Monday, April 27, 2009
Cleo's Odyssey
The motif of a journey is one of the oldest in literature. Much like Odysseus' travels, Cleo in Cleo from 5 to 7 is also engaged in a life-changing journey. What are some of the obstacles she must overcome? What are some of the things she learns? How does her outward journey mirror her inner one? What, if anything, is her goal?
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Cleo's journey is a transformative one. She spends much of the film a narcissist, seeing worth only in physical beauty, in her work, things that are fleeting. This is why the prospect of cancer is so terrifying; her body is all she really has, as evidenced by her little musical numbers in which she sings of seduction and lust. She is almost afraid when nobody in the café stops to listen to her single, as if her entire life's worth were contained in some inconsequential hit song getting a bit of radio play.
ReplyDeleteHer time with Antoine seems to promise change. In the end of the film, she doesn't fear the chemotherapy, even though chemo can do things to a body that must seem terrible to somebody as centered on the physical and the sensual as Cleo is. She is living in the moment instead of dreading the decay of the future. How did she overcome her fear of decay and death? She reciprocated--she promised to see Antoine off in exchange for his emotional support at the hospital. The discussion she has with Antoine at the park indicate that reciprocation is something new for Cleo, who is, as she puts it, afraid to give into relationships and do more than "be loved."
Her obstacles? I wouldn't call them obstacles, but she is faced several times with scenes that exist as if meant to clue her in to her superficiality. The ugliness of the man piercing his arm, the fearlessness with which her friend poses nude (while Cleo would fear the artists "finding a fault"), the man in the comical short film having a total paradigm shift after removing his sunglasses.
I don't think Cleo ever really had a goal other than to shed the misery that came with not knowing, hence the reliance on superstition as a means to try and know what she could not yet know--in this sense, the Tarot cards are like Eve's apple in a sense, granting knowledge that turns out to be the truth (she has cancer) but tormenting her with it. Cleo never saw her narcissism as a central problem...all she wanted was for the time to come when she could call the doctor and get the prognosis. The fruits of her journey are basically incidental to anything she might have thought or planned.
Some of the major obstacles Cleo must overcome are her sickness as well as her superficial state of being. A major motif in this movie was mirrors and the idea that being beautiful was the most important thing if you had nothing else; this was also an idea that Cleo had to overcome. Throughout her journey her inner-self reflects her outward journey, meaning whenever there was a change for Cleo not only would her inner self change but her physical being would change in some way as well. Almost as if through the journey we were uncovering the façade that Cleo wore and she, as well as the audience, was finding who she truly was. This is shown in many ways throughout the film, in the beginning Cleo is wearing a wig but as we move on we learn that it is not her real hair when she takes it off because she is upset, symbolically uncovering a little bit of Cleo to see who she really is. When Cleo goes to visit a friend and tells her she does not like being naked, even for art this symbolizes the cover she puts on to the outside world. We catch Cleo looking at herself in the mirror a lot throughout the film, in one of the scenes the mirror breaks meaning she cannot look at herself anymore nor rely on her beauty for serenity. Eventually towards the end of the film after Cleo has met the nice man we learn that Cleo’s real name is really Florence, in each of these symbolic steps in her journey we learn more about Cleo as she is uncovered from her cosmetic personality and looked at as more of a human being. From this journey she learns to live life and to stop worrying about everything. I am not sure if Cleo really ever had a goal, I do feel as if she was lonely and felt empty and was searching for something that was missing; through her search she eventually found herself underneath all of the façade.
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