Film Review : The Balcony – Joseph Strick
The film The Balcony is a early 1960′s B/W work based on the play “Le Balcon”by Jean Genet. Being familiar with Genet’s strong surrealist visual style, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film. Initially I felt slightly annoyed by the slow pace, and its theatrical performance. The film initially focuses on a rather violent civil war and we see Shelley Winters at a big metal door, meant to keep things in and to keep things out. A strong instruction how to view the rest of the film. Half dressed-up prostitutes have gathered in the main room , where they engage in daily activities like knitting and what looks like a type of Meccano.
The plot focuses around this Brothel , where sex is not necessarily the essence, but an excuse to live out the fantasies of each person. On this the early part of the film focuses in a cringeworthy attempt to display the interaction between the girls and customers. The dialogues seem forced, is this conscious or because we are dealing with an adaptation of a play?
This is where the film becomes interesting and succeeds where f.e. David Lynch’s Inland Empire recently seems to fail in engaging the viewer. The characters become caricatures, a milkman becomes a general , a gasman becomes a bishop, a madam could be a queen. The dialogue sometimes clumsy and overtly played. In the Balcony it is still possible to think in reference-points of your own life instead of disconnecting entirely into a dreamlike state Lynch is so good at. .
Through the blatant metaphors hurled at us at a higher pace than the film itself, one questions himself. Assuming the original play was a continuation of the anarchist state of mind that Genet promotes, it’s an interesting take that this version seems to use Hollywood’s world as the brothel. the place where dreams come true, and the real politics of the mind are played. The influence of the media to the people who wish to be led. The independent state of mind is something not many people dare to engage, rather choosing to prolong the safer status quo.
It is only when we are removed of our clothes, our power and securities, our shames exposed and without the uniform that we realize all is just a masquerade we kept believing in, even against better judgement.
And then we are sent home by Madam Irma, with a cheeky wink, this message slowly opening in our brain. Wondering if any of this is real. THAT is the power of cinema. All of that achieved in 1 hour and 24 minutes.
