Lulu on the Bridge

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Movie
German title Lulu on the Bridge
Lulu - The Secret of a Love (TV only)
Original title Lulu on the Bridge
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1998
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Paul Auster
script Paul Auster
production Greg Johnson , Amy J. Kaufman , Peter Newman
music John Lurie , Graeme Revell
camera Alik Sakharov
cut Tim Squyres
occupation

Lulu on the Bridge is a 1998 film based on a script by Paul Auster . It was initially supposed to be made into a film by Wim Wenders , who advised the author, however, to direct it himself. This is how Auster's first directorial work came about. Filming began in October 1997 and was completed in Ireland on January 4, 1998. The world premiere took place during the 1998 Cannes International Film Festival . The film was shown in the “ Un Certain Regard ” section.

action

In Lulu on the Bridge is about the protagonist Izzy and Celia. Izzy is a reclusive jazz saxophonist who performs with his band in bad bars, has a failed marriage and leads a selfish life as an artist. One evening, during a band performance, Izzy is hit by a man shooting wildly and falls backwards onto the stage. Just before he passed out, a piece of concrete fell from the ceiling next to him on the floor.

Now the story begins within the story because the film has two storylines. On the real level, Izzy will die from the gunshot wounds suffered, on the level of the dream that Izzy imagined shortly before his death, he will experience a new life, a life marked by love for another person.

In the course of this dream (which the viewer considers to be the continuation of the "prehistory" up to the final scene, so not his dream!) Izzy and Celia ("the heavenly") get to know each other by a strange coincidence. After his discharge from the hospital, he found a stone in a briefcase of a man who was shot on the street, packed in a small black box. In the briefcase he also finds Celia's phone number, scrawled on a pub's paper napkin. When he unpacks the stone and it begins to glow incredibly blue, Izzy is gripped by fear and he thinks he has gotten into a bad game. Nervous and indignant, he calls Celia and a short time later he stands in front of her door to ask her what the stone is all about. Celia doesn't know the answer, apparently her number was just by chance in the dead man's pocket. But she lets herself into the situation, unpacks the stone and holds it in her hands, whereupon the stone again begins to glow blue. Celia is now transformed, she feels happiness and contentment and seduces Izzy to touch the stone with her. Izzy and Celia seem to have found the greatest happiness on earth by touching the stone together.

Shortly thereafter, Izzy found Celia a new job as an actress through his connections: She is supposed to take on the film role of Lulu in a remake of Frank Wedekind's drama Pandora's Box , which is to be shot in Ireland.

For the filming, Celia flies to Dublin, where Izzy plans to follow her a few days later. He gives her the stone. After she leaves, he is kidnapped by brutal men and held captive in a warehouse. He assumes that the men are looking for the stone and denies knowing anything about a stone. But he also cannot respond to Celia's many calls, which is why she worries. Later he hears gunshots being fired in front of the warehouse and hopes to be released. A Doctor Van Horn comes into the room, introduces himself as one of the good guys, and asks Izzy about the stone. Since Izzy continues to pretend he doesn't know of any stone, Van Horn confronts him with ever new details from his life over several days. This “purifies” Izzy: He is forced to think about his life and his guilt in life. Horn is like an angel of the last judgment who brings Izzy to his senses shortly before his real death.

Celia has since learned that Izzy has not arrived in Dublin and is very sad as a result. Believing that he has left her, she takes the stone and drops it from a bridge into the Liffey . Van Horn has figured out the connection between Izzy and Celia and leaves Izzy angry in the warehouse. This tries to free himself, which he also succeeds.

Meanwhile, Van Horn and two men approach Celia in Dublin. She quickly suspects that they are after the stone, throws them the handbag with the words "Here it is in" and runs away. The two men pursue them. On the same bridge from which she threw the stone the night before, she is surrounded by the men on both sides of the bridge. Then she climbs over the railing and jumps into the river.

Izzy meets with the film's producer and learns that Celia has disappeared. He receives a video cassette from him with the scenes that have already been shot. When he looks at it, he cries.

The last scene of the film takes place in reality again. Celia stands on the side of the road and sees an ambulance with a siren and flashing lights pass by. When the blue light is turned off, she knows that the person in there (Izzy) has just passed away, and she feels for him and crosses herself even though she doesn't know who is inside.

interpretation

Lulu on the Bridge is (on the second level, that of Izzy's dream) a film about love , the myth of boundless love and the question of what remains shortly before the death of a person, what questions one has to ask in life. The film deals with the typical Auster question of how people find support in the postmodern era, whereby the connection with other people in particular can lead to a more fulfilling life: "You can only find yourself in the face of the other."

In this context, the question of the meaning of the stone is particularly interesting. “The stone is the engine of this story,” says Auster. “Of course, this metaphor can be interpreted in different ways. For me, the stone symbolizes a force that brings us closer together in this world. ”However, Izzy's reality in particular remains separate from this myth, devoid of love and characterized by selfishness, coincidence and death, but also embittered by the inability to continue playing the saxophone. because he had to have a lung removed because of his gunshot wound.

That Celia bears a resemblance to the Lulu character from Wedekind's drama is particularly evident on the third level of the film, the shooting of Pandora's Box in Ireland : precisely there, Celia appears as a young, pretty woman who plays various feminine roles for her partner accepts and exudes a lively sensuality that attracts male gazes and is able to slip into several roles as an actress. In this context, of course, the question of why the film title refers to Lulu and not to Celia is also interesting, since Wedekind's drama, which was written between 1892 and 1913, provided the background to Lulu on the Bridge . Auster uses this substance only to a limited extent; Above all, he draws on the main character of the drama, Lulu, whose characteristics he gives in part to his protagonist in the film, Celia.

Auster emphasized in an interview that he believes that Izzy's life was really changed shortly before death, that he was actually refined, that he experienced the deep love for Celia. “It doesn't matter whether Izzy only dreamed this story,” explains Auster, “because it left a certain effect, even if it happened in another dimension.” But this remains an insoluble mystery, like so many things intellectually cannot be explained in Auster's texts.

Reviews

Since plot and interpretation can hardly be separated in this film, as can be seen in the previous sections, personal experience and opinion on topics such as “loved ones”, “inexplicable phenomena” etc. play a role in the evaluation and it is also on several levels moved, the criticism mostly felt overwhelmed. Only the main actor's play received praise almost consistently. The lexicon of international films wrote that the film “did not find a convincing narrative and staging unity”, but raised “a number of questions worth considering”. The FAZ found: “Paul Auster has made a small masterpiece. He tells with such a dreamlike feeling for the right rhythm that the movie minutes turn into a magical evocation. Harvey Keitel and Mira Sorvino have an overwhelming cinema presence. ” Bayern 3 -Online advised against this:“ Writers stick with your novels. And the tip to the potential viewer: Better read one of the man's really brilliant novels than get bored with 'Lulu'. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the interview with Wenders at artechock Filmmagazin and the information from the production company under web links.
  2. ^ Archive Festival Cannes
  3. ↑ "I hope that audiences will be moved by what is essentially a story about deep and powerful feelings." Paul Auster in an interview on Redeemable Features ( memento of the original from May 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.emergingpictures.com
  4. ↑ See the review: Alles nur ein Traum ?, Rhein-Zeitung from January 15, 2010, not online
  5. ^ "I firmly believe that Izzy lives through the events in the story, that the dream is not just some empty fantasy. When he dies at the end, he's a different man than he was at the beginning. ”Paul Auster in an interview on Redeemable Features, as above.
  6. ^ Rhein-Zeitung, see above.
  7. ↑ See the web links.
  8. ↑ Quoted from Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon, see under web links.