Martin Provos: Director
This film forms the basis for rich discussion on the feminist movement and how we have failed to educate the general public on the ill treatment of Western women even or most obviously under the guise of being charitable.
The film illustrates state of the art in cinematic excellence, in the ability to present every frame as if it is a piece of fine art in itself.
But the subject matter is so distorted in favor of men, the prejudicial workings of a man's mind, and the harmful appeal of women's fantasy life that it detracts from the otherwise fine aspects of the film.
Seraphine is a middle age woman in her forties who has been living on her own, making money and painting in her free time. She calculates to a fraction of a franc how much money she needs for her maintenance, how much to charge per tasks. She sets about to make ends meet and she does just that. She has mastered the rudiments of her world.
Along comes a "famous " man, a man on a shining white horse and undermines her, makes her appear not just in the narrative of the film but the film Director continues this prejudicial impression by showing her "child like" visage above her work as if she is a child, a grown one, a super talented one but a child with an almost vacuous face, titled towards the sky because her only understanding of her world is that she is not entirely of this world.
But Seraphine is an adult. She lives intellectually alone, has little to do with other people. One can almost count the number of words she utters in her entire life time, if this rendition of her life is to be believed. Does this mean that no attempt need be made to uncover her strengths, her truths beyond the obvious?
The art dealer on the white horse takes away Seraphine's ability to determine without benefit of his help what art supplies she needs, how much money she needs to live on and whether or not she is to continue in her chosen line of work. In the process of thinking he is elevating her into a more dignified position in society he is taking away her personal dignity and substituting his notion of who and what she should be.
And then he fails. Without apology. He can not deliver on what he promised, assured her would be hers. He and his sister insinuate this is all beyond her comprehension because it involves world events of catastrophic capitalistic failures world wide and they respond to her by treating her even more like a child, "she simply can not understand it is deemed beyond her comprehension. But is financial difficulty of any type truly beyond Seraphine's comprehension or is it more accurately stated as being beyond the comprehension of this gentlemen of former "means".
What Seraphine can not understand, and what he is not saying, is how profoundly he has failed. That he took her dignity, her world, destroyed it to make her into something less than competent and then failed to provide the essentials for her to be sustained in his artificially constructed parasitic Paradise.
This film is a tragedy with all the underpinnings of appeal to the male dominated world and the middle upper class way of thinking of the poor, the menial domestic worker viewed yet again as inferior, rather than as intelligent; The lower class is seen as incapable of understanding anything beyond the immediate even if they are gifted artists.
To place this woman, who has so little substantive interaction with others, into an Asyllum, an institution overly crowded by people starved for interaction is a CRIME.
This film is a tragedy, a painful unfolding of how cruelly we treat one another not out of malice but from our arrogant ignorance.
I recommend it be seen as the basis of a discussion on who we are and how we can communicate better more charitably towards one another.
LindaZises
WBAI Women's Collective
CriticalWomen@blogspot.com
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