I often watch movies on DVDs and often prefer foreign movies over domestic. Foreign films usually focus more on the human condition, the stories more spiritual.
I rented Seraphine (2008) from Netflix and watched it last night. I found it very moving. It has a well written screenplay, convincing character portrayals and beautiful cinematography. It is based on the real life of a poor French housecleaner, Seraphine Louis, who paints under the command of her guardian angels. After her death she became known as “Seraphine de Senlis”, a Modern Primitive painter.
In the opening scenes we are introduced to a bedraggled Seraphine, climbing a tree and sitting in utter joy on its big limb, which seems odd for a woman her age. It is obvious Seraphine is in tune with the elementals and nature. She possesses a childlike fascination with water and especially trees. We see scenes of her in the countryside, gathering plants and pails of clay from stream banks, melted candle wax from the novena candles in the church, vials of blood from the butcher shop and wonder what she is doing. When she returns home it is revealed she is making her own pigments to paint. During the day she eeks out a living doing menial cleaning jobs in town. The little money she earns she spends on art supplies, and paints in ecstatic frenzy until the wee hours of the night. Her subjects are the flowers, fruits and trees she loves so much.
Seraphine’s work is discovered by the German art critic Wilhelm Unde who recognizes her genius and becomes her patron. They become separated at the outset of WWI as Unde has to flee France. He returns many years later and finds Seraphine still alive and painting. He tells her she should no longer clean houses but should paint full time and he funds her with a monthly stipend which she squanders as she waits for a Paris exhibition of her work.
“Your flowers are strange. They move.” comments a neighbor, during a private showing. “They look like eyes, wounded eyes. Terrifying things.”
Seraphine replies, “I know, Madame Delonges. When I look at them, what I’ve done scares me.”
Séraphine Louis
Alas, poor Seraphine! Her madness escalates as she follows the dictates of her “angels” in a moving climatic scene and is catapulted into the asylum.
In the film, Seraphine is portrayed as a tragic figure, yet her hand moved by the Divine, creates works alive and vibrant. The final scene is bittersweet as Seraphine is taken into a private room with a view in the hospital. She is brought in half catatonic and as she turns she sees the window and a tree beyond. The camera captures her slow tortured gait out the door and across the lawn to sit beneath the tree, coming full circle when she first appeared to us.
Sun, Aug 15, 2010
Just Life