Maybe Later

Dan mungkin bila nanti kita kan bertemu lagi
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1. Recently, I've been thinking about women in films who die suddenly and violently. Two examples, both conveniently in Godard films, keep coming up in my mind: Nana (Anna Karina) in Vivre sa vie and Camille, the Brigitte Bardot character in Le Mépris (who can forget Camille, stretched on the bed, ostensibly naked yet resolutely never explicitly shown, langurously discussing her body with Paul (Michel Piccoli) in Godard's "fine-you-want-a-steamy-Bardot-shot-I'll-give-you-anything-but" scene?)

Both deaths are violent, sudden and, worst, inexplicable. Camille's marriage with Paul unravels turbulently, tearfully and tragically in the second act of Le Mépris (but doesn't everything unravel in the second act of Le Mépris - ideals, dreams, hopes, moral and artistic integrity...?) Yet she seems to have obtained a moment of peace as she waits at the filling station, before leaving and her car is unexpectedly hit by an oncoming car. In the silence following the squeal of brakes and the dull crunch of metal, the handwriting of her words in her love letter appears on the screen, read by her in voice-over like ironic famous last words in a voice from the grave.

Nana's death is even more abrupt - after leaving her marriage and forced by poverty into prostitution, she seems to achieve an odd equanimity about her lifestyle in an astonishing sequence of scenes of her entertaining clients while carrying on an extremely factual voice-over conversation with Raoul, her pimp, about the risks, options, medical benefits etc of prostitution. Like Elisabeth Vogler, the silent actress in Bergman's Persona, Nana, herself with vague aspirations to be an actress, struggles with her doubts of communication and its abilities to represent meaning and convey truth. In the penultimate, eleventh story (this, after all, is Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux), Nana carries on an extensive conversation with the philosopher Brice Parain, playing himself, where we are shown for the first time the Nana beneath - her doubts, her questions, her illusions, her disillusions, Nana as we have never seen her before. In the next and last story, she is sold by Raoul and, in the transaction gone awry, she is suddenly, sickeningly, stupidly, shot.

2. The very first film that Quentin Tarantino made was a "black and white trial run" called My Best Friend's Birthday. In it, Tarantino relates a story, told straight to the camera, with the dash of Tarantinoian humour that always cracks me up:

Out of the blue, I felt depressed for no reason whatsoever, just this dark cloud hanging over my head. I was gonna commit suicide... I was gonna go up in the bathroom, fill the bathtub with hot water, and open my veins. I was actually gonna do it. ... You know what saved me?... It was The Partridge Family. The Partridge Family was coming on, I really wanted to see it, so I said, "Okay, I'll watch The Partridge Family, then I'll kill myself." Well I watched it, and it was a really funny episode.... And uh... I didn't feel like killing myself afterwards. It all kind of worked out.

I read somewhere - someone once said, "that's the best thing about committing suicide - you can always do it later."

3. I think back on the sudden and violent deaths of Nana and Camille... would they have been as shocked as we were? Having lived most of their lives without hope, would they have died without hope too? Or would they not have regretted, would they not have looked back at what they left behind? Had they known what was going to happen to them in the last scene of the film, would they have turned and said, "no, later?"

4. "Mungkin Nanti"

Should we possibly meet again later
Please do not make the one request for me to return
The feelings that remain have died
Like the whole of yesterday

("Mungkin Nanti" (Maybe Later), by Indonesian band Peter Pan, from their album Bintang di Surga (Star of Heaven))