Amélie, Walter, and the Rest of the World

"Failure is destiny," a man at the bar tells Joseph.  "Failure teaches us that life is but a draft, a long rehearsal for a show that will never play."  The irony of the situation--the failed writer sharing with the employess and patrons of The Two Windmills Café perhaps the most poignant message they have ever heard--is underlined by a message even more powerful.  As Monsieur Dufayel reminds Amélie that only she can change the outcome of her relationship with Nino, so are we, the rest of the world, reminded that we have the ability to change our own lives.  

Granted, this is easier said than done.  New Year's immediately comes to mind: the annual ritual of making promises to oneself about things that one will do better, things that one will avoid doing at all, things that one wishes to know, things that one wishes to forget, and so on and so forth.  While I have no doubt that man is capable of keeping such promises, I think we'd all be hard-pressed to find someone who has successfully honored all of theirs.  (And if they have, chances are their so-called "resolutions" were required little resolve.)  But within this realm of failures, there are a multitude of triumphs.  It is likely that the vast majority of these triumphs succeeded only because of the help of others, encouraging us to hold fast to our promises to better ourselves and the world.  

We see such instances in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.  Indeed, the title is telling, for Amélie's destiny is fabulous, in part because of her own pro-active nature but also due to the help of her coworkers and neighbors.  This is, in many ways, very representative of the real world.  A single human being is capable of getting by on his or her own, as Amélie's father does.  But it is, as we see, a lonely and sad existence at best that is undermined by simplicity and fear. Conversely, Amélie's life, one that is irreversibly tied to the people with whom she works and lives, is all the richer.  The relationships that she has with each of these people are reminiscent of our own relationships with the people who surround us.  There are those who annoy us and those who please us just as there are those we dread to see and those who make our hearts melt.  

Then there are those who show us what and who we really are.  They expose our flaws and weaknesses, reminding us that we cannot hide from them, we can only attempt to fix them.  And with the help of that person, sometimes we can.  Amélie does, abetted by Monsieur Dufayel.  He is the mirror from which she cannot hide, and through her, he reminds us that in reality, even the best attempts to conceal certain aspects of our lives often come up short.  He is, ultimately, the link between the film and the world.  He shows Amélie, and thus us, both the kind and harsh realities of life, forcing her to take control of it to create her own fabulous destiny.  

This is what good films do.  They do not attempt to make perfect a world that is far from it.  Nor do they attempt to represent isolated aspects of that world.  Rather, they are atune to the various elements of the world and their constant interplay.  Walter Benjamin discusses this in his critical work "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."  Benjamin says that shooting a film "presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery, staff assistants, etc....[and this] renders superficial and insignificant any possible similarity between a scene in the studio and one on the stage."  What Benjamin misses, however, is that these "extraneous accessories" add an otherwise unattainable authenticity to film.   They situate the film not in a fictional and limited world but one that is filled with artifact that closely resembles the extraneous in our own lives.  It is only when a film is able to acknowledge and dismiss the superfluous in our own lives that it will ever be able to succeed.  Amélie, through giving us a glimpse of the real world, succeeds.