The Crimes of Robespierre

[rosarosa]

Просматривая свой архив с революционными ссылками, я вспомнил о довольно странном эссе известной всем ВФРщикам Эрики Воз. Решил, что участникам этого сообщества оно может показаться любопытным, тем более, что фильм Вайды "Дантон" тут неоднократно обсуждался.
С автором я не согласен по многим пунктам (даром, что сам слэшер ), текст привожу скорее как курьез. Он на английском языке, и переводить его мне лень, так что заранее извиняюсь за нерусский пост

Andrzej Wajda's 1982 French/Polish motion picture version of the struggle between Danton and Robespierre for control of the country lays painfully bare a fact that is subtly inferred in most histories. Namely, Robespierre's supposed lack of masculinity makes him unable to govern properly and thus compels him to set up an "unnatural" dictatorship. The movie Danton goes a step further in its extreme, pervasive and nearly neurotic homophobia. In this portrayal Robespierre is not only "unmasculine" but also homosexual. This, and this alone, is the reason Danton deserves to rule instead.

According to the movie, what qualities does Danton possess that would make him a statesman whose will and ideas deserve to win over Robespierre's? Danton is corrupt. Although the movie says next to nothing about his East India peculation, even it cannot gloss over the glaring fact that Danton, in violation of every principle of revolutionary fairness and equality, is making a lot of money (and certainly not through politics) while his country is needy. Venality, never highly respected in political leaders, is made downright dangerous in times of war and crisis as existed in France Year II. Although his is popular and a “great orator,” Danton does not seem to make a particularly good choice as a leader either. At best he is overconfident and full of boastful bravado which blind him from making wise decisions. "Who would dare oppose me?" he arrogantly asks the reasonably concerned General Westermann and then scowls at the latter's reply of "The Committees." Later, he claims "Now we've got him!" after Robespierre leaves Danton's dinner table to plan the latter’s death warrant. And, even in prison, he remains cocksure; "A political trial is a duel...I still have my voice" he boasts jovially. At worst, which is quite often in the course of the movie, Danton is fatalistically reckless. He seems to be able to control neither his mouth nor his lower instincts. He blows up at Robespierre, questioning the leader's masculinity when he knows that Robespierre's government is thirsting for his blood and only Robespierre prevents his bloodthirsty colleagues from taking Danton's life, at a dinner that was untactful even in its sumptuous planning. Danton then leaves his doomed comrades to fend for themselves when he meets two prostitutes, obviously old friends. Such corruption, irresponsibility and brainless braggadocio do not make Danton the type of politician one would like at the head of a crisis-plagued country.

Robespierre on the other hand is Danton's exact opposite in leadership style as in other matters and seems to represent the better statesman from an objective point of view. Robespierre is obviously more concerned about the people's welfare--after all he shares their meager lot down to the scarcity of fresh bread and sugar. He does not flaunt wealth to a starving people. He is not corrupt and thus there is no threat that he will be bribed by an enemy power. Furthermore, Robespierre seems a cleverer politician; he is willing to make compromises, even with Danton whom he feels to be in bad faith. Danton seems to want things his way or no way at all. Robespierre seems the more perceptive of the two as well, not only does he refrain from mindless arrogance, he is much better at understanding the full impact of situations. This is most evident when he initially defends Danton to the Committee of Public Safety because he foresees that Danton's execution would mean the necessary application of the Great Terror. Even when the truth is not on his side he is able to discover it as when he admits to Eleanore, during the course of the trial, "the Danton case is a dilemma. If we lose it, the Revolution is sunk. If we win, the same is true." Robespierre is also a hard worker and an impeccable diplomat. Even when ill, he is reading government papers---one can bet Danton was doing nothing of the sort when on his extended honeymoon with his 16-year-old bride. Robespierre has the tact, restraint and manners, so essential to the smooth running of political affairs, that Danton so desperately lacks. Robespierre politely accepts wine at Danton's dinner, even though he doesn't normally drink, but unlike Danton he does not get drunk and divulge dangerous opinions. Note Robespierre's immaculate sangfroid a few minutes later in the face of Danton's inappropriate outburst at the dinner table. Although at his trial Danton will refer to Robespierre as a "mediocre man" objectively there is little reason to view him as such from a political perspective. Indeed, the opposite seems far more likely.

Of course, there is the matter of their ideological clashes on government policy. Here Robespierre, while perhaps the better politician, is certainly much crueler than his counterpart. Yet even though Madame Guillotine haunts much of the movie, she is more of a symbol of Danton's coming mortality rather than Robespierre's ruthless genocide. The cruelty of political pogroms is not Robespierre's chief crime according to this film. Had Wajda wished to emphasize the tragic results of Robespierre's tenacity in holding to revolutionary ideology ahead of human lives, he had plenty of opportunity to do so.
Executions and city-wide paranoia, not to mention the listing of a few of the ghastly statistics on all those dying in the Terror, would not be too hard to film and would certainly have had no problem inflaming the minds of theater-going audiences. But such a step is never undertaken in Danton. A single execution---and only a man walking *to* the scaffold at that---is shown before Danton's own. Mass murder, though Robespierre's most easily identifiable crime, is not the main reason why Danton deserves to win over Robespierre.

The true reason is simple; Danton is more of a man than Robespierre is. This is not a matter of health. Although Robespierre, admittedly, is continually sick throughout the film, Danton is not in the best of condition either. "I'm 35 and look 60" he says tiredly at one point. The matter is not health, but rather virility. This is the only aspect of character that makes reckless, extravagant, and boastful Danton a better leader than cautious, perceptive and frugal Robespierre. Wajda goes through pains to ensure that this contrast is as cut and dry as possible.

Therefore throughout the film there are a great number of innuendoes insinuating Robespierre's supposed homosexuality---the embodiment of the "unnatural" quality of both his personal and governmental existence. The most blatant of these recurring intimations is Robespierre's behavior with Camille, which is easily comparable to a man who does not wish to sacrifice his wife. In fact, Camille unknowingly makes this comparison when he asks Philipeux who has come to visit him in prison. "Is it my wife?" he questions. The visitor is none other than Robespierre himself. Earlier, when Robespierre had tried to persuade Camille of the gravity of his situation, he put his arms around the journalist’s shoulders in a gesture of tender concern. Coming as this does from a man who literally jumps whenever the adoring Eleanore so much as touches him, this is definitely meaningful. Camille, during the duration of the meeting, refers to Robespierre as a "whore" thus laying bare the latent comparison to a female that Danton had already brought to light earlier that night when he roared:
"Make men happy! You're not a man! Look at you,
you're powdered, you don't drink, swords make
you faint and you've never had a woman! Well,
what are you?"
The audience is left to supply the inevitable answer to this rhetorical question, "a woman." Although it is historically accurate that Robespierre did try to save his boyhood friend, Wajda's depiction exaggerates this into something beyond mere friendship. Throughout the film, true historical details are magnified and thus shown in a different light.

Another example of this bending of fact and another blatant anomaly in Robespierre's normally frigid demeanor is his apparent affection for Saint-Just. This relationship furthers the argument for Robespierre's homosexuality and the "unnaturalness" of his entire government. Although Saint-Just’s rather effeminate attributes are historically based, here they are exaggerated into egregious marks of sexual preference. Saint-Just, a gold earring in each ear and mascara on his eyes, first comes into Robespierre's room holding a bouquet of white flowers in one hand. Flowers for Robespierre. Robespierre hugs him--this bearing in mind that he never so much as touches Eleanore--and allows Saint-Just to gently grasp his shoulder muscles slightly later on. Saint-Just exhibits the concern of a lover---certainly not that of a terrorist colleague---when he inquires about Robespierre's fever. It is Saint-Just who is allowed to quite comfortably sprawl out on Robespierre's bed at the end of the film. Saint-Just follows his friend everywhere in a manner far too dogged to be explained by simple political comradeship.

Saint-Just and Robespierre are not the only members of the government to be accused of being "unnatural" in some way. Heron, the chief agent of the Committee of General Security, joins their ranks when he is accused, by Bourdon, of "openly favoring the rogues whom he recruits." This is a charge that is left out of Przybyszewska's original play as well as Bourdon's historical speech. The other members of the Committee of Public Safety are monstrous in their own ways; Couthon's wheelchair, Collot's outlandish dandyism, and Billaud's unshaven slovenliness are continually emphasized. Eleanore, Robespierre's caregiver, is also depicted as unnatural. She beats her little brother so that he learns
The Rights of Man and Citizen and she slaps a servant whom she suspects of "ogling Citizen Robespierre." The "unnaturalness" of the Committee and its supporters is additionally enunciated by the strident tone of the background music and the eerie dreariness of Paris. The Year II, Wajda seems to say, was a perversion, unnatural, a monster. The men who implemented it were perverse, unnatural monsters. It deserved to die because of this unnaturalness itself, not because of its consequences.

In contrast to the terratoid government, the naturalness---emotional, sexual and political---of the Dantonists is highlighted. Danton himself refuses all unnatural impediments on his behavior. He goes where his healthy masculine instincts lead him (even if they do lead him to abandon his colleagues in favor of prostitutes and to be somewhat overly intimate with Camille's wife). He flings aside his powdered wigs and wears his ruffled outfits comfortably. He enjoys food and money. He laughs, cries and becomes angry when he feels like it. He is a normal, living human male. Even Camille, whose emotional neurasthenia makes him appear somewhat feminine at times, is shown as a man who does not hide his feelings and who has a wife and a child (a normal family as opposed to the Duplays) whom he dearly loves. The Dantonists represent life amidst death, naturalness facing a monstrous dictatorship. This is why they deserve to win the battle and why they enlist our sympathies.

One may ask the reason for Wajda's obsessive aversion to homosexuals and the connection between virility, "naturalness" and the proper head of state. As President Clinton was to learn to his regret, nations do not put such a heavy stock on virile leaders as they used to...or at least not consciously. One possible hypothesis for the significance of the sexual potency of the head of state owes much to the ancient fertility rites as described by Sir James Frazier in The Golden Bough. The "king"--the main political leader---is personified as the living manifestation of fertility spirits. His own personal virility is reflective of the fertility of the crops. Thus there is a desperate need for the leader to be not just healthy but fecund as well. Obviously, this is a primitive belief, much more in tune with 1987 BC than AD Yet, apparently, it holds sway still. Danton, the virile "king", deserves to win over the "unmasculine" Robespierre who can maintain his control of the land only "unnaturally" since his own lack of potency has made him an incompetent "king" and has caused his land to wither into a brutal, sterile place.

Such are the crimes of Robespierre.