In Memoriam: Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

The Final Wink of the Old Fox

Having read and watched his interviews, the interviews of a man who once was a repertory actor, performing in out-of-the-way places of the Great Britain, one can only be certain that his plays were not mere philosophical explications of a general hopelessness and uncertainty. He is a Bekett, but a unique one, more direct, more accessible Bekett, a Bekett put into a genre. Pinter knows how to tell a story, especially in its first, action layer; it is a story audience can relate to without nodding slowly as its metaphysics enters their lives. That is probably where the mixed terms used to describe Pinter come from


By MARIJA CVETKOVIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve 2008 and the next day the local media rushed to remind that he sided with us during the NATO bombing of Serbia. The fact that he also supported defence of Slobodan Milosevic was overlooked.

On the other hand, British "The Times" spoke of his daft political ideas, ever since the old and seriously ill Pinter started having his enranged political outbursts, mostly against Tonny Blair and his support for the US-led war on Iraq. Pinter's dotty, ludicrous political positions put them in mind of the morose characters in his plays.

All orbituaries written in his honour sound as if taken from a drama course book; none fails to mention his adjective - pinteresque, his pause, his dark, uneasy world. Occasionally, he is described as a comic. The way you understand Pinter depends largely on the way you see (read) his plays. Nevertheless, having read and watched his interviews, the interviews of a man who once was a repertory actor, performing in out-of-the-way places of the Great Britain, one can only be certain that his plays were not mere philosophical explications of a general hopelessness and uncertainty. He is a Bekett, but a unique one, more direct, more accessible Bekett, a Bekett put into a genre. Pinter knows how to tell a story, especially in its first, action layer; it is a story audience can relate to without nodding slowly as its metaphysics enters their lives. That is probably where the mixed terms used to describe Pinter come from. His characters are all fools, but so are we; although we just watch and they take an active part, we all know that there is something in the wind. The only difference lies in how we accept it - to them who live their lives it seems natural, whereas we see it as a scandal, madness. We are taken aback by what our seemingly decent neighbours say.

Pinter treats his middle-class (or lower) characters as laboratory mice as he puts them in enclosed and seamy rooms, often windowless and airless, and sets their ways. Then he watches, expecting the worst to happen, though he allegedly hopes for the best. The trick is that the end of the play does not end the problem. In fact, it goes on, for the problem is only taken over by the audience, the young who connect with the characters through their character, spirit or speech. They all seem to share one, universal endless soul. As such, they are all tragically unfinished and foolish; not fools yet - they are borderline cases, though. The time and the place around them also become foolish. Or have the time and the place made them foolish in the first place?

Politically, he draws the distinction between winners and losers, but keeps them imprisoned in their little shelter, in constant fear from each other. None of the thoughts they get and convictions they have is absolute, except for a short moment when memories of the past cause them to burst. They live on those memories, even more so as they grow old. 'Because a man glows to one man only, once in one's lifetime, and that is all'. Ljudmila Petruševska, a Russian author.

As such, Pinter kept emerging, like a consistent ray of winter sun from his first play ' The Room', followed by 'The Caretaker', Buster Keaton-ly choreographed 'The Birthday Party', the famous "Homecoming" , all to his more recent "Party Time". He was a screenwriter as well; he received Oscar nominations twice, but was still awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Although he was a screenwriter and an author, he never stopped directing and acting in plays, often with scripts he produced himself. (There is an anecdote where he is at a rehearsal of a play he wrote. A man, dissatisfied with his acting informs him with typically British subtleness that the writer had put a pause there for a reason. To that, Pinter, the writer responds: 'And you think he would dislike what I am doing?')

His brilliant vivacity, even when something unbearably and mysteriously dark is happening, probably has a root in his well-practiced acting performances. Therefore, his last acting role in Beckett's 'Krapp's Last Tape' should not be seen as a farewell gesture, but as pure fun, a wink of the old fox - a wink to keep death at bay, for many, many years to come.


A part of an interview

A scene from 'The Birthday party', directed by William Friedkin


(Published: 10.01.2009.)