As the weird world rolls on

"- Inanimate objects, she said.

- What about them? I asked.

- Inanimate objects as a means of expressing human emotions. That's the language of film. Only good directors understand how to do it, but Renoir, De Sica, and Ray are tree of the best, aren't they?

- No doubt.

- Think about the opening scenes of The Bicycle Thief. The hero is given a job, but he won't be able to take it unless he gets his bicycle out of hock. He goes home feeling sorry for himself. And there's his wife outside the building, lugging two buckets of water. All their poverty, all the struggles of this woman and his family are contained in those buckets. The husband is so wrapped up in his own troubles, he doesn't bother to help her until they're halfway of the door. And even then, he only takes one of the buckets, leaving her to carry the other. Everything we need to know about their marriage is given to us in those few seconds. Then they climb the stairs to their apartament, and the wife comes up with the idea to pawn their bed linens so they can redeem the bicycle. Remember how violently she kicks the bucket in the kitchen, remember how violently she opens the bureau drawer. Inanimate objects, human emotions. The wife sells the sheets, and after that we see one of the workers carry their little bundle to the shelves where pawned items are stored. At first, the shelves don't seem very high, but then the camera pulls back, and as the man starts climbing up, we see that they go on and on, all the way to the ceiling, and every shelf and cubby is crammed full of bundles identical to the one the man is now putting away and all of a sudden it looks as if every family in Rome has sold their bed linnens, that the entire city is in the same miserable state as the hero and his wife. In one shot, Grandpa. In one shot we're given a picture of a whole society living at the edge of disaster."

Man in the Dark

Paul Auster