In Response to the Screening of 'My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud'

While the film acts primarily as a biopic, depicting the relationship between Antonin Artaud and Jacques Prevel up until Artaud's death on March 14th 1948, it does posses elements of The Cinema of Cruelty. The cinematic spectator witnesses, in a conventional linear progression, the growing and intensifying relationship between the artist, Artaud, and the poet, Prevel. In his lifetime Artaud expressed a disatisfaction with cinema, believing that the audience were split from representation into merely accepting realism. However, he did believe that the advancements in technology, such as ' lenses, camera positions and even different stock' ('Performance', p.55) would enable audiences to engage with the work. The viewer's vision then allowed them to become a part of the action. This is the case in 'My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud'; the film is filtered through a grainy black and white stock, which distances us from discarding the piece as Artad's unquestionable reality. Instead, it is cold, unsettling and thus acts literally and figuratively to symbolise Artaud's bleak descent into hallucinogenics and extreme illness. The external and the internal worlds of Prevel and Artaud increasingly intwine, creating a nightmarish set of images.
Sound and music acted in support of the artists' disjuncture with society. In my opinion, the blues music that was repeated at various parts of the film did not create or sustain a certain mood or atmosphere. Moreover, it completely conflicted with the emotions and images of the characters and bohemian Paris. Even so, Artaud himself would have encouraged these obscure choices, because they force the spectator to answer their own questions on what is being presented or alluded to. The characters used their own voices as tools of cruelty in keeping with Artaud's manifesto: they screech, yell, whisper and utter. Each noise layers them in unpredictability and ultimately adds to an illusion of madness.

I would rate the film as 3/5. I found it an interesting insight into the lives of many characters, but Prevel and Artaud especially: the film was well shot and effectively acted, but I think it was slow and seemingly long. Also, if Artaud's manifesto and personal beliefs are to be taken into account, 'My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud' detered too heavily from them, as it gradually became 'a slice of life'. Realism overwhlemed the surreal and abstract, giving us a biopic narrative of Artaud's life.