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Philip Kaufman:
Quills
and the
Prickly Side of
Free
Expression
Director Philip Kaufman (right) with Dr. Annette Insdorf. (Photo: Elisa Haber)
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Quills got under the skin and troubled many viewers at the co-sponsored Independent Feature Project-Directors Guild of America-Entertainment Weekly evening on November 10
at the DGA Theater in New
York. Director Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Henry and June) presented his new film Quills, which explores the extremists on both sides of the age-old battle on free expression of ideas.
While it appears to be an ersatz costumer One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest crossed with another Milos Forman film The People vs. Larry Flynt, the film explores the social repressions which are imposed after revolution. Dr. Annette Insdorf, Director of Undergraduate Film Studies of Columbia University, moderated the discussion with the director.
Ostensibly, the plot is about Dr. Royer-Collard who is directed by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, revolutionary turned moralist, to take over Charenton Asylum from the humane Abbe Coulmier, because a notorious inmate of the asylum, the Marquis de Sade, is writing pornographic literature which is being smuggled out by the chambermaid Madeleine. The popular literature is a threat to the bourgeois morals of the new regime in the period following the French Revolution.
The film explores the conflict between extreme free expression and the fear of ideas by moralists. The Puritanical hypocrite Royer-Collard, who exploits the misery of his patients by brutal methods, is more worthy of the term sadist than the term's namesake de Sade because his repression ignites violence which consumes most of the characters.
Henry and June was invoked several times during the evening, and the association is understandable. Henry and June, which was about a modern-day de Sade without the violence, Henry Miller, was so controversial but artistic that the MPPA had to invent a whole new classification, NC-17, to accommodate it. Quills is an R-rated film.
Insdorf discussed the superb ensemble acting, which she likened to a quartet between de Sade, Royer-Collard, Madeleine and Coulmier. The film was shot in sequence. Kaufman explained, "If we had shot out of sequence, to satisfy whatever production [considerations], it would have been so injurious to dramatic line, tension and development."
He felt that because "the characters needed that development," and was crucial in the scenes between Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, which explore a friendship, based on respect between de Sade and Coulmier. Kaufman praised Kate Winslet for being the first to commit to the project even though she would be part of an ensemble in a part that "was somewhere between a lead role and a supporting role." Her dedication was matched by Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis, Michael Caine as Royer-Collard and Joaquin Phoenix as Abbe Coulmier, all of whom interacted in seamless ways with each other.
Insdorf admired the way Kaufman made de Sade a presence, an idea, rather than just a person. "You don't even allow us to see Geoffrey Rush fully until about 20 minutes into the film, so there is an entire mystery about his character before we get to see him."
Shooting in sequence was ideal for Kaufman and the actors, but it always enabled him to define a visual style akin to painting with the cinematographer Rogier Stoffers.
"I've worked with some great cinematographers and have had wonderful relationships with them." Stoffier and Kaufman developed colors and shades and achieved an overall greenish wash, "a greenish color rather than the usual sepia tone," perfect for suggesting not only the decadent and decaying quality of Charenton but the greenish tones inherent in paintings of the period by [Jean Baptiste Simeone] Chardin. The catacomb-type set by Martin Childs changed with the darkening mood of the film, becoming more menacing and filthy as the violence escalated. With Kaufman's encouragement, costume designer Jacqueline West executed an innovative approach to costuming, mixing late 18th-century fashions, worn by the Marquis and Madeleine, with the sheathlike Empire fashions and precursors of the modern suit, to reveal a changing society and a schizoid tone to the film.
In this respect, Quills has contemporary meaning far beyond period
concerns. How does Kaufman regard current censorship posturing? The
prologue, involving a possible lover of de Sade's was cleverly designed to show Kaufman's attitudes toward the hypocrisy of current censors toward sex and violence. The young woman appears to be involved in sexual bondage play, but "it quickly degenerates into something far more pornographic, which is history." What was intimate, shown only in faces and hands, is in reality an executioner preparing the woman for the guillotine before a sea of crazed revolutionaries in Reign of Terror 1794 Paris. The executioner then becomes a supporting character in Charenton Asylum almost 15 years later. "History is not even given an NC-17 rating. Children are allowed to watch brutality." The climax occurs when the mental patients, especially the executioner of the prologue, are turned on by the violence described in the tale told by de Sade rather than by the sex.
Kaufman explained that the Production Code, which evolved in 1934, was instituted after a series of free, sexually oriented movies threatened moralists and religious leaders. The American film was stunted as a result, and was further hampered by the Blacklist after World War II, which restricted political ideas. As a result, American cinema was "movies without content, and that's what is dangerous." The "Royer-Collards are sent out to Hollywood to rout out people," he adds. Freedom of expression is First Amendment, he says, "not Fifth Amendment or Tenth Amendment, it's the very first amendment. You sometimes wonder why a lot of people are much more concerned with the right to bear arms than with freedom of speech. You would think that if they were truly conservative, they would be out fighting for freedom of speech."
-Kevin Lewis
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