The Dreamed Ones

As the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing plush, dec­o­ra­tive film biogra­phies becomes less and less of a finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble prospect, Aus­tri­an direc­tor Ruth Beck­er­mann has found an extreme­ly effec­tive anti­dote to such pres­tige fol­lies in her beau­ti­ful, light­ly exper­i­men­tal per­for­mance film, The Dreamed Ones.

Despite reject­ing a sub­jec­tive, inter­pre­tive approach to his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, the film is unique­ly affect­ing in the way the direc­tor details the intense, long-dis­tance romance between the poets Paul Celan and Inge­borg Bach­mann which took place large­ly via writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence through­out the cen­tral por­tion of the 20^th century.

On paper, the film doesn’t sound par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing, as Beck­er­mann co-opts the tal­ents of two young local actors (Anja Plaschg and Lau­rence Rupp) to read out the pro­found and heart­felt let­ters into micro­phones while stand­ing oppo­site to one anoth­er. Their eyes are fixed on the pages and their mind focus­ing on the words and the into­na­tion. As an extra dimen­sion to the film, the actors them­selves begin to warm to one anoth­er dur­ing the cig­a­rette and tea breaks, pos­si­bly a result of the feel­ings that have been stirred up from their work. It’s a film that details how the cre­ative process in itself can bring peo­ple clos­er togeth­er in mys­te­ri­ous ways.

Yet it is not a doc­u­men­tary, and the break sequences are clear­ly per­formed with a view to enhanc­ing the text as a whole. But that in itself is of inter­est, as it empha­sis­es a con­nec­tion between expres­sions of love and an innate lit­er­ary impulse that sits dor­mant inside us all. Yet the real star of the film is the prose itself – lucid, intense to-and-fros express­ing tor­tured des­per­a­tion at being forced to com­mune in this pri­vate, emo­tion­al­ly lim­it­ing and non-phys­i­cal fashion.

Plaschg and Rupp make for appeal­ing choic­es to intone the let­ters. With their tat­toos, refined music taste and vague­ly hip­ster demeanour, they bring out the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of Bach­mann and Celan’s words as well as exem­pli­fy­ing how tra­di­tion­al notions of romance and courtship have (d)evolved through­out the centuries.