In search of the Green Ray

Ordinary blissfulness in Eric Rohmer’s films – by S D Anugyan

Many years ago I was discovering Eric Rohmer’s films for the first time. I began with Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, which opens in the French countryside. I was absolutely astonished with what I was experiencing. Rohmer had a knack of making ordinary, day-to-day events momentous. In one of the ‘adventures’ the two girls simply sit in a field before dawn, waiting for a moment of pure silence that one of them insists occurs every morning. Rohmer insists we wait with them – in a dark field, in silence.

My next rental from the Oxford library was L’Ami de Mon Amie (‘My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend’). It is quintessential Rohmer, taking place mainly in a shopping mall and leisure park, where the four protagonists talk about their feelings. Yet even the title has an air of mystery about it, where one asks, ‘What is really going on?’ and there is something Shakespearean about the ensuing comedy of errors.

The backgrounds of the film are also deceptive in their mundanity. First, there is a silent poetry with the buildings no matter how unimaginative the architecture is. Rohmer very much wants to illustrate how it is to live in this world. Antonioni would use buildings in much the same manner, for example in the extensive sequence of La Notte when Jeanne Moreau simply walks listlessly around the city.

Rohmer also seems to deliberately reference great paintings, in this case George Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières where he is clearly aware – as are two of the characters in the film – of the socio-economic background to the leisure activities of those around.

Further observation reveals how carefully clothes and their colours are chosen. They can reveal discord or harmony between the characters, and also their inner selves.

One of the teenagers from Osho Ko Hsuan I was sharing the house with at the time came in while I was watching. I braced myself as she hovered behind the couch, expecting her usual derision of my artistic tastes. Instead she was completely silent for a while then said in awe, ‘It’s like they’re ordinary people talking about what seems like just ordinary things, but they’re actually the most important things in the world.’

I couldn’t have put it better myself. The characters in Rohmer’s films have an emotional articulateness that is enviable, perhaps their ingenuousness enhanced by often not being professional actors. It is the only real element of fantasy in most of his films, yet one that is attainable if we would wish it, to be so expressively honest in a balanced, exploratory, sensitive manner. He is depicting a civilisation high in emotional intelligence.

Another oblique reference to science fiction is Le Rayon Vert (‘The Green Ray’), also the title of a Jules Verne novel. The first time I saw the film I put it down to one of Rohmer’s ‘annoying’ ones, where I just couldn’t get on with the main character. I found her peevish and sentimental. Yet as with any great work of art, it endured beyond immediate impressions, as I discovered when I returned to it more recently.

In-between, something had to shift in my own life, and that was the green ray itself. For those who don’t know, the green ray is the final flash of light that the sun sometimes gives off before slipping below the horizon for the night. I had never seen it, despite many attempts.

One friend told me she had spent months in ideal circumstances attempting to observe the ray over both the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean, evening after evening, and it had always eluded her. Another person told me rather dismissively, ‘Oh yeah I’ve seen it dozens of times.’ This last comment disheartened me somewhat, for it was supposedly a semi-mystical experience, something wonderful to perceive.

Then a few years ago I went with friends to walk on Dartmoor one clear, bright, late afternoon. We were high up, and with an uninterrupted view towards the west, not a cloud to be seen. I realised these were ideal conditions to observe the ray so I thought I would try yet again.

Just as the final top part of the sun’s circumference was retreating gloriously behind the horizon, it happened. An absolutely brilliant flash of green shot out through the atmosphere, into my eyes, and my brain.

It was gone in an instant.

But there was a residual green hue colouring my vision entirely, as I found when I looked away.

It wasn’t so much in my eyes as in my head.

I felt stunned, in a green daze. Looking around at my companions, I asked if anyone else had seen it. Two of them shook their heads; a third said, smiling, yes, she had seen it.

We walked back to the car in silence.

I couldn’t speak properly about what had happened, to convey something about a change, but I was haunted for several days by that green ray, as well as with the fear I was going to go blind. The light was there at the back of my retina whenever I closed my eyes, I would wake up to it, fall asleep to it. Whenever I half-closed my eyes, the world had become green. What that meant psychically or psychologically I can’t really say, only that a profound silence had accompanied the (literal) vision. Then after a few days it had gone, my normal sight restored.

The experience persuaded me to buy Jules Verne’s The Green Ray. Unusually for the author, it is a romance, and while it may lack the emotional intelligence of Rohmer’s films, the sense of place (actually Scotland) is vivid and accompanied by stunning pictures; in that way, it is worthy of the director, certainly, but also because of the awareness of the green ray as symbolic of something more within oneself than out.

Literary reference is even more overt in A Winter’s Tale, the second in Rohmer’s films based around the four seasons. Shakespeare’s play features not only in the title but actually is performed within the film itself. Once again, Shakespearean themes – in this case, of destiny, chance and love frozen in time – are framed within a startling mundanity.

Rohmer’s films are full of seemingly prosaic journeys. Near the beginning of A Winter’s Tale there is a long scene where we simply follow the protagonist as she makes her way across the city. Only when prepared to stay with it, one can observe that Rohmer is showing us how even a routine journey is full of esoteric labyrinthine knowledge that only a certain person can know: which bus to take, where to get on and off, how to navigate the streets, who to talk to and what to say, until the final discovery of a door hidden from the main thoroughfare and admission to a sanctuary. We are being taught that even the casual journeys we take every day are full of significance. Indeed, the resolution of the tale happens on a bus. It is as if Rohmer is saying, ‘Pay attention, all of us are living lives of immense importance, we are all heroes on a journey.’

Rohmer’s spiritual perspective is vast and generous. Reputedly a Catholic, apparently he could be very evasive when asked about his beliefs. His earlier series of films Six Moral Tales I find difficult simply because they are too… moralistic. It is a short blip though and subsequent films whilst being highly moral are not dogmatic in the slightest. D H Lawrence said something to the effect that one can trust the novel implicitly, but the novelist is usually a dribbling liar. He was talking about the need of a well-written story to transcend the writer’s personal views and opinions. Rohmer certainly accomplished that, to such an extent that no personal beliefs are evident in any of his films from Pauline at the Beach (1983) onwards, that particular film demonstrating beautifully a surprising break from any kind of convention. The in-depth conversations about faith and reincarnation in A Winter’s Tale, rather than emphasise any particular belief system, focus on the profound seeking of the characters.

If you are prepared to sit silently in a dark field, accompany people on long commutes and listen to relationship problems, then try Rohmer if you haven’t already. You are in for a treat. For the mundane blissful world of the protagonists is our world, as long as we are ready to perceive it as such, with a green ray illuminating the wonders of ordinary life.

Featured image credit to konbini.com