365 Films
Entry #98
Summer
Hours (2008)
Directed by
Olivier Assayas
I don’t think there is a director working
today who can capture movement quite like Olivier Assayas. This skill is put to superlative
execution in his 2008 family-drama, Summer
Hours. I knew very little of
Mr. Assayas’ work before this film, for it was the first one of his I actually
saw. Instead, I had vague memories
of trailers for the two techno-thrillers he made prior to this, Boarding Gate
and Demonlover. To be brutally
honest, both looked like fresh off the shelf direct to DVD material but if I
may offer a lesson to be learned by my ignorance, it is to never judge a film
by its trailer. Granted, I still
haven’t seen Boarding Gate or Demonlover but going off of Assayas’ collective
output since, which includes, Summer Hours, Carlos, and the now in theaters
Something in the Air, I feel as though my prejudice will once again be proven
unfounded. Such is the attitude I
had going into Summer Hours as I sank into my spring-loaded seat in the Laemmle
Encino theater where it was playing, another lesson borne of ignorance,
sometimes no expectations are the best kind of expectations to have. As the next hour and forty-three
minutes unspooled, I was completely transported. Not to a magical realm or a mystical portal, but to that
immaculate region where cinema and memory collide to produce a truly shared
evocation of humanity. Summer
Hours concerns a trio of adult siblings dealing with the recent death of their
Mother and the subsequent decisions that must be made regarding the family
estate and the highly desirable collection of artworks contained therein. It would be enough for the film merely
to address the issues of French national identity, the conflict between public
and private displays of art, and the incredibly complex relationships between
adult siblings. All of these are
elements that are rarely handled well in cinema and can lead to a lot of leaden
bullet point dialogue or an orgy of melodramatic relationship climaxes. Assayas makes a ballet out of his
dialogue (hence his agility with movement) and renders each character with the
resultant depth and humanity to modulate these intellectual abstractions to the
realm of the instinctual. To watch
Summer Hours is to engage with people and
ideas, making the acceptance of one part and parcel with the other. It’s an extremely masterful piece of
writing and directing. With that
being said, the main issue I would like to address in regards to this film is
an entirely personal one for me.
It could be that I’m just looking for an explanation as to why I get so
choked up every time I watch it but there is a reason we have specific
memories, right? It’s hard for me
to watch this film and not think about the move my family made from the house
in which we spent the better part of ten years. It’s a very strange sensation to leave the house where you ostensibly
formed your being and it is difficult to describe only because each experience
is so specific to each person.
Granted, my family’s situation is entirely different from the one faced
in Summer Hours (there was no mountain of valuable art work to sort through
unless you discount our collection of hand-made pottery from 1st
grade art class) but I fail to bring to mind another film that so elegantly and
poetically captures the utter despair that comes from looking at a barren room
after everything has been packed up and boxed for a move. What was once filled with clutter and
mess has now been rendered back to its original state: cold and lifeless. It may just be a collection of plywood
and brick (or whatever houses are made of) and at the end of the day, a
thing. That doesn’t make it any
easier to let go of, regardless of how irrational it is to hold on to it. I’ll always be grateful to Summer Hours
for not only helping me navigate through images and ideas from my own life (and
life in general), but also introducing me to a truly great filmmaker.
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