204 - Gertrud, 1964, Denmark. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

204 - Gertrud, 1964, Denmark.  Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Amor Omnia.

Love is all.

There is nothing else in life but love.  Nothing.  Nothing else.

That is what Gertrud says.  She wrote a poem about it when she was 16.  She stands by it in her old age.

She reads the poem to her lifelong friend Axel Nygreh.

Just look at me.  /  Am I beautiful?  /  No, but I have loved.
Just look at me.  /  Am I young?  /  No, but I have loved.
Just look at me.  /  Do I live?  /  No, but I have loved.

Nygreh asks if she regrets her position now that she is old.  She says, No.  She does not regret it.  She stands by it.

Even though she is alone.

Even though she has spent the last half of her life alone.

Because she left the ones who loved her.  Or specifically, the man who loved her.  The man who married her.  The man who wanted to stay with her.

Because he did not make her feel the way she wanted to feel.

Gertrud has lived the modern problem.

It is 1964.

People have started to be liberated.

They can love when they want to and leave when they want to.

Gertrud's own husband Gustav promised her that freedom when they got married.  He just never expected her to cash in on it so suddenly.

Gertrud decides to take her freedom.

"Love is patient.  Love is kind."

Gertrud is not patient.  She is very much impatient.

Her husband works too hard.  He spends his time and attention on his job, on money, on social standing, on honor.  He does not give her enough time and attention.  He does not make her feel the way she wants to feel.  She wants all of him or nothing.  She refuses to compromise.

So she gives herself to the great musician.  Erland Jansson.  She will leave with him.  He will give her what she wants.  They will be together, just the two of them always.

Except that he is a player.

He brags at a party about his having conquered her, and he has already gotten another woman pregnant.

Well, then there is Gabriel Lidman the poet.  No, she already had an affair with him, before Gustav. He does not mean the same thing to her as Jansson does.

Gertrud's husband Gustav begs her to stay.  He will be faithful to her.  (He has always been faithful to her.)  He will even let her have her other lover.  He will be a friend to her.  Just stay.

No.

She wants perfection or nothing.

Perfection being defined by her feelings.

She will leave.

And leave she does and lives her life alone.

The modern problem.

Freedom to leave.  Perfection or nothing.  My feelings are all that matter.

And fifty years later we still have not realized that maybe the sexual revolution of the 1960s did not deliver on its promises.

Or take a moment to look up the word love and discover its definition.

Perhaps love is about the other person.

About sacrificing my desires for someone else's good.

About being faithful.  About being steadfast. About being true.

No matter what the circumstances.

The irony here is that Gustav is faithful to Gertrud, while she is unfaithful to him.  Yet she justifies herself by accusing him of not loving her the way she wants him to.

Gertrud says that "love is all."  But she does not have the faintest idea what love is.

No.  She has not loved.

She has felt intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what she wants.

Which is what most pop songs are about which have the word "love" in the title.  Not the pursuit of another's good, but intense longing followed by the pain of not getting what one wants.

She has rejected men because they were not good enough for her. And she has thrown herself at men who did not love her.

She has only cared about herself.

And her invisible, abstract, idealized image that she calls love.

Frankly, this invisible, abstract, idealize image is her god.  Her idol.

And she has given her life to it.

And she is alone.

When all the while there stood a man who was willing to love her.

If she had just been patient.

And not demanded that it be perfect.

And not focused primarily on her own feelings.

And let him.