It is sometimes difficult to recognize the paw of a filmmaker. First because they are not all the authors. Far from it. It would even rather the exception. Sometimes the style is not great enough (everyone is not Bresson), sometimes the topics are too different from each other. Often, the films lack of interest and it does not even bother to seek a semblance of coherence. So what to make of a filmmaker like Robert Mulligan? Its lack of visual style led him instead to fit each type and the blasting of the interior. With nearly 20 films spread over forty-year career, Mulligan's work has touched on different genres: western, fantasy, chronic social comedy. Thanks to retrospective the French Cinematheque, we have the opportunity to rediscover the work of the filmmaker overlooked.
If some of his films are world famous (Summer of 42, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Other) , others are forgotten. The disorder can discover precisely identify commonalities and make findings. Far from claiming to substitute myself for Jean-Pierre Berthomé, the eminent critic and film historian whose introductory lecture to the work of American filmmaker was quite exciting and illuminating, return briefly to a film of the last period. If it was said that Mulligan was attracted by the world of childhood, by death, he was a great director of actors, or had a knack for surrounding himself with top musicians, the vision of Clara's Heart ( The secret Clara 1988) allows to reveal one of his qualities: his humanism.
Before last film Mulligan Clara's Heart is a story of reconstruction. A mother who lost her baby went into exile in Jamaica and met a maid who draws from his depression. The agreement is so strong that the mother brings her home to care for her teen, who at first rejected. A beautiful friendship will gradually link between these two beings in pain, sustained by the parental environment exploding. But the maid carries a dark secret and tries to rebuild as well.
Only a few years after his prominent role in The Color Purple, Whoopi Goldberg gives the character of the maid intensity all nuance and restraint, while the young man is played brilliantly by Neil Patrick Harris, which is the star. Always on the cutting edge, without lapsing into melodrama or sentimentality, Mulligan discusses a topic rarely discussed by the movies, an unlikely friendship and salvation, than those that shape lives and overcome the horror. Storyteller subtleties of the heart of man and woman, Mulligan loves his characters and it shows. He does not need to resort to tricks of staging. His way of showing simply and fairly, without any distancing, making them even more staggering. At the risk of offending some viewers, so accustomed to cynicism dominating and triumph of our time.
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