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Vagabonde possesses many themes which when viewed on the surface are almost invisible. However, when a closer post-mortem style of analysis is adopted they soon become clear and more distinguished. The themes included in this film are Mystery, Jealousy, Loneliness, Independence and ultimately, Tragedy. We see the themes develop in front of us individually as the film progresses, but as the viewer, we only become aware of the super-structure by the end of the film. We know from the start that ultimately the journey ends in tragedy but are curious as to why this woman is lying dead in a ditch. The two themes: Tragedy and Mystery, arrive together in the film.
The film opens with an image of a young girl lying in a ditch covered in mud. This image is visually shocking and instantly provokes a reaction from the viewer. The reaction must vary from person to person but ultimately it creates curiosity and sympathy. The director invites the audience to participate in uncovering of the "mystery" surrounding the life of a dead woman.
On the surface, Vagabonde is a deceptively simple story. The film opens with the image of a frozen female corpse and a narrator (Varda) tells the audience that what follows are interviews with the people who knew her in the last weeks of her life. Through interviews and flashbacks the viewer learns how this young woman ended up in a ditch, but not why she started her solitary journey. The film's main concern is the reaction of people to the drifter, not her psychology. Varda uses other people's memories to construct an image of the drifter. Loneliness is communicated instantly by the sheer fact that this woman is lying alone with no possessions in a small village and no one knows her.
If she was a resident she would be recognised and if she was from a family out of town, then surely she would have some belongings with her. It is Varda's intention to portray this tragic image of isolation. The structure of the film is supported by the way in which the story develops, i. e. through a series of interviews and documentary type monologues. From the outset, Varda establishes that she is using the accounts of witnesses to build a portrait of Mona, but as the film progresses it becomes evident that these interviews reveal more about the witnesses than the drifter.
Each interview portrays a certain social view of what it is to be a drifter, not necessarily an accurate picture of who this particular drifter, Mona, is. Therefore, according to Varda, the film is: "More than just Mona who always eludes us, who is too reserved, too dosed, the film addresses 'the Mona effect' on those she came in contact with and inevitably affected. She is a catalyst, someone who forces others to react and adjust themselves in relation to her. " Mona has five significant relationships throughout the film. She has two female "friends, " Madame Ladies and Yolande, two lovers, David and Assign, and one intellectual partner, the Goatherd. Through these encounters, Varda explores Mona's capacity for emotional warmth, her intelligence, and her independence, but more explicitly these relationships explore the other people's views of Mona and who she "should" be. The testimony offered by the participants in these longer encounters is inter-displaced with descriptions of Mona offered by other witnesses.
When interviewed at Vagabonde's New York premiere with Barbara Quart in 1986, Varda described her intentions as: "I like to see how her "no" (her rejection of society) opposed to the society gets reactions in such different ways according to who is meeting her. So by trying to capture more or less, less rather than more, who she was and what was in her mind, since we go through other people's reactions, we discover more about them than about her. " Varda's unique style to the film is almost documentary-like with deliberate alienations from the story. We view the several witnesses as if we are the interviewer or police enquiry. The first witnesses are the workers in the vineyard where Mona's frozen body is found.
One man offers sympathy for the dead woman, and tells the police that the purple stain on her is from being thrown into a wine vat in the nearby village. The next cut shows Mona striding along the highway. A trucker picks her up, but when she declines his invitation to use the bed in the back, he kicks her out. This is purely because she refuses his offer to use the bed in the back.
The truck driver then acts as Mona's witness to his companion. The trucker's story prompts the other man to recall finding a woman who was sleeping like an "angel" in one of the bungalows he was tearing down. In the three separate representations, all given equal weight, Mona has been described as a potential victim for being on her own, a pain for refusing sex, and as a sleeping angel. It is at this point that we know for sure that Mona is a complete outsider. Her presence or behaviour affects middle-aged housewives, school girls, truckers, mechanics, construction workers, academics, and domestics. Each reacts to her in a way that is indicative of her or his social position in the community.
For example, a young farm girl helps Mona fill her water bottle at the family pump and later, during a family dinner, she tells her parents she wants to be free like the camper. When her mother asks who would make her dinner every night, the girl quietly replies, "At times it would be better not to eat. " To this girl, who lives a sheltered life with her parents in a tiny village, Mona represents the freedom to go where she pleases without answering to anyone, a life full of excitement. The harshest rejection Mona faces in her journey is the one given by the Goatherd. In his own words he chose a "middle road between loneliness and freedom, " when he decided to reject mainstream society but to keep a family.
The morning after Mona's arrival his irritation with her begins to show. He thinks she has slept long enough so he makes a great ruckus to wake her. As they speak he learns that she lives for the complete freedom of the road, that she has no desire for anything. Over dinner one night Mona mentions that she would like to grow potatoes, so the Goatherd gives her a stretch of land to farm.
He also moves her out of the house and into an abandoned trailer in the yard. To disguise her hurt at being moved away from him and his family, Mona exclaims, "You three and the herd are a crowd" as she moves into her tiny new home. Once in her new home Mona forgets about her potato farm. She stays in her trailer reading, smoking and sleeping.
The Goatherd, in frustration, finally kicks her off his property. He tells her it's not fair that all she does is sit around all day while he and his wife work. During the conversation when he asks her to leave, Mona tells the Goatherd that if she had the chances he has had (he has a Master's degree in Philosophy) she would not be living in the squalor in which he exists. 'You live in filth just like me, only you work more, " she tells him. Monas story is not unlike that of Grusha from Bertolt Brechts A Caucasian Chalk Circle. In the play we see the same qualities of freedom and survival in the peasant woman, Grusha, as those in Mona. The difference being that ultimately Grusha's determination leads her to a free life rather than death.
However, in an ironic way the death of Mona provides her with the ultimate freedom she has been searching for, that is to say if there is life after death. This style of female portrayal can be seen across a broad time period and throughout many different cultures and nationalities. We have already seen that Brecht based one of his most successful and famous plays on the topic. The same can be said for Ibsen. This is especially noticeable in A Dolls House with reference to the character of Nora.
Throughout the play she is ultimately searching for her self-independence which she refers to as the miracle. Nora's outcome is not quite as terminally tragic as that of Mona from Vagabonde but for the family her departure is as good as death. Friedrich Durrenmatt also wrote a play about female independence. This was called The Visit and held Claire Zachanasian as the protagonist. In The Visit Claire's motives remain unclear for three-quarters of the play, but ultimately her goal is again freedom (as well as incorporating revenge) both for herself and the town.
Another excellent French example of this style can be seen in Erick Mona's, La vie revenues anges (The Dream life of Angels) sees Isa (Elodie Boucher), 20, wandering through France with only a rucksack on her back. Unperturbed whatever hardships may come her way, she picks up part-time jobs to keep her going and never wishes to stay anywhere any longer than necessary innocent and optimistic by nature, she is quite comfortable with her destiny. Stopping off in Lille in the north of France, she meets Marie (Natasha Render), another 20 -year-old loner, but a different type: hyper-sensitive and in complete rebellion with her immediate surroundings, Marie is as unsociable as Isa is outgoing. These stories of victimized or lost women are frequent throughout both time and genre, ranging ultimately from the bible to modern day soaps.
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Research essay sample on Discussion Of The Film Vagabonde By Agnes Varda
