| The Platters – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| @[Harriet132:9935] Great to see someone is thinking about this incredible scene too, and the meaning of the song in relation to the action. For me, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" - as it is used in the ending - reflects the shifts in Geoff and Kate's relationship. Through this one, deceptively simple dance sequence, we come to understand that their love has profoundly changed, moving away from "images" toward a recognition of the impossibility of two people (despite shared histories) truly living up to an imposed idea/ideal of love, further complicated in Kate's realisation of her continuing (and very painful) love for Geoff. The co-ordination of the camera with Charlotte Rampling's completely non-verbal acting here is astonishing - the way Rampling communicates her body coming alive again with desire and "body-couple" memory, the flickers of alternating recognition and doubt on her face, the sudden, ambiguous gesture where she violently pulls down her hand (disgusted, overwhelmed, or a bit of both?), the subtle push-in of the camera, the circling motion, the lighting change... It's both very complex and very coherent. There's a couple of other things going on here too, I think. The sense of the anniversary as one that is highly-staged managed (given the preparations and discussions around the event that is used to create the film's temporal structure) down to the very timing of Geoff's "on cue" crying suggests that, on one level, this is a marriage and a declaration of love-commitment that exists on the level of surfaces, at least for the assembled audience/camera. I think the ambiguity that results - Is it all for show? Is it real love or merely the gesture" of love? - very cleverly parallels the ambiguity that Kate herself feels around these very same questions. I think that, by ultimately aligning us with Kate's perspective (the choices on the level of framing and scene construction subtly privileging Kate over Geoff), director Andrew Haigh ultimately withholds judgement on their marriage. Both Kate and the viewer are frozen in a moment of radical indeterminacy, with possibilities stretching out on either side of this divide. Just as one can listen to the Platters song and intuit/project different responses dependent on experience, mood and bias, Haigh does similarly (and generously) with the ending of his film. Which is why "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is such a perfect choice: it's simultaneously devastating, unsettling and deeply romantic. | |
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