Writer and director Marleen Gorris
But wait. All these begetters are but characters in a fiction, a movie fiction called Antonia's Line. This film is a family chronicle, a survey of one family's history through the generations, a history tracked through its matrilineal line.
The begetting of the movie itself is, actually, the work of Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris, who wrote the original script for Antonia's Line in 1988. Completed and released in 1995, Antonia's Line was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film and proudly walked off with the Oscar at this week's ceremony. (Currently, the movie has just started a second week of an Austin theatrical run at the Village Cinema Art.) This now-popular movie was still relatively unknown when it made its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, where it went on to win the festival's award for best picture. While in Toronto, I had the opportunity to speak with Marleen Gorris. Our conversation took place the day after the premiere screening of Antonia's Line, and though the festival awards had yet to be decided and announced, this test audience rose to a spontaneous standing ovation at the movie's close.
"Lovely" was the initial word Gorris used to summarize her movie's outstanding reception. Her natural reserve, though, was quickly overcome by her delight. "It was absolutely fantastic the way people laughed and clapped. It was marvelous. That also made me very nervous." As Gorris that night fielded questions from the audience during the Q&A that followed, no sign of her nerves was detectable.
Antonia's Line traces the history of one family across five generations. It's a family saga in the classic sense except for one critical difference: This family line is traced through its female descendants, from mother to daughter. (It helps that the women in this fictional family all have a propensity for giving birth to female babies.) This matrilineal narrative construct almost seems too simple to be responsible for such a radical narrative departure. Onscreen family chronicles have generally stuck with the basic patriarchal narrative scheme that long ago became the standard for Western civilization.
"I started Antonia's Line three times, but only the last time -- which was last year -- did I manage to finish it," explained Gorris. Though the script has been ready since 1988, shooting was hindered by the sizable cast that had to be assembled and the difficulty of finding an authentic-looking village that could also undergo a 50-year aging process. The funding required was greater than any one source could provide and thus a multi-national producing roster was cobbled together. Antonia's Line, which was filmed in Dutch with English subtitles, was the Netherlands' official entry to the Academy Awards, although the project was actually shot in Belgium. Investment sources came from both these countries, and also the United Kingdom; the cast and crew were a mixed lot as well. Because of all these details, Gorris continued, "it took quite a long time before I could get the film made. And it grew to be increasingly difficult." She says it in such a way that makes clear her fatigue with the business end of filmmaking.
Antonia's Line begins in the mid-Forties as World War II is drawing to a close. As it opens, we witness Antonia and her teenage daughter Danielle returning to the countryside town of Antonia's birth. They have come to see Antonia's mother Allegonda, who lies in a state of near-death while continuing to rant about her long-dead husband's infidelities. During the film's opening scenes, Antonia acquaints her daughter with the town's colorful characters, its legends and lore. Throughout it all, Gorris depicts the proceedings with a unique blend of magical realism and hardscrabble reality.
Scrawled on a bombed-out wall as Antonia and Danielle first enter the town is the slogan: "Welcome to our Liberators." Even this common wartime phrase comes to resonate with amplified meaning as the movie puts the words to peacetime use by associating them with the new matriarchal order. We are given no clues regarding the details of Antonia's and Danielle's lives prior to this moment of arrival. When asked pointblank about Antonia's earlier life, Gorris admitted her own uncertainty: "I've often wondered myself why I knew so well what she was going to do after she left the city and I never really gave a good answer to myself as to what she did before that. I always assumed that she lived in the city, and maybe it was Rotterdam, maybe it was bombarded by the Germans, and maybe she lost her husband, or maybe he had been dead a couple of years. I thought to myself, `Well, it doesn't really matter where she comes from, because this is where her story really starts.' "
Antonia and Danielle decide to remain in the country following Allegonda's death. They put down roots and the seasons change and we watch a legacy come into being. Two more generations continue the family line over the movie's next 50 years. Danielle gives birth to Therese, and Therese gives birth to Sarah, though each chooses to do so in an unconventional manner. Their family also grows beyond the strict confines of biology. Their home becomes a welcome refuge to society's outcasts, as well as those men who are able to love such independent women.
The humanistic feminism evoked by Gorris in Antonia's Line might more properly be termed magical feminism. For, indeed, this movie functions much as a fable or fairy tale might. It creates a mythical world in a realistic locale in order to explore realms of possibility and the redistribution of circumstances. Antonia's Line is an optimistic work, a movie that puts its faith in the cycle of life and death and in the possibilities of regeneration and transcendence. This harmonious perspective is a new aspect in Gorris' work. While no less outwardly feminist, her three earlier features are, notably, more didactic and dialectical in their structure and content.
Gorris' first feature film, which is probably her most widely seen film on these shores, is 1982's A Question of Silence. Ironically, Gorris almost didn't get to direct the movie herself, having offered this first screenplay to feminist art-film luminary Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman) to direct. Akerman challenged Gorris to merge her activism and her politics, and direct it herself. The story never fails to disquiet audiences who get caught up in its urgency. It hinges around the unsettling confusion that occurs when three female strangers go on a rampage in a dress shop and kill the proprietor after he humiliatingly accuses one of them of shoplifting. The case goes to trial where their lawyer persuasively argues a Menendez-style defense in which their murderous outburst is presented as a reasonable reaction to lifetimes of victimhood. No one can view A Question of Silence without declaring sides.
In 1984, Gorris directed perhaps an even more polemical movie, Broken Mirrors. Here, the filmmaker continuously cross-cuts between two women working in an Amsterdam brothel and a woman who is trapped in a basement by a serial killer who photographs her for his collection. The Last Island is Gorris' only English-language movie. Made in 1990, it details the step-by-step choices made by a group of plane-wreck survivors.
Throughout her career, Gorris has never been one to allow people to go gentle into the light of day. For Gorris, making movies is about making a stir. Now, with the success of Antonia's Line and the ever-increasing complexity of her narrative vision, Gorris may manage to keep audiences well-stirred well into the future. Although once upon a time, such a prospect might have seemed unlikely, Gorris herself seems struck by the possibilities. Her Monday night Academy Award acceptance speech began: "Some people have called Antonia's Line a fairy tale. Perhaps it is. And that it should win an Oscar is a fairy tale come true for all of us involved in its making."