COMMENTS:

?I wonder what?s really wrong with her.?
?Elisabet Vogler.?
?Elisabet.?

The first two lines are uttered over a black screen. The last over a long shot of Elisabet herself pacing back and forth in her hospital room while a television set, located in the lower right side of the frame and positioned with the screen turned away from us, flashes images of an unknown nature. The shot is perfect; too perfect. Symmetrical. We see only two walls for almost the entire segment; the back wall is bare. The only light in the room is projected from the TV. As Elisabet moves about, her shadow grows and shrinks, casting over the bare wall. Feels stagey. We can hear that the TV is tuned into a news broadcast or something of the sort based on the neutral, polished voice of the male speaker. We hear things about U.S. military forces bombing things. The sound gets louder. Elisabet is now fixated upon the screen. Gunshots. People screaming. Chaos. We cut to a frontal shot of the TV set which now occupies virtually the entire frame. Something familiar. Vietnam. A few seconds later, the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk. We then cut back and forth, back and forth between closer and closer shots of Elisabet staring at the image, retreating back into the opposite corner of the room, hands clinched in front of her mouth, and shots of the monk aflame.

How is this icon of suffering and protest being used? Why is it being used? How we see what we see seems to occupy us just as much as what we see. Before this segment, we see Elisabet?s Nurse, Alma, putting her head to pillow. It?s her voice we hear at the start. Shots of the type we see at the beginning of the segment, long shots of Elisabet walking around, appear elsewhere in this film and correspond to what we might call dream sequences. But why would Alma be dreaming of Elisabet seeing these images? Recall that Elisabet is seen later in the film perusing a well-known photo of a Jewish boy being rounded up in the ghetto by Nazis. But how is that shown? Is it also presented as a mental picture? Recall also that Elisabet is a known stage actor. Might this be effecting the staginess of some of the shots?

[ By Colin Burnett • November 11, 2004 ]