Bijou by Stuart Dybek, 1981
The magic trick:
Using a film festival movie review as a way of critiquing human behavior
Yesterday we highlighted Robert Coover’s “Matinee,” a dastardly clever story about movies. So for a weekend double and because its Oscars night, we look today at “Bijou,” a story by one of my all-time favorites, Stuart Dybek, 30 years before “Matinee.”
Like Coover, Dybek is using movies as a way to draw out his story. Also like Coover, Dybek is being very clever here. “Bijou” is a description of a film screening at a film festival. Evidently, this is a very serious film about human suffering.
But whereas Coover’s cleverness is almost always almost completely about commenting the nature of story, Dybek is after something different here.
In describing the film and some of the audience and critic reaction, he manages to criticize nearly every corner of human activity.
And that’s quite a trick on Dybek’s part.
The selection:
The film which rumor has made the dernier cri of this year’s festival is finally screened.
It begins without credits, challenging the audience from its opening frame. Not only has it been shot in black and white, but the black and white do not occur in usual relationships to one another. There is little grey. Ordinary light has become exotic as zebras.
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