Marc Chagall, “Exodus,” oil on canvas, 1952-66 (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou)
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday, January 30, $13-$18, 8:00
Chagall and threeASFOUR exhibitions continue through February 2, $15 (free on Saturday)
212-423-3200
www.thejewishmuseum.org
“Should I paint the earth, the sky, my heart? / The cities burning, my brothers fleeing? / My eyes in tears. / Where should I run and fly, to whom?” So wrote Russian painter Marc Chagall in a poem when considering what subjects he should explore on canvas. That poem, among others written by the artist, appear high on the walls of the powerful, deeply personal Jewish Museum exhibit “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile.” People have been lining up outside in the freezing cold to experience the intimate show, which zeroes in on the period just before, during, and immediately following WWII, when Chagall and his beloved wife, Bella, were forced to first leave their home in Russia, then flee France for the United States as German power spread across Europe. The exhibition ends on February 2, and because of its popularity, the museum will be open on Wednesday, when it’s usually closed. In addition, the Chagall show, along with the small, sparkly fashion exhibit “threeASFOUR: MER KA BA,” will get an official public farewell Thursday evening in the special program “The Wind Up: Bright Winter Night,” which will include guided tours, an international beer tasting, and a live performance by Philly-born, Brooklyn-based indie singer-songwriter Mirah (Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn), who will soon be releasing her follow-up to such previous records as You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This, Advisory Committee, and C’mon.
Marc Chagall, “Self-Portrait with Clock,” oil on canvas, 1947 (private collection)
“Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” consists of thirty-one paintings, twenty-two works on paper, and vitrines of photographs, illustrated books, letters, and other ephemera. The show is divided into four parts: “Time Is a River,” “War and Exile,” “The Jewish Jesus,” and “The Colors of Love,” in which Chagall incorporates his unique iconography and color palette — religious men holdings Torahs, a cow playing the violin, a glowing moon, mothers holding babies, angels floating in the sky, pendulums swinging on clocks — on canvases filled with pain, fear, and dread as he first watched the horror of the Nazis, then lost Bella to a sudden illness in 1944. “The Fall of the Angel” encapsulates Chagall’s oeuvre of the time, a painting that he began in 1923 and reworked in 1933 and 1947, centered by an angel in red, looking like a twisting fire, spiraling uncontrollably toward earth. In the right background is Christ on the cross; the crucifixion is seen in many of these works as Chagall, who was raised in an Orthodox family, uses the figure to represent Jewish suffering not only during the Holocaust but throughout time, as well as relating it to his own tortured soul, first tortured by guilt for having been able to escape the Nazis while his brethren were murdered, then by grief upon losing his wife on the eve of their starting a new life together. In “Exodus” (1952-66), a haloed, crucified Jesus looks over a mass of men, women, and children running from a burning shtetl, linking the escape from Egypt with the pogroms and the Holocaust. And in “Self-Portrait with Clock,” Chagall’s second wife, Virginia, bathed in blue, is leaning on the artist, who portrays himself as a red goat working on a canvas of a crucified Jesus being sorrowfully embraced by Bella in ghostly white as a winged clock flies away in the distance. It’s a haunting image, one of many in this haunting show.
After getting a biopsy taken and drawing the death card while consulting a fortune-teller, popular French singer Cléo (Corinne Marchand) begins looking back at her life — and wondering just what’s left of it — while awaiting the dreaded results. The blonde beauty talks with old friends, asks her piano player (Michel Legrand, who composed the score) to write her a song, and meets a dapper gentleman in the park, becoming both participant and viewer in her own existence. As Cléo makes her way around town, director (and former photographer) Agnès Varda (Le Bonheur, Vagabond) shows off early 1960s Paris, expertly winding her camera through the Rive Gauche. Just as Cléo seeks to find out what’s real (her actual name is Florence and that gorgeous hair is a wig), Varda shoots the film in a cinema verité style, almost as if it’s a documentary. She even sets the film in real time (adding chapter titles with a clock update), enhancing the audience’s connection with Cléo as she awaits her fate, but the movie runs only ninety minutes, adding mystery to what is to become of Cléo, as if she exists both on-screen and off, alongside the viewer. A central film in the French Nouvelle Vague and one of the first to be made by a woman, Cléo de 5 à 7 is an influential classic even as it has lost a step or two over the years. A new digital restoration of Cléo de 5 à 7 is screening January 28 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Remastered & Restored: Treasures of French Cinema”; the later screening will be introduced by French author Catherine Cusset. The three-month festival continues with such other recently restored French classics as Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (introduced by Henry Bean), Jacques Demy’s Une chambre en ville (introduced by Adam Gopnik), and Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès (introduced by Lola Montes Schnabel).
There’s something always lurking just beneath the surface of Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s 1985 drama, Himatsuri, and when it finally arrives, it’s shocking and explosive. In the small coastal village of Nigishima, the fishermen are at odds with the lumberjacks. Someone is dumping oil in the water, killing the fish, and the chief suspect is Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji), a strong woodsman who chops down trees, raises dogs to hunt down wild boars, shoots monkeys, cheats on his wife with a former girlfriend turned hussy (Kiwako Taichi), and is the only villager who refuses to sell his property to a company intent on building a marine park there. He both cavorts with and defies nature and the local spiritual beliefs, at one point swimming naked in the waters leading to a sanctuary. “Only I can make the goddess feel like a woman,” he proclaims. Carefully watching and worshiping Tatsuo is young Ryota (Ryota Nakamoto), who also oversteps boundaries, using sacred branches in animal traps, and is forced to expose himself to the goddess in retribution. Soon a storm comes, transforming Tatsuo and leading to a horrific conclusion. Set in the area where the Japanese creation myth takes place, Himatsuri is a strange creature indeed, with confusing plot twists, bizarre transitions, and some very weird scenes, with a creepy score by Tōru Takemitsu and lush photography by Tamura Masaki. Yanagimachi’s tale, written by Kenji Nakagami, is no mere clarion call to save the environment; instead, it’s an examination of man’s inhumanity to nature, the disregard for the trees, the oceans, the animals (while also commenting on religion, homosexuality, and contemporary society). Yanagimachi (God Speed You! Black Emperor; Ai ni tsuite, Tokyo) mixes genres, from horror to thriller to romance to musical, as he tells the story of one man who just can’t stop himself.
