Tonight I watched The Double Life of Veronique and it provoked in me some thoughts about my relationship to others, to the world, and to technology. In particular, it started off a process of thinking about distance and closeness, and how these function in relationships. Whilst distance might be thought of as a barrier to relationships, something to be overcome in order to share one's space and life with another person, I believe this film paints a more subtle picture. Namely, the film suggests that distance can actually facilitate relationships and that what matters is how we relate to this distance.
The two main characters of the film, Weronika and Veronique, are both the same and different, separated by great distance and yet unified. They have the same appearance, the are both musically talented, and they seem to have an intense relationship to the world around them. Even though they don't text or email each other every day, they have an awareness of the other which is often lacking in typical communications today. This awareness could be referred to as intuition, feeling, premonition or other such terms. What matters though is that their awareness of each other does not take the form of endless updates of their status on facebook or even face-to-face meetings. Rather, their awareness of each other is vague but intense, something deep within them, yet hard to convert into the language of text messaging.
As you can tell, I thought about the contrast between modern technology and the relationships dramatised so brilliantly in The Double Life of Veronique after watching the film. What struck me was that whereas in the film distance seems no barrier to unification, togetherness, belonging and so on, a lot of modern technology actually separates people, even though this goes against the slogans used to sell a lot of it. Much communication technology is designed to bring people together who are separated spatially. We phone each other from anywhere to anywhere, have wireless internet and so on. And yet after watching The Double Life of Veronique I had the sense that the film stages beautifully a more enriching and wonderful sense of togetherness through distance than any experience I've ever had with using modern communication technology for bridging spatial gaps.
Because the film shows that a kind of closeness can be achieved despite, or because of, a certain kind of distance, I will refer to this as a dialectical togetherness. There are several examples of this dialectical togetherness in the film. The most obvious and powerful is the link between Weronika and Veronique. The former glimpses the latter in Krakow, getting onto a bus, whilst Veronique first sees Weronika in a photo she herself took (though at the time not realising what she'd taken a picture of). There are other elements which link the two: the piece of music which repeats throughout the film, the tiny transparent ball, and most strongly the feeling they both have of the other (Veronique feels as though she is grieving just after the death of Weronika for example).
The other obvious instance of dialectical togetherness takes place between Alexandre and Veronique. Their relationship starts off and continues for much of the film as a relationship at a distance. Veronique spies Alexandre in a mirror as he is performing a marionette show for the school children that Veronique teaches. Later she comes across him by chance at a traffic light stop and exchanges glance with him through the windows of their vehicles. Alexandre then begins sending Veronique items in the post, calls her on the telephone and even manages to shine a light into her apartment. What brings them together, spatially, is a cassette tape which Alexandre records for Veronique, which gives her a number of clues as to his location. This is one of my favourite scenes in the film: Veronique listens to the sounds which Alexandre has recorded (walking down a street, through a busy train station, into a cafe where we hear the waitress talking and so on) on a pair of wireless headphones, walking through her apartment, taking off her jacket and even brushing her teeth. What is so brilliant and fascinating about this scene is the juxtaposition of ambient sounds from one location with images of another. The sounds which Veronique listens to do not match the spatial location she is in. Both Veronique and we the audience are in two places at once.
What strikes me about both these relationships is that distance is not a barrier to be overcome in order to have a close relationship. There is a sense of togetherness without the need for technological solutions. Having said that, one might object that the tape recording is a piece of technology and therefore an example of how technology can bring people together. In response, I would just briefly say that the use of technology here is not to bring the other into immediate presence, but to use absence and distance in order to defamiliarise both Veronique and the audience's relation to space, and to facilitate a creative relationship between Veronique and Alexandre. Therefore, perhaps I should say that technology is not inherently poor at creating relationships and doesn't necessarily alienate people, but that it depends on its use.
To give one more example of dialectical together from the film let me consider briefly the role of the marionettes. Though they are mute and are clearly constructed puppets controlled by human beings, they take on a life of their own suggesting that they are not what they seem, or perhaps not just what they seem. A scene near the end of the film shows two puppets made to look like Veronique. There is a beautiful shot which shows Veronique being almost caressed by her puppet double, or even hypnotised. To me this suggests a relationship which has more meaning and depth than one could make with a virtual pet, for example. The puppet was hand-made, it is manipulated by hand, and it's static expression seems to be defied by its movements. Hence, we are drawn in by the puppet despite the sense of obvious distance which it creates because of it's artificiality.
I suppose in one sense I'm merely trying to put together a number of ideas and concepts that I have read of: Heidegger's remarks on technology, Benjamin's thoughts on art and the aura which is lost in mechanical repetition, and no doubt more besides. It does strike me that The Double Life of Veronique can be productively read alongside such ideas and concepts. For example, there are so many fragile, beautiful elements to the film which might be seen as auratic elements or things which technology hides or even destroys. The tiny transparent ball which creates an upside-down miniature world, or Veronique's strange intuitions of being suddenly alone in the world, and of remembering the feeling that she was not, before, alone in the world because there was someone out there, just for her.
To me, technology is enormously helpful in providing solutions to various problems, such as long distance communication. But I do believe that the technologisation of life comes at a price. Watching The Double Life of Veronique reminded me in a very sensual way that there are things which are both more special than anything that could come from, or through, technology, and that technology is actually one threat to some of these things. To take an example, the film somehow captures the feeling and atmosphere of solitude. Through the film's lighting, use of music and camera angles, very fragile qualities and almost imperceptible elements are drawn out, including a feeling of solitude. To me this is what makes the film so special: that it manages to film things which one might think impossible to do so. Solitude is a very fragile thing and hard to describe or experience. It is not simply being on one's own or being in a quiet space. It is not something which one achieves through satisfying certain criteria. If this were the case, then we could imagine technological devices which would create the conditions necessary for solitude. Having said that, this will not stop people from trying to achieve this, and no doubt there are such devices already available (ambient music, luxury spas and so on might qualify). But in trying to create a sense of solitude through technology, one ends up trying to force a situation through instrumental rationality rather than letting it emerge.
In conclusion, The Double Life of Veronique strikes me as something rather rare and special. It is a truly beautiful film which manages to let the more fragile and precarious aspects and elements of life come out of their hiding places for a few moments. In particular, it shows how relationships based on these fragile elements are possible in spite of, or because of, a certain kind of distance. Perhaps this is the distance of letting things be (as Heidegger might put it), as opposed to the distance between two mobile phones. Or perhaps this is the distance which creates and sustains the aura of things which Benjamin speaks of. In any case, for me this film rekindles my hope of having a more spiritual, precious and intense relationship to life, appreciating the singularity of things, people and events, and of allowing relationships to blossom through distance.
