Daisies

Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time watch challenge #237, Daisies, by Věra Chytilová, 1966 (film 29 out of 264) “The world is rotten, so we shall be rotten too” works as a sort of central thesis to Daisies, full of surreal imagery that follows the flittering chaos of two girls, both referred to as Marie. Chytilová’s film plays with colour and experimental cuts throughout the entire film. This time around I was paying a lot closer attention to that than the first time I was watching. The way she cuts around movement creates a forward push throughout disconnected scenes. The way she uses colour to portray the harsh “rotten” world of the patriarchal society compared to the natural colour of the pastoral countryside is purposefully jarring. The world of femininity shares this quality. Joy is a radical act in such oppressive times, and Marie I and Marie II relish in the chaos they cause. The way they toy with men takes common expectations of women and turns it in their favor, luring men to their side for their own entertainment and ditching them once they try to get more from them. Debauchery is the name of hte game and the film puts the two girls in jazz clubs, underground pubs, and the backrooms of music stages. Even during times of war, times of hurt, people must live and joy is part of that. The joy of Daisies is so radical that even when the film acknowledges that joy will not save the girls from a terrible fate at the hand of war, the girls’ attempts at “playing by the rules of the rotten world” still resemble this sort of nymphic mischievous play. Work is play, a game. As long as it is of the world of war, the world of patriarchy, it is something to be ridiculed and mocked.