2023.06.01
Mask/Persona
In Robert Altman's filmography, ``Images'' was influenced by Ingmar Bergman's ``Persona'' (66), along with ``The That Cold Day in the Park '' (1969) and `` Three Women '' (1977). It is often described as a "trilogy" that received a lot of attention (although it is not at all similar). The heroine, Kathryn, can be said to be an extension of Frances, who imprisoned the young man in ` `That Cold Day in the Park ''.
The young man in `` That Cold Day in the Park '' is not only a ``man'', at least in front of the heroine's eyes, but also a presence reminiscent of a ``child'' whose gender is undifferentiated. In the heroine who brings in a prostitute for the sake of a young man, I sense not only the conflict with how she perceives herself as a woman, but also the perversion of a ``pseudo mother'' who watches over the growth of a young man (= child). The sight of the silent young man dancing lightly was like a comedy scene in a silent movie where the heroine's eyes were captured by the camera. This strange scene is similar to the opening scene of `` Masked/Persona, '' in which a boy places his hand over a woman's image, in terms of its image of silence and its spirituality.
“Images” © 2023 Phoenix Films Holdings Limited
Husband, lover who was supposed to be dead, ex-lover. Not just “three women” but “three men”. Masculinity is stripped away. All the men in Images seem incomprehensible to Kathryn's suffering. It's hardly any help. The image of a "child" is also applied to this work. A girl named Susanna (Kathryn Harrison) is brought in by her ex-lover Marcel. Kathryn hangs out with a girl who looks a lot like her old self. Multiple doppelgangers. Like Kathryn and Susannah's relationship, the cast's first names and character titles are shuffled around in this film. The actors are also a puzzle. I no longer know where the "real thing" is in this work.
This can be said to be a typical Robert Altman approach, which values the actors' interpretation and improvisation. It's a movie that keeps moving like a living thing. Kathryn Harrison, who played the girl, played Lily, a girl who meets a unicorn, in Louis Malle's masterpiece Black Moon (1975). What a fate!
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