Inspiration Case Study #8: The Case in which "Give Up the Thing You Love" Leads to Transcendent Release

[Published on the Facebook Thunkity Thunk: Open Ideas forum on June 4, 2020]

In my last essay here, I discussed the concept of constraint, cinematically and otherwise, and now I'm going to turn to its opposite: exuberant release! Only, I am not going to cast my net so wide as to address every work of art portraying people freed from bondage and drudgery and even aesthetic constraints. No, that would be an impossible, Douglas Adams-type, cosmic-sized encyclopedia. What's more manageable and more my style is to focus on a pattern in films, across the decades, showing a specific symbolic gesture of such cathartic liberation, at the end of (or in the midst of) a personal, largely internal journey. I have two actions in mind, actually, but that's because they overlap in the way they communicate what words can't when humanity is overtaken by a flood of emotion: bursts of running and dancing.

First, though, in keeping with the template I've set up for myself here, I need to back up and explain how I was inspired to examine this pattern. As usual, it was the result of an associative, cross-medium pollination: it had to do with not film, but rather music. After many years of setting aside Elliot Smith's music, which consumed me two decades ago, but then became too heartbreaking to bear anymore, I suddenly felt compelled the other night to pull up on my phone a couple tracks from his 1998 album XO, first "Waltz #2 (XO)," then "Pitseleh." The latter has always been my favorite song of his, not just because of its spare, haunting lyrics -- which arguably address his childhood trauma as well as adult relationship issues -- but also because of the clever twist in the melancholy instrumentation. It rolls along quietly like a dull music box tune, lulling the listener to the point that even a seasoned one like me is still caught unawares when suddenly, after the devastating lines "Give up the thing you love/But no one deserves it," a progression of loud piano chords rises up like a stairway lifting your heart out of your body.

I had studied that aspect of the song many times in the past, but this time it threw my mind over to another, uplifting piece of music, in the world of cinema: George Delerue's overture with horns and strings composed for the opening of Francois Truffaut's 1973 film Day for Night. As a camera on a crane tracks actors bumping into each other on the street set of the film within a film, suddenly, as the director (played in meta-style by the real director) yells "Cut," another camera on a crane comes into view, revealing the artificiality of what we've been seeing, and that's when Delerue's score kicks in. Certainly, the composition itself (which harks back to classical pieces, such as Georg Philipp Telemann's "Concerto in F Major for Two Horns") has enough of a bittersweet undercurrent to tug at the heartstrings in any presentation. What seals the deal, though, is the way it suddenly bursts out at the film viewer -- just like how the burst of piano midway through "Pitseleh" achieves much of its effect through contrast with the quiet guitar picking that has come before it.

And it is through contrast that scenes in films depicting their protagonists suddenly running or dancing (or, in rare cases, doing both at once) achieve such a piercing, heightened effect, conferring a transcendent sense of release on not just the characters, but also, vicariously, us, the film's viewers, so that we are reminded to exude joie de vivre more often in our own lives.

Nearly all films that involve running and dancing wouldn't count for this then, since in most cases those activities are central to the plot and thus no contrast comes into play. Chariots of Fire wouldn't count and neither would The Red Shoes. Black Swan wouldn't count and neither would Point Break, despite its amazing foot chase across LA. Saturday Night Fever wouldn't count and neither would Run Lola Run, despite all the philosophizing Tom Tykwer overlays upon the exhausting paces he puts Franka Potente through. Dustin Hoffman's 1976 thriller Marathon Man wouldn't count, but here's another of his films from that decade that would -- along with many others, moving backward and forward in time, to adumbrate this trend that likely encompasses much more than I can chronicle here:

• Kramer vs Kramer (1979), directed by Robert Benton, in which Dustin Hoffman's Ted is distracted while flirting at the playground and misses the moment his young son looses his grip on the jungle gym, falling down and splitting open his cheek, so that suddenly we are seeing the actor running for several blocks through New York City, carrying the boy, and arriving at not just the emergency room entrance, but also a transition point in his growth as a parent

• The Squid and the Whale (2005), directed by Noah Baumbach, in which, at the end, Jesse Eisenberg's Walt bursts out of the hospital his father has been taken to after collapsing and also runs across New York City, only in his case, it's to the American Museum of Natural History, where he's finally able to stare straight at the titular exhibit, which symbolize his fighting parents, after having to look through his fingers as a child

• The 400 Blows (1959), directed by Francois Truffaut, in which, at the end, Jean-Pierre Leaud's Antoine escapes under a fence surrounding the juvenile delinquent center he's been sent to and runs and runs until he's facing the sea, in one of the most famous endings in cinematic history, for my purposes here neatly epitomizing this pattern of protagonists showing their personal growth through a burst of physical activity

• Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), directed by John Hughes, in which Matthew Broderick's title character races through streets and backyards and even neighbor's homes, in order to make it back to his own before his parents do, in the first instance of several here of protagonists putting on a burst of speed not necessarily to symbolize accelerated personal growth, but rather to hammer home the vivacious, carpe diem core of their identity

• La La Land (2016), directed by Damien Chazelle, in which, at the end of the First Act, Emma Stone's Mia abruptly stands up and leaves dinner with her boyfriend and friends, exits the restaurant, and then begins running down the street, a joyful expression on her face, as she heads to meet her new love at a movie theater, the music swelling, as the camera on a crane rises up, in a way that reminds me of that piano burst in Elliot Smith's "Pitseleh"

• Jules and Jim (1959), directed by Francois Truffaut, in which, also in the First Act, Jeanne Moreau's Catherine leads Oskar Werner's and Henri Serre's title characters on a footrace across a fenced-in pedestrian overpass, in an act of breathless spontaneity that foreshadows all the twists and turns she'll lead the three of them on in the years to come

• When the Cat's Away (1996), directed by Cedric Klapsisch, in which Garance Clavel's Chloe leaves an afternoon gathering at a bar, where she's realized she's in love with a neighbor she's barely paid attention to over the course of the film's events, and she runs euphorically down Parisian sidewalks, with the camera patiently tracking, over the entire playtime of Portishead's "Glory Box," until mid-stride the screen cuts to black and the credits roll

• Mauvais Sang (1986), directed by Leox Carax, in which Denis Lavant's Alex dances through dark Parisian streets to David Bowie's "Modern Love," in Lavant's signature herky-jerky manner, in the character's desperate attempt to exorcise the feelings he has for Juliette Binoche's Anna

• Frances Ha (2012), directed by Noah Baumbach, in which Greta Gerwig's title character dances down streets to "Modern Love" also, only in this case in the daytime and in New York City and less in service to the development of her character (though it does do that too, since she is a struggling dancer), than in service to the development of the layer cake of French New Wave and post-New Wave homages the American director and his muse have cooked into all their cinematic collaborations

• Beau Travail (1999), directed by Claire Denis, in which, again, we see a character played by Denis Lavant suddenly dancing, only this time his Galoup is doing so in the traditional setting for such, a dance club where "The Rhythm of the Night" by early rave band Corona is playing, but the contrast is double-pronged here, since not only is he shown dancing alone, with no one else even in frame as you'd expect, this also comes at the end of a film all about his reminiscences about training Foreign Legion soldiers in the dry East African desert

• Morvern Callar (2002), directed by Lynne Ramsey, in which Samantha Morton's title character, who has been processing the suicide of her boyfriend in strange ways over the course of the film, wanders through a strobe-lit dance club with earbuds in, listening to "Dedicated to the One I Love" by the Mamas and the Papas via a mixtape her lover left her, symbolizing that she remains passively at a remove from the world around her still

• Rachel Getting Married (2008), directed by Jonathan Demme, in which, in the penultimate sequence in this masterful film, Anne Hathaway's Kym dances in tandem with others in a tent in her father's backyard to Sister Carol's live performance of her dancehall classic "Natty Dreadlocks" (in a scene that has echoes of Mira Nair's 2001 film Monsoon Wedding), then pauses and seems to be all alone -- like Morvern or Galoup -- perhaps recollecting all the drama she caused in the days leading up to her sister's wedding, before the clouds on her face part and she begin to dance again, with a sunny expression of determination and resilience that symbolizes as much of a changed character as any of these I've mentioned here

• JoJo Rabbit (2019), directed by Taika Waititi, in which JoJo, who has let the hidden Jewish girl Elsa out of his mother's house to learn that the Germans have been defeated, begins to dance slowly, with Elsa then following suit, as "Helden" (the German version of David Bowie's "Heroes") plays on the soundtrack, with this scene recollecting not just this earlier exchange between these two characters...

JoJo: What's the first thing you'll do when you're free?

Elsa: Dance.

• ... but also this earlier one, between him and his mother Rosie, which speaks to not only their situation at the end of World War II, but also to our own, now in 2020, as we skirt our way around a war that does not yet have a name:

Rosie: The Reich is dying. You're going to lose the war, and then what are you going to do? Hm? Life is a gift. We must celebrate it. We have to dance, to show God we are grateful to be alive. [She does a little dance as JoJo watches]

JoJo: Well, I won't dance. Dancing is for people who don't have a job.

Rosie: Dancing is for people who are free. It's an escape from all this.

And so must we too move exuberantly, out on the streets, enacting the personal growth our whole civilization has been tardy in achieving. Art can't hold a candle to real life right now, but someday we'll look back and see new patterns sewn through the songs and films and art and literature of the future that will reveal to our children's children the symbols and gestures that caught on and rippled forward from this pivotal moment of liberation, when the old tropes and methods of communication were no longer adequate for describing unbelievable events and we had to run and dance at full tilt over a precipice, to burn the past and rise up chanting a new People's Language of the Phoenix in unison.