Nachmittag
an
Angela Schanelec Film
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the Film] [the director]
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AFTERNOON
by Angela Schanelec
from: Anton Chekhov, On
Theatre “The hero can either marry or shoot himself. There is no other
way out.”
Summary
The
main characters of Chekhov’s The Seagull, today, here, on three lovely,
terrible summer
afternoons.
Director’s Statement
Afternoon was written in reference to
The Seagull. There was the play, or what the play meant to me, what it
became in my memory. The mother, the son, the older brother. The girl.
The lover. The house, the lake and the summer. In Chekhov more than two
years pass, but I felt that to be able grasp it at all I needed to give
myself a framework: a single afternoon, hence the title. In the end it
went quickly, three days in summer, the end of a family.
I mainly
thought about the relationship
between mother and son, here
a
variety or deviancy of love that runs at cross purposes into
nothingness and personal ruin. And the unutterable sense of guilt that
arises from it. The girl, Konstantin’s girlfriend, was at first more of
a sideline figure, but she became more and more important, because it
is apparently impossible to do without hope. I just let her speak, and
it was curious to watch her talking herself out and to
see
the effect this had.
I believe that in our society people come about
through
others. We come about through the mirror of the Other, and depending on
who this is we become beautiful or ugly. We rely on this Other, we
depend on his gaze, her hand.