Black Narcissus reviewed and laid bare in black and white!

Black Narcissus is a 1947 drama co-directed, co-produced, and co-written by British duo Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell known together as The Archers who also collaborated on great films such as The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Small Backroom, “I Know Where I’m Going!” and others. 

Based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Margaret Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus follows a Superior nun named Sister Clodagh and 4 fellow Sisters who are sent to Saint Faith, a remote Indian village in Southern Asia. The palace of Mopu is 8,000 feet above sea level facing a mountain range nearly as high as Mount Everest. The highest Peak, Nange Dalle (Nange Daily), is nicknamed The Bare Goddess for a good reason. General Toda Rai donates the palace to the nuns to open a school and a dispensary and assigns Mr. Dean as the nun’s guide as well as their link to the villagers. The palace of The Bare Goddess sits on a high windy shelf above Mr. Dean and the villagers who live far below in the valley. To Superior Sister Clodagh and her 4 sisters, the task of setting up the school and clinic seems simple. But none of the sisters are prepared for the high altitude, the strong wind, the spell of The Bare Goddess; they can hide their bodies but they can’t hide the mountain. The film’s music is by Brian Easdale, is edited by Reginald Mills, and its cinematography is by Jack Cardiff. The film stars Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodah, David Farrar as Mr. Dean, Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth, and Jean Simmons as the village girl Katchi. The film won 2 Academy Awards for cinematography and art direction for Jack Cardiff and Alfred Junge, respectively, with actress Deborah Kerr winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. In this presentation, I will take a closer look at the film’s themes and offer my personal opinion of the film at the end.

Themes

Empathy
You have to relate to people to empathize with them. This is the story of Jesus who came in the flesh to experience life as we experience it and to be tempted in all ways like us. Like Jesus, the nuns are sent to a palace exalted high above a remote village in south Asia to build a school and a hospital for the natives. The natives are connected to the land through farming and live simply. But unlike Jesus, the nuns are running away from everything associated with pain and any other feeling reminding them of the past and what they are. As a result of this renunciation, the nuns are to the villagers as the palace is to the valley, high and out of reach. For example, a young general named Dilib Rai congratulates Clodagh, the Superior nun, on the birth of Jesus. She reprimands him by telling him that Christ is not addressed in such a casual way. But a local guide named Dean is within earshot and objects to this formality by pointing out that Christ should be casual and as much a part of life as our daily bread.

This separation of the divine and the flesh is symbolized by the Holy man who isolates himself from the other villagers and spends all day and all night staring at the mountain. For example, there is a scene where he doesn’t react at all when a villager dies. In an equivalent scene, Sister Clodagh tries to get a nun named Ruth to open up and talk to her concerning the nun’s weight loss. Ruth’s weight loss is due to worry concerning her vows to the nunnery and her attraction to a man--Dean, their guide. But knowing how Clodagh would condemn her if she were truthful about this, Ruth refuses to confide in Clodagh.

If Clodagh could accept her own feelings as a woman, Ruth would feel like Clodagh could relate to her and open up. But Clodagh, being the Superior Sister, is self-righteous, insensitive and is as cut off from herself as the Holy man is from the other villagers.

Hebrews 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are...”

The power of the senses
Stimulation reconnects the nuns to the past and their emotions. Sister Phillipa is reminded of what she was before becoming a nun when she finds Dean fixing a pipe in the shower. Dilib Rai’s colorful clothes and jewelry reminds Clodagh of the emerald necklace and other jewelry her grandmother left her. When Dean joins in singing Noel and Lullay my Liking, his masculine voice reminds Clodagh of the night her fiancé gave her a present of jewelry.

The House of The Bare Goddess: TemptationWhen the nuns arrive at the palace, sister Phillipa complains about the garden being overgrown. And later, Clodagh tells Dean that something in the air and high altitude has “exaggerated” everything. Both the overgrown garden and that “something in the air” is nature. Nature’s power over the body is more powerful at Mopu palace. Dean and Katchi symbolize nature. This explains Dean’s raw masculinity, his mostly exposed body and its effect on the nuns, and also the effect of his voice when he sings with the nuns (On a side note, pay attention to the young general’s face when Dean sings and the general’s comment about Dean’s deep, beautiful voice afterwards). The power of nature over the mind also explains how Katchi’s raw sensuality is able to seduce and ultimately conquer the young general who believes that going to an all-girls school is as simple as studying hard.

The nuns, the Holy man, and the young general have their own ways of resisting the power of nature. The Holy man isolates himself from other villagers; deprives himself of all sensory stimulation; and he concentrates all of his attention on a mountain. Likewise, the nuns resist nature through hard labor and covering their entire bodies from head to foot. To suppress the instinct to nurture the sick, a child with a high fever is turned out of the convent and sent home with its mother. The child dies as a result but pay attention to the tussle between sisters Briony and Honey. Honey's maternal nurturing instincts come out in this scene as she begs sister Briony to keep and comfort the baby. Also, the nuns restrict the school to young women and children. The nuns limit the color of the garden to green vegetables. And at the end of the film when Ruth trades in her habit for a red dress, Clodagh responds to her by reading the Bible.

When all other efforts to resist temptation fall short, the nuns respond to the power of nature with denial. There’s a scene in the school in which Katchi and Ruth catch a whiff of Dilib Rai’s perfume. Katchi is aroused by the general’s scent and expresses her feelings; but Ruth lies about the perfume’s effect on her. In another scene, Ruth sees some small children and fights back her nurturing instincts by criticizing them.

Humility
Black Narcissus ends with a showdown between Clodagh and Ruth on the cliff underneath the bell. This is a symbolic confrontation as Ruth--in her red dress and red lipstick--has eaten of the forbidden fruit by renouncing her vows to God and a religion that doesn’t relate to her human frailties. In the struggle with Clodagh, Ruth loses her balance and falls off the cliff and down to earth. This falling from heaven and the height of the mountain is symbolic. Ruth falls down to the villagers level, to that of a human.

Isaiah 40:4, “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.”

From the valley below, Clodagh looks up and sees clouds covering the palace, a sign that nature can never exist separately from the body. Clodagh learns also that she cannot help the villagers from the mountain just as Jesus himself had to come down from Heaven to Earth in the form of flesh and blood man:

Romans 8:3, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh...”

Wrap
“A basket of fruit, piled high and luscious and ready to eat” are the words Margarette Rumor Godden--the author of the book that this film is based on--uses to describe the village girl Katchi; however, the same words can be equally applied to the film itself which, like the village girl, is inflamed with erotic tension. Art director Alfred Junge does a terrific job in articulating this tension in the costumes by juxtaposing the nuns’ stark white religious habits against the young general’s flower patterned coats, gold, turquoise, jade jewelry. This tension carries over to contrasting the nuns’ restrictive habits against Dean who may as well have worn a thong throughout the entire film as his bare legs and torso are exposed and glowing as if rubbed in baby oil. All of these visual motifs--the lushly colored surroundings of the village; the young general’s colorful wardrobe; Dean and Katchi’s unabashed sexuality--underscores the plot’s tension and the nuns’ struggle to repress memories of what they were prior to joining the order.

It is hard to believe that as beautiful and as scenic as this film is that it was shot primarily at Pinewood Studios in Southeast England with large-scale landscape paintings, scale models, and matte paintings. The landscape settings were filmed at Leonardslee Gardens in West Sussex, the General’s palace was shot at the home of an Indian Army retiree. None of the scenes in the film were shot anywhere in South Asia. This film is so well shot--especially the aerial scenes of the mountains and palace--and so striking in its colors that there are few films I can compare it with.

Martin Scorsese--who happens to be a huge fan of the film and its director Michael Powell--called the film one of the earliest erotic films and I agree with him 100%. At times, though, the erotica angle is so obvious that I found myself laughing such as the scenes involving Dean and the nuns. Powell is such a great technician that it is hard for me to think that the humor in these scenes weren’t intentional. But I found the most erotic scenes in the film for me involved Kathleen Byron’s character Ruth’s transformation from uptight nun to super-freak acting out Clodagh’s desire for David Farrar’s character Dean.

All of the acting in the film is terrific despite the fact that of all the principal characters, only 1--young general Dilib Rai--is Indian. Jean Simmons, who plays the village girl Katchi, is British and had her face painted for the role. Despite this, it is hard to imagine any actress other than Simmons playing this role as--or more--seductively, especially in the scenes where she seduces the young general. Deborah Kerr is also terrific as sister Clodagh, the Superior Sister tasked with keeping her fellow sisters in line while also struggling with herself. But, to me, the standout performance is Kathleen Byron’s character Ruth who steals the last 1/3rd of the film when she trades in her religious habit for the red dress and red lipstick; wow! Her physical transformation reminds me of the point in The Wizard of Oz where the film goes from black and white to technicolor. The scenes involving her and Dean early in the film also stand out, especially 1 in which Dean is shirtless and her moving in slow motion for a closer look. Funny scene.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have collaborated on many films and I would put Black Narcissus up there with The Red Shoes as among their very best and 1 I’d recommend to someone who hasn’t seen their films.

Personal notes on Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller 'Memento'

The following are notes I made for a video essay on Christopher Nolan's 2000 film 'Memento.'

Reincarnation

Really it’s like Jimmy got revenge on Johnny by being reincarnated as Leonard who has no memory of his own past life and now seeks revenge for the murder of a wife who does not exist, a wife who is actually jimmy. Natalie is actually Leonard which is why she tells him that they are both survivors, not because he lost his wife, though

Memory

Emotions help us remember. We may forget the details but the impressions stay with us, help us, and protect us. If Leonard felt the things Natalie said to him about how she planned to manipulate him he wouldn’t have allowed her to do it. This also shows how being overly dependent on facts and the means of recording them impairs us and causes us to make the same mistakes over and over. (This is why Sammy Jankis keeps picking up the same electrified object on the test) We have to go back to our notes instead of relying on how the experience made us feel to inform us on how to react which is like being a robot and falls also into the routine category. Also, sometimes you don’t have time to look at a note (such as when Natalie provokes him to hit her, goes out to her car, and comes back in and tells him that Dodd beat her up)

Experience

Experience is the key to growth. without experience and the benefit of wisdom you keep repeating the same mistakes. Leonard’s problem having short term memory is that he is unable to grow and learn from his experiences.

Context and the nature of reality

When Leonard was taking notes on Sammy Jankis and using them to determine whether the man was lying or not, Leonard also reduced Sammy to a bunch of facts and Sammy’s wife knowledge also to a few facts even though she knew her husband the same way Leonard thinks he knows his wife 

• an interpretation of a thing that is unreliable. I could be sweating but that doesn’t mean I’m nervous. I could have just finished working out or ate something hot. The facts don’t provide any underlying basis for it such as why, how, etc. Example from script: 

TEDDY
Lenny, you can’t trust a man’s life to 

your little notes and pictures. LEONARD 

Why? 

(CONTINUED) 

44 CONTINUED: (2) 

TEDDY
Because you’re relying on them alone. You Don’t remember what you’ve discovered or how. Your notes might be unreliable. 

LEONARD Memory’s unreliable. 

Teddy snorts. 

LEONARD (cont’d)
No, really. Memory’s not perfect. It’s 

not even that good. Ask the police, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. The cops don’t catch a killer by sitting around remembering stuff. They collect facts, make notes, draw conclusions. Facts, not memories: that’s how you investigate. I know, it’s what I used to do. Memory can change the shape of a room or the color of a car. It’s an interpretation, not a record. Memories can be changed or distorted and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts. (the inverse of this reasoning is also true: facts can also be unreliable depending on the context they are in as Leonard finds out throughout the film as he is manipulated by his notes to carry out actions that have nothing to do with avenging his wife)

here’s an excerpt from scene 140 in the script that’s the opposite of the excerpt above. Leonard is on the phone talking to a cop: 

LEONARD * (anxious) * What do you want? * (listens) * I know you’re a cop, but what do you * want? Did I do something wrong? * (frightened) * No, but I can’t remember things I do. I * don’t know what I just did. Maybe I did * something wrong, did I do something * wrong? * 

Thank-you. 

Leonard paces. * 

LEONARD * I dunno - something bad. Maybe I did * something bad. * (earlier he said that facts were more reliable than memory)

• A fact is like seeing something like a rock on your car but a fact doesn’t tell you how it got there or why
• scene 123 where Natalie threatens and insults Leonard and hides all the pens so he can’t write a note about it is like people putting more trust in things than themselves or others when I think of how Leonard said that memories are unreliable and facts are. If he’d remembered this he wouldn’t have trusted Natalie later
• in scene 68 on page 115, Leonard writes Don’t trust her on a bar mat when Teddy tells him he can’t trust Natalie. Leonard does this facetiously as if to shut Teddy up but without wit or a sense of humor, the words themselves take on a serious context
• The “look of recognition” he sees in Sammy’s face that makes him think Sammy is faking was the man’s way of pretending to remember so as to not seem like an idiot

existentialism

• If Sammy can’t remember being shocked over and over then Leonard’s feeling that his wife had been murdered may also be something he can’t remember
• The way that Sammy keeps picking up the same electrified object in the shock test is a metaphor for Leonard’s actions: 

Leonard keeps getting ripped off over and over by Burt at the hotel

He keeps allowing himself to be manipulated over and over by Teddy after he kills Jimmy

• Another thing I thought about is that Leonard doesn’t know if he wrote the notes or if somebody else wrote them.
• Do we define ourselves or are we defined by others? 
• are we what we are or are we what we believe we are? 
• Is Leonard Shelby who he says he is? On p. 69 and scene 115, Teddy tells him that he does not know who he is. Without memory, others have defined him as a murderer
• This would support my guess that Leonard was programmed to believe he had a wife.
• in C140, Leonard tells cop on the phone that he’s afraid of doing something he can’t remember like Sammy Jankis did. This strengthens my guess that Leonard did to his so called wife what he accuses Sammy of doing to his wife
• We are all alone and disconnected from each other through our feelings that interpret facts differently 
• Do our actions have meaning without purpose? 
• Leonard truly is living in the moment. Can a forgotten moment ever be said to have existed? 
• As a machine, Leonard carries out tasks that are human in nature such as revenge and greed

desensitization

The fact that Sammy gave his wife--someone he loves--too much insulin makes the case that Leonard also did the same to his wife.

also, Leonard is a metaphor for a generation whose attention spans have become so short that the meaning for every act is immediately lost--nothing lasts

scene to support my analogy of Leonard being a symbol for a generation of shortened attention spans. Leonard says that Sammy Jankis preferred commercials to watching movies because commercials are shorter

scene 130 L watches commercials

Emotions

By depending on facts and eschewing emotions, Leonard has nothing to link with the past

plot: Leonard orders call girl to simulate the night he wakes up and finds his wife killed. He believes that the shock of this will make him remember it the same way the shock tests were meant by reinforcement to teach Sammy not to touch electrified objects.

Time

I lie here, not knowing how long I’ve been alone. If I could just reach out and touch her side of the bed I could know that it was cold, but I can’t. I have no idea when she left.” (this metaphor for time is important because it illustrates the importance of feelings in approximating time itself. If the bed were warm, he could have an idea of how long the space had been unoccupied. This metaphor is also important because it suggests that time itself is defined by feelings which facts don’t have)

I think that Leonard is associating things he did to Jimmy with the false story Teddy brainwashed him with about his wife’s rape and murder

In scenes 163-168 scenes of Leonard’s wife death are juxtaposed with him murdering Jimmy. 

Subjectivity

• I can almost see an analogy with somebody recruited to serve in the militiary and a culture where the person is expected to be subjective and follow orders and protocol
• Having no memory leaves you to the mercy of what people say instead of experience
• “I don’t even know how long she’s been gone. It’s like I’ve woken up in bed and she’s not here because she’s gone to the bathroom or something. But somehow I just know that she’ll never come back to bed. (right here is the key! Why would he believe she wasn’t coming back to bed unless he’s been told that she wasn’t coming back to bed?)
• Natalie gave Leonard the note instructing him to go to the hotel and kill Dodd or put him on Teddy
• in scene 130, Leonard confesses that on the night his wife was murdered that he disagreed with the facts of the case file the police made. the paradox is he admitted to putting almighty trust in facts earlier when he disagreed with Mrs. Jankis about Sammy’s condition
• LEONARD
  But he’s not the right guy! * 
• TEDDY * He was to you. Come on, Lenny, you got * your revenge — just enjoy it while you * still remember. * this is the paradox of having a short memory and relying strictly on notes, esp. false notes. It’s like convicting and executing the wrong man but being emotionally satisfied that someone, even an innocent, pays the price
• When you think about what John G. uses Leonard for who’s under the influence that he’s avenging his wife’s murder, this is no different than soldiers sent to fight wars for oil
• Leonard from scene 119: “I didn’t think it was important to her what the answer was, just that she had one to believe.” This statement comes after Mrs. Jankis asks him if he thinks her husband is faking his condition. Leonard’s rationale for not remembering why he kills his wife’s murderer is the same. Leonard from scene 24 explaining to Natalie why it’s important that he get his wife’s murderer: 

NATALIE
But even if you get your revenge, you 

won’t remember it. You won’t even know it’s happened. 

LEONARD (annoyed) 

So I’ll take a picture, get a tattoo. (calms) 

The world doesn’t disappear when you close your eyes, does it? My actions 

still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. My wife deserves 

vengeance, and it doesn’t make any difference whether I know about it. 

Routine

• Routine is one of the film’s themes that comes out in Leonard’s rituals of writing notes, the women he believes is his wife reading the same book over and over and Sammy repeating the same mistake in picking up the electrified metal shapes (what’s the difference between them?)
• Like i wrote earlier, Leonard has become a metaphor for his interpretation of people by facts alone, in other words, a machine which can be wrong because it doesn’t take into account the motivations behind why people do what they do, only the act itself which is, like memory,
• The problem with repeating something over and over is that it loses its potency and ability to stimulate 
• reading the part where Dodd is chasing Leonard in the trailer park and Leonard forgetting who’s chasing who made me think if you can’t remember why you’re doing something then wouldn’t this be a routine, something carried out without any emotional involvement which is also how he describes his ritual of writing notes on himself, his wife reading the same book over and over, and Sammy Jankis repeatedly shooting insulin into his wife until she dies?
• So, the film is about how we lose the meaning of life and our emotions through routine;
• in scene 112 on p. 63, Leonard orders a girl from an escort service to get her to interact with his wife’s things--hair brush, book, underwear--to remember his wife. Philosophically, this could representf how we try to stimulate ourselves by dressing up fake things with real things such as drugs, alcohol, texting, facebooking, sex, etc
• Learning through repetition (scene 174) Leonard’s Sammy Jankis story gets stronger each time he tells it like a lie that’s told so many times that it becomes a fact
• Leonard has no memories so his actions have no emotional basis and his notes are struck off like a laundry list, like a routine of just something he has forgotten why he has to do it. (just rambling her and trying to get this down)
• without memories or emotions our actions become robotic

Structure

• Each scene in Memento is divided and subdivided with the latter part of the scene shown 1st followed by a contextual scene showing everything that happens prior to the scene before it to reflect Leonard’s short term memory with the 1st or latter part reflecting the last thing he remembers and the 2nd or 1st part of the scene putting the 1st part of the scene in the “why” context
• 1st half of each scene is cut off from its greater context to reflect how short term memory affects Leonard’s interpretation of reality

Plot

• question: did John G. send Dodd to kill Leonard? answer: Natalie sent Dodd to kill Leonard. when Dodd pulls Leonard over he asks Leonard how he came across Jimmy’s car!
• In scene 111, Leonard is reading the police report of the stolen Jaguar and the drugs in it, telling someone on the phone that the police weren’t even looking for John G., the man who raped his wife.
• p 76 scene 120 Teddy knows where Natalie lives because he sets off the alarm on Leonard’s car parked outside her house
• scene 126 p. 82 confirms my guess that Leonard killed his wife by giving her too much insulin? in any case, he probably never even had a wife to begin with
• The police DID find someone at the scene of his alleged wife’s murder
• scene 132 after L drinks the mug of spit and milk N says to him that he really has a problem like the cop had told her (Teddy, she knows him)
• 133 his wife’s eyes blink through shower curtain. she is alive!
• In scene b140, Leonard finds the beer mat in Jimmy’s jacket pocket with “Come by afterwards” written by Natalie letting Jimmy know to come over after the drug deal’s complete; this is when leonard shows up. 
• In scene 24, Leonard walks into the diner and Natalie calls him Lenny. He tells her that his wife used to call him Lenny. This strengthens my theory that she brainwashed him and planted the dead wife theory in his head with the help of another woman he imagines as his dead wife
• Jimmy tells Leonard to remember Sammy Jankis
• Teddy shows up at the scene of Jimmys murder checking the doors of the Jag. He set Jimmy up.
• in scene 24, Natalie asks Leonard to close his eyes and remember his dead wife. Is she asking him this to make sure the programming is stilll in his head?
• Reading the script and thinking about the strong possibility that the woman Leonard thinks is his wife was in on brainwashing him into thinking someone, Teddy, killed his wife, this story reminds me a lot of the Manchurian Candidate because (on scene 58) he said that he woke up in bed alone and didn’t know how long he’d been asleep or when she got up to go to the bathroom. I’d think that if someone had raped and beat her in the bathroom the noise would have awakened him. He woke up and assumed she’d been raped when he saw her in the bathroom as though he’d been told this--Teddy told him this, Teddy and the woman he thinks is his wife conspired to get him to murder Jimmy. Then, when he showed up at the restaurant in Jimmy’s clothes, Natalie uses him to kill Teddy.
• confirmed: Leonard was programmed!