Memory and amnesia have been popular themes in cinema, around which dramas and narratives are centred. In The Headless Woman (Spanish: La Mujer sin Cabeza, 2008) directed by Lucrecia Martel and Festen (1998) directed by Thomas Vinterberg, the possession and loss of memories are allegorically correlated with the historical and political background of Denmark and Argentina. This essay will focus on the analysis of the two films and argue that Vero’s amnesia in The Headless Woman represents a collective silence during the Dirty War in the history of Argentina, and Christian’s memory in Festen of being sexually abused by his father results in his successful rebellion against the patriarch, although not thoroughly. Other characters especially Else in Festen will also be discussed to extend to a wide array of political issues regarding class, gender and race, of which the inequality and discrimination is shared by both countries of Argentina and Denmark.
In The Headless Woman, Vero is an upper-middle class dentist who accidentally runs over a dog or a boy in a car crash, after which she seems to lose her memory and could not be sure whether she kills the dog, the boy or nothing. Her husband, her brother and other male family members try to convince her that she only hits a dog and she keeps confused. In the end, she changes the colour of her hair and finds that all of her memory on that day seems to be wrong. Therefore, she accepts to be innocent and completely forgets about this accident. As the narrative of the film is confusing at first sight, the historical and political allegory of Vero’s oblivion is even more obscure, which could be associated with the history of the Dirty War from 1976 to 1983 in Argentina, during which between 9,000 and 30,000 people disappeared. The dead boy, regardless of whether he is hit or drown to death, is analogous to the nameless and traceless disappeared people in this sense. It is asserted by Martin that he is ghost-like since he is traceless and ignored after his death, and this symbol of ghost-child which implies the current form of social exclusion thus works as a metaphor for the disappeared in the past who were similarly forgotten[1]. Vero’s amnesia could be interpreted as both a form of denial of her fault and the leftover shock to her. According to Ochonicky, a part of the past is produced by the present memory and the evolving understanding of the past events, which “locate the past in the present”[2]. This is demonstrated by the words of Vero’s husband and other male relatives saying “it was nothing……it was just a scare” as they try to affect Vero’s memory and her own perspective on this case in order to distort her subjective “past”. Since the film adopts “a free indirect discourse” named by Pasolini that keeps following the emotion and psyche of Vero[3], it is uncertain whether the scene of the car crash at the beginning of the film is an objective narration of the past or an artificially modified version of Vero’s recovered memory. Her unconscious denial might erase the accident from her memory, yet her oblivion could reversely imply its exact existence as its leftover influence. Vero’s reaction is also related to the case of the military violence, as the historical fact might be erased in the post-dictatorship period through the mechanism of collective silence or a collective refusal to remember, which belong to the effects of the dictatorship[4]. Although the Dirty War has passed, people are still engaged with “a collective complicity” that everyone knows but cannot say out, which is extended to their treatment for the poor and lower-class people.
The erasure of memory and even the real events is implied in the film through the empty shots, the spatial vacancy between people of different classes, and the special framing that often “cuts off” Vero’s head. After the accident Vero keeps driving before she stops at an empty field and gets off her car to have a walk. During this sequence, either her head or her entire body vanishes in the frame, implying that she might be in an unrealised process of erasing her memory and clearing her possible guilt off her mind. Thus, the erasure of her body parts symbolises that of her memory and her sin. Although Martel did not directly show anything related to the Dirty War, the dead nameless boy and the habitual forgetting and denial of one’s fault have indirectly pointed to the traceless disappeared people in the history and the collective practice of maintaining silence. Yet it remains uncertain whether people like Vero are the ones to blame. Considering that Vero is instructed by the psychological hints of her husband and brothers, it is difficult to decide whether Vero belongs to the elite class that inflicts exploitation on the lower class or the dominated public who can hardly denounce the injustice or revolt against the ruling class. As neither her mental state is stable nor is her social state clear, her practice of erasure could be interpreted as both escaping from blame and protecting herself in a distorted way. To some extent, Vero, as a female, seems even not to be permitted to acknowledge her guilt if there is, because the men are dedicated to maintaining the superiority and the ostensible purity of their class, which could be considered as their resistance against an ethical necessity to change the status quo of the social stratification. However, as Solanas and Getino have mentioned in their 1970 article, “the middle sectors were and are” of “ambivalent class condition” and “buffer position between social polarities”[5], thus their attempt to protect their dignified position against the dark-faced poor people seems ludicrous and useless.
This leads to the analysis of the class differentiation in this film. Apart from indicating Vero’s psychological condition, the spatial gap could also be utilised to imply the distance between the upper class and the lower class. When a friend of the dead boy and the gardener come to deliver the flowers, there is a spatial distance between Vero and them, indicating the invisible yet unbreakable barrier between the classes. According to Losada, Martel adopts the special “middle class gaze” seeing from the eyes of the middle class like Vero and her family, which “defamiliarises the neo-colonial order”[6]. Going beyond the “cult of victims”[7] which is common in other Argentine films to reflect and criticise the dictatorship from the perspective from the victims and the unprivileged class, the social stratification in The Headless Woman is demonstrated in an ironical but self-reflexive way through this privileged yet impotent standpoint. To some extent, the ignorance of poverty and marginalisation in the contemporary society is essentially the same as the oblivion and denial of the past trauma, as both could be regarded as passive practices towards social issues.
As Page has argued, Lucrecia Martel’s works are centred on the theme of middle-class anxiety and a delicate hint of incest[8]. Thus, an even more obscure social issue lies between genders, referring to the instructions given by Vero’s male family members to her and her extra-marital affair with her cousin. The patriarchs in her family place an irresistible power over Vero, who is seemingly used to obedience and acceptance. Although she appears enthusiastic to have sex with her cousin, it remains unknown whether she is forced in some way to begin this incestuous relationship. As a result, Vero’s decent job as a dentist and gorgeous appearance with blonde hair serve as the masks covering her powerlessness compared to the patriarchs.
Considering the inflexible boundaries between genders, classes and races which link “the systematic brutality of the past, and neoliberal impunity in the present”[9], Festen is similar to what is explored and discussed in The Headless Woman, as these ubiquitous political issues are also reflected simultaneously, although set in a different social and historical background in Denmark.
The story of Festen happens at Helge’s 60th birthday party, when the sexual abuses imposed by this patriarch decades ago on his twins, Linda and Christian, is exposed by Christian who is stimulated by Linda’s death. The concealing and revealing of the incest memory between Helge, his wife Else, Christian and dead Linda constitute the whole film built on a panorama of a wealthy, upper-middle-class, white, Danish family. Being a representational work of Dogme 95, the deliberately inferior and amateurish quality of cinematography creates an illusion for the audience of prying into the private life of a decent family with exceptional comical members like Michael. Nevertheless, the opening of this film is proved to be deceptive when the truth of this family is gradually revealed. The allegorical interpretation of the whole family as a “microcosm of Denmark” is prevailing and cogent, inferred by a shot of Danish flag flying in front of the house[10]. Helge represents the patriarch and the ruling class who is shown hypocritical to pretend as guiltless and exploits and subjugates the unprivileged. His expulsion of the sexually abusive action from his memory is intended to purify himself[11], which might be a custom and even an unconscious habit of the privileged people to maintain themselves spotless. It is thus extremely ironical that his villainy is exposed at the party where he desperately needs decency and admiration, yet Christian’s accusation and the letter from Linda destruct all of his prestige and reputation and expels him out of the privileged class. Correspondingly, Christian represents the resister against the injustice of the patriarchy who tries to rebel and makes a success. With the father, Helge, being “the establishment” and the son, Christian, being “the dissident expatriate”[12], the incestuous abuse is the exact metaphor for exploitation and hurt imposed by the ruling elites to the people.
Nevertheless, the mechanism of patriarchy is not sundered but only re-established as the position of the patriarch is shifted from Helge to Christian, according to Chanter[13]. Christian becomes the new patriarch after his rebellion, demonstrated by the admiration and kindness towards him expressed by almost all the people at their home. Michael’s reaction during the whole process and the transition of his attitude towards Christian are especially significant to indicate Christian’s succession to the patriarch. After Helene reads aloud Linda’s suicide letter as a strong proof of Christian’s words, Michael heavily beats Helge outside the house. At first sight, it is only his punishment to his father’s incestuous act and his revenge for his brother and sister. Yet before he knows the truth, he is extremely delighted when he is assigned by his father to host the party, and he forces Christian out of the house into the forest and even ties him to the tree despite their good relationship before, only in order to save Helge’s face and preserve his reputation. As a result, it is more appropriate to interpret his act as a way of venting his rage of being deceived by his sanctimonious father, to whom he always expresses full respect and trust. When Helge finishes his apology speech on the next morning, a shot of Christian’s disgusted expression is followed by Michael’s immediate action of asking Helge to leave. It seems that Michael fully receives Christian’s unexplained intention and offers to work for him without being ordered. Therefore, it could be implied that Michael has accepted Christian to be the new patriarch and is ready to defend for him. The rebellion only expels Helge out of the family centre, but the rest members of the family including Else who has tried to help conceal her husband’s immorality are all prepared to treat Christian as the new patriarch in general acquiescence. Thus, this expulsion of Helge is not a thorough subversion of the ruling class or patriarchy but only serves as a substitution of the ruler and the patriarch, which obscurely conveys a pessimistic attitude.
It is weird that Else is left out of any punishment and is able to have breakfast with her children on the next morning. In fact, she is guilty of complicity with Helge as she did not help her children with knowing about her husband’s sexual abuse. She pretends to forget what she has seen, although she still reacts accordingly to send Michael to boarding school. After Christian wins the position of the patriarch, she transfers to the new condition quickly and refuses Helge’s request to leave with him. She represents the group of females who act as doubtlessly obedient to the ruler (Helge and then Christian) and “submit to the system” of patriarchy[14], in which the status of females is so trivial that even their misdeeds are to be neglected. Apart from the gender issues, the fact of discrimination against the non-whites is also displayed on this character, although not as apparent and fierce as on Michael. She is not able to correctly remember the name of Helene’s black boyfriend, Gbatokai, implying that she implicitly rejects other ethnicities in her own nation. Vinterberg has mentioned in an interview that the racism and hostility against Gbatokai is a reborn form of Fascism in Europe[15]. He has affirmed that by including this foreign character into the family drama, it is possible to “underscore the extent to which the film’s depiction of the family functions as a portrait of Denmark”[16]. Thus, Gbatokai’s suffering is not the only case but represents the situation of other black people in Denmark. Although Else does not humiliate him through malicious words and songs as Michael does, she belongs to the “silent majority”[17], according to Stevenson, who always act as silent accomplices and are reluctant to change the problematic status quo. In this way, Else’s oblivion parallels Vero’s amnesia, as they are both simultaneously perpetrators and victims and silently accept all the arrangements of the patriarch. Their impotence to fight for themselves and other victims is concealed by their deliberate indifference and forgetfulness, and their inaction reversely results in their even more impotent situation.
To conclude, Vero in The Headless Woman is an allegorical character representing both the privileged class in society and the powerless woman in the patriarchal system, whose amnesia acts as a protection for her position in the society and a result of obedience towards patriarchs. She also symbolises the silent majority during the Dirty War who committed a collective complicity and adopted deliberate oblivion. In Festen, the memory of the incestuous abuse is expelled by Helge but kept by Christian, who successfully exposes the immorality of his father and defeats him. Yet the patriarchal system still exists after his rebellion, demonstrated by Michael’s prompt adaptation to the new patriarch of his elder brother. Else is similarly to Vero, both of whom are obedient and forget the misdeeds conducted by themselves or ruling patriarchs to remain the status quo. The dead boy in The Headless Woman and Gbatokai in Festen are either ignored or discriminated, both of whom have dark skin, so as to indicate the racism shared by both countries. Being the mixture of objective events and subjective perceptions, memories as representational allegories manage to involve the historical and political concerns of the directors in the films.
[1] Deborah Martin, “Childhood, Youth, and the In-between: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Lucrecia Martel’s La Mujer sin Cabeza,” Hispanic Research Journal 14, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 149, https://doi.org/10.1179/1468273712Z.00000000043.
[2] Adam Ochonicky, “The Spectral Present: Landscapes of Absence in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and The Headless Woman,” Screening the Past, no. 43 (April 2018), accessed December 11, 2019, http://www.screeningthepast.com/2018/02/the-spectral-present-landscapes-of-absence-in-once-upon-a-time-in-anatolia-and-the-headless-woman/.
[3] Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The Cinema of Poetry,” in Movies and Methods. Vol. 1, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 550.
[4] Cecilia Sosa, “A Counter-Narrative of Argentine Mourning: The Headless Woman (2008), Directed by Lucrecia Martel,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (December 2009): 252–56, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349279.
[5] Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, “Toward a Third Cinema,” Cinéaste 4, no. 3 (1970): 3.
[6] Matt Losada, “Lucrecia Martel’s La Mujer sin Cabeza: Cinematic Free Indirect Discourse, Noise-Scape and the Distraction of the Middle Class,” Romance Notes 50, no. 3 (2010): 309.
[7] Sosa, “A Counter-Narrative of Argentine Mourning,” 252.
[8] Joanna Page, Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, 2009), 181.
[9] Martin, “Childhood, Youth, and the In-Between,” 154.
[10] Brian Goss, “Rebel Yell: The Politics of The Celebration/Festen (1998),” Studies in European Cinema 6, no. 2–3 (2009): 225, https://doi.org/10.1386/seci.6.2-3.215/1; C. Claire Thomson, Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), 33.
[11] Tina Chanter, “The Picture of Abjection: Thomas Vinterberg’s ‘The Celebration,’” Parallax 10, no. 1 (January 1, 2004): 35, https://doi.org/10.1080/1353464032000171064.
[12] Jack Stevenson, Dogme Uncut: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, and the Gang That Took on Hollywood (Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2003), 84–85.
[13] Chanter, “The Picture of Abjection,” 37.
[14] Chanter, 37.
[15] Richard Porton, “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark: An Interview with Thomas Vinterberg,” Cineaste; New York, 1999, 18.
[16] Mette Hjort and Ib Bondebjerg, The Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2001), 280.
[17] Stevenson, Dogme Uncut, 84.
Bibliography
Chanter, Tina. “The Picture of Abjection: Thomas Vinterberg’s ‘The Celebration.’” Parallax 10, no. 1 (January 1, 2004): 30–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/1353464032000171064.
Goss, Brian. “Rebel Yell: The Politics of The Celebration/Festen (1998).” Studies in European Cinema 6, no. 2–3 (2009): 215–227. https://doi.org/10.1386/seci.6.2-3.215/1.
Hjort, Mette, and Ib Bondebjerg. The Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2001.
Losada, Matt. “Lucrecia Martel’s La Mujer sin Cabeza: Cinematic Free Indirect Discourse, Noise-Scape and the Distraction of the Middle Class.” Romance Notes 50, no. 3 (2010): 307–13.
Martin, Deborah. “Childhood, Youth, and the In-between: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Lucrecia Martel’s La Mujer sin Cabeza.” Hispanic Research Journal 14, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 144–58. https://doi.org/10.1179/1468273712Z.00000000043.
Ochonicky, Adam. “The Spectral Present: Landscapes of Absence in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and The Headless Woman.” Screening the Past, no. 43 (April 2018). Accessed December 11, 2019. http://www.screeningthepast.com/2018/02/the-spectral-present-landscapes-of-absence-in-once-upon-a-time-in-anatolia-and-the-headless-woman/.
Page, Joanna. Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema. Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, 2009.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “The Cinema of Poetry.” In Movies and Methods. Vol. 1, edited by Bill Nichols, 542–58. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Porton, Richard. “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark: An Interview with Thomas Vinterberg.” Cinéaste 24, no. 2/3 (1999): 17-19.
Solanas, Fernando, and Octavio Getino. “Toward a Third Cinema.” Cinéaste 4, no. 3 (1970): 1–10.
Sosa, Cecilia. “A Counter-Narrative of Argentine Mourning: The Headless Woman (2008), Directed by Lucrecia Martel.” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (December 2009): 250–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349279.
Stevenson, Jack. Dogme Uncut: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, and the Gang That Took on Hollywood. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2003.
Thomson, C. Claire. Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.
Filmography
The Headless Woman. Directed by Lucrecia Martel. Argentina: Aquafilms, 2008.
Festen. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg. Denmark: Nimbus Film Productions, 1998.
Maggie 叶芷灵 