Quills

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This article discusses the 2000 English film. For the 2004 Japanese film Quill, please visit Quill (film); for other uses of the word Quill, please refer to Quill (disambiguation).

Quills
Film poster for Quills.
Directed by	Philip Kaufman
Produced by	Julia Chasman Peter Kaufman Nick Wechsler
Written by	Doug Wright
Starring	Geoffrey Rush Kate Winslet Joaquin Phoenix Michael Caine
Music by	Stephen Warbeck
Cinematography	Rogiers Stoffers
Editing by	Peter Boyle
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)	September 2, 2000 (Telluride Film Festival)
Running time	124 min.
Country	United States/United Kingdom
Language	English
IMDb profile

Quills is a 2000 film based on a play that was inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. It relates the last years of the Marquis, while incarcerated in the insane asylum at Charenton. The movie was adapted by Doug Wright from his play, and was directed by Philip Kaufman. It stars Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis, Joaquin Phoenix as the Abbé, Michael Caine as Dr. Royer-Collard, and Kate Winslet as the chambermaid Madeleine LeClerc.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Geoffrey Rush), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Costume Design. Quills won the 2000 National Board of Review Award for Best Film.

Although based on historical incidents, the movie makes no attempt at historical accuracy. It has been criticized for several distortions of the person and life of Sade. For example, Sade had written his most violent novel 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille before the revolution, not in the asylum at Charenton as the film suggests. Further, the plays Sade staged at Charenton were never of a violent or sexual nature.

1 Plot summary
2 Analysis
3 Production
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story is a fictional account comprising some facts of the Marquis de Sade's life. As in life, the Marquis writes cruel and erotic stories during his imprisonment. However, the film quickly departs from historical fact, although it never becomes quite so surreal as Wright's original Grand Guignol play.

The first episode of the movie relates an incident involving a lady, who has preyed on men, and how she meets her end, which she finds pleasurable in a masochistic way, by being beheaded by the executioner. Marquis de Sade is seen reflecting on this and penning it down, inviting his readers to prepare themselves for stories that would “stimulate (their) senses”.

The film jumps four years into the future to Charenton Asylum, where the Marquis is now confined. Madeleine LeClerc (Kate Winslet), a laundry maid at the asylum and the secret accomplice of the Marquis, manages to smuggle out the Marquis’ manuscripts under the dirty linens. Soon the Marquis’ Justine is published anonymously. Napoleon orders all copies of the blasphemous book to be burned in public, and the author is sentenced to death. However, Napoleon's advisor intervenes and recommends Dr. Royer-Collard to be sent to Charenton in an attempt to cure the Marquis from his perversions and to prevent the Marquis from publishing his works.

The ignorant Abbé is shocked when the doctor reveals that the Marquis has actually published his work. He confronts de Sade and tells him: “You are not supposed to publish them.” After this the Marquis is denied ink and paper. In the meantime Royer-Collard, the old doctor, goes to the nunnery to fetch his young bride, Simone. He is unable to provide for her sexually (except in a cruel, forcible way) and so he tries to compensate with luxury by allowing her to decorate their home in the most opulent manner. Eventually he is turned into a cuckold, and Simone runs away with a young architect. She leaves a copy of Justine under her pillow along with a note, and this throws him into a rage.

The rest of the movie follows the Marquis' attempts to publish or perform his progressively more explicit writings, whilst still incarcerated in the Charenton Asylum.

Dr. Royer-Collard favors torture as a means of treating psychiatric patients, in contrast to the Abbé, who lets patients seek creative outlets, such as theater and painting, as forms of therapy. The Abbé had encouraged the Marquis to write, but never expected his writings to be smuggled out and published.

Geoffrey Rush as Marquis De Sade.

The Abbé is pressured by Royer-Collard to restrain the Marquis. The film becomes a spiralling power struggle between the two authority figures and an author desperate to write and to have his work enjoyed by others.

It is this battle of wills that is a central focus of the story line, rather than any specific perversions associated with Marquis de Sade. The film also shows the various ways that some of the characters, including Bouchon and Royer-Collard's bride, are inspired into action by the writings of the Marquis.

The film's epilogue features several ironic twists.

One of the more important plotlines is that the Marquis' never gives in to the pressure to end his writings: in the absence of proper writing material uses a chicken wishbone for a pen, wine for ink, and linen sheets to write his new novel on. Shocked by the Marquis’ conduct, the Abbé is forced to remove all possible things from the cell that could possibly serve as writing material. But even this fails, for the Marquis writes on his clothing with his own blood. Outraged and helpless, the Abbé is forced to leave the Marquis naked and cold in a barren cell.

The climax of the movie shows the Marquis narrating a final story to Madeleine in through a relay asylum patients. Buchon is excited by the story and he breaks out of his cell and slits Madeleine's throat. Fires are set in the Asylum and Madeleine's body is discovered by her blind mother in the laundry vat. The death of his beloved not only leaves the Abbe distraught but the Marquis, too, (who appreciated the laundry maid and enjoyed her companionship) is doomed into sorrow. With the delighted approval (if not the explicit urging) of the doctor, the Abbé, bereaved and infuriated, orders the Marquis’ tongue to be cut off, as he believes that the Marquis’ story incited the patients to act as they did.

The Marquis swallows and chokes to death on the cross of a rosary which the Abbé offers to him to kiss during last rites. The Marquis’ death causes the Abbé to suffer a complete mental break and the former manager of the asylum himself becomes a patient. The movie ends with Royer-Collard introducing a new Abbé to Charenton.

The cell which the Marquis occupied is now the abode of Abbé du Coulmier, who, like the Marquis, thirsts for pen and paper to give expression to his thoughts. This time it is Madeleine’s blind mother who plays the role of the accomplice.

[edit] Analysis

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Quills is essentially a historical fiction that draws on the life of Donatien Alphonse Francois Comte de Sade, or Marquis de Sade, the controversial literary figure whose popularity was dubious. The film as an independent work of art has but little in wanting but Wright’s liberties in subverting facts to make an exciting drama needs to be scrutinized. Firstly, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned twice at Charenton and the period that Wright and Kaufmann are alluding to is the 1804 confinement. Owing to a lettre de cachet, the Marquis was subject to death. This was in accordance with Napoleon’s orders for de Sade was alleged to have written (it was a rumour) a novel Zoloe that blatantly criticized Napoleon’s wife. To make matters worse, Justine also was published and Napoleon chanced upon it.

The Marquis de Sade's family intervened and pleaded that the sentence be averted and the Marquis was restored to the asylum. Within the asylum the Marquis was allowed to write and even publish his works though under the supervision of the Abbé. The Abbé du Coulmier, played by Joaquin Phoenix is not at all a reflection or even a shadow of the actual Abbé. The real du Coulmier was a man nearly as old as de Sade (two years his junior), and his friend, perhaps because he may have shared the Marquis’ penchant for debauchery and fondness for women. The chambermaid, Madeleine is based on the real life Madeleine who was only a teenager and not a twenty-five year old lady. Her full name was Madeleine le Clerc.

Interestingly the villainous Royer-Collard who is shown to introduce such instruments of torture as the ‘wicker-cage’, ‘terror–bath’ and straight jackets was a man who actually abolished the use of these. Instead Coulmier was the one who indulged in these practices. Moreover, the laundry maid was not killed by inmates. That seems to have been inspired by Weiss’ play Marat/Sade. Also Charenton did not suffer a fire-breakout.

These deviations are possibly pardonable, but the death that the Marquis is provided with in this plot is a defying of history and fact. Not only did the Marquis not have his tongue cut out but he did not die of swallowing a cross. De Sade died in his sleep aged seventy four. In fact, the Marquis was at this time not a slim and handsome man with an admirable physique, but rather a ‘very big, very fat, very cold, very heavy, a large mass, a vulgar, short man whose head seemed a shameful ruin.' Even the dancing and singing with other inmates that indicates a camaraderie and a warm-hearted person is not a true depiction, for the Marquis was known for his haughtiness and generally disliked by almost all the inmates. Quills is therefore necessarily a fiction with very little factual content.

Despite the criticism against its factual digression it is a movie that raises several relevant questions and attempts to answer them. De Sade even in this century remains a controversial figure: one sect argues that he was a revolutionary who adopted a method very different and unique, while others consider his work to be outright evidence of unabated libertinage. Post-Freudian critics believe that de Sade was an intricate writer who wanted to explore and exploit the human psyche laying it bare, simultaneously questioning religious and political hypocrisy.

Quills is a retrospective account of de Sade’s life, and Wright and Kaufmann seem to be members of the pro-deSade brigade who argue in favour of the intention de Sade might have had. Quills is therefore an interpretation of de Sade rather than a narration of biographical fact. De Sade is portrayed as the prolific writer who wishes to expose the libertinage of the nobility and the church. In the movie Geoffrey Rush tells Joaquin Phoenix that the nobility are ‘pin heads’ who deserve to rot on the streets. Even the play Crimes of Love, quintessentially mocks the tradition of the old man exploiting a poor young girl. In fact Wright seems to tacitly address the theme of power politics that is inherent in ‘sadism’. Kaufmann perhaps deliberately shows twice the saying: “Mort aux Tyranny” where tyranny becomes synonymous with ‘power’.

There is an intended critique of the power of the Royal party through the comical figure of Napoleon whose feet are shown dangling in the air: not just because the Emperor was of slight stature, but possibly to hint at the fact that the new Royalty was losing ground. The cinematic metaphor of colour is also aptly used: several times throughout the film the colour red seems to fill the screen. This is an allusion to the period known as the Reign of Terror. The significant cutting off of de Sade’s tongue could be a visual expression and commentary on the question of censorship.

The Abbé (Joaquin Phoenix) and Madeline LeClerc (Kate Winslet).

De Sade is garbed as a social reformer with a touch of difference whose primary objective is the ‘freedom of thought and expression’ which became a byword during the French revolution. His sexuality is a secondary even a tertiary attribute. In fact de Sade in real life had had fifty seven sexual intercourses with Madaleine but in the movie the Abbé informs the audience that Madeleine died a virgin.

De Sade is eulogized and he becomes a martyred hero rather than a social aberrant. De Sade had been imprisoned several times and once in particular on account of having invited a prostitute, indulged in foreplay and then diverting into socially obscene actions: he masturbated into a chalice, called God a ‘mother fucker’.

The film analyses Sade’s anti-Christian tendencies. The Abbé deflates de Sade by telling him that he is not a potent ‘anti-Christ.’ Perhaps to afford dignity to de Sade and his scorn for the debased (as he thought) Christian religion de Sade is allowed that fictive ending in which he dies of swallowing a cross, refusing Last Rites.

According to this film, de Sade was committed to truth and the movie harps on his determination to voice the truth. “Men’s natural character is to imitate… It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes," Sade had said. Quills raises this fundamental question of imitation. The Freudian implications of trying to be copious in one’s conduct. It asks: does the act of reading, thinking, or seeing invoke in us a desire to do it ourselves? How related are the libertine’s hedonism and the conservative’s repression?

The denouement makes the final clinching statement. Joaquin Phoenix’s final insanity and his zealous almost insane urge to write out his thoughts reiterate the picture of Sade as in the early part of the movie. This seems to suggest that the legacy of Sade continues. From a historical figure whose literary fame is doubtful and often criticized Sade is transformed, rather magnified into a concept – immortal and legendary.

The movie was also criticized by Neil Schaeffer, a biographer of Sade, for historical inaccuracies and for simplifying the rich and contradictory life story of Sade to a simple one of constant struggle against censorship.^[1]

[edit] Production

According to Wright, it was Kate Winslet's interest in the role, immediately following the success of Titanic, which led to the film's production.

Key smaller roles in the film are played by Billie Whitelaw as Madame LeClerc, Amelia Warner as Royer-Collard's child bride Simone and Stephen Marcus as the inmate Bouchon.