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DOI Artikel:Rutkowska, Teresa: Porządek natury i chaos duszy, czyli o ogrodach filmowych
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49351#0228
Teresa Rutkowska
222
metaphorical sense, iike an empty place. A wide,
straight avenue is portrayed with lawns on either side
closed perspectively by the edge of a pool. Bushes
are shaped into cones, balls and hexagons, hedges
are cut into regular lines of identical height and statues
are placed along the avenues.
In this garden of such regular layout and structure,
viewed from a bizarre perspective as though from
the air, above the level of the terrace, the main
characters search for and lose each other, constantly
engaged in a strange, peiwerse gamę of uncertainty
and contradiction. Contrary to the generał image of
the garden, it is a feeling of claustophobia that
accompanies the main characters. Both the pałace
and garden, in spite of their monumental charm, have
an oppressive function to fulfill, hemming in and
suppressing the characters. It is only towards the end
of the film that they decide in unison to leave it, thus
giving rise to hope that some kind of liberty may be
achieved.
The claustrophobic aura of the French garden
takes on a social dimension in the films of Bunuel,
beginning with Golden Age (1930). This film of
surrealist poetics is a strong attack on middle-class
customs and morals. The garden forms part of the
hostile background in which the two lovers are placed.
The chief characters of The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie (1972) escape to their garden from
unwanted guests, in a futile attempt to win mutual
intimacy, but they also are constantly subjected to
the company and conventions of society. Vital to
BunuePs revolutionary commentary is the fact that
the gardener employed by the couple is a church
dignitary, and it is he who cuts the bushes and trees,
removes the unruly weeds, ensures that the flowers
grow to the same height and in accordance with the
rules in force.
In Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s
Contract (1982), the death of the garden’s owner, a
worshipper of geometrie forms and the controlling
of naturę is hardly intended to provoke immeasurable
regret among members of his family. It provides them
with an opportunity to change the way they conduct
their lives, as reflected in the arrival of a new garden
designer, who is supposed to create the garden of
paradise, allowing them to live together in harmony
with true naturę, freed of its shackles. The expression
of this return to innocence would supposedly be the
English landscape garden. However, Greenaway
would not be himself if he did not reveal with pure
irony the disaster of what also amounts to a myth.
In one of the scenes from Zbigniew Rybczyńskie
film The Orchestra (1987), rows of neatly clipped
shrubs mark the boundaries to the garden of temporal
delights, while Charon’s boat sails between them. The
figures who occupy this garden are eąually as rooted,
stiff and overbearing as garden statues. To the rhythm
of AlbinonFs Adagio, they move through garden
paths sunk in liquid-like, overflowing greenery. The
cycle of life, condensed into a musical miniaturę
lasting no morę than a few minutes, is limited to
consumption, reereation and flirtmg only to end in
death.
The expulsion from the garden of savage naturę
to artificially concocted and aesthetically impeccable
forms, the products of human invention, imagination
and talent, but also of fashion and a cultural context,
has always been ąualified unambiguously in ethical
terms.
The film Serpents Kiss by Philippe Rousselot
(1997) creates its own specific discourse on the
subject of mutual relations between man and naturę,
but above all on the subject of the garden’s functions
and its style in Europę at the turn of the 17th century.
The main theme concerns the shaping of the garden
which is intended to grow in the place of meadows
and woods. Step by step, the process of creating this
work is portrayed, involving the destroying, levelling
and digging up of the land, the cutting down of trees,
to be followed by the demarcating of paths, the
planting along their length of boxwood, the erecting
of statues, fountains and planting in regular patterns
of saplings. As work on the garden progresses, the
owner loses his fortunę.
Rousselofs film can be seen to carry a contem-
porary ecological message. In morę than a materiał
sense, there is a high price to pay for the bonding of
naturę and man’s interference in the natural world.
The owner is punished for his vanity and stupidity.
Nevertheless, in the wake of disaster, the main
characters acquire wisdom and maturity, and as a
consequence an opportunity for a better and morę
worthwhile life. The garden also survives as a
completed work that deserves acclaim. Thus, the film
does not end in such a way as to leave no room for
doubt, and as such the dilemma between naturę and
culture remains insoluble.
Translated by Peter Martyn
222
metaphorical sense, iike an empty place. A wide,
straight avenue is portrayed with lawns on either side
closed perspectively by the edge of a pool. Bushes
are shaped into cones, balls and hexagons, hedges
are cut into regular lines of identical height and statues
are placed along the avenues.
In this garden of such regular layout and structure,
viewed from a bizarre perspective as though from
the air, above the level of the terrace, the main
characters search for and lose each other, constantly
engaged in a strange, peiwerse gamę of uncertainty
and contradiction. Contrary to the generał image of
the garden, it is a feeling of claustophobia that
accompanies the main characters. Both the pałace
and garden, in spite of their monumental charm, have
an oppressive function to fulfill, hemming in and
suppressing the characters. It is only towards the end
of the film that they decide in unison to leave it, thus
giving rise to hope that some kind of liberty may be
achieved.
The claustrophobic aura of the French garden
takes on a social dimension in the films of Bunuel,
beginning with Golden Age (1930). This film of
surrealist poetics is a strong attack on middle-class
customs and morals. The garden forms part of the
hostile background in which the two lovers are placed.
The chief characters of The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie (1972) escape to their garden from
unwanted guests, in a futile attempt to win mutual
intimacy, but they also are constantly subjected to
the company and conventions of society. Vital to
BunuePs revolutionary commentary is the fact that
the gardener employed by the couple is a church
dignitary, and it is he who cuts the bushes and trees,
removes the unruly weeds, ensures that the flowers
grow to the same height and in accordance with the
rules in force.
In Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s
Contract (1982), the death of the garden’s owner, a
worshipper of geometrie forms and the controlling
of naturę is hardly intended to provoke immeasurable
regret among members of his family. It provides them
with an opportunity to change the way they conduct
their lives, as reflected in the arrival of a new garden
designer, who is supposed to create the garden of
paradise, allowing them to live together in harmony
with true naturę, freed of its shackles. The expression
of this return to innocence would supposedly be the
English landscape garden. However, Greenaway
would not be himself if he did not reveal with pure
irony the disaster of what also amounts to a myth.
In one of the scenes from Zbigniew Rybczyńskie
film The Orchestra (1987), rows of neatly clipped
shrubs mark the boundaries to the garden of temporal
delights, while Charon’s boat sails between them. The
figures who occupy this garden are eąually as rooted,
stiff and overbearing as garden statues. To the rhythm
of AlbinonFs Adagio, they move through garden
paths sunk in liquid-like, overflowing greenery. The
cycle of life, condensed into a musical miniaturę
lasting no morę than a few minutes, is limited to
consumption, reereation and flirtmg only to end in
death.
The expulsion from the garden of savage naturę
to artificially concocted and aesthetically impeccable
forms, the products of human invention, imagination
and talent, but also of fashion and a cultural context,
has always been ąualified unambiguously in ethical
terms.
The film Serpents Kiss by Philippe Rousselot
(1997) creates its own specific discourse on the
subject of mutual relations between man and naturę,
but above all on the subject of the garden’s functions
and its style in Europę at the turn of the 17th century.
The main theme concerns the shaping of the garden
which is intended to grow in the place of meadows
and woods. Step by step, the process of creating this
work is portrayed, involving the destroying, levelling
and digging up of the land, the cutting down of trees,
to be followed by the demarcating of paths, the
planting along their length of boxwood, the erecting
of statues, fountains and planting in regular patterns
of saplings. As work on the garden progresses, the
owner loses his fortunę.
Rousselofs film can be seen to carry a contem-
porary ecological message. In morę than a materiał
sense, there is a high price to pay for the bonding of
naturę and man’s interference in the natural world.
The owner is punished for his vanity and stupidity.
Nevertheless, in the wake of disaster, the main
characters acquire wisdom and maturity, and as a
consequence an opportunity for a better and morę
worthwhile life. The garden also survives as a
completed work that deserves acclaim. Thus, the film
does not end in such a way as to leave no room for
doubt, and as such the dilemma between naturę and
culture remains insoluble.
Translated by Peter Martyn