Embracing Ambiguity Poem by gershon hepner

Embracing ambiguity
that we through dissonance have filtered
we question with acuity
why anyone should be bewildered.

Mark Harris writes ‘about a revival of the Alain Resnais “Last Year at Marieebad” in the NYT, January 13,2007 (“‘Marienbad’ Returns, Unsettling as Ever”) :
WHEN Alain Resnais’s gorgeous puzzle box of a movie, “Last Year at Marienbad, ” reopens at Film Forum for two weeks on Friday, New York cinephiles may find themselves as mystified and delighted as their counterparts were when the film first reached Manhattan in 1962. “Marienbad” either does or does not tell the story of what may or may not be a love triangle that does or does not end violently, though the movie could also be presenting shards of a dream, a memory or a fantasy. What transpires among the three nameless principal characters is, the filmmakers have always maintained, up to you to figure out… With the terms of the argument thus clarified for its target audience, “Marienbad” qualified for some essential tokens of significance: a booking at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, where it could rub shoulders with the “higher” art to be found in the auditorium just around the corner on 57th Street, and an endorsement from the Museum of Modern Art, which scheduled seven nights of benefit performances — at a hefty $5 a seat — that would lead up to the film’s March 7 opening. Patrons received programs with three pages of explanation that began, “The film you are about to see will, in all probability, upset every normal viewing habit you have formed.” “The meaning is not imposed on you, ” it continued, “but rather, with a respect for your intelligence that is uncommon in the cinema, your collaboration is required to complete your personal understanding.” This flattery was, of course, catnip to a certain stratum of New York film sophisticate, and soon critics were slugging it out. In The New Yorker, Brendan Gill approvingly compared “Marienbad” to “Finnegans Wake, ” as did Dwight Macdonald in Esquire, while Time magazine warned that “customers who expect to be entertained are going to be painfully disappointed.” When Bosley Crowther of The Times said that “beyond any question, ” “Marienbad” was “the ‘furtherest out’ film we’ve ever had, ” Jonas Mekas took a swing at him in The Village Voice, scoffing that any critic who had been following experimental filmmaking would know that “Marienbad” was merely a “pretentious ornament” and “a stone in the cemeteries of the dead, ” adding that he knew his position risked “the making of many enemies.”… The Hollywood establishment was divided. “Marienbad” was denied a best foreign film Oscar nomination, though Mr. Robbe-Grillet’s screenplay was nominated. “Look at ‘Marienbad’ honestly, ” the veteran director William Wyler grumbled. “What is it? It’s just another talking radio show with pictures. Nobody acts. People stand around while the author talks about the woodwork. There is nothing clever about confusion.” But Wyler had already lost that war. By the time he voiced his complaint, “Last Year at Marienbad” had been playing around the country for more than two years, and an audience that was all too happy to embrace ambiguity, dissonance and even its own bewilderment was beginning to rule the day.


1/16/08