Word: maing
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...Ma Nuit Chez Maud. Eric Rohmer wrote and directed this drama about the basic choices people make to determine the quality of their lives. Set in a claustrophobic French town and loaded with conversation about Pascal and Catholicism, this movie is so well done that it makes all its points in the camera work and in the performances of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Francoise Fabian. The involved dialogue is merely an added...
Wolfe clearly feels at home amongst this counter-society (one hesitates to call it a culture ) and is quite willing to use his razz-ma-tazz prose to further his subjects' own ends. He's caught on to the fact that the most revealing documentation of modern day America is carried on through the voice of the press release. (PR, you may remember, was even invented by an American, Cambridge's own Edward Bernays.) So when Wolfe takes off on his great tirades of trade names and trivia, the neon flashing in his eyes, the fury of apocalypse heavy...
Sutherland tries to achieve a proper balance between ethereal consecration and worldly wisdom. But the latter quality is principally conveyed by such lines as "Look, Ma, I'm human," and "Let's follow the monk and see what it eats." After the boy dies of hockey injuries, Martha and the monk consummate their tormented ardor at the foot of the church altar; the scene comes close to unintentional parody of the old de Sadistic monk-and-choirgirl routine...
...narrow milieu does not only limit, however; it also increases the probability of the chance encounters on which the narrative of Ma Nuit Chez Maud is based. Jean-Louis counts on chance. luck. And his luck is good because he scientifically applies his will to it, as when he picks up his wife-to-be with the full intention of marrying her. Comprehending his possibilities and limitations, he can neither renounce the world and become a saint, nor marry Maud. who is a free-thinker. Either way, to want everything or nothing, you've got to be crazy...
Through confusing academic discourse Rohmer leaves you with a murky residue, what Godard has called "a fabric of contradictions" between consciousness and action. Like See You At Mao, Ma Nuit Chez Mand is about "finding the right line" through the chaos, be it political or moral. Both films, however, resist solutions as well. How complete a human clarity is possible remains always questionable. With all his worrying about how to live, about his personal beliefs and his clear conscience, Jean-Louis fails to make an important human perception about the connection between Maud and Francoise, which his scientific outlook...