Jef
Costello is an embodiment of purpose (another ‘f’ doesn’t serve any). His
working-class living quarters are exemplary in the precise functionality of
everything – all the water bottles lined up neatly on a shelf, a medical kit
just in place. Even the canary in its cage has a function in Jef’s universe, as
we learn in the course of time.
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| Jef's worldview in a key image. |
Some
of this dedication to the obsessive ordering of the physical world till it fits
a worldview comes, one may surmise, from J-P Melville’s private search for
symmetry. Therefore the consistent sameness of the colour palette in his late
colour films (light blue/gray/light ochre) – especially here in Le Samourai or in his last film Un Flic – an ironic minimalism that
establishes Melville’s moral universe even before the films have really begun. What
doesn’t have purpose in the scheme is meaningless – therefore the near-comical effect
of having Jef visit his ‘girlfriend’ only when he needs to establish an alibi.
Melville’s
vision of a world that runs on its own rhythms of planned action is exact in
ways Tati would have found comic. a.) Jef goes to a run-down garage to have the
number plates of a Citroen changed, doesn’t exchange a word with the man there,
hands him money and gets a gun in a total of about five movements. b.) One of
Jef’s rock solid alibis is with a group of professional gamblers. He goes there
after the job, cops come to pick him up ostensibly for a “routine checkup”.
When Jef heads out, Melville stays back in the room with his camera for the coup de grâce. One of the gamblers who was pretending to take a nap while Jef killed
time in his place comes back to the table, picks up his cards and the gentlemen
resume the game at once with clockwork precision. The ‘arrangement’ is
well-oiled. Everything in Jef Costello’s universe is.
On a
metaphysical level, the very plot of Le Samourai is concerned with restoring
symmetry in a world where something has gone off-register. The pianist – the
only witness who saw Jef at the crime scene – doesn’t identify him at the
police station. Jef doesn’t receive his dues from the people who hired him and
gets shot at because he’s become a perceived danger. Until he figures out these
aberrations he can’t let go.
Hence
the entirely appropriate conclusion – Jef revisits the location of the first
violation, this time exactly prepared for what is coming. A samurai without his
master must dictate the terms of his existence. When he has been cornered he
should know what to do.
CUT TO:
Bauji,
in his puraani Dilli mohalla, surrounded by the bustle of community. When he realizes
that rumours about his daughter’s boyfriend are unfounded, he takes the simple-minded
but radical decision not to believe anything he has not experienced first-hand. He gives
up his job at a travel agency; how can he convincingly sell the charms
of foreign lands when he hasn’t been to these places? Pretty soon a small cult gathers
around Bauji, intently following every utterance and gesture he makes in a
futile search for the ‘truth’. For a long time Bauji takes a vow of silence,
finally making up his mind to let his daughter marry the boy. But all through
the marriage ceremony he’s caught in a strange kind of sorrow, the reason for
which doesn’t become clear until the very end. The end which takes his
metaphysical drive to its necessary logical conclusion. How can Bauji know the
true joy of flying until he has tried it?
This
whimsical world with its inherent chaos is not for men of single-minded vision.
The existential man achieves meaning - finds home - when he ceases to exist.
