达尼埃尔·于伊耶

81-year-old master, Jean-Marie Straub, once again invents and surprises with his latest film. Kommunisten consists of six parts, five of which have been taken from his earlier works. Straub does not aim to be self-reverential, but instead wants to make different blocks (of text, time, and languages) clash so as to highlight invisible elements of feelings and politics. It is a film about human adventure, from the past century to the one ahead. In this project, all the things that the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet have been based on for the past fifty years, find their most raw and recent form.

　　Based on an unknown Sch?nberg opera from 1929, From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a not-quite loveless marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man, while he has cast an appraising eye toward an attractive, fashionably dressed acquaintance of his wife’s. Though each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover, in the end they decide stability and comfort are more important than the fleeting thrill of new romance. Directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, who previously collaborated on two other films about music (The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968, and Moses and Aaron, 1975), rely on long fixed shots in austere black-and-white so that the focus remains on the musical brilliance of Sch?nberg’s atonal score, performed here by 70 musicians. That Sch?nberg would choose such a relatively lighthearted message for his newly discovered musical language remains a mystery, especially since the conclusion reached by the husband and wife—to stick with the tried and true—seems directly at odds with Sch?nberg’s own philosophy of composing. It is just this juxtaposition, however, coupled with Straub and Huillet’s faithful presentation, that makes the opera a compelling addition to the Sch?nberg canon—and the film such a challenging and intriguing experience.