Behind the Scenes

Franz cannot repress a smirk of anticipation. He knows what is going to happen. They don't. All is black, shrouded in a silence so thick it strangles sound. Blind, deaf and mute. Franz lifts his hands. Three… two… one… Light! Noisy light. The night skies ignite. Fire rains on the city. It is as if the stars themselves are crashing down, it is not merely the death of men, it is the death of the cosmos itself. He peers around him, delighting in the transfixed expressions, gleaming tears streaking down their cheeks.

This is Oscar fodder.

New shot. A panicked crowd runs down the boulevard, silhouetted in red, their faces in shadow except for the brief glances they send to the angry sky. Among them, a man and a woman, whose names the audience will get to know later. The man trips and knocks himself out. The woman tries to lift him up, but he is far too heavy. She cries for help, over and over again, but the crowd hears nothing. It flows around the distressed couple, cold and indifferent like a river around stone.

Franz puts his hands over his mouth. He is proud of the next scene, one of the harshest he has ever conceived: understanding that no one will assist her, but unwilling to abandon her love, the woman will lay on top of the man to shield him from the falling napalm, giving up her own life so that… hold on.

Hold on.

Who is this? There is a running woman in the crowd, imperfectly shadowed. She hears. She heeds, she turns right back and runs to help. Together, the two women heave up the fallen man. Together, all three of them cross into a nearby church in the nick of time. Safe. Safe? What is this? This wasn't in the script. This wasn't filmed. This wasn't supposed to happen. Franz jolts up from his seat. What's going on? The entire movie is about the man—whose name, the audience shall shortly learn, is Julian—half-burned and invalid, coming to grips with his wife Rosa's grisly sacrifice. Except the sacrifice did not happen, thanks to… who is she? Who the fuck is she? Some extra?

Franz fights the scream at the edge of his throat. If it had been another scene, any scene other than the one without which none of the movie makes a lick of sense. The premiere is ruined, utterly and completely ruined. He must put an end to it. Franz runs up the alley. Not a minute later, the film sputters and stops, and it is not merely a city but indeed an entire universe that goes up in flames as Franz lights up the film reel and his red silhouette and shadowed face stare down the terrified projectionist.

⁂

No one is happy. Franz is not happy, the producers are not happy, the projectionist has PTSD, the festival is disrupted, the insurer, of course, is furious.

At the same time, no one can say Franz has entirely gone off the deep end: there are many witnesses to the mysterious extra's heroics. They are all affected in their own way. Tywin Jones, the actor who played Julian, whispers: “Who is she? I'm in love.” But he falls in love every day.

Franz is locked up in a room where he smoulders with embarrassment, both at the defacing of his movie and at his own erratic behavior. The marred perfection of his craft unravels him. He tries, vainly, to remember where he saw that woman before. A new copy of the movie, freshly made from the master and sealed in front of five witnesses, is given to him while the producers negotiate his release.

He is relieved to see that the scene where Rosa sacrifices herself for her Julian is just as he remembers it. At the same time, the alternate take has left its imprint in Franz's mind—the tragedy's feeling of inevitability is gone, leaving an abyss in its stead. He finds himself looking for the stranger in every frame, his heart so shrouded in confusion that he doesn't know if he dreads or craves to see her again.

It is only in the end, when the final scene at the field hospital starts, when he begins to think she is gone forever, that he spots a volunteer darting from bed to bed with such presence that everything around her all but disappears. It is her, he realizes with a start. He pauses the frame and bangs his fists against the door. “I found her!” he screams, until a producer checks on him with a questioning look. “Really? Where?” she asks.

Franz's confidence all but vanishes and he stutters an incoherent response: although the movie is still paused at the precise frame he remembers, the woman is gone.

⁂

The movie does well. The publicity most certainly helped, as did the mystery of the burned tape and the mystique of the “Cannes arsonist.” But mostly it is a very good movie. A small victory for Franz as he tries to piece himself back together, alone in his Manhattan apartment. Studios will call him back eventually. Maybe not this year.

He understands why. He's crazy. And he's not getting better.

The mysterious woman still haunts his dreams, but in itself that's nothing to worry about (unlike Rosa's charred corpse which now features in many cinephiles’ nightmares). What is of more import, as Franz discovers, is that she haunts his films, nearly all of them.

From the crack of dawn to shortly after midnight when his awareness fails him and the reel spins out, Franz's projector rolls, projecting his own movies, his shorts, some unused footage he is sentimental about, home videos, everything he can dig out of the boxes in his closet. Usually, nothing special happens. Sometimes, she happens. There is no telling when or where. She comes and goes at her own whim.

Franz watches one of his favourite scenes, the great dance at the castle of Grandfort before the Prince is murdered. He replays it ten times, twenty times, before he finally spots her, ravishing, clad in white and mauve, dragging “shy marquis number three” to the dance floor. Franz pauses the projection. Got her! But it is futile: she only remains unmoving for a second or two before she starts looking around, not surprised, but… disappointed, it seems. She walks out of the frame and does not come back.

There is only one place she never goes: digital movies. She cannot wade through zeroes and ones. Franz always thought that digital was the death of the medium. Now, he has proof.

He is hopelessly fascinated. A whole day spent in front of the screen is worth the ten or twenty seconds for which she graces it. He wonders when was the first time she came to his reels. Probably he hadn't noticed.

He wonders what her name is.

He has an idea.

⁂

A red envelope lays on the sidewalk of a deserted avenue in Manhattan, at dawn. All is quiet. In the distance, a woman walks towards the camera, wearing a red leather jacket and a pair of blue jeans. She takes her time, but it is a long take. She stops in front of the envelope and reads the two words written on it in black sharpie: “To You.” She looks around for someone, anyone else, to be the letter's legitimate recipient, but she is well and truly alone. She kneels down and opens it.

“Hello,” she mutters as she reads. “My name is Franz… filmmaker… found you in my movie…”

She reads attentively, but does not seem shocked. Her emotion is of an entirely different order. She looks around, trying to find a focal point, finally opting to stare at the sky.

“You did this?” she says out loud. “The zeppelins raining fire on Paris, you made it happen? That was you? That poor sweet prince, murdered on his wedding night? That was you, too?” A great breath gathers in her breast. “How dare you?” she cries. “How dare you create such… horribleness? You utter, vile, horrible… horrible MONSTER. How dare y—”

End of scene. The film runs out.

⁂

Obsessed as he is by the mystery and his yearning to know the woman's name, he does not see the outburst coming. And yet he cannot think of anything else she could have said. It's real, he realizes, it's all real.

His whole career, Franz had been obsessed with realness. On the set, he had no rest until he believed that what he had filmed was real. When he lost all sense of direction and the walls were made of solid stone, the smashed bottle of sharp glass, the victim's blood was made of blood, and their death was made of death, then he knew he had succeeded.

Truth be told, he had known all along. He had felt it, in his bones, just as he feels it now. He just never realized the deeper meaning.

To Franz, the world is a pit of despair. A cesspool of war and betrayal, of crime and punishment, of suffering and indifference. This truth he feels intensely, it overflows his soul, and so he has to shout it from the rooftops. He has to reveal the darkness of human nature, to rub its reality under the world's nose, and only then can it be mended. He did a splendid job of it, forever carving his name in the pantheon of tragedy.

And yet: to show is to create. It cannot be denied. She said so. She who walks across the reel, across still frames, has enlightened him. Franz's face contorts and trembles, he realizes his wretched mistake, he realizes that his crimes are no lesser than those of Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, John Wayne Gacy, even if he did not mean them, and he breaks down, completely and utterly, in front of the blank screen.

“Forgive me,” he cries, “please forgive me.”

⁂

Franz's next movie is… something else. From the overbearing darkness in which it formerly brooded, his work has emerged into the sun. Into the sun, where not even the hint of a shadow can endure. Without a single instant of clear-sightedness, it has moved from one blindness to another.

The critics flex their wit, elated to have an outlet in which to spew the evergreen contempt they have for the craft. Unravelled candy floss, they say—a Disney flick dipped in honey and seen through rose-colored glasses—so nonviolent it can't even afford a punchline—uh oh! It appears Franz Gierz's Titanic has hit a niceberg.

And so on. Even the most indulgent claim it must be a demented masterpiece of irony.

Franz does not care. He did not film it for the plot. He filmed it for the characters. Would you not like to live in a world where objects come to life, where forks and knives dance and cook the perfect dinner? Would you not like the rich and powerful of the world to drive around throwing their money into the wind? Would you not like birds to sing on your shoulders?

He watches his new movie at home, over and over, and he delights to see the mysterious stranger enter scene after scene and walk around with a smile of wonder on her face. The light bends around her and flowers grow in her footsteps. And then, she says it, she finally says it, her name, as ancient as it is beautiful: “I'm Thalia. You've gone a bit overboard, don't you think?”

Perhaps he has. Perhaps he has to find a balance, a middle ground. Hollywood is merciful: he is given a second chance. But he spoils it. He is a man of excess, through and through. He cannot film tragedy anymore, only happiness and optimism, purest than pure, unmarred by narrative. His entourage is baffled. If only they knew. If only they knew the chime of her laugh, the spring of her step, the light of her gaze, the innocent beauty of her soul. Perhaps he could show them, arrange a special projection and hope she manifests herself, but he doesn't care to. They wouldn't understand.

⁂

Manhattan again, just after the rain. Segments of a double rainbow can be glimpsed between the skyscrapers. There is a letter on the ground, sealed in a Ziploc bag. A woman picks it up. “Dear Thalia,” it says, “I am sorry to tell you that my career is over. I hope that its death throes could bring some lightness to your world. Forever yours, Franz.”

“It did,” Thalia says, pausing in thought. “It did. Do you know why I came into your films, even when they were horrible? Because they are real beyond the frame. I can see this way,” she says, pointing behind the camera. “If I ring that doorbell, someone will answer. If I wait for long enough, pigeons will come. There is substance to your work. It's magical. I cannot explain it. Say, Franz…” she asks in a pleading tone, “can you not keep filming? I don't care what. There are so many things I haven't seen.”

⁂

A rocky path, up close. The horizon, far away. The Andes in between, fierce and indomitable. Thalia enters the frame and picks up the envelope from the top of a shrub. She enjoys the scenery while she answers.

“How do I get from place to place? I just walk. The roads don't end, here. They all lead to everywhere. I was in suburban New Jersey a few minutes ago, and before that, I was in Osaka, I believe. If I walk along this path, eventually, it will just turn to something else. A country road, maybe. The Himalayas. The Shire. A lunar colony. The inside of a mall. There are crossings everywhere, so sometimes I'll turn left or right to get to something that looks interesting. It rarely is. Unless it's from you.”

⁂

A concerto of horns exalts Kolkata's bustling streets. Everything overflows: the cars, the people, the food most of all. A woman wearing a yellow sari purchases fuchkas at a stall, speaking fluent Bengali. She sits on the ground and speaks to no one, this time in English.

“It's odd, I seem to know all languages, but I never know before I start speaking,” she muses. “Everything is mixed up, here. Languages, clothes, locations, eras… sometimes I get back to a place I've already been, even though I've been walking in a straight line. Sometimes I'll see a corpse, go through a door, and see them dance with the murderer. Or I'll hear the punchline before the joke. I hate it. At least with your letters the story moves forwards.”

⁂

Snowflakes as large as pearls fall on Old Quebec in the evening. The whiteness that blankets the street takes on soft hues from the storefronts and the displays. A large ice sculpture of a bear stands on the sidewalk, as ferocious as it is still. In some other world, it might move. Thalia traces the contours of its jaw with her finger. She tests the sharpness of one of its fangs and appears disappointed in the result.

“Thank you for doing this for me,” she says. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it. It makes me feel more… real.” She pauses, taken in by a melancholy, a slight sadness. “I wish I could meet you. Feels strange to speak to thin air all this time.”

Suddenly, she stares straight at the camera.

“I think this is where you stand,” she says, smiling. “People avoid this spot.”

She walks resolutely towards the camera, and then through it.

⁂

Franz's dining room is immaculate, unrecognizable to all who know him. He sets the table, deploys a chic new red tablecloth still marred with folding marks, places two candles in the middle. Adjusts them, back and forth, for a minute until they are perfectly centered. This is silly. Checks on the salmon. Slides out a bottle of red wine from his cellar. No! Franz, what are you doing? Seafood pairs with white. Puts it back, gets Chardonnay instead.

Looks at the time. Five minutes to eight.

Hesitates. This is crazy. Crazier than what happened in the past few months? Maybe. Hits the record button anyway. What's the worst that can happen?

Sits down, right third of the frame. Hallway and front door in left third. Candles in middle. Waits. Heart flutters. Waits some more. Camera captures a single bead of sweat sliding down his neck, carrying a bit of candlelight.

The doorbell rings.