58 Doru POP

Doru POP

What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”?

Abstract: Without trying to identify a sub-genre in the The digestive system Romanian contemporary cinema and without searching for of the visual consumers the so called “cooking films”, this paper is analyzing the usage of food and eating in the “new wave” films of the We are “visual consumers” (Schroeder Romanian cinema. Treating food and food consumption as 3-4), we consume and devour visual a social practice and using the concept of food semiotics, products and visual objects. Today the author presents some of the most important usages of Cinema is one of the most important tech- eating in the contemporary Romanian cinema. nologies by which we absorb information Keywords: Romanian cinema, food, eating, taste, through our most important sense: the sensation, spectator, synesthesia. sight. As Ian Christie has put it, cinema is in and by itself a form of consumption, a “devouring” of meanings, ideas and realities. This visual consumption takes place in a production world where the reproduction of images is made in a similar way to fast food. We consume pre- cooked advertising and film products, yet visual production is limited in terms of its scope. Cinema, and the other related video technologies, is fundamentally an art of two senses: sight and sound. Pushing towards the limits of other senses has always been a question for Doru Pop the philosophers and practitioners of cinematic arts. One possible answer Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca E-mail: [email protected] was the concept of haptic gaze (regard haptique), the term used by Gilles Deleuze (and borrowed from Alois Riegl), which EKPHRASIS, 1/2012 explains how, using vision to stimulate SYNESTHESIA IN CINEMA AND IN VISUAL ARTS the other senses, cinema has the capacity pp. 58-67 What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”? 59 to put the viewer in a state of mind food in an aesthetic way. Crossing the line which allows almost tactile experience between the screen and the experience of (Deleuze 25-26). This tactile capacity of the viewer, starting with the 16th and 17th visual arts, documented from Ancient art century masters and (not) ending with the to that of the Renaissance, gives vision experiments of Viennese actionism, was a a capacity beyond its limitations. So the constant provocation, which reverberated tactile function of the vision, pushing into cinema (Keller 2006). beyond the optical and into the sensory, In this context, the question is if allows cinema to be crossing the visual cinema can integrate the taste into its boundaries of the cinematic and reaching mode of production, if this peculiar to the limits of tactility and even olfactory sense can become a part of the visual perception. The Soviet cinematographers, “devouring” of cinematic production. like Eisenstein, were among those Seeing how taste is used in some of the pushing these limits further and further, Romanian new cinema movies could some of them suggesting even that film provide some hints on the motivations should become an all inclusive medium and the techniques of how the movie of expression, one that would address makers are dealing with this issue. “all the senses”, which would physically move the spectators through the use of Sitting at the table montage (Eisenstein 38). of the Romanian cinema It was Antonin Artaud (1971) who Cristian Mungiu ironically charac- went on speaking about a “third type” of terized the Romanian film by the fact that film making, one that would be a mixing it is centered around a “scene at the table” of the “pure”, visually based cinema, (quoted by Chirilov 13), that is we can and the “psychological”, emotion filled find an ubiquitous sequence in most of the cinema. This third cinema would be a Romanian films, in which the characters cinema of senses, of sensations produced sit around a dinner table, allowing the by the eye, yet existing in the other director to build a mise-en-scène filled senses too. Being a purely audio-visual with psychological tension. Chirilov form of expression, cinema can only reviewed the wide variety of Romanian stimulate those other senses in order to films belonging to the “new wave”, from generate a feeling, a substitute for the Radu Muntean’s The paper will be blue or real experience. Yet eating is one of the Tuesday after Christmas, where using the facts, like smelling and sensing odors, dinner table is a tool for insight into the which refuses itself to the visual nature of characters’ inner emotional world, to cinema making. Eating and “tasting” art Florin Șerban or Marian Crișan where the was one of the key issues for experimental table is an intermediary object, used to artists, and cinema proposed some of the present relational dynamics between the most awesome experimentations with characters. I believe that it is even more 60 Doru POP important to see how these locations of visual representations. One of the fathers the action, beyond the simple typology of cultural anthropology, Claude Lévi- of the “table scene” could be suggestive Strauss, argued in his seminal book for the deeper levels of significance into describing the cultural distinctions these films. Identifying a sub-genre in between the primitive and the civilized the Romanian contemporary cinema, (Le cru et le cuit 1964) that we can interpret one close to what was called “food the eating practices of a group as relevant films”, I suggest we should analyze the for the entire cultural practices of that implications of the usage of food and group. The hypothesis of Lévi-Strauss eating in the “new wave” films of the concerning the „preparedness” of ali- Romanian cinema. Treating food and ments distinct from the “raw” nature of food consumption as a social practice food in the wild, has a very pragmatic, we can identify the conceptual use of interpretative ending. Preparing and eating in the contemporary Romanian using the food is to be considered as one cinema. The physical nature of the act of the first and most primitive layers of of eating shown on the screen goes code making in human societies. beyond the relationships or the character As human beings we not only eat development, it is about getting in touch, food, we attribute characteristics to that being moved by the cinematic production food, that is we make the processed in a different way than the classical aliments relevant for our social status. movies are doing it. It is my contention Thus, following the “food trails”, we can that we are witnessing a search for a identify the deeply rooted significations multi-sensory, synesthetic experience, about social practices and social identities. produced by the two senses (sound and So, if processing food is an indicator of sight) to stimulate other senses, widely the possibility of processing reality, of practiced in European moviemaking transforming that which is natural into (Marks 22). a carrier of significance, by consequence any form of transforming a raw signifier Semiotics of food into a secondary, “cooked” signified, Of course, there is a long history in the becomes a form of semiotic. Here food arts dealing with the relationship between processing is a primitive expression of color and taste (as it can be traced from semiosis. Goethe to Klee), or the correspondence Later, in L’Origine des manières de between the music and the images (as it table (1968), Lévi-Strauss takes further is for Kandinsky), yet the role of taste in his analysis, suggesting that culinary the visual arts is still a debated problem. rituals are indicators of social structures, One possible answer to this problem of the organization of human societies as comes from the anthropology of culture, a whole. Not only that the way we treat from a structuralist interpretation of food is relevant for the way we operate What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”? 61 with meaning in society, but our table that the relationship we have with food “rules and habits” become indicators of is an indicator of our social status, of the the emotional dynamic within the group. position we are taking in society. But the And, since eating contains the cultural “code of food” is more complex, it carries practices of a given group, by interpreting more than the codes of social relationship these practices of eating we have access or social hierarchies, it is an expression of to the initial conventions, to the profound power structures and cultural practices. meanings otherwise hidden. And this, as Brower suggests, this cultural In the logic of the “semiotics of food” interpretative tool, can be used in films – the way we eat as a representation of to “communicate important aspects of the way we see the world we live in – character’s emotions, along with their we must follow the differences between personal and cultural identities” (Bower our practices concerning eating. As in all 1). So the interaction with food and the cultures we attribute symbolic meaning treatment of food as related to the actions to our food, from the Hebrew tradition on the screen must be seen as part of of eating bitter herbs to remind the meaning creation in cinema. Food is an chosen people of their bitter life during indicator of the ethics and moral values the captivity, the Hindu interdiction of of the characters, but also of the inner eating cow meat, due to the connection dynamics of meaning production in any to the bounty-full Goddess of the Earth, film. or the Christian representation of the Here I will be using some relevant body and the blood of Christ by their examples from some of the most impor- food substitutes, bread and wine, we tant cinematographers of the new should look at food as never being just Romanian cinema, like Cristi Puiu, food. Food is always codified by the Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristian cooking and preparing practices, by the Mungiu, in order to discuss the role codes we embed in the act of making played by eating in cinema. In the our food. These codes are based on a following analysis I will apply the binary fundamentally structuralist approach to structure of myth-making and myth all forms of signs, where the permutation interpretation proposed by Lévi-Strauss: of an opposing set of terms (cooked- savage – civilized, processed – natural, raw; fresh-rotten) become indicators of to give a description of the signification the qualities of the given cultural object, searched by the contemporary Romanian environment, of the social practices they moviemakers. take place in. So, if cooking is a sign, a manifestation Eating (in) cinema of cultural elaboration, that is invested Although food and nutrition play with meaning, it is allowing us to have a fundamental role in our lives, the access to the embedded significance. One classic film practice deliberately ignored obvious expression of this significance is these functions, constantly avoiding 62 Doru POP images of people eating. Eating was, background which allows the director to in the traditional film canon, a gesture build intellectual significance. In an even of irreverence. In a very Victorian way more primitive way, eating allows time of thinking, eating in front of other to be processed in the movies, most of the people was not a nice gesture, and so the times the character sits at a table, then we unsightly nature of the eating has put see him standing up – he has finished food, together with taste as sensation, eating, time passed by. outside the interest of cinema. They were The third level of using the food in the “missing meals and appetites” of cinema is by attributing symbolic and early moviemaking (Zimmerman 2009). metaphorical significance to it, building Because it was commonly accepted that a deeper reference level into the scene movies cannot show their feelings of (Zimmerman 9). This is best exemplified people who eat and even less what they by the famous table sequence in Bunuel’s taste when they eat, cinema excluded Viridiana. The action takes place at the eating as a function and attributed it other table of apparently regular people, but roles. it is a reference to the Last Supper of Zimmerman describes three key ways Christ. Another symbolic treatment of classical cinema uses food and repre- food is to build it metaphorically, from sents the act of eating. At the first level, a simple material to a psychological tool. food is a simple prop, it is an element As it happens in the famous Gold rush belonging to the setup, used to localize sequence, where Charlie Chaplin eats a or to contextualize the narrative within slice of his own boiled shoe soles, and a historical or spatial frame. Here food later becomes himself a roasted chicken is a function that allows the author to in the eyes of his antagonist, food is used create subtext hermeneutics, and send as a narrative tool. This also happens us simple information. For reasons in comedy films, where playing with related to the arguments of the “pure” food (throwing tarts or cream pies) are aesthetics of film, which makes eating comic instruments, since food is always an ignoble visual action, filmmakers available, yet is only an object, devoided started avoiding it by an ellipse, which of its primarily quality, the taste. can integrate eating in a temporal split, or they simply placed it in the background. The soup This gave another important function as the primordial liquid of Reality of eating, which was early on used into The artificial nature of most of the movies, that is to indicate the fast passing traditional cinema productions was of time. As Orson Welles does in the now the fact that it seemed to ignore basic famous sequence of the time passing bodily functions: sleeping, excretion, by in the relationship between Charles eating were deliberately avoided since Kane and his wife, the table is only a they did not seem to be important in the What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”? 63 narrative development. They were simply into the created Reality (Barthes 26- “dejection”, shameful and disgusting 27). The fact that Porumboiu puts his references to our animality. Cinema was character in this deeply human position, “disembodied” (Elsaesser), yet even making us witnesses to a fact of life these theoreticians, interpreting the role otherwise ignored by cinematographers, of senses in cinema are relying only on has to do with the interest for realism of hearing, touching and thinking. As it was these young moviemakers. the case with other biological functions of our bodies, the cinema evaded the Have you eaten yet puritan constriction imposed on its (any Romanian cinema)? modes of production, and during the 50s, Eating is also fundamental in another together with the growing interest for key film of the Romanian new wave. realism in the European cinema, as it was Cristi Puiu’s Cigarettes and Coffee (Un with the British kitchen sink films, but pachet de cafea şi un cartuş de Kent) is taking also with the French Nouvelle Vague, place within a “table scene”. Unlike the the bodily actions became integral parts Romanian movies before him, Puiu of the aesthetics of cinematic realism. In creates a context where we do not take this respect, eating and cooking were part in a symbolic reconstruction of the considered fundamental parts of the world (like in Pintilie’s ending of the Oak realism of life, not only representing the Tree – Balanţa), but we are witness of a materiality of the visible world, but also natural scene. A son greedily eats course reshaping the universe where human after course, in the middle of the dialogue beings live. This meant a return of the with his father, without caring about the kitchen as a filmic space: many of the spectator, without any courtesy towards new Romanian films are beginning or are his parent. This treatment of the realistic ending in the space of the kitchen. dialogue is, more importantly, relevant In Corneliu Porumboiu’s movie Poliţist for the inner dynamics of the Father-Son adjectiv (Police, adjective) we have an relationship. The son eats incessantly, important use of the kitchen space and of and the Father only gets a glass of water, the act of eating. The main character, the which he never manages to drink, and policeman, troubled by a moral dilemma, which is chose also by his son, all the is all alone at the table, and we see him in while watching the greed and almost a close up eating soup for several minutes. gluttony manner in which his offspring This is the point where the “Real” takes becomes a representation of the capitalist place, that “Real” which Roland Barthes consumerism. has called (with respect to photography) There is no plan-séquence, as in other the punctum. It is that hole, that single new wave movies. On the contrary, element which pokes out from the image “Reality” is built upon other cinemato- and “pierces” the viewer, bringing him graphic techniques. The table scene 64 Doru POP begins with a standard medium shot, narrative. For example, later on in the and it starts in medias res, that is it begins discussion, we find out that the father is when we already see an empty plate on going to cook a potatoes soup – one of the table, an indication that the son had the simplest and cheapest meals, even for already eaten a meal before, and now Romanian standards – another indication the waiter brings him the second plate, of the social status of the father. Here, the maybe even the third course, since it counterpoint becomes obvious and even is an apple pie. We also find out that transparent. While the “working class” the son had already drank a beer, since is no longer fed by the government, a the waiter offers him another one. He new social category of workers is born, refuses and condescendently asks his one of capitalist extraction, which does father: “Have you eaten, yet?” And the not need society to be feeding them, father says twice that he is not hungry, they provide for themselves, they are although he looks starvingly at the son, as the egoistic devourers, the emotionless he starts eating the pie. From now on the eaters. This becomes more than clear son will speak only with his mouth full, when the son gets a coffee, and the father with a total lack of respect for the father, is still undecided about what to order, and the sound of cutlery on the plate is that the son asks for another piece of counter-pointing his father’s words. The apple pie, and surreptitiously asks for a son scornfully masticates while his father special part, a crunchier part of the pie. A describes his life tragedy, the loss of his cup of water, says the father, and the son job, the desperation of a life time lost. In decides for him, “bring him a Dorna”. The this context, the food becomes not only a entire scene describes, by simply showing metaphor of relationship, it is a narrative eating and drinking practices, the power function, one positioning the viewer, by relationship between the two and their counter-shot over the son’s shoulder, in ideological universe. As we will see later, his eating position. We are the ones who the father is unable to understand the are “eating” the information about this difference between instant coffee and person’s life, we are chewing without “Lavazza” coffee, as he is not able to feelings, we are tasting the deep despise. understand the difference between the Relevantly enough, the job the father various types of bottled water offered used to have was also tied to food and to him. His incapacity to perceive the to eating practices. He used to provide differences between different types of food for a worker’s canteen, he was processing food is a manifestation of his transporting peas, potatoes and noodles incapacity to understand the cultural meant to feed the working class. “Now changes taking place in society, in the there is no one to be fed”, says the father, general transformation of his world. all the while his son continues to eat. While the crunchiness of the pie asked The references to processing food are by the son is simultaneously an indicator constantly present during the entire of the crunchiness of the son towards the What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”? 65 father, his lips seem clenched in the sugar the law, brings an “alive” pig in his of the pie while telling his father what to apartment. This is paired in a symbolic do, and the choosy nature of his character. way to the nature of his existence. The His mouth is filled with sweetness, yet way people in Communist Romania the words he mutters are bitter and sour found their food becomes an indicator for the ears of his parent. Since almost the of the primitive status of their very life. entire discussion between father and son Illegal and illicit, the killing of the pig is is conducted with the son masticating his done by the upholder of the law. And the food, Cristi Puiu is leaving us with the solution they find to kill the pig, which bitter taste in our mouth. is gassing the animal, is not due to their “humanism”, but to their secretive way Human versus animal of life, since they want to avoid social Another important director of the participation, they do not want to share new generation, Cristian Mungiu, is this food. also using the table scene and eating At the next level, we must note that the as a device to create significance. As it social value of the pig is here a reference happens in Tales from the Golden Age, in to the lowest form of eating, there is the episode dedicated to the killing of nothing prestigious about the way people the pig, we see how social hierarchies are get their food, and the indoors slaughter clearly indicated (not only in Communist is a reference to the dismantling of the time) by the food children have in their intimate space, which should have been lunch box. In an apparently egalitarian a space of non-violence. The apartment society, young children were educated becomes a butcher’s house, hinting to the early on that some are “more equal” “unclean” nature of Communism. The pig than others, and this showed in the food (not due to religious reference, but mostly they were eating. The son of the militia because in Romanian “pig” is used as a officer is eating salami sandwiches, while swear word) becomes an indicator of the his comrade is selling his intelligence unclean relationships humans developed for food. In the school the boys make with each other. Finally, all the citizens transactions with food, one of them sells of the Socialist Romania were brought his help for the tests, for sausage and pork to their lowest manifestations, their de- skin. Here, in a parodic manner, Mungiu humanization being complete when we (who wrote the screenplay of this episode, are witnessing their eating habits. The although not directing it) refers in an beastly nature of the “new human beings” oblong way to the scarcity of food during becomes obvious in the discussions Communist time, when people had to about the various options they have for use primitive practices, like killing pigs killing the pig: strangulation, shooting, in the courtyard of their block of flats, in and finally it is the young school boy order to provide meat to their family. The proposing the solution of “gassing the militia officer, who is supposed to uphold pig”. Even children are debased from 66 Doru POP their human condition to the animalistic, place in the house of the Radu family, primitive state. If food is profoundly when Otilia goes to visit her boyfriend, connected with our emotions and our and where a ritualistic eating takes passions, in a deep psychoanalytical way, place. Even if food is about family, since the pleasure that we obtain from eating cooking is done in the private space of being linked to our sexual pleasures, the nuclear group which is bonded by when empty mastication takes place, it eating together, in this scene eating is a is only an expression of the void of any method of social separation. During the desire and pleasure, finally indicating the entire time Otilia sits at the table, she does depletion of significance in the film itself. not eat anything, and the refusal to eat is This binary pair of significances, hu- equivalent with the refusal to integrate in man versus animal, is also present in that group. Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winning movie 4 Constructed at the borders of gore and months, 3 weeks and 2 days. On one hand horror films, 4 months... is a movie where there is the brutal abortion, which makes shock and disgust are used to obtain our stomach turn, in a very terrifying emotional reactions from the viewer. In scene where we see the bloody fetus this movie, eating is a form of violence, thrown on the floor of the bathroom, since all eating is based on an initial which is opposed to the polite and violence on a life form. Left almost dead civilized manner in which Găbiţa, in her hotel room after the brutal abortion, who just aborted, sits and waits for her while Otilia searches panicked for her food. “I was hungry”, she answers here (and we are also searching with the main friend, and here slow development of the character), Găbiţa sits in the restaurant sequence gives us the awful sensation of the hotel, looking with an empty gaze that the separation between the brutality outside the screen. No longer sick, now of the killing of the baby and the animal she is in the mood for a cigarette, while state the woman was thrown is very asking Otilia if she buried the fetus, she narrow. Here the symbolic boundary is has ordered food. By this, she is finally broken by Otilia’s gaze towards us in the devouring herself, and devouring her end of the movie we are distributed as humanity. “What is this?”, Otilia asks the witnesses of the transformation of these waiter who brings a plate of meat, and the women on the screen. They are falling waiter’s answer is more powerful, since from human beings into an animality the menu from the wedding next door is caused by broken social relationships. a list of body parts: “beef loin, pork loin, Raped, abused and emotionally terro- fried liver, breaded brain, marrows...”. rized, they end up as devourers them- While Otilia settles for a bottle of selves. sparkling water and Găbiţa looks emptily Before, in the same movie, we have at the menu, the main character looks another table scene, which is taking towards the spectator, breaking the wall What’s Eating the Romanian “New Wave”? 67 between the two worlds. It is now that the to emotional or psychological tension by disgust becomes almost physiological, hearing and moving). the tension built by the director reaches Sitting in the movie theater we are not its peak when a very corporeal disgust, a only viewers. By using the final décadrage, visceral reaction coming from the visual the moving of the visual attention creates a connection between seeing, hearing and encounter with the narrative generates tasting. The final mise-en-scène is designed an emotion that can be almost tasted. to create a visceral sensation within the This is what Mungiu succeeds to do in viewer, one that we cannot experience this sequence – to make the spectator without this reflexion of the camera into participate at the “taste” of the visual our mind. And this is beyond the simple object (as in other sequences of the film, witnessing of people eating or partying. It the spectator is involved by participation is a pure cinema of sensations.

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