SUSAN SONTAG
film to the first, any more than I prefer the second novel to the first.
But I know that, as the aim of
Brother Carl
(like that of
Death K it )
was more ambitious, the risks taken far greater, the results more uneven
and less harmonious, those passages in
Brother Carl
which do work sur–
pass anything I was able to accomplish in
Duet for Cannibals.
* * *
From the beginning, when I first imagined
Brother Carl,
the cen–
ter was the miracle. The narrative was to build toward two miracles:
one that does not take place ( the resurrection of Lena), and one that
does (the healing of Anna) , in whatever terms a miracle is thinkable
now. Though the miracle Carl does manage to bring off is far from
the " traditional" miracle pictured in Dreyer's
Ordet,
which takes place
within the setting of a still pious, rural society, I feel strongly influ–
enced by my memory of
Ordet.
I saw the film only once, about fifteen
years ago, and doubt that I remember it accurately. But that film,
probably greatly transformed by the willfulness of memory, has re–
mained all these years as a kind of ideal experience of my imagination
- along with Dreyer's last film,
Gertrud,
and Bunraku theater, and
the films of Jean-Marie Straub.
The only interesting action in life is a miracle or the failure to
perform a miracle ; and miracles are the only subject of profound
interest left for art. I say this as someone who has tried to perform a
kind of miracle (that effort being the deepest personal source of
Brother Carl ),
or, more modestly, to help a miracle come to pass.
When I started to write the script, I was in the throes of that effort.
The week after the end of shooting, in Rome, I learned I had failed.
That failure has not destroyed my belief in miracles.
Paris
June 1972
