow as smoothly as I would like it to. Maybe not, because uncertainty is part of life, and as such it deserves a place in my account. I do not even know how the story started because, as all good things in my life, it began without warning and, when I least expected it, there it was.

In 1968, the world of entertainment became mesmerized with a skinny young girl with a prominent nose who sang her way through the bittersweet life of theater and film actress Fanny Brice in the box office hit (both in theater and film) Funny Girl.

My admiration for Ms. Streisand goes back in time numerous years, to those darker moments of my youth when English was becoming a language of fate and a permanent shelter, without my knowing it. In the movie, there is a climactic scene where she rushes to catch a tugboat at the New York harbor, shortly after finding love in the arms of bon vivant Nicky Arnstein (played by Omar Sharif). Much as I would like to linger in my praise of Barbra as a consummate actress and singer, injecting pathos and passion in a character that to some extent ended up reflecting her quite a lot at some stages in her life, I will refrain from doing so.

The tugboat scene unfolds with the backdrop of a hurried Miss Brice trying to convince her entourage that her decision to live life beyond her success as a comedienne with the Ziegfeld Follies is final. She does this with a song, while everybody begs her to reconsider. However, she is adamant and will follow Nick to write the first act of a love whose epilogue will be a dark naked stage where La Streisand will render perhaps the best version of My Man ever recorded. But right now, if you can hold your breath enough to accompany the singer through the end of a belted note that grows above a mid-size orchestra, there is still a world to hope for.

The tugboat slides on a foamy sea, leaving a trail leading back to the harbor of departure. From a distance, it seems as if she could choose to go back and put such a preposterous idea of love well behind her. Curiously, the novelty here is that in the wildest act of love in the movie, the heroine does not sing of love, but of possibility….and perhaps that is what love is all about.

I’m gonna live and live NOW!
Get what I want, I know how!
One roll for the whole shebang!
One throw that bell will go clang,
Eye on the target and wham,
One shot, one gun shot and bam!
Hey, Mr. Arnstein, here I am …

I’ll march my band out, I will beat my drum,
And if I’m fanned out, your turn at bat, sir,
At least I didn’t fake it, hat, sir,
I guess I didn’t make it
Get ready for me love, ’cause I’m a “comer”
I simply gotta march, my heart’s a drummer
Nobody, no, nobody, is gonna rain on my parade!