Eastern European Women Directors - Discussion 1: Vera Chytilova - "The Fruit of Paradise" (1969)

Knowledge, Enlightenment and the Truth We Don’t Want to Accept: A Discussion of Chytilova’s The Fruit of Paradise

3-21-07

Vera Cytilova’s 1969 film, The Fruit of Paradise is complex and problematic to critics who attempt to view it from any particular vantage point while avoiding the analysis of it in other contexts. For example, though there are feminist (even if Chytilova would have never used that term to describe her work) overtones throughout the film, reading it in its entirety as thoroughly concerned with gender and the role of women would be too simplistic. In “Can We Live With the Truth?”, an article appearing in Central Europe Review, Daniel Bird reminds us that a major focus of the film is with truth and that there is no concrete evidence within to suggest that it celebrates a nihilism resulting from the knowing of a truth that we do not want to be able to comprehend or to believe is indeed the truth of our existence.

The Fruit of Paradise opens with a visually intriguing retelling of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. The first images we see are much more reminiscent of photographic slides quickly switched, juxtaposing a variety of plant imagery of various shapes and colors. Adam and Eve walk across, holding hands, and barely stick out with their almost transparent bodies merging with some of the plant textures. It is this sequence that may remind us most of Daisies – there are vivid colors, and the pace at which new images bombard us is overwhelming, almost assaulting. The climax of the retelling comes as the narration tells us: “And the serpent said to the woman: Ye shall not surely die!” Immediately, we are again shown various close-ups of plants, but they have a reddish cast to them, as if filtered. When Eve appears again, the narration of the serpent continues (or the narrative retelling of what the serpent said, rather): “On the day ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil.” After this, “tell me the truth” is repeated as a chant, while we see Adam and Eve holding hands and struggling with one another – pulling each other forward, backward, side to side. The colors and textures of the background continue to change, forming a complete aesthetic “chunk” of material for us to process, along with the chant and intense (religious sounding) music.

The next big cut occurs as if to signal the fall as we see a gray, drab, deserted chunk of landscape before seeing an apple fall. Eva, sitting beside her sleeping husband under a tree, catches it. Now a more whimsical music plays and there is a shot reverse shot exchange between Eva and Robert, a man clothed in a red jacket as bright as the apple Eva seductively bites into. Eva asks her husband, “who is it?” and he replies by asking her what she is eating. In this scene, as in many throughout the film, Eva appears innocent, almost child-like in dress and mannerism. But after eating the apple, she becomes more inquisitive, seeking Robert out and observing him as he plays with various women. Robert, clothed in red and seductive, reminds us of Satan, or perhaps the serpent, challenging the women and appealing to their desires.

The pivotal moment of the film occurs when Eva notices a key, on the sandy beach of the resort or vacation destination, which has fallen out of Robert’s pocket. When he pays no attention to her signaling him about the key, instead continuing to flirt and play with the other women, Eva walks off with it, eventually using it to unlock a cottage. Once inside, she frantically searches; we do not know what she is looking for, but she opens several dresser drawers containing various items, including what looks like fruit, possibly pomegranate seeds (which could, according to myth, symbolize the forbidden fruit in itself, adding an element of temptation). After exploring the drawers, Eva finds Robert’s briefcase and opens it, finding a rubber stamp inside and stamping herself on the thigh with a red number six.

The scene of the discovery of the briefcase has an ominous, disorienting aesthetic to it. The camera movement is jumpy, as if hand held, which adds tension, along with the use of tilts and high and low camera angles. There are also alternating cuts between Eva exploring the cottage and Robert and the others of the resort on the beach – playing, flirting, and even searching for the lost key. It is also important to note that the color of the six is red and that six is considered the number of the beast. Once Eva stamps herself, she cannot rub it off, no matter how hard she tries. This may be symbolic of her gaining knowledge of evil and submitting to its seduction. What began as an innocent exploration and curiosity has grown into something more for Eva – it has led her to discover lust and evil. This becomes clear as we find out, when Eva returns to the beach, that there is a murderer on the loose who has been stamping his victims with a red number six. Literally, those who gain knowledge of evil die, as Adam and Eve believed they would upon eating the forbidden fruit, and indeed did in a sense as they became aware of evil and thus could not live the same, innocent life ever again.

It is also important to note that after begin stamped, Eva’s appearance and actions change dramatically. No longer dressed in white, she begins first to wear pink, and finally red, matching Robert, whom she continues to pursue, saying that she loves him. In one of the final scenes of the film, as Bird points out in his article, Robert tells Eva, “Everything is nothing but a dream. You are a lie.” While I cannot come to a definitive conclusion about the meaning of this sentence, it seems to signify that gaining knowledge goes hand in hand with losing the type of divine knowledge that may have been possible before there was knowledge of evil that clouds judgment and confuses human emotions and motives. Without the fall, the inner human crisis concerning salvation of the soul and the ability to distinguish between good and evil would not exist. Eva does not seem to notice that Robert is evil – he is seductive and intriguing to her. Eva lives as if in a dream, disoriented from her previous innocence, and not wanting to know the truth of evil that she has come into contact with and which has altered her. At the very end of the film, Eva tells her husband, “Don’t ask to now the truth, even I don’t want to know” after she kills Robert, and yet is not free from Satan because she has committed murder of him, who she had loved. Evil begets evil and cannot be eradicated; Eva must be expelled from paradise because she knows the truth of inherent human darkness.

I began this discussion with the assertion that there is no set reading that one can arrive at as far as the film’s thematic concept. This is because, though it is a story told to parallel the fall of man and the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, it cannot be summarized as a commentary on the deceptive qualities of women. Though at moments it seems this simple, such as when Robert tells Eva, “You’re the only one who came of her own free will”, we cannot overlook the role Robert, as a man portraying Satan, not a Satanic woman, plays in seducing her. We also must remember that Eva’s husband is portrayed as unfaithful to her, lusting after other women. In Eva’s relationship with her husband, she is not the only one unfaithful to the marriage, yet there is a double standard at work as her husband says, “Forgive me, I have sinned against you. But I did not know what I was doing.” Eva replies to his comment, “You’re my wife and I’m your husband” saying, “that’s not true” and is further questioned by her husband, immediately suspected of having someone else. There is a double standard at work here in that Eva is expected to forgive her husband, even though he cannot show her the same forgiveness. “You’re like him”, Eva tells her husband, “You’re all the same.” This statement directly compares Robert and Eva’s husband, and asserts that men in general have the evil of lust within them.

There are many more avenues to explore with this film; many more interpretations to test upon subsequent viewings. My analysis has only begun to touch on the themes Chytilova may have been considering. It is a complex film, and, contrary to her government’s belief that the film gave in to nihilism as a result of commenting on the inevitability of evil and the desire to keep the truth hidden so that the knowledge of this inevitability could not surface, the horror of truth at the end, and Eva’s expulsion from paradise clearly focuses on some moral framework; her end is not celebrated. As for a final comment on the feminist aesthetic, it too is conflicted – Eva is both empowered in her quest to actively seek out knowledge, yet is also a temptress and ultimately, an embodiment of evil (even if that evil equals that of every character portrayed, including that of her own husband).

For anyone who would be interested in reading more from the article I have cited in my analysis the address is: www.ce-review.org/01/17/kinoeye17_bird.html