Cinema: Stanley Peskin
RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA’S sharp, engrossing screenplay for Merchant Ivory’s Jefferson in Paris provides a richly complex experience. The film begins in Pike County, Ohio, where the history of Thomas Jefferson (a very accomplished Nick Nolte), the third president of the United States (1801- 1809), is probed by a journalist. Interviewing a black family, he discovers that their legacy from Jefferson, to whom they are related by blood, is “freedom, not a collection of valuables”.
The valuables in question are the buckles of Jefferson’s shoes, which we see when he comes to the French court in 1774 (all the French spoken in the film is either subtitled or translated). Jhabvala’s and director James Ivory’s ironic treatment of the international theme (quite Jamesian in its complexity), and the issues of freedom and slavery, shows Jefferson coming into contact with French manners and morals.
Morals, he feels, are “better for us Americans” than manners, and difficult to unlearn. A man of stern moral rectitude, he is shown to be not only personally fallible, but also not exactly an innocent abroad in the corrupt Old World. Courteous, amiable, always on his guard, he is the perfect diplomat and so no more free of hypocrisy than were the founding fathers of the New World.
Responsible for portions of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson believes that independence is not a toy for children to play with but the privilege of a fully matured mind. The state of his own mind is a troubled one. He knows that the grievances of the Parisian mob are justified, and in one of many voice-overs he is appalled by signs of social inequality.
Pitying the misery he sees, and understanding the hatred shown towards the queen, he fails to see the anomaly in his own situation. He believes that nobles, clergy and commons should be combined in order to ensure freedom. The great question is: do the commodities of liberality and democracy exist in America?
Ivory shows that Jefferson is closed to the analogy that exists between his keeping of slaves and the desperate financial situation in France attested to by the burning of effigies of succeeding ministers of finance. In a country where revolution is rife, slavery is illegal. This crucial irony is intensified when Jefferson tries to justify slavery and laws of property on the grounds that there is a difference between the laws of man and the laws of nature, as well as on the grounds of family.
The screenplay neatly dissects his position: his slave Sally Hemings (a seductive Thandie Newton), with whom he will be more intimate than he imagines, is also the half-sister of his dead wife. If Jefferson does not wish to emulate the vainglory of royal processions, his vainglory lies in his desire to recreate Monticello, his paradise on earth, in Paris. He grows an American garden, but only the corn takes root.
The film revolves around Jefferson’s relationships with three women whose lives are interlocked: the painter Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi), his slave Sally, and his daughter Patsy (Gwyneth Paltrow). In his affaire with Mrs Cosway, Jefferson discovers that the game of heads and hearts engineered by Mr Cosway (Simon Callow) becomes a reality: the passions of the heart overwhelm reason. Declaring his love for Maria, whose husband cannot love her “in a way a man loves a woman”, he is uncommonly chivalric.
The salve for his wrist (hurt when he attempts to leap over some logs to prove his love for Maria) proves to be Sally, who bears his child, while his contact with Maria is largely epistolary. Like Jefferson, Sally is a victim of the plantation mentality; she cannot lay the ghost of Monticello. She may think Jefferson to be the best master in Virginia, but he is her master and her resemblance to his dead wife is a key factor in their association.
To the third woman in his life, his daughter Patsy, he says: “You are my true life and my true love, everything that is best in me belongs to you.” Back in America, she married, had 12 children, but continued to live at Monticello as her father’s devoted companion and hostess.
Apart from a visible microphone in the opening sequence, the film is spectacularly dressed by Guy-Claude Francois and superbly photographed by Pierre Lhomme.
A seance conducted by the infamous Dr Masmer, shots of Jefferson’s own invented writing machine, and an episode involving an air balloon carrying a pig and a bird, are conceived with a Felliniesque virtuosity in a thoughtful and elegantly directed, but not always immediately accessible, film.