CROSSED TRACKS a film by Claude Lelouch: A Confluence of Complicated Minds
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008Human mind and human motivation are complicated phenomenon. And for a film maker like Claude Lelouch these complicacies are food for thought which led him to make his latest film Crossed Tracks which deals with the behavior of the inner and outer sides of the human minds. And when the film script deals with the hidden desires of the mysterious characters, the film becomes a thriller. Crossed Tracks belong to this category where a popular writer seeks characters for her new novel, who sends her secretary to find the new plots and characters, who happens to be her ghost writer. On the highway this dejected ghostwriter meets a hairdresser, who befriends with him and that leads him to plot his new story for the writer.
Like the crossed tracks, the individual characteristics of each character crissed-crossed at some point and unveil their mysteries of life. In a very narrative style Lelouch unveil the whole portrait of the story and explores the critical individualism of human kind. The film travels between fiction and reality where the ghost writer tries to gather new plots for the popular writer who gathers fame on his talent. And in reality this ghost writer who is so much humiliated by the writer. In his search of new plots and characters he meets one hairdresser and at the turn of the events and time she becomes his protagonist of the new story and his soul mate.
A director’s creative achievement lies there where he can use and handle his characters to tell the story in a very distinctive way, where story remains intact and the characters move accordingly. Apart from that, opening up the inner space of the each character needs to be looked into very carefully. Since this movie is all about some individual’s own psychology where they live happily or unhappily, the director successfully using the time and space of the film to express his art of telling story through moving images. And as a thriller this is the point of success of the film though this film does not represent the real aesthetics of the French films who contributed the idea of “New Age” to the world of films.
Tags: Claude Lelouch, New Age Film, World of Films
