1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 30: Antonia’s line
This Belgian-Dutch production belongs to a genre we used to see more of in the 1980s and 1990s:
How could one die like this, expecting nothing? It seems unutterably bleak. Clearly, to Antonia and to the authors of the movie, it doesn’t seem this way: life is to be embraced and then nothingness is also to be embraced (or at least accepted). Well, as I see it, Antonia’s acceptance of death seems overly placid, smug, just as her attitudes toward religion and toward conventional sexual morality seem smug.
The movie hints that Antonia will endure in the memory of her great-granddaughter. But if the movie’s underlying philosophy is correct, then all human consciousness is ephemeral, worth nothing or virtually nothing.
The movie’s reliance upon stock characters isn’t a problem. Its embrace of feminism and unconventionality isn’t a problem – indeed, to some extent, it’s to be welcomed. What I don’t like is the smugness.
It’s not often that I view an intelligent, memorable movie so at odds with my own temperament.
Because he was a butcher and thereby / Did earn an honest living (and did right), / I would not have you think that Reuben Bright / Was any more a brute than you or I; / For when they told him that his wife must die, / He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, / And cried like a great baby half that night, / And made the women cry to see him cry.
And after she was dead, and he had paid / The singers and the sexton and the rest, / He packed a lot of things that she had made / Most mournfully away in an old chest / Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs / In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
(Edward Arlington Robinson)
For a very different take on the movie, see this review by Roger Ebert.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. One reason I’m glad to have seen the movie is the performance of Els Dottermans as Danielle, Antonia’s daughter. Danielle has few lines. Her role, especially at the beginning, is to stroll around the village with her mother and to quietly affirm her mother’s judgments and actions.
It could have been a thankless task. But Dottermans is very good at projecting intelligence with her face, which glares and smirks and glows.
Danielle also performs the movie’s most memorable physical actions: a pitchfork jab, a gleeful handstand, an ebullient run across a lawn, an enraged overturning of easels and paint in her artist’s studio. Antonia’s actions seem rather calculted. Danielle follows her mother in most things, but in key moments she acts instinctively. Hers isn’t a juicy role, but Dottermans gives one of the most interesting performances of the year.
HERE IS THE STORY OF EVERY PERSON IN THE VILLAGE
Among this genre’s highlights are My Life as a Dog (Sweden, 1985) and Cinema Paradiso (Italy, 1988). At the turn of the millennium, the concept was shrunk down to
HERE IS THE STORY OF EVERY PERSON IN THE CAFÉ
(Amélie – France, 2001)
Since then, we’ve not had many notable specimens.
Such movies are often sprinkled with quasi-magical images and situations. Antonia’s Line follows this trend while staunchly rejecting the supernatural. The titular character’s great-granddaughter asks if there is a heaven. “This is the only dance we dance,” Antonia replies.
Such movies are often sprinkled with quasi-magical images and situations. Antonia’s Line follows this trend while staunchly rejecting the supernatural. The titular character’s great-granddaughter asks if there is a heaven. “This is the only dance we dance,” Antonia replies.
She and the other villagers go to church, but they’re performing a charade.
This is no gritty Pelle the Conqueror: it is shot in warm colors, and the soundtrack plays triumphant-sounding classical music. Still, the movie has a hard edge. For example, one of its characters is the Village Rapist.
Other stock characters include:
Antonia herself isn’t so easily pigeonholed. Unlike the others, she makes up her own mind, and she raises her daughter, Danielle, to do the same. So, when Danielle decides that she wants a child but not a husband, Antonia takes her to the city and helps her to pick out an aloof Sex God – a blond greaser on a motorcycle – for procreation and nothing else. (It’s this union that issues the Child Prodigy.)
There’s lots and lots of feminism. Perhaps you approve of feminism. You still might object to having feminism preached to you for your entertainment.
Then again, some viewers do enjoy being preached to, and for them Antonia’s Line would be just the thing.
Not everything is so trite. In one sequence, the Priest is blackmailed into giving a rather lovely feminist sermon (and so, by a clever trick, the viewer is literally preached to). Antonia and Danielle smirk in their pew:
Antonia and her friends form a clique. Many nights, they and their expanding families eat together in the farmyard, at a long table. The Kindly Farmer brings his Strapping Sons. Women and men all get along in harmony together.
The villagers outside this enlightened clique are left to weep and gnash their teeth.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Then, three-fifths of the way through, the movie gets interesting. The characters who populate this (mostly) idyllic village begin to die off. (Antonia’s mother already has had a rather horrific death, but it’s quickly forgotten.) The deaths have a wide range of causes. Murder. Childbirth. Suicide. Misadventure. Brokenheartedness. Illness. Old Age. Death comes with equal certainty for the antinatalist Intellectual and for his polar opposite, the Woman who Gives Birth Every Year.
Antonia’s death is different. She’s the character who always decides what’s in store for herself. In the movie’s first scene, she wakes up and decides that it is time, that she’ll simply die surrounded by friends and family before the day’s end. She summons her loved ones. The movie ends with her last flicker of consciousness.
This is no gritty Pelle the Conqueror: it is shot in warm colors, and the soundtrack plays triumphant-sounding classical music. Still, the movie has a hard edge. For example, one of its characters is the Village Rapist.
Other stock characters include:
- the Intellectual
- the Child Prodigy (the Intellectual’s great friend)
- a couple of Lovers who are Slow of Mind
- the Lecherous Priest
- the Woman who Cries Out at the Moon
- the Woman who Gives Birth Every Year
- the Kindly Farmer who Harbors Unrequited Feelings for Antonia
There’s lots and lots of feminism. Perhaps you approve of feminism. You still might object to having feminism preached to you for your entertainment.
Then again, some viewers do enjoy being preached to, and for them Antonia’s Line would be just the thing.
Husbands’ Irrelevance: CHECK
Rapist’s Comeuppance: CHECK
Conversation about the Artichoke’s Many Fascinating Layers and, Especially, Its “Heart” (“Artichoke” Is Code for Something Else): CHECK
Not everything is so trite. In one sequence, the Priest is blackmailed into giving a rather lovely feminist sermon (and so, by a clever trick, the viewer is literally preached to). Antonia and Danielle smirk in their pew:
Antonia and her friends form a clique. Many nights, they and their expanding families eat together in the farmyard, at a long table. The Kindly Farmer brings his Strapping Sons. Women and men all get along in harmony together.
The villagers outside this enlightened clique are left to weep and gnash their teeth.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Then, three-fifths of the way through, the movie gets interesting. The characters who populate this (mostly) idyllic village begin to die off. (Antonia’s mother already has had a rather horrific death, but it’s quickly forgotten.) The deaths have a wide range of causes. Murder. Childbirth. Suicide. Misadventure. Brokenheartedness. Illness. Old Age. Death comes with equal certainty for the antinatalist Intellectual and for his polar opposite, the Woman who Gives Birth Every Year.
Antonia’s death is different. She’s the character who always decides what’s in store for herself. In the movie’s first scene, she wakes up and decides that it is time, that she’ll simply die surrounded by friends and family before the day’s end. She summons her loved ones. The movie ends with her last flicker of consciousness.
How could one die like this, expecting nothing? It seems unutterably bleak. Clearly, to Antonia and to the authors of the movie, it doesn’t seem this way: life is to be embraced and then nothingness is also to be embraced (or at least accepted). Well, as I see it, Antonia’s acceptance of death seems overly placid, smug, just as her attitudes toward religion and toward conventional sexual morality seem smug.
The movie hints that Antonia will endure in the memory of her great-granddaughter. But if the movie’s underlying philosophy is correct, then all human consciousness is ephemeral, worth nothing or virtually nothing.
The movie’s reliance upon stock characters isn’t a problem. Its embrace of feminism and unconventionality isn’t a problem – indeed, to some extent, it’s to be welcomed. What I don’t like is the smugness.
It’s not often that I view an intelligent, memorable movie so at odds with my own temperament.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Reuben BrightBecause he was a butcher and thereby / Did earn an honest living (and did right), / I would not have you think that Reuben Bright / Was any more a brute than you or I; / For when they told him that his wife must die, / He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, / And cried like a great baby half that night, / And made the women cry to see him cry.
And after she was dead, and he had paid / The singers and the sexton and the rest, / He packed a lot of things that she had made / Most mournfully away in an old chest / Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs / In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
(Edward Arlington Robinson)
For a very different take on the movie, see this review by Roger Ebert.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. One reason I’m glad to have seen the movie is the performance of Els Dottermans as Danielle, Antonia’s daughter. Danielle has few lines. Her role, especially at the beginning, is to stroll around the village with her mother and to quietly affirm her mother’s judgments and actions.
It could have been a thankless task. But Dottermans is very good at projecting intelligence with her face, which glares and smirks and glows.
Danielle also performs the movie’s most memorable physical actions: a pitchfork jab, a gleeful handstand, an ebullient run across a lawn, an enraged overturning of easels and paint in her artist’s studio. Antonia’s actions seem rather calculted. Danielle follows her mother in most things, but in key moments she acts instinctively. Hers isn’t a juicy role, but Dottermans gives one of the most interesting performances of the year.
