L'Argent
Robert Bresson, 1983 Watching a film by Bresson is a bit like following a long and somewhat tedious proof of a mathematical theorem. In both cases the plot advances through small, logical steps which are as consequent as they are sterile. Where the mathematician strives to relieve each step of his argument from the taint of intuition or vagueness,Bresson obtains the same reduction through the paring of character, drama, and realism, leaving in their place a sequence of abstract forms whose narrative logic we admit even as we struggle tosuppress our craving for color and life. L'Argent is a somber, bloody film. It apparently derives from a story by Tolstoy, another ardent moralist with a weakness for didactic art. This is a curiousdidacticism , however: it does not so much instruct, as sketch, small, bleak segments of human experience starkly constructed with the basic,blocky elements of standard narrative. The story begins begins calmly, the story evolves calmly, the s...