In the White City

To drop out of society: this is one of the central topics in the films of Alain Tanner. Unfortunately, we cannot just vanish: we leave traces. We also leave commitments, partners, children, our post, the apartment. And if we get really able to reach the state of completely breaking off all outer belongings without touching our inner states, we are still far away from being free: We are neither free to do something, because in well-organized societies, my freedom-to stops exactly there where the freedom-to of my neighbor starts, and since we are crowded on this planet, there is not much to accomplish. And neither is our freedom-from so easily to achieve, because we live in a global society where only the suicide is for free.

In Tanners's "Messidor" we have Marie and Jeanne, whose freedom-to ends quickly, namely in the moment where there are out of money. In "Charles vif ou mort", Charles' freedom-from ends there, where he sees that it is not to accomplish without destroying the whole society, which is rather impossible. And in the never-land between freedom-to and freedom-from, there is Paul in "Dans la Ville Blanche", the Swiss sailor, who decides one day not go back to his ship but to stay in Lisbon until his money is gone. In a letter to his partner in Zurich, he writes: "I am not in vacation, since a vacation must be planned, and planning is work. I am doing NOTHING". All central characters of Tanner's movie want the same: to experiment how it is possible to experience the ABSENCE of something: the empty space as absence from the crowd, the empty time as the absence of obligations in society. And all of them fail sooner or later: either they cannot go on anymore, because the emptiness has turned into nonsense, or people do not let them go, because they want them put behind bars - of prisons or clinics.