The complex ambiguities of human behaviour have forever been enmeshed in our existence and generations of painters, poets, musicians and philosophers have attempted to use their craft to immortalise and express this variety of feelings.
Works of art have survived as a testament to their ability to expose such ambiguities to public scrutiny, but never before the late 19th and early 20th centuries had this become more possible; mainly due to the use of modern technologies.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was one such artist who chose to adopt photography as an art form which records, preserves and exposes the conundrum of humanity’s most intimate moments, where vulnerability and brutality are not only juxtaposed but are seemingly, two halves of the same being.
Originally, Cartier-Bresson was an aspiring painter training in Paris under André Lhote but he gradually became disillusioned with Parisian society life and its frivolity and travelled to Africa’s Ivory Coast to work on a plantation. There he experienced at first hand the injustices suffered by the natives at the hands of the white man – colonialism at its worst. It was during this period that he was inspired to take up his camera, a gift from his erstwhile mistress’ husband and hold a mirror up to humanity.
In a very well-scripted play by writer-director Karmenu Serracino, Theartrencore chose to mark the centenary of Cartier-Bresson’s birth in 1908 and pay tribute to his inimitable photojournalistic genius, which remained influential until his recent death in 2004. Having been to see Enfer Ou Ciel, Ġenna Jew Infern at the Music Room in St James Cavalier, I can genuinely say that the biographical window which was opened onto Cartier-Bresson’s life and which attempts to explain, or at least explore, the possibilities that led him to become one of the leading photographers of the 20th century, provided an intriguing insight into his life.
Although good use was made of the set which was uncomplicated and easily adaptable, the stage in the Music Room was still a trifle too small to accommodate an otherwise praiseworthy performance. Set in the late 20s and early 30s, it follows Bresson’s journey from Paris to Africa on a train of emotions and contradictions which seem to tear Bresson’s soul apart.
Torn between two men he looked up to and admired, an angst-ridden Bresson, played expressively by Kris Buttigieg, met the sensuous and alluring American ex-pat, sculptress Gretchen Powell at the Café Cyrano, a hub of Surrealist movement, whose ideology he felt strangely drawn to. Bresson soon embarks on a liaison with Gretchen, which is undercut by the lustful currents and sexual tension there is between him and the two men he aspires to emulate artistically – André Lhote and René Crevel, interpreted by Tyrone Grima and Keith Borg respectively.
Sarah-Lee Zammit gives a portrayal of Gretchen’s distant and often glacial demeanour very satisfactorily, making her character appear to be a true femme fatal of the era, whose inner demons infect Bresson’s very being and help alienate him more effectively from Parisian intellectual society. Mr Grima’s reserved and ultra-disciplined Lhote created a clear contrast as a man trapped in a prison of his own making through enforced self-restraint and an obsession for detail; with that of Keith Borg’s enigmatic, transgressive and ever so slightly dangerous Crevel.
Caught in a web of ideological intrigue, and pushed and pulled by the opposing forces of two influential and equally desirable men and their schools of thought, Bresson faces a dilemma as to whether he should pursue a career in art – striving for artistic excellence and the satisfaction it brings, whether under the wing of the rigid cubist Lhote or the enticing Surrealism of Crevel; or choose to ignore its easily corruptible loyalties altogether in favour of the rhythms of the dark continent.
In choosing to escape the monsters threatening to destroy him from within, Bresson unwittingly falls straight into the lap of the very real and terrifying brutality of human superiority and subjectivism on the Ivory Coast. Mark Schembri plays an uncouth and ignorant Lejaune, a large bully of a man with a petty disposition for whom Bresson works on a plantation. Mr Schembri exposes the repellent character of Lejaune in a manner that is also sensitive to the ambiguity of his softer, more bourgeois musical aspirations – a dichotomy which leaves Bresson perplexed, especially after he witnesses the brutal way in which Lejaune treats his servant Doua, executed in a short but poised performance by Tamara Micallef.
In a final attack on Lejaune’s inability for mercy or compassion, Bresson takes up the natives’ cause and escapes with Doua into the forest, only to contract blackwater fever and suffer terribly until his life is saved by local traditional remedies. This is how the play ends – with Bresson deliriously raving about the ambiguities of life in the various forms which he has experienced: from high art to base, animalistic violence and how this vast range of human capability can hold sway upon our inner demons.
This proves to be a crucial turning point in his life and in the uncanny bouts of lucidity which occasionally accompany delirium, Bresson finally realises that, to loosely quote from Baudelaire’s poem Le Voyage, thoughtfully included in the programme: It doesn’t matter that it is hell or heaven which is burning in our heads, but that we must delve deeply into the unknown to reach new horizons.
Source: Weekender, Saturday, October 11, 2008