I have lots of reactions to Copie conforme, none of which I can honestly say are fully developed.

Abbas Kiarostami
The lion's share of Godfrey Cheshire's 2012 essay for Criterion, Certified Copy: At Home and Abroad is dedicated to analyzing the film in the context of its auteur. Here, I must confess my complete ignorance of Kiarostami. I have a passing understanding of Iranian culture (I've read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and I tinted my Twitter avatar green in 2009), but most of the essay was directed at a reader more knowledgeable of Kiarostami than me.

The part that did catch my attention, however, was Cheshire's speculation of how Kiarostami viewed the genesis and production of "...a film made outside Iran, in foreign languages, was perhaps a creative dare he couldn’t resist." I thought of how, to date, the only film I've seen that was directed by François Truffaut is Fahrenheit 451 - his only film shot in English. It was happenstance in both instances, but there is something curious to me that my initial foray into either filmography should be their ventures outside their own milieus and conventions.

Value of Art
The argument advanced by James Miller (William Shimell) in his book holds that replicas of art, rather than being the soulless knock-offs dismissed by intellectualism, can be just as meaningful in the eye of the beholder. I thought of Chester Harding's portrait of Daniel Boone. Harding was the only artist to ever work from Boone himself, having met the famed pioneer in his twilight years. Boone sat for a series of sketches, from which Harding later made a few fully developed portraits.

One of the portraits is in the collection at the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY. I have seen it half a dozen times over the years, most recently last summer. I spent nearly a full twenty minutes in near solitude with the portrait, studying it, mentally appraising the subtle differences between that one and the one shown on Wikipedia. Harding's sketches, of course, would be the "original" (provided one doesn't extend the argument that Boone himself was the original), and all of the portraits made from them are mere copies.

What of it?

When I study the portrait, it does not matter that it is one of a few pieces all borne of a series of sketches. What matters is that it was painted by the only artist to ever sit across a table from Boone. Harding looked into his face, and was therefore the only artist truly qualified to depict not just the overall appearance of Boone's face, but to try to convey his essence. Harding is our only reliable source for "seeing" Boone. First generation or second, the work stands on its own. I'm with James Miller on this.

Enjoyment vs. Appreciation
This is a broader argument, and one that arises at least weekly in discussions among Flickchart users. What matters when discussing a film? Its context? Its historical influence? Authorial intent? Or is it simply whether or not one likes a film or not? Is liking a film the same thing as saying the film is good?

I'm of the mind that there is such a thing as objectivity about film. There are techniques to all the various crafts, from writing to editing, that can be evaluated. That is a separate matter from how one feels about the film. I can recognize that a film is good, while not liking it. I can like a film while recognizing that it is not good. I'm not so arrogant as to equate what I like with a verdict of the quality of a film. Others, however, seem to view film through the lens of pure id, condemning anything they dislike regardless of its importance. In this, I side more with Elle than with James Miller.

James Miller and Elle
Cheshire notes that "In a shot where the woman leans over to whisper something (we never learn what) to Elle, and completely blocks the camera’s view of her, it may be said that the film goes through the looking glass." The film changes from a debate over interpretations of the meaning of art to a study of marital relationship. It's much more subtle than, say, the break in From Dusk to Dawn's transition from crime drama to horror film, but it's no less palpable.

Cheshire explores questions such as which half of the film is "true", or whether both halves are true in different ways. I'm content at present to simply accept that the first half engaged my intellect and that the second half spoke to my heart. I'm not particularly concerned with knowing whether they were critic and fan or husband and wife.

Elle
Cheshire defines the break in the film as being the unheard remark from the barista to Elle, but for me it happens earlier than that. Before Miller takes his phone call out of doors, he began to describe watching a mother walking with her son. Elle cries, but remains stoic. They both know what they're talking about, though we don't.

Though it's James Miller who espouses the pseudo-academic philosophy of living for moment, it's Juliette Binoche's Elle who imbues the film with its emotional immediacy. Her mind is on the past and the future, but it's because she's struggling to use the present to connect them. Elle at first appears to be the antithesis of Miller's carpe diem ideal, but where he is intent on the ephemeral, she longs for the contentment of a more permanent enjoyment. She is willing to accept that life will not be an endless parade of larks, so long as there is a shoulder on which she can always rest her head.

I thought of the collapse of my own marriage, and how my withdrawal into my depression kept me from doing little things like walking with my hand on my wife's shoulder. The shots in the restaurant of Binoche staring directly into the camera felt accusatory and made me flinch. I felt guilty and fought back my own tears.

I will not be immortalized with a statue in a fountain.

Copie conforme entered my Flickchart at #18/1565

I had hoped that Diane Jacobs's 2001essay for Criterion would help me find a stronger appreciation for My Man Godfrey, but it seems that I really was supposed to content myself to laugh at the antics and marvel at the acting. I can appreciate where this might go over well with a theater audience, where a crowd might feed on its own energy, but watching at home by myself I simply found the film flat, predictable and tedious.

I loved the opening credits, though, and I did find Gail Patrick's haughty Cornelia interesting. It's a pity that her character was dismissed so thoroughly in the film's final act. There for awhile, I had the glimmer of hope that something interesting might occur with her.

My Man Godfrey entered my Flickchart at #1445/1566

I'm so white, I knew some of these songs from Willie Nelson's Countryman album. It was a thrill to hear the original versions by Jimmy Cliff. I have a passing familiarity with Jamaica so I knew going into the film about things like rampant corruption and crime. As Michael Dare put it in his 2000 essay for Criterion, "It’s an anti-tourism film—violent and energetic, yet somehow managing to discreetly combine political realism with show-biz fantasy shootouts."

The Harder They Come starts off as Footloose (but with better music) before becoming À bout de souffle [Breathless]. It's easy at first to identify with Ivan (Cliff). He's the new kid in town with dreams of making it big as a singer, only to find himself in over his head in a dog-eat-dog world. Rooting for him comes easily, even during the first part of the film that feels formulaic and familiar.

What makes The Harder They Come so fascinating, though, isn't just that it then morphs into a crime drama with political commentary on the corruption of the drug trade. It's that even as the film changes tone and direction around him, Ivan remains the same. We see a change in Ivan after he capitulates and takes the $20 for his record, but that feels more like reassurance than a paradigm shift. For the most part, though, Ivan is the same guy at the end of the film that he is at the outset: a dreamer with stars in his eyes.

This, in turn, asks us to question the degrees by which we measure worthiness of sympathy. If we identified with Ivan in the beginning, and if Ivan didn't really change, then how do we feel about Ivan at the end? Do we feel betrayed? Do we remain on his side, seeing the police are little more than a stand-in for all his other adversaries? How much weight do those badges carry with us? Would it bother us if instead of shooting cops, Ivan had taken on competing drug traffickers?

It's easy for a lot of viewers to dismiss Ivan out of hand as a short-sighted, egocentric punk who couldn't leave well enough alone and got what he deserved in the end. I certainly don't endorse violence, much less shooting cops, but on a philosophical level there's a large part of me that remained sympathetic to Ivan through to the very end. Our society discourages, stifles and swindles countless people out of using their natural talents and pursuing things bigger than themselves, and it's in that context that Ivan's defiance resonates.

The Harder They Come entered my Flickchart at #688/1567