The Secret Philosophical Themes Behind Amélie

Amélie is a 2001 comedy film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the director of The City of Lost Children, A Very Long Engagement, and Alien: Ressurection) starring Audrey Tautou (The Da Vinci Code). It tells the story of Amélie Poulain (Tautou), an imaginative, fun-loving and friendly, but very shy waitress, living in Paris. One day, she accidentally discovers a box that has been hidden in her apartment. When she opens it, she finds treasures that once belonged to a young boy years before. Amélie discreetly returns the box to its owner, and his reaction inspires her to strive to make others happy. One by one, she observes the people around her, and finds small but effective ways to improve their lives.

At first glance, Amélie appears to be simply a really fun comedy set against the backdrop of a somewhat stylized Paris, but if you strip away its layers and look closely, it actually deconstructs a philosophical concept.

For those of you have never taken an ethics course, the concept in question is known as Utilitarianism and entails quite simply that one should attempt to do as much good for as many people as possible. John Stuart Mill, a major believer in this ideology, stated “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness”. Amélie herself seems to hold this perspective even if she does not immediately realize it, given she changes the lives of several different people.

At the same time, however, the movie brings this concept into question — just how far should one go with this ideal? While she means well, Amélie goes to extreme lengths in her quest to make others happy. For instance, in an attempt to convince her father to travel more, Amélie steals his prized garden gnome. Then with some help from one of her friends, she has postcards mailed back to him depicting the gnome in front of various landmarks. While this eventually works, it does leave the father extremely frustrated for much of the movie as he tries to understand what is happening, and there is still the fact that Amélie basically committed an act of theft, even if it was done with good intentions. 

She also creates a fake letter from the dead husband of a neighbor saying he loved her (up until this point, the neighbor was grieving over his death but believed him to have been cheating on her) and outright lies about how it got to the neighbor. 

In another instance, she recovers a scrapbook dropped by the man she likes, and rather than immediately returning it, she keeps it and spends time looking through his secrets first. When she finally decides to return the scrapbook, instead of simply handing it to him, Amélie leads its owner through an elaborate set-up which ultimately allows him to watch her put the book into the bag on his bicycle. She then sends him a series of obscure clues by which she hopes to meet him.

Additionally, Amélie spends so much time helping others she eventually realizes she is neglecting herself. While she was able to help her friends in discreet and subtle manners, this does not work in her pursuit of romance. At one point, Amélie watches a television program which talks about a woman with the same name as her (also played by Tautou), who died from exhaustion at the young age of 23 because she spent so much time helping others she failed to look after herself, which in part inspires Amélie to search for her own happiness as well. 

Later on she even finds herself struggling with everyday activities, such as at the end, when, under the belief that the man she likes is seeing another woman, she has difficulty cooking. In fact, Amélie eventually has trouble appreciating the things she does for other people, as was shown when she completely ignores her excited neighbor’s attempts to talk about the “letter” she got (which Amélie had recently gone through the trouble of forging).

When she finds a man she likes, she wants to pursue a relationship, but even when he follows her clues, she cannot bring herself to confront him. She finally gains some confidence when she receives a tape from “the glass man” (an elderly artist whom Amélie helped to perfect one of his paintings), but ultimately Amélie is only able to confront him when she meets him by accident.

It could be argued that Amélie also has a tendency to see things in black and white; which at one point actually goes against her utilitarianism. Amélie sees a grocer mistreating her friend, and as a result, she decides to take it upon herself to punish him. She does this by repeatedly breaking into his apartment while he is at work and changing things to annoy him, such as changing his alarm clock, replacing his slippers with an identical pair of a different size, and switching the speed dial number for his mother with a psychiatric hotline. As hilarious as all of Amélie's pranks are, it is also a perfect example of a major flaw in her line of thinking.

Amélie's methods do help the person the grocer bullied, allowing him to interact more openly with customers, develop a close friendship, and discover a hidden artistic talent. However, Amélie thinks nothing of the man she continuously humiliates. This is a good example of the extremes Amélie is willing to go to, seeing as it clouds her judgment and unwittingly creates a double standard — Amélie is willing to help the partner by punishing someone she sees as a bad man, rather than trying to help them both by finding a way for them to reconcile their differences. 

Ultimately, Amélie can be seen almost as a deconstruction of utilitarianism. It emphasizes that while it may seem like a reasonable perspective it has its problems, particularly in the question of how far you should go. It also raises the point that even while helping others, you will still need to help yourself.

French Cinema I like

In this blog I have said a few things that aren't necessarily pleasant about certain films or filmmakers. I've voiced a few times that I don't like Jean-Luc Godard, and I may have also mentioned before that Jaques Tati's Playtime was a movie I found more excruciatingly long than funny, mainly because I felt its scenes didn't have much of a connection, the jokes were poorly timed, and everything seemed to just keep going on and on and on and on and on much longer than it needed to.

So as you can imagine I may have said a few things about French Cinema that haven't exactly been pleasant, but I'd like to make it clear that I've got nothing against French Cinema personally. I might not be overtly fond of the French New wave era and the work that resulted from it (especially Godard), but I have seen some good French movies, and so I thought that it might be good to write a little bit about some of these films to prove it.

So to start, I think I might bring up another movie I was required to watch for the same class in which I was subjected to Playtime and Tout va bien. This movie was released roughly a decade before the two aforementioned films, in 1956, and was set in a Nazi Prison during World War II. This was a movie called A Man Escaped.

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous going into this film, but I thought it was actually pretty well done. The plot centers around a young man named Fontaine, who was a member of the French resistance before being arrested and taken to a Nazi Prison. However, against all odds, Fontaine manages to systematically and carefully devise an elaborate plan to get out. Complications arise, though in particular a cellmate who he may or may not be able to trust.

I found the general step-by-step structure of the movie to be interesting. The whole story is confined to the knowledge of the protagonist, but that makes it all the more interesting when we see him finding creative ways to improvise the necessary components to find his way out as well as to keep the guards from figuring out what he's doing. Of course, in addition to that, there is also a sense of fear, as Fontaine knows he is taking some huge risks and the slightest mistake could cost him everything, especially given some of the daring things he has to do (which includes dismantling the door to his cell, it makes a bit more sense in context).

It all builds up to a tense climax when Fontaine finally carries out his plan, and the exceptional build up makes the ending all the more satisfying.

So next, I'll bring up a classic that often comes up whenever I find myself talking about French Cinema. This is an exceptional piece of comedy as well as a good example of French cinema at its finest. What we have here is a charming little film called Amélie.

Plot-wise, it's a fairly straightforward premise: a young waitress named Amélie Poulain has an experience that inspires her to try and bring happiness to everyone around her, and naturally comedic shenanigans ensue. The jokes are great and well-timed, and even the ones that go on longer manage to be humorous without wearing out their welcome.

Of course, part of what makes this movie so great is the world that it creates. Amélie herself is a very interesting and complex character. We see that she is intelligent, creative, and resourceful, has noble intentions and really puts her mind to her goals, but she also has her problems. She is very shy and has difficulty confronting strangers, especially the man she likes, which in turn interferes with her own happiness. However, there are a number of other great characters she interacts with over the course of the movie, each of whom have their own little stories that she manages to play into.

Finally, I'll bring up a more obscure movie titled The Big Blue. This film was technically shot in English, but made by a French director (who later went on to make several better-known movies, including among other things The Fifth Element). This is a more complicated film than the previous two in terms of story, but has something very interesting to offer. Admittedly it was one that I wanted to see so bad I had to resort to illegal downloading when I realized it was impossible to get on DVD where I live, but it was worth it.

The plot of this movie is a bit harder to explain. It's centered around two professional divers, one of whom is a little bit... too fond of it, to the point where he sometimes seems to be more like a dolphin than a human. Along the way a journalist from America played by Rosanna Arquette enters the picture and forms a close relationship to both men as they partake in various diving competitions.

The plot is exceptionally complicated and might not be easy to follow, but the interactions between the characters are solid (if at times a bit strange) and of course the underwater photography is just unbelievable.

So there you are: three great examples of French Cinema at its finest. This was originally going to be a review of Jaques Tati's Playtime, and I still stand by my thoughts on that along with Godard, but I decided I've said enough things for now against French Cinema and thought that instead perhaps it would be worthwhile to show some of its more positive aspects.