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 story calmly turns bleak and horrific violence creeps calmly in at the end. And then the film is over, and the viewer is left to interpret within all the vast, suggestive space that good art provides. Of courseBresson is too wily to suggest an agenda or design: he writes his proof, drops the chalk, and exits left, and all that remains are the governing equations for one particular wretchedness rippling out from a small and seemingly inconsequential moral perturbation. Each film a theorem, building over time to a mechanics of the soul.
I like this film, much as I like every Bresson film I have seen. But as a mathematician with an abiding interest in Catholicism, I almost feel I have no choice: if any art is to speak to the ethical reductionist, it is the art of this austere, intelligent, and baffling French filmmaker. In interviews,Bresson comes across as a man of great feeling. But after the camera has blandly panned the shattered skulls of the children, and the assassin has calmly announced his guilt to a crowd of strangers, and the Law slowly gathers in a gentle and uncertain body, confused, unbelieving, and the film ends there, I am tempted to ask: about what, exactly, doesBresson feel strongly? The tears and anguish of human existence? Or the elegance of his QED?
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 story calmly turns bleak and horrific violence creeps calmly in at the end. And then the film is over, and the viewer is left to interpret within all the vast, suggestive space that good art provides. Of courseBresson is too wily to suggest an agenda or design: he writes his proof, drops the chalk, and exits left, and all that remains are the governing equations for one particular wretchedness rippling out from a small and seemingly inconsequential moral perturbation. Each film a theorem, building over time to a mechanics of the soul.
I like this film, much as I like every Bresson film I have seen. But as a mathematician with an abiding interest in Catholicism, I almost feel I have no choice: if any art is to speak to the ethical reductionist, it is the art of this austere, intelligent, and baffling French filmmaker. In interviews,Bresson comes across as a man of great feeling. But after the camera has blandly panned the shattered skulls of the children, and the assassin has calmly announced his guilt to a crowd of strangers, and the Law slowly gathers in a gentle and uncertain body, confused, unbelieving, and the film ends there, I am tempted to ask: about what, exactly, doesBresson feel strongly? The tears and anguish of human existence? Or the elegance of his QED?
Comments