Movie: Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992)
Despite the memes, good satire should risk being mistaken for that which it intends to criticize. Better still if the satirist loves, or at least has a genuine fascination for, the thing they satirise. To what extent Orlando (the movie - I have not read the famous Virginia Woolf novel on which it is based) can be truly considered satire is debatable, but it has a sincere appreciation for British history, culture and art, despite being merciless in its depiction of the nationalist and patriarchal forces that have shaped all of it. It is a historical fantasy in which we meet Orlando (Tilda Swinton) - a nobleman who doesn't grow old, but does change gender halfway through - at various points in their life between 1600 and 1992. Although the film has a coherent narrative, each section could also play as standalone short that both evokes and lampoons specific British historical fiction genres. It combines real events, places and people with fictional ones, switches effortlessly between comedy, drama and romance, and plays around with genre conventions. It reminded both of History of the World: Part 1 and of Holy Motors, In other words, I absolutely loved it. Shortly before this, I also saw May December. Both films are great examples of why I miss postmodern irreverent playfulness in modern cinema.
The first 'chapter' of Orlando immediately makes its intentions clear. Queen Elizabeth is introuduced with a chant of her era, telling us "Eliza is the fairest queen that ever trod upon the green. O blessed be each day and hour, where sweet Eliza builds her bower." As the "fairest queen" arrives on a boat to her castle, her young (male and female) servants scramble to welcome her. The scene perfectly sets up a traditional Britsh royal drama, providing the familiar pleasures of beautiful castles, and orderly rituals performed in calming sync by clean-shaved well-read squires. But the cracks in the facade appear fast. The lovely chant is interrupted by modern electric instruments, making random incompatible sounds, and when Elizabeth enters the frame, she doesn't have a familiar look. She is portrayed here by Quentin Crisp, the Englsihman in New York Sting sings about. Despite knowing (and liking) that song all my life, I never knew it was about Crisp and had also never heard of him before. He was a gay humorist/public intellectual who was somewhat confused about his gender identiy, but though he may not have the most masculine look, he also doesn't resemble Cate Blanchett. In scenes where he arrogantly asserts his authority and power over his courtier Orlando, Potter films both in extreme close up, making it impossible to miss the masculine characteristics of Queen Elizabeth, or the femininity of Orlando, who at that point in the film is still a man. This gender bending creates quite a fun dissonant effect, very much taking you out of the fictional world of the film, and forcing you to see Queen Elizabeth as nothing more than just a cruel man drunk on power.
The rest of the film's chapters similarly play around with feminist ideas, though they are often more lighthearted and much funnier. They are held together by Tilda Swinton's great performance. With her hopeful innocent optimism and sense of resolve she turns Orlando into a hero who might as well come from traditional folklore. Many of the stories play out like that as well. When Orlando is sleeping for a week after being scorned by a Russian woman, Potter's build up of the slowly escalating efforts to wake him up is a great example of how perfectly timed cuts can create great comedy, and leads to a great punchline. The sequence is a wonderful bit of slapstick that almost feels as an adaptation of a traditional children's tall tale song. What makes it even better and funnier is that it comes at the end of the chapter that is taking on David Lean-style romantic epics. Here the Brits are inelegant unsophisticates failing to realise that the foreigners are their intellectual and cultural superiors.
In the story that is essentially a high society costume drama, the first one in which Orlando is a woman, the film lavishes in the beautiful costumes and the literary pretentions of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope's dialogue (they are actual characters discussing poetry and women in a saloon), while showing their sexist underpinnings. Similarly, the section inspired by Shakespeare, lets you enjoy the snappy dialogue, filled with smartly constructed comebacks and elaborately delivered monologues, only to reveal that all this wit doesn't amount to anything but self-flattery. (It's interesting that in these two stories that most focus on the role of language in British history, the funniest jokes are sight gags, involving respectively a giant dress and a giant table). The final story (followed by a fantastic epilogue in contemporary London that ties things up with the coolest, weirdest and most self-reflexive scenes of the film) is essentially one of those modernised Jane Austen adaptations that dials the romantic fantasy up a couple of notches, only to show that there is nothing romantic in tragic dilemma's that force one to choose between love and dying in war. The pacifist leanings of the film become clearer much earlier; Orlando only becomes a woman after rejecting to kill unnamed Arabs.
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