Marya Murphy

After tweeting that I was engaged in a volatile “discussion” of Assayas’s Summer Hours, I was asked privately to explain my position. I’ll share with you, volatile readers, that position.

I can only really talk about such things in reaction to others. So I’ll tell you first what my foil (spouse) had to say. In essence, it’s ham-fisted, reactionary, poorly directed, poorly cast, poorly acted, and the goddamn camera never stops moving. He found it repetitive and unrevealing and thought the hammered-home point was that we’re losing our past and our culture and our traditions and the new rowdy generation of multiculturality and loud music is destroying beauty. Something like that. (I wasn’t really listening.) (I’m kidding.) (Mostly.)

Whereas I thought it was lovely, gentle, nuanced, complicated, and all about letting go. There’s no judgment or condemnation. Here’s the past. It’s beautiful. We’re nostalgic for it but have no room for it. Thank goodness for museums. The ostensible main character is reluctant, but not passionate. He’s the most tied to the past because he’s the oldest and the closest to his mother. But there’s no judgment of the younger, less-tied siblings. Their willingness to let it all go makes perfect sense. Nothing nefarious in it. And the final scene was a perfect reflection of the opening scene. The old matriarch, owning her space, controlling everything gently but firmly, now replaced by the young girl with the same manner, a new version of her grandmother’s liveliness. The grandmother had been a wild and passionate youth, uncontrollable. The young girl is the same. This is life. This is change. It’s not evil. It’s beautiful. We can be nostalgic for the past while embracing the future. Our notions of art and beauty and life are no less valid.