Die Another Day, Die Another Place

"I've thought a lot about you and me. It doesn't matter now. It's not your fault or mine. It's just how it is. We're alone and we stay alone. But what counts is to want something, no matter what it takes. There's a bit of happiness in simply wanting happiness."

― Jacques Demy's "Lola" (1961)

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Dear Kate,

I really thought I had Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Lola" (1981) on my hand when I walked out of the library, Blu-ray at last.

How could I be not sure?  Well, there is no insert on the case.  Nothing but a blank box with a barcode and an embosser label "LOLA."

I put the disc in last night, and there came a long track shot pulling me into its black-and-white world.  Fassinder's ain't black-and-white (1981).  And ain't French either.  Same opening shot in "Bay of Angels."  Jacques Demy.  What a pleasant surprise.

Now why would two movies 20 years apart give their title character the same name, and both cabaret dancers too?  Because they are invoking the same Marlene Dietrich character in Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel" (1930).  Her name is Lola Lola.

A fake name.  She's a "night club singer" in the 30s, a "cabaret dancer" in the 60s, and, let's be honest, a prostituting jezebel by the time we can come to admit to ourselves in the 80s.  You can know her by her name and what you think it means and would allow, everybody can, if the price is right.  You can pay your life for the knowing, but "Lola" is still all you will get, your VIP status notwithstanding.

Demy called his "Lola" a "musical without music."  I say also a Romance without romance, with a Hollywood ending without a Hollywood story.  Nobody knows what they want.  Characters keep aiming for each other and missing by a minute or two, a mere arm's reach, a few heartbeats away.

"There's a bit of happiness in simply wanting happiness," a man says to Lola, wanting her, of course, to be that bit of happiness to speak to that fragment of his loneliness at that particular moment of his life.  Everybody is moving from this to that, because, this is too boring, my here and now, too lifeless, and any bit of that has to be better just for being different.  A change of scenery, a different smell, a new world opening itself up to you.  Any world is good enough; no world is good enough.

When the characters in the quintessential American novel "Revolutionary Road" were yearning for a livelier life in France, all the characters in "Lola" couldn't wait to get away from France, to America maybe.  Anywhere but here is where paradise lies.

We are all looking for a new world, light at the end of our tunnel.  If it's just another tunnel we are getting ourselves into, well, at least it will be a different tunnel, a bit of excitement to be found there, maybe.  Maybe not.  Who cares, as long as we are moving on.  Anything that is alive is on the move.  Like Thomas, we need some proof of life, poking into the wound of Jesus to electrify ourselves for another day.

We will all die.  The plan for the day is to pray it not be today.

Yours, Alex