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In this second post inspired by Raoul Ruiz's beautiful film Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust / Marcel Proust's Time Regained (1999), I want only to make three points.
First, Marcel's biggest epiphany comes in the library of the Guermantes (la bibliothèque du prince de Guermantes). Thus, the key in understanding Proust is The Library!
(Indeed, any good library contains a multitude of magical powers, and its contents sure to startle you with intense memories from time to time. You may recall that in Andrei Tarkovsky's Солярис / Solaris (1972), the space station library plays a similarly important role in triggering both alien and human epiphanies -- and for even experiencing zero gravity.)
Second, in addition to Raoul Ruiz's work, there are two other very good films based on Proust that I have seen: Percy Adlon's Céleste (1982) and Volker Schlöndorff's Un amour de Swann / Swann in Love (1984). These films, combined with Proust the actual person and the writings (texts) of Proust, all serve to illuminate each other from different angles.
Third, while in the past, upon my early reading of it, I surely caught many of the poignant elements in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu / Remembrance of Things Past / In Search of Lost Time, but over time, and more and more in time -- thanks in part to Raoul Ruiz's Time Regained -- I am really digging the many subtly comic elements in Proust. . . those even beyond the already observed satirical mockery of socio-economic class distinctions and the foibles of social interaction.
In the Ruiz movie, Marcello Mazzarella plays Marcel in a way that reminds me a lot of Peter Sellers -- a masterful blend of the Peter Sellers we see in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), the Pink Panther movies, and, as Chance the Gardner (aka Chauncey Gardiner), in Being There (1979).
Look for the comical and you will see it, for surely it's better to laugh than to cry -- more fun, at any rate.
Today's Rune: Partnership.
The 1999 Raoul Ruiz film Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust / Marcel Proust's Time Regained is a dazzling adaptation and synthesis of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu / Remembrance of Things Past / In Search of Lost Time from the vantage point of its final volume.
Admirers of Proust's work will want to see this if they haven't already; while those who haven't yet read Proust's novel -- the longest in history and probably the greatest novel written since the year 1900 -- might want to get cracking. Otherwise, the movie would thoroughly mystify rather than edify.
Ruiz's movie version works hand in hand with the novel, made possible by Proust's meticulous use of visual art, architecture, music, fashion and focus on social manners as well as memory devices.
If you can dig and grok this, you'll have reached the mountaintop, no doubt. If not, no extra lost time to remember or forget, I suppose.
Certainly, it's a beautiful looking film, with clever and important scenes rendered with true surrealistic flair.
Today's Rune: Fertility.