#drawn to garden of earthly delights by hieronymus bosch for atmosphere!!

[sontrava]

ych for fishgardian

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SO this one was a challenge but a good one. enjoyed working on it a ton, happy to finally share it with you!

[inapat16]

Jean-Noël Picq gives a voice to The Garden of Earthly Delights of Hieronymus Bosch : paintings in the cinema part 3/4

In 1980, Jean Eustache made a short-film about The Garden of Earthly Delights of Bosch. This triptych is considered one of the most enigmatic paintings of Bosch and is considered a masterpiece until today. This painting has been studied by many artists, scholars and intellectuals. The composition drawn by Bosch between 1490 and 1510 is rich in symbolism and has provoked numerous debates between art historians. Eustache chose to Jean Noël Picq to analyze it in front of three amateurs and the camera. The staging gives an atmosphere of a small gathering between friends. Jean Noël Picq, who is a psychoanalyst, gives a very intimate interpretation of this painting without showing it to his audience while sitting on a red chair and smoking a cigarette.The painting is only entirely shown in the middle of the short-film, so 15 minutes after Jean Noël has already started his analysis. This choice of Jean Eustache gives us a unique experience since at first we only witness Picq talking about a famous painting and making references to specific parts of the painting. However the camera makes a close-up of these details but does not show the entire painting right away.

Jean Noël Picq makes his own interpretation through the symbolism carried by the objects and the animals painted by Bosch. Even if Picq’s analysis is very subjective, the viewer, if he or she is sensible to this painting, is carried away very easily. Although you might not agree with Jean Noël Picq in every comment that he makes, it is an interesting experience to assist such an intimate scene. It feels like we are entering Jean Noël’s minds when he looks at the painting for the first time. Eustache gives us the rare sensation that Picq is giving us access to all the thoughts that are coming to his mind as he admires the painting in front of us.

Throughout the whole film the sexual reference call the attention of the viewer. This could be linked to the fact that the painting of Bosch has a lot of sexual representations between humans that are half animals or even between objects, or humans and objects. Nevertheless, the staging chosen by Eustache is also very sexual. There are two women listening to Picq, apparently hypnotized by the speech given by Picq. In fact, the speech of Jean Noël Picq concentrates mostly in the third painting of the triptych with represents “the last judgment”.

Eustache has already experienced with this form of filmmaking with “A dirty story” which is a film also featuring Picq where he tells a dirty story to a group, mostly to a group of women. Eustache actually filmed this movie twice with different actors. Moreover, Eustache uses his traditional long monologue as he does in other movies like The mother and the whore.

This short film, even if it enters numerous clichés that are recurrent of Eustache’s filmmaking and of the 1980s, is a very interesting perspective to introduce paintings into cinema.

Laura Cárdenas.