The Inner Life Of Martin Frost [DVD] [2007]

Paul Auster has said that The Inner Life of Martin Frost is a comedic answer to his film Lulu on the Bridge. Lulu on the Bridge is a story about a dying man's fantasy about a woman playing the role that Louise Brooks made famous in the German expressionist film Pandora's Box. Louise Brooks was probably film's greatest portrayal of the idealized woman. Every man painted his fantasy on her lithe figure. So what do we make of The Inner Life of Martin Frost? In short, it is about a man's creation of a woman and that creation's struggle to become real and alive.

More specifically, the film begins with Auster's voice, which is apropos, because he has one of the strongest authorial voices writing. His narration immediately alerts us to the fact that this is a story, being told by a writer, about writers and their muses. But, more importantly, we learn that this story will be continued to be written and revised, even as the last scene fades out. Consequently, there is no resolution, no completion for the viewer by the the narrator. Instead, we must finish the tale on our own.

The story is also a meta-fiction, which constantly refers to writers and their books. To emphasize this a wall of books plays a pivotal part in the film. On that wall of books two particular writers seem to receive attention--Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka.

It is also a film about perception and the philosophy of perception. Claire reads aloud from Berkeley and Hume.

It is also a story about how men create women and how women nurture that creation and the dangers that arise from this artifice. In that regard, Auster has picked two exquisite and ethereal actresses to play the spirits or the muses-Irene Jacob and Sophie Auster.

The men, or the writers, come in two flavors-the slow, serious writer-Martin (David Thewlis)-or the plumber/writer-James Fortunato(Michael Imperioli), an alter ego for both Auster and Frost. As an aside Fortunato is one of the most interesting characters that Auster has created. He reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout.

So, what about this movie? It is beautifully shot; the actors are wonderful; but it is a puzzle and a mystery. It frustrated me but it made me think. I have watched it twice and it grows on me. I highly recommend it to literary souls who are interested in the creative process and don't mind the frustrating tropes of meta-fiction.

In ancient times it was said that really inspired or creative individuals
had "muses'. Poets, artists and composers would have a female spirit
that would infuse the person with ideas.
In this case the muse somehow gets caught between worlds
and it takes the rescue of a failed muse from an untalented
heater repairman to bring her back to Martin.
This story has a sort of old world Irish quality to it.
It is well filmed and acted.

After spending three years writing a book, exhausted writer goes to a friend's house on the countryside in order to relax, regroup and figue out "the next thing". In the process, this solitary creature finds a woman in his bed one morning without remembering how she got there. The love between two starts developing as they connect both intellectually and emotionally, until one day a writer realizes that the woman is not who she says she is. Who is she? Or better yet, what is she? A product of his imagination, a muse, a creature from another world? But at that point film takes turn where we meet another "writer", an amateur who writes terrible stories in his spare time and who also has a muse that is almost duying duie to her inability to thrive on his imagination. This is almost a philosophical meditation on can too much creativity destroy creatures around a person just as much as too little creativity? What one must do to hold onto his/her muse and let it thrive, what sacrifices have to be made? To a some degree, one can say that this idea has been expointed once before - if you have seen a movie "Swimming Pool" with Charlotte Pampling, you will know what I mean. How does one distinguish between reality and creative visualization? What is real and what is not real? How do we choose between these two? Thsi film is not for mass audiences. I also feel that main characters (and there are only four of them) have been miscast. There is very little or no chemistry here.