When you look at Son of Mr. Green Jeans, you begin to see the structure formulating his work. The ABC’s form a restrictive guideline to his work. Can some of your best work come from limits that are within or out of your control? Think of George Lucas and his $11 million dollar baby Star Wars the New Hope. Within a limited budget and constant pressure from screen executives, Lucas would be the highest budget film of its time and create a multi-million dollar enterprise.
In another sense, the Star Wars movies got worse and worse as Lucas obtained legendary status, unlimited funds, and complete artistic control over his films. In a financial sense, he did himself good, but those prequels sucked balls.
In The Atlantic Man, we, the audience, can only see what Duras shows us, which is as she fondly describes as nothing or “emptiness.” However, confined within this screen of emptiness are her words, which seems overtly unrevealing. She has limited the audience’s access to concrete facts and like the screen leaves us empty. In that sense, her loneliness is felt, but we are left helplessly drowning in her sea of poetic suffering with no lifeboat in sight. She limits our access to connect with her, which is quite frustrating as a reader. It almost seems as if this essay is completely for herself and not for the subject or any reader.
In another light, she reveals enough. In a melodramatic way, this emptiness takes on another form throughout the essay. In the beginning, her mind tries to empty out her image of her love. The mind is trying to fight the emptiness with emptiness, but of course it doesn’t work and she knows it. She does not try to fill the void, but almost does nothing to heal it or close it up. He is an actor of this emptiness and of course is never there, and she doesn’t ever tell him if he is the main character or not. Is he watching the film or is he in this film? Maybe it no longer matters because he isn’t there.
