Thursday, September 10, 2009

Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens - David and Albert Maysles, 1976

The ability to show the beauty hidden behind weirdness.
The embracing look, the loving camera revealing the jewels that sparkle even more, surrounded by trash as they are.
Reality, or fiction? Poverty, or aristocracy?
Choosing to live outside societal rules. Surviving a solitary present enlightened only by a socially glorious past.
Walking the fine line between what we are and what we think we could have been - blaming the others for our perceived failures. Can one actually objectively asses her own evolution? I guess not as we'll always dream of passed what if's...
Detached from the world, serene and contradictory, cultivated - indulging in aristocratic pleasures of book discussions, singing and dancing, swimming in the ocean, feeding the raccoons and the cats, mother and daughter live in a fairy tale, a sad fairy tale glowing with beauty. Their show of self sufficiency and self content is built on nostalgia, regrets and denial.

The Maysles Brothers make us feel about Big and Little Eddie Beale - we are astounded by their contrasts, and as we get to know them, we are torn between joy and awe. We care about them, by the end of the film, and we wonder how our caring would (or would have) change(d) their life, as it is certain that Maysles' gentle eye changed something in their destiny.

What is the effect of the artist on his subject's life?

http://indexmagazine.com/interviews/albert_maysles.html