Like
most writers, Romanian novelist Norman Manea’s fiction is often highly
autobiographical. Considering he survived both the Holocaust and the Ceauşescu
regime’s persecution, how could it not be? Since 1986, Manea has lived in a
state of sort of, but not really, self-imposed exile, teaching at Bard College,
but still writing in his native Romanian. René Frölke employs Manea’s own words
to tell his life story, in a distinctively elliptical and suggestive fashion,
throughout Le beau danger (trailer here), which screens
during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
It
might seem strange that a film about Manea takes its title from a brief essay
by Michel Foucault, but it is worth remembering in the 1980s the French
post-structuralist theorist became a fairly consistent critic of Soviet Communism
and a supporter of Solidarity. Regardless, his argument language serves as a
movable refuge is certainly apt in Manea’s case. Rather than a traditional
parade of dates and archival photos, viewers will read significant extracts of
his work (in English translation) that give a vivid feeling for his early
years. The selections from his story “We Might Have Been Four” are particularly
evocative—pastoral in tone and setting, but marked by an ominous atmosphere and
mounting sense of alienation.
In
many ways, LBD is a study in
contrasts, starting with Manea himself. Unlike Kosinski and Nabokov, Manea
never ceased writing in Romanian, despite his residency in the bucolic Hudson
River region. Given his age and accomplishments, he could easily get away with
playing the curmudgeon card, yet Manea appears to be quite a gracious good sport
when Frölke follows him at European book festivals and at various media
appearances and master classes.
Frölke
has a keen eye for intriguing visuals, often using grainy 16mm for eerie
effect. The use of simple ambient sound is also quite canny. At times, he might linger
on some pedestrian imagery a bit too long, but many scenes are tightly packed with
power and meaning—especially a sequence in a Romanian Jewish cemetery. Although
no words are spoken, the significance of the 1942 and 1943 dates of death are
inescapable.
