Take This Waltz (2011)
Directed by Sarah Polley
***SPOILERS***
Leonard Cohen once said of poet Frederico Garcia Lorca:
“He has been a man of
extraordinary influence on both my political and personal work. I admire him.
At fourteen years of age, I realized that in order to define the words ‘purity’
and ‘poetry,’ I could go to Lorca."
Cohen based his song “Take This Waltz” off Lorca’s poem “Pequeno
Vals Vienes,” which is almost translated exactly word for word, albeit a few
minor changes—which is where we are able to attach Cohen’s direction with the
song. Lorca’s poem depicted his condemned relationship with Salvador Dalí in a
homophobic Spain. Dalí had a brief connection with Lorca before abandoning him
when their relationship became physical, and continued to keep his sexual
orientation in the closet amidst his strenuous marriage with his wife, who he
claimed to only have sex with once. Lorca’s poem recalls a brief relationship
he shared with another poet named Hart Crane, in the lines:
“There is a death for
piano/That paints little boys blue”
Crane and Lorca spent an evening together at a local gay
bar. A bilingual translator had accompanied their date, since they each spoke
different languages, but left the bar (he was straight) because of uneasiness. When the
translator returned, Crane and Lorca had split apart due to the inability to converse—a tragic separation between two men who shared a genuine
connection. Sailors (dressed in blue) surrounded the men as they played piano
and told dirty jokes, and afterwards the two split apart. Both Lorca and Crane
died within two years of each other following this night, with Hart’s death
coming as a suicidal response to gay-related bashings and deaths. More than a
direct relationship, Lorca’s poem may be more or less focused on the loss of
love, instead of the loss of a companion. Spain was not welcoming for Lorca’s kind,
and the constriction and longing Lorca felt poured out into “Pequeno Vals
Vienes.” Cohen’s song is very much a translation of not only this longing for
love, but a longing for Lorca himself via a female singer. This can be seen in
the only lines that don’t directly adapt Lorca’s poem:
“There's a bar where
the boys have stopped talking/They've been sentenced to death by the blues”
Cohen uses imagery to depict an actual funeral, which in
turn represents this longing for art and beauty Cohen used to fuel his music.
Cohen utilizes sexual energy he shares for the singer to establish this innate
longing, which is where director and writer Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz steps in.
Sexual frustration and desire certainly fuels Margot’s
(Michelle Williams) flirtation with Daniel (Luke Kirby) and her eventual
separation from her husband Lou (Seth Rogen), but the sexual undertones—much
like Cohen’s song and Lorca’s poem—accompany several other themes that expand
upon Margot’s state of mind, including death (the end of her marriage) and the
disillusion of love (her slow and correlative downfall with both Daniel and
Lou). Along with adapting Cohen’s song for the title of her film, Polley also
employs the song in a magnificent "dance" sequence between Margot and Daniel,
representing the both the culmination of their attraction and the beginnings
their relationship’s deterioration. Their “waltz” is actually Polley’s (and Cohen's) depiction of the connection shared between two dancers. Margot and Daniel begin
kissing, and soon they’re exploring the sexual fantasies Margot was tempted
with during her flirtation. Finally they move into a quiet complacency Margot
shared with Lou, marking a full circling trip that places Margot directly back
where she started.
Cohen's song begins:
“Now in Vienna there
are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder
where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with
nine hundred windows
There's a tree where
the doves go to die
There's a piece that
was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the
Gallery of Frost
Take this waltz, take
this waltz
Take this waltz with
the clamp on its jaws
I want you, I want
you, I want you
On a chair with a
dead magazine
In the cave at the
tip of the lily
In some hallway where
love's never been
On a bed where the
moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with
footsteps and sand
Take this waltz, take
this waltz
Take its broken waist
in your hand
This waltz, this
waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own
breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in
the sea”
This mixture of sexual desire and an unattainable sense of
love Margot strives to achieve is in full force through Cohen’s imagery, in
which he depicts a church (There's a
lobby with nine hundred windows), a gravesite (In the cave at the tip of the lily), and a funeral procession (In
a cry filled with footsteps and sand) that incorporates the loss of Lou’s
family, particularly his alcoholic sister Geraldine (Sarah Silverman). This can
be seen as a longing to achieve the love she’s built for Lou over the years and
the death of their relationship, and the twinge of longing and regret
representing both her hesitancy to abandon her husband and the desire to find
that love once again. Margot is fully committed to Daniel, asking him to have
his way with her after such a life-crippling decision (Take its broken waist in your hand), represented so forcefully
through Cohen’s alcohol-stricken protagonist skulking away from the love he’d
come to know for so long (With its very
own breath of brandy and Death/Dragging its tail in the sea).
“There's a concert
hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had
a thousand reviews
There's a bar where
the boys have stopped talking
They've been
sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it
climbs to your picture
With a garland of
freshly cut tears?
Take this waltz, take
this waltz
Take this waltz, it's
been dying for years
There's an attic
where children are playing
Where I've got to lie
down with you soon
In a dream of
Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some
sweet afternoon
And I'll see what
you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and
your lilies of snow”
Here we can see the bar Margot set for her relationship with
Daniel, but really it’s the bar set for any new relationship. The hope and
longing for this love to be truly transcendent and life altering. Margot’s
expectations had been built by Daniel’s fictional description of their first
sexual encounter (There's a concert hall
in Vienna/Where your mouth had a thousand reviews). Cohen was describing
the physical being whom he was attached to, but along with Polley’s portrayal,
this represents an expectation of love that’s too far-reaching to attain. So as
Margot’s relationship with Daniel degenerates, the innate desire to find such
love comes from oneself, as seen in the final shot of Margot riding the
carnival ride—which she previously shared with Daniel—by herself. Constantly
Margot finds love, and constantly does she lose it. But she will continue to
persist love’s allure by visiting it’s grave (Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture/With a garland of freshly cut
tears?) and longing for it into the great beyond, where Cohen finds it to be the
only place he can share with his love once again (There's
an attic where children are playing/Where I've got to lie down with you soon).
“And I'll dance with
you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a
river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on
my shoulder
My mouth on the dew
of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul
in a scrapbook
With the photographs
there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the
flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and
my cross
And you'll carry me
down on your dancing
To the pools that you
lift on your wrist
Oh my love, oh my
love
Take this waltz, take
this waltz
It's yours now
It's all that there
is”
This seems to be Cohen’s culmination in finding love in the
afterlife, where love is as beautiful as depicted in his (and Margot’s) mind. Cohen’s
transformation into a river is a remarkable piece of imagery that recalls all
the intimate and sexual desires (My
mouth on the dew of your thighs) that drive this love. It’s a love that can
be seen in Margot’s beguiled face as her relationship with Daniel dwindles into
a quiet comfortableness, as foretold earlier in a scene featuring several women
showering together in a locker room:
“New things get old.”
Daniel may have gotten old, but the journey Margot took
almost seemed a necessary one. For she lost love, gained it back, and lost it again,
but the allure of love still remained. Love was still attainable. But love was
also a mystery. It held a physical presence that could be related through imagery,
but not physically touched. So as Margot dips into the same life she previously
held with Lou, there’s a twinge of optimism fueling her plight as she boards
the carnival ride. Whereas her ride with Daniel ended in an abrupt halt that signified
their eventual stalled relationship, her solo ride displays her search for love is a
journey she must travel alone. Instead of coming to a stop, her ride is only
interrupted by the black screen of Take This
Waltz’s closing moments, representing the unpredictable and ambiguous
concept of love that’s too vast and encompassing to truly understand or attain
in this life.
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