gertrud

Dreyer's last film, Gertrud, is not so much difficult as it is dull. I watched it over Christmas and was fairly underwhelmed. The camerawork and staging are mesmerizing, a textbook in understatement, but the decision to never let the actors portray any facial expression or to let them make eye contact during a film that contains an hour and a half of two-person conversation is a poor one. I understand that the lack of passion and eye contact are an illustration of the emotional disconnect between the characters, but that point isn't remotely important when your characters don't have personalities.

Philip Lopate suggests that these intentional decisions are meant to be humorous. They are silly to be sure, but I'm not sure I give Dreyer enough credit to see the camp in his own pomp. Dreyer wanted to elevate himself as one of the most important filmmakers of all time. To him, making Gertrud a vapid, dull and nearly artless film was his way of proving his superiority over me: the guy who thinks himself informed but finds Gertrud vapid, dull and nearly artless. Certainly Dreyer's brain must have been much larger than mine.

But in the midst of your nap there are some concise statements about the relationship between a man's devotion to his work and his devotion to love. Most of all it critques our dramatic tendency toward martyrdom. By doing away with the anguish and crying and suicide that accompany most love stories, Gertrud instead martyrs herself by an internal death. Fascinating themes for a film, right?

Maybe. This thing really toes the line.