582 - The Fire Within, France, 1963. Dir. Louis Malle.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

582 - The Fire Within, France, 1963.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Credo ut intelligam, my dear man.

Alain has just joined the others for dinner, as the gentlemen are having a philosophical debate.  One of them asserts one of the great concepts of the faith, as declared by St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), as developed from Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430).

Credo ut intelligam.

I believe in order to understand.

Faith comes first.  Then understanding.

The other man rebuts him.  Asserts that that would contradict the first man's claim that St. Thomas separated philosophy from theology.  He believes that one can have only faith or only knowledge.  "Where knowledge is, faith is not."

He does not believe.  So he does not understand.

Alain is oblivious to their discussion.  He has something else on his mind.  And he is drowning in it.  So he does not take the lifeline when it passes by him.  To him, it is just another of many ideas that will pass by superficially as he staggers headlong to his chosen demise.

His mind seems to be a rattletrap of ideas gathered from a lifetime of reading without commitment.  Without belonging to anything.  Just shoving endless thoughts into his brain and allowing them to knock about in there.

Alain has just spent three days--three nights--with Lydia, and has now returned to the Maison de Santé, the health house, for healing.  Lydia wanted him to come to New York with her, to divorce his wife Dorothy, and to marry Lydia.  But Alain said that would only make her another Dorothy.

The health house, the clinic, is a place for cures de repos, rest cures.  Healing through rest.  Under medical supervision.  Alain has a room there, where he sits and reads.  And apparently joins the others for dinner where two of them engage in philosophical debate.

They go to play pool, on one of those pool tables without pockets that we have been seeing in these French movies.  He looks out the window and observes doctors in white coats moving in the courtyard.  He returns to his room.

Alain cuts newspapers clippings and tacks them to the mirror, next the place where he has written on the mirror, "July 23," a date which at first is mysterious, but over time we begin to discover this is the date he has set for his demise.

He is reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Babylon Revisited.  You may make the connection.

Alain looks at pictures of Dorothy and of another woman, which fill the room.  As he paces.  As Erik Satie's piano score plays beneath the scene.  He restlessly messes with things.  He opens his briefcase and pulls out a gun.  No, not Travis Bickle.  Not that kind of anxiety.

The doctor enters but does not see the gun.  Alain quickly hides it.

Alain returned from America, where his wife still is, and checked himself into rehab for alcoholism as well as for his anxieties.  The doctor says he is cured and may leave at any time.  Alain says he will only begin drinking again and will spiral down.  But he agrees to try it.  To go out for a time.  And see what he can find.

Alain revisits his old friends.  From his bachelor days.  From the way they respond to him, we gather that he was the life of the party.  That they all loved him.  And still do.  But he is different now.  Unresponsive.  Unengaging.

His friends have settled down.  They have married and have had children, or they are pursuing a life's work.  One is an Egyptologist and has written a book on ancient Egypt.  Another is a painter and sculptor.  Each of them is kind to him.  They have missed him.  They offer him things.  Come stay at my place, where you can write.  And rest.

But he rejects them.  He is still living in the postured ennui of his pre-30s.  They have grown up.  Moved on.  Yet he refuses to.

He takes his first drink.

It makes him sick.

They are there for him.  Attending to him.  Caring for him.

Yet he rejects them still.

He returns to his room at the health house and pulls the trigger.


*                              *                              *                              *


I've done nothing but wait. all my life.  For something to happen.  For what, I don't know.

It's not feelings of anxiety, Doctor.  It's a single feeling of a constant anxiety.