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Last night I went to see a film with a friend and I fell asleep about a quarter of the way through. Strangely this turned out to be a near-perfect way to watch the film. It’s called, appropriately, Un Homme Qui Dort (1974) by Georges Perec and Bernard Queysanne, based on Georges Perec’s 60s novel of the same title. It’s about a student who tries to step out of society for a while, who just stops all the interactions and obligations of being a social and socialised subject. I dozed off about 15 minutes in and napped fitfully with the eerie narration of Shelley Duvall (The Shining) entering my half-asleep thoughts. Then I woke and was absorbed in an odd state of attention and mind-wandering for the remaining hour of the film. 

Un Homme Qui Dort is devoid of character-driven dialogue, and an overall concept stands in for a plot. When I woke up from my little doze, I was much more tuned in to the film and to the fact of sitting there for 90 minutes to watch an idea, rather than a story, played out in front of me. For example, the film is measured out by metre and rhythm as opposed to narrative – there is a kind of poetic register that comes from something structural, rather than from the individual protagonist. Maybe it’s the structure and ordering of images – the same shots of the student’s decent into a “grubby” late night cinema are repeated; iconic Paris street scenes devoid of people; the breaking up of the student’s garret into single images (cracked mirror, coffee cup, wallpaper, ceiling). All this contributes to a sense that the pace of the film is regulated not only by the narration addressed directly to “you”, the individual, but primarily by the world outside: the objects, the streets, the windows, the rain, the things that exist whether you, the individual, are there or not. 

Un Homme Qui Dort felt very different from the contemporary focus on psychological resolutions or redemption that I expect to see when I go to the cinema. Towards the end of the film there is an increase in pace when sudden peopled shots and a dissonant score lead towards the closing scenes. I think the film’s impact comes from the way it embodies its own message and completes its own structural circle – it’s quite pure in its aims and message,  without stirring up the complications (distractions?) of sympathy or catharsis. You can read a quotation from the film that I put in a comment on my friend’s blog, The Spider Spoke, as he seems to have been contemplating some of its themes recently.   

The mood of the film might be said to be nihilistic or anarchic but in the end these things, in the film and in life, are revealed to be utterly futile. It sounds melancholy but it’s not, as my friend said, it’s actually refreshingly and upliftingly ‘clear’. I’m not sure if that clarity comes simply from Perec’s final messages about the individual (“Time, which sees to everything, has provided the solution, despite yourself”) or from the film’s own general ‘consciousness’, which seems to resonate at a more intuitive level. Possibly that was the napping, but I’ve not had a more intimate and singular film experience and I think that means I enjoyed it.

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