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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Representing Holy Foolishness: An investigation of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema Alina G. Birzache A Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2012 Declaration University of Edinburgh School of Divinity PhD Thesis ‘Representing Holy Foolishness: An investigation of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema’ I DECLARE that: I composed this thesis, the work is my own. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or qualification. Name……………………………….. Date……………………………………… Abstract In this thesis I investigate the evolving figure of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema. Three national cinemas - Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, French cinema, and Danish cinema – form the primary focus of my analysis. These cinemas correspond broadly to the three main orientations in European Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. The cinematic holy fool of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is interpreted in this thesis as a protean figure through which different European religious and intellectual traditions percolate (chapters one and two). Against this varied cultural background, I investigate the way in which the figure of the holy fool is used by filmmakers as a means of responding to and critiquing aspects of the modern world. To this end I analyse how filmmakers have represented different types, features and uses of the holy fool in interaction with their particular cultural and religious backgrounds. In particular, I examine how the cinematic holy fool is used to critique the religious and social status quo, the contemporary political power structures, and the abuse of reason. An apparently anachronistic figure, I argue that the holy fool has proved a versatile modern device, employed to question established secular and religious worldviews, from the Soviet regimes (chapters three and four) to contemporary Western European democracies (chapters five, six and seven). Through this thesis I identify how the modern holy fool is one without authority; a figure whose critical function has largely outgrown its confessional traditions, even if indebted to them. Nonetheless, in diverse secular and religious settings, I demonstrate how the fool’s critical function remains morally legitimated by selfless suffering. i Representing Holy Foolishness: An investigation of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema Contents Abstract page i Introduction 1 1 Holy Fools and Folly: Literature Review and Methodology 11 2 The Pauline Holy Fool and Its Successors 42 3 Speaking Truth to Power: the Holy Fool in Soviet and Russian Cinema 78 4 Holy Fools in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky 115 5 The Suffering Fool in French Cinema 148 6 The Performance of the Holy Fool in Danish Cinema 183 7 Idiocy as Technique: the Dogme 95 Movement 215 Conclusion 242 Filmography 250 Bibliography 252 ii Introduction A young man is gazing at a travelling wagon in the middle of a village square. Defying the silent and almost motionless crowd gathered around, he ventures inside the vehicle to see the exhibition it hosts. Closely following the young man, the camera reveals that most of the internal space is taken up by an extraordinary exhibit: an enormous stuffed whale with decrepit skin like an old map bearing the marks of time, and yet sporting open eyes that seem alive. Fascinated, the young man returns for a surreptitious nocturnal visit to see this leviathan. In this second scene the whale’s penetrating eye unexpectedly appears as the focal point of the camera in a striking chiaroscuro close-up. After several long seconds during which we gaze into the beast’s eye, the man’s profile enters the screen from the side and addresses the creature with an inquisitive look, exclaiming: ‘See how much trouble you have caused!’ These memorable scenes come from the Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s art house film Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) which, at the dawn of the new millennium, generated much debate over its encrypted meaning. For some critics it seemed that János Valushka, the protagonist and young man in these two scenes, was playing a particular cinematic type - that of a holy fool.1 What prompted such an identification? Even by his own admission director Béla Tarr has no religious faith.2 But this does not mean that his meditations on the human condition avoid religious references. On the contrary, the image of the stuffed whale offers one of the most 1 John Orr, ‘Béla Tarr circling the whale’, Sight & Sound, 4 (2001), 22-24; Jonathan Romney, ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’, Sight & Sound, 4 (2003), 32-33; Peter Hames, ‘The melancholy of resistance: The films of Béla Tarr’, Kinoeye, 1.1 (2001) < http://www.kinoeye.org/01/01/hames01.php> [accessed 11 October 2010]; Alan Pavelin, ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’, Talking Pictures, <www.talkingpix.co.uk/ReviewsWerckmeisterH.html#Alan> [accessed 11 October 2010]; Ian Johnston, ‘Seeking order in disorder: Béla Tarr’s “Werckmeister Harmonies”’, Unspoken: Journal for Contemplative Cinema (2009) <www.unspokenfilmjournal.wordpress.com/i-tarr- contents/seeking-order-in-disorder-bela-tarr’s-werckmeister-harmonies> [accessed 12 October 2010]; Michael Wilmington, ‘“Harmonies” depicts a world out of joint’, Chicago Tribune (28 December 2001) 2 Béla Tarr, ‘In search of truth: Béla Tarr interviewed’, interview by Phil Ballard, Kynoeye, 4.2 (2004) <http://www.kinoeye.org/04/02/ballard02.php> 1 powerful cinematic metaphors of religious desolation in a film which is itself a meditation on modern society. How might this be possible? A few words about the film will help to set the context. Its action is placed in a small village, somewhere in central Europe, set in a pastoral landscape seemingly oblivious to the modern world, which is suddenly thrown into eschatological anticipation. The source of the commotion is the arrival of a strange wagon displaying ‘wonders of nature’, its greatest attractions being ‘the world’s biggest whale’ and an enigmatic and malefic Prince. Frightened by alarming rumours of strange happenings that preceded the arrival of the wagon, no villager summons the courage to enter the show. The sole exception is the village postman, János Valushka. In spite of a lack of cues in the narrative, there are visual elements which render the film readable as a commentary on the state of religion in the contemporary world. If the small village is taken as a microcosm, we see János as the only person of religious sensibility left. He is the only one who shows a genuine interest in the whale, which, for him, is far more than a stuffed exhibit. While the villagers understand its presence as ominous, for János it is a sign of divine mystery and creative power: ‘How mysterious is the Lord that He amuses Himself with such strange creatures!’ he exclaims. The framing of the creature’s immobile but seemingly real eye in close up brings to our mind representations of the Divine Eye. If the beast is a metaphor for God, as has been suggested, then the state of a whale, stuffed and decrepit, appears to reinforce the idea of a dead God.3 In this spiritual wasteland, the modern ‘holy fool’ Valushka is not a person of absolute religious faith, but rather the last human being in which the divine sense has not completely atrophied. His modernity, therefore, is indebted to his relevance to Nietzsche’s ‘fool’ announcing the death of God, rather than to the older Christian hagiographic tradition of holy foolishness.4 Traditionally, the figure of the holy fool has appeared in Christian tradition as a counterpoint to mainstream society. Standing outside accepted social norms, holy 3 Alan Pavelin, ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ <www.talkingpix.co.uk/ReviewsWerckmeisterH.html#Alan> [accessed 11 October 2010], (para. 6 out 8) 4 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp. 181-182 2 fools have been well positioned to offer a powerful critique of contemporary behaviours and ideas. If Valushka represents a modern variant of the holy fool figure in cinema, does he also retain the critical function of his foolish predecessors? In Tarr’s political parable Valushka’s complex role is indeed grounded in the way he offers a contrasting vision to the world around him. The critical function is retained, even though it corresponds to the particular circumstances of his own epoch and place. Firstly, it is through Valushka that the contrast between darkness and light becomes apparent, and a moral perspective is introduced. He is neither led by his passions like the crowds that want to destroy every sign of civilization, nor by the theoretical intelligence of the ivory tower musicologist for whom he provides food and care. Valushka is guided instead by his moral sense into attending to the needs of the others. Secondly Valushka’s simplicity, appearing to the people as folly, stands out against the world around him as a beacon of unspoilt humanity. In contrast with his meek mode of being, other characters seem driven by ideologies, functioning as either manipulators or the manipulated.

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