Like her fellow Czech New Wave directors, Chytilová takes on the form of a loose narrative structure with Daisies. The collage of adventures and symbols vaguely connected invites the audience to think allegorically or metaphorically. The vagueness of message leaves space for numberless interpretations, and the rich symbolism is fertile grounds for any theoretical mode to [de]code. One can easily take on a progressive or regressive feminist critique. For the optimistic feminist, the argument can be made that the girls are vessels for the corruption around them. Their destructive behavior is a reflection on the limits of agency for women as the patriarchal system of the time collapses on itself because of autocracy and the increasing disparity between the classes as results of systemic flaws. Within this broken space, women can only be successful when mimicking the destruction around them. Facing this reality, as Chytilová seems to insist upon with Daisies, inserts a talking point about systemic hurdles in the discussion of improving the status of women overall. Self-actualization occurs when the individual wills oneself into acquiesce, benefiting from ones own unique talents and experience, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc.
Then a more conservative feminist critique may express distaste for the film. If woman have complete agency regardless of inevitable systemic cracks, the girls should enter the career world determined to reap the rewards at least equally as much as men, if the status of men are a measure of success since their historical privilege has set the bar for everyone else. Self-actualization occurs when one accepts what society has granted one from birth and functions within those realms, developing appropriate skills, to the best of ones knowledge.
The argument that Chylilová made a film promoting frivolous consumerism has been made by commissioned censors. Chylilová then made the rebuttal that her story ends with a lesson in punishment for bad behavior. Clearly Daisies is rich with many currents of symbols, allusions, and themes that occasionally culminate in waves to extract shocked responses from viewers. Complexities swirling all at once draw in a multitude of assumptions that prefer to materialize the flow of complexity.
The girls themselves are represented as indifferent doll-like objects near the beginning of the film. Their limbs creak like wood as they move rigidly about. Chytilová anticipates the puppet masters who might watch Daisies and reduce the girls (and thus the film, or even further, Chytilová's talents in film making) to objects of their prejudices, using linguistic strings of logic to manipulate the girls like puppets on a stage set in imaginary theaters of biases.
The girls shake off their puppet tendencies as soon as they become inspired to go bad just like the world. Those who may argue that the film avoids the grim aspects of communism or any socio-political engagement should reconsider. I think that the film takes a very entertaining and flamboyant approach to social turmoil while poetically mocking the biases of criticism itself. Daisies for me, was a very cynical account of society and the individuals' opportunity to officially weave talents and experience with society in a constructive or beautiful way.
The choice of girls as taking on the role of the glutton ads an interesting philosophical twist for the allegorical reader. Woman become object of transition. One might think of Eden or the womb. Whereas the Man tends to assume maturation, adulthood, responsibility. With regards to the allusions of Eden, as we see in the opening scenes where the girls scamper about in a field of flowers and pick an apple from the apple tree. Eve is the weak figure, childlike in her susceptibility of being fooled. She then causes Adam and her own maturation by obtaining and sharing the fruit thus knowledge. Chytilová picks up on the theme of post-lapsarian maturation with the girl who dons the virginity crown of daisies. The virgin girl makes the choice to deny her lapse and instead feign prelapsarian purity. She also chooses the careless conscience of a child, denying the reductionism imposed upon the individual imagination by the expectations of the system in adulthood. Throughout the film, the girls test their ability preserve a garden of Eden world within a normal one because of their de-sexualized innocence and the denial of responsibility. They function upon whim and are relatively safe from harm using whatever they can to its fullest use, until it's destroyed. At one point, they even cut up the very frame that captures them. Occasionally questioning their existence, we can wonder if the idealized world they represent really does exist, or if it does, who lives there and what are the implications of an Eden-like world lurking among the variations of human experience who must all thrive on the same planet. The destructive tendencies could point to warmongers, ostentatious wealthy folk, or the tyrants; again, all side effects of the patriarchal system, per se.
However, rather then limiting the scope of the film as a critic of gender inequalities in this particular society at this moment in time, I think that the film hints at a much broader scope; the founding soil of theological and philosophical lore that is perpetually tilled by earthlings, and then, from which social institutions sprout.
But who can say? The foundations of humanity is a slightly difficult topic and the film's hallucinogenic form suggests a dispute between the signifier and the signified. The girls seem to have the final word right from the opening of the film, nobody understands us. The pleasure of watching such a film comes precisely from an active refusal of obvious identifications and the same old logical plot structure.
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