‘Everyone has their reasons.’ Such was the painful
revelation that Octave (Jean Renoir’s character) delivered in ‘The Rules of The
Game’. All of our actions are governed by our subjective motivations, and in
order to stick to the rules and customs, we put on masks and façades to hide
our true and bestial desires, and then we said we did it out of courtesy. The
few ones, who did not observe these rules, who acted spontaneously, were
labeled as outsiders. What connected us all, could be nothing more than a web
of lies. Renoir had the wisdom to understand this humanistic dimension, and he
portrayed it fearlessly in many of his works, in particular ‘The Rules of The
Game’. Like Zarathustra, Renoir knew he
has gathered too much honey, and he was handing that out to his audience.
Renoir wanted us to look through all the façades and mined into the deepest
corners of the human condition.
In order to explore these themes, Renoir used his unique
mise-en-scenes to instill an original touch to his masterpiece. To me, two of
those served crucial purposes. The first one was the prevalence of mechanical
toys and automatons present in the first half of the film. The automatons
seemed to be associated with Robert, who was portrayed rather negatively
throughout the film, but to me there were 3 significances for this
mise-en-scene.
First, this symbolized a ‘mechanical’ nature of the
storyline and the theme. Robert was seen as ‘mechanical’ because he was more
than happy to accept the ‘Rules of the Game’, which was the customs and manners
that could ensure one to be courteous. He was committing hypocrisies throughout
the film – he was not honest to his wife, Christine, and he didn’t know what he
could do to come to terms with his mistress, Genevieve. He could not feel the
plights of the two ladies, and he was dehumanized by the rules he wanted to
cling to. Robert was certainly smart - he knew that if he committed to the
rules, he would get the ‘right answers’, and at least he would experience a
peace of mind in short term. That meant he had to deliver an ultimate
fabrication of Andre’s death, when he was clear what scenarios would lead to
such a disappointing endpoint. Another
interesting observation, to me, was a ‘clockwork analogy’ of the plot. The
different storylines in the film seemed to represent different wheels in a
mechanical system, and they had different properties. The dynamics of each
storylines could vary, but they affected each other in an intricate manner.
Actions in the films were overlapped, especially in the second half of the
film. Such an arrangement indeed enhanced the fluidity of the whole plot.
Second, this was a commitment to naturalism. Influenced by
Zola, Renoir aimed to deliver a naturalistic style to many of his work. And
this implied that Renoir’s movie universe was deterministic – which meant the
possibility of free will was futile. This was why Andre and Octave were
considered tragic heroes – they were the two characters who could not, or did
not, want to commit to the ‘Rules of the Game’. Andre did not care whether his
rant on the radio show would embarrass anyone, he just wanted to channel out
his frustrations and passions. Octave seemed to act awkwardly through the film,
and he failed to accustom to the atmosphere in the chateau (he dressed up as a
bear in the evening party). What was worse, Andre’s death was highly tragic,
because that was predicated on a double mis-identification. Octave, in a sense,
was the culprit Schumacher should go after, and then Schumacher made a mistake,
thinking Andre was the ‘wife-stealer’. It was Andre’s character flaw that
projected him to such a fate, and a strong sense of fatalism could be felt –
all the characters were just pawn pieces on Renoir’s chess board.
Third, it represented a reduction, and this argument
synthesized the first two. In order for Renoir to deliver his ideas, a
reduction would be useful for him to model on. Like Zola, who reduced all his
characters to their primitive desires, Renoir reduced his characters to the
mechanized components, which were pieces in his deterministic moral universe. Judging
from the number of filmmakers inspired by ‘The Rules of The Game’, Renoir’s world
was a convincing one.
The other mise-en-scene, which was important in the film,
was theatre. The key event in the evening was a party, where everyone had to
dress up into different roles. The theatricality aspect was more than evident –
all the characters dressed up to whatever they wanted the others to perceive
themselves as. That were brutally honest depictions – Octave’s bear costume was
a legend – but almost everyone fabricated themselves, so that they could cover
up their moral blemishes, and more important, their true intentions. This was
not an event that would cement further understanding, this was just a
performance show that would tear everything apart at the end.
The hunting sequence at the middle part of the film was
intriguing. First, the tone and rhythm were very different from the acts before
and after this scene. While long takes
and gliding camera movements were of preponderance in those parts, the hunting
sequence was bombarded by fast-cuts, reminiscent of montage-style editing. It
gave the viewers an awkward feeling because the tone was so different from the
other parts of the film. If we look at
this scene in a contextual manner, it is not hard to understand that it is
allegorical to the impending WWII. The rabbit hunt not only foreshadowed
Andre’s death, it also provided a chaotic and disorienting feeling to the
viewers. The rabbits were like the innocent bystanders, which were ripped apart
by the few selfish parties. They were lining up to be eliminated, and could not
act to prevent this disaster from happening.
To me, this scene also served a meaning beyond context. The
devastating actions committed by the characters illustrated that they could not
co-exist with the natural world. This was due to the lack of self-knowledge.
The design flaws of human being meant that they could not unravel all the
secrets in the universe, and they had no way to come close to any universal
truths. On the other hand, they could not have enough introspection to
understand the workings of their inner psychologies. Due to these, humans had
to establish circumstantial, and ephemeral rules, so that they could have some
solid foundations to base on. This was indeed melancholic - the fact that they could not be in harmony
with the world suggested that they could not understand their positions in the
universe, and they could easily commit to all sorts of actions that would only
result in destruction. This is the timelessness of Renoir’s ‘Rules of the
Game’. Human’s lack of understanding of the ultimate universal knowledge would
only reduce to a false impression of a circumstantial existence. After all, the
rules of the game are really the awful truths of human nature.
So, are you ready to embrace the 'Rules of The Game'?
-END-
(2/2)
by Ed Law
6/6/2015
Film Analysis - 45
