L'Argent

"L'Argent" (French, 1983): When I saw Bresson's 1974 film "Lancelot du Lac" in 1977, I was amazed. What a stripped down, abstract, minimalist film! How empty, unemotional, and full of dread can one film be? Well, he met this challenge nine years later with his own (and last film) "L'Argent". Imagine screen writing a very interesting, linear story (taken from Tolstoy's short story "The Forged Note"), creating many characters who occasionally cross one another's paths, but then using static, nearly frozen camera work; stiff, nearly frozen "actors" (non-actors, "deliverers of the few lines"); and no major action to depict the events of your story. The result is almost like a "recreation of actual events". If you're looking for an intelligent story, here it is. If you're looking for entertainment, powerful acting, fascinating interaction, dizzying camera work, Dolby sound or a single special effect, go elsewhere.

On the DVD for the film L'Argent, it's writer/director Robert Bresson says that he dislikes his films being called "works", because he sees each films as being a sort of "striving" or attempt towards something more and more perfect with cinematography and so on, and most specifically to strive towards truth with what's up on the screen. It's an interesting position to see from the film's own creator, because the truth as presented in L'Argent is that really of repression. It's not just the characters, or particularly the actors portraying them, or the deliberate flow of shots in a scene of violence or physical altercation or something that should be run of the mill in a crime movie. It's the society itself, and even in the subtler ways the mechanics of society, of money as well, drive along people, especially when they do wrong. Like other Bresson pictures, L'Argent is interested in man's conscience and what it is to go over the line of what makes one guilty or not based on the cruel fates of such a society, only this time even more restrained and- as the word gets thrown around so often- detached.

But I would be a little hesitant to label it outright as detached. Bresson's definitely no Scorsese, let's make that clear, and one's not going to get a camera movement that jolts you in your seat. On the other hand there's a level of low-key engrossment in the material. It's not very easy to get through, to be certain, as Bresson is all about both subtleties and hitting you over the head with the message, although not seemingly so much with the latter. His story comes from a Tolstoy short, and it seems fitting for a man who's masterpiece, A Man Escaped, also dealt with the feelings of dread against a clockwork structure where any and all feeling comes in smaller doses. The protagonist, Yvon, gets handed a twist of fate with some counterfeit money, and gets put to jail after taking a deal on a job that leads to a car crash (perhaps the one and only time, ironically of course, that Bresson probably tried an action scene like this). After a stint in prison, where coming face to face with the man originally responsible for putting him in there via the counterfeit money only brings a sense of loss in lacking revenge, he goes through a murder spree.

But a murder spree, of course, as Bresson would only do, where omitted details are all apart of the mis-en-scene and in adding an emphasis on the aftermath more-so than the actual grisly details of what goes on in the moment. There's even a moment towards the end of something out of Sling Blade, only here not so much out of the simplicity of the mind from knowing right or wrong but from the simplicity of being numbed by the experience: the lack of a conscience. Yvon is the kind of criminal that never gets shown in movies, and rightfully so. He doesn't fit into a comfortable mold, and it will be a little sluggish for some viewers, even in an 81 minute running time, to see the usual Bresson tactics going on; likely many, many takes to wear down the already non-professional actors, and this time stuck in a near-rigid control of Bresson's in an emphasis of camera over performance. As one critic pointed out, it's more like 15th century icons than usual 'actors'. And, truth be told, it's not quite as fascinating as A Man Escaped or Pickpocket because of Bresson making it tougher to get into the detachment of the main character (the lack of narration may be attributable to this, or the simple fact that perhaps Tolstoy is a hard literary nut to crack).

But as his final film, it's a good "attempt" that does progress ideas about the truth behind criminal acts, and the society that tries, convicts and houses them (there's an great little moment showing how the prisoners have to pick up their suitcases before going into the prison), and how 'normal' citizens also have a kind of repression that comes out in spurts, like with the old married couple who take in Yvon late in the film (the shot of the slap is significant, tying into Bresson's visual scheme of such acts being too easy to show on film). It's an intellectual stimulator, at the least, even as it does resist anything extremely favorable as an emotional effort. It's slightly cold and assuredly dense, but worthwhile for a certain kind of movie-goer.

On a strictly formalist level, Robert Bresson's swan song, "L'Argent" (1983, France;which directly translates to "Money"), can be regarded as Pure Cinema. That is to say, no emotions, no actions, no music, none of such "artificiality" that has customarily been associated with cinema. At best, the film (and for that matter, Bresson's entire filmography) can be described as a Cinema of Ideology.

What is strictly at work here is the "idea" of how money can corrupt and destroy the human spirit. Surely, this can be derived from the Biblical concept of "money being the root of all evil" (Bresson's Christian upbringing being almost always discernible in his films). But this is not to regard this essential commodity per se as the reason for all things evil. Rather, at least in the film's context, it's a particularly forged 500-franc note that set in motion a series of unpleasant and unjust events, with this quiet and unassuming gas station attendant named Yvon Targe at the (abysmal) center.

As suggested from the preceding paragraphs, what concerns Bresson here is not the characters themselves or the milieu they are in (the actuality), as let's say the Italian Neo-Realism would have it, but the idea of how an unscrupulous act can be the cause of another person's undoing. This is humanism in its abstraction. Thus, watching the implications and complications of the counterfeit 500-franc bill upon the lives of the characters--or upon the life of Yvon--is like watching statuesque figures ("15th-century Christian icons", as some would politely have it) being callously manipulated by their blind fate, perennially condemned to be dragged along by the turning of its wheels.

And it is Bresson himself who is the prime mover of this "wheel". In his hands, the "force" of this fate is of such a cold, detached, unforgivably rational quality that one can unfailingly have the feeling of not being able to bear it all. From the initial simple act of the two schoolboys having to knowingly spend the counterfeit money at a photography shop, to the final harrowing act of Yvon having to commit a terrible deed in the name of and as a vengeance against the money (in a figurative sense), one senses Bresson as having the big hand in this cause-and-effect chain of events.

If one gets such a feeling, it's because the filmmaker (already 82 at that time) intended it to be so. As "L'Argent" is a specimen of Bresson's own brand of Pure Cinema, he absolutely wants his exacting vision and conception to be seen and felt in each and every scene, unhampered and uncluttered by the "standard" cinematic manipulations of stylized dialogue, fancy emotions, accompanying soundtrack and contrived actions. In this specific cinematic world, the filmmaker is the cinematic god himself whose fuel for his performers (non-professional at that) is mainly his idea of how cinema should be.

(In reference to one of his films, a reviewer noted that it is Bresson himself who is assuming the different characters in the film. Curiously, the above-noted film elements are what define, not in a derogative way though, Bresson's introductory feature film, "The Ladies of Bois du Bologne".)

This, in effect, gives an entirely purist level to the filmic conception of what it means to be an auteur, formally introduced to movie lexicon by the French New Wave, as pioneered by Jean-Luc Godard. "Purist", in that, whereas the New Wave pioneers can still "play" upon the above-mentioned filmic artificialities, Bresson the auteur is no different from being a sculptor or a painter or even a novelist. It's his own soul that seeps through his work. The product is distinguished by the singularity of its maker's personality.

What makes this singularly cold, clinical method even more pronounced is how Bresson's characters always find themselves drawn into the vortex of some kind of moral and/or spiritual crisis. The intellectual thief in "Pickpocket", the desolate young wife in "A Gentle Woman", the abused teenage girl in "Mouchette", the self-destructive youth in "The Devil, Probably", the contemplative priest in "Diary of a Country Priest", and now the quiet simpleton-turned-morally bankrupt murderer in "L'Argent". Bresson's rigorous and steely formalist cinema should just be the perfect stage for the dark night of his characters' souls. Grace is attained not without some form of sacrifice and damnation of the soul.

It is this ideology that fills the mold of this filmmaker's astonishing pure art. Unrelentingly dark and morbid, perhaps, but a flickering light of salvation can still be seen through it all.

Robert Bresson tells the story of a handful of people who are manipulated by greed for the key component of capitalism: Money (originating in the form of a counterfeit bill, I'll also tell you it's based fairly loosely on a Tolstoy novella "The Forged Note"). A disturbing series of events change the lives of a few individuals and signifies how such a system can rot a human being to their core. Emotionally I connected with this film very strongly, at some points it made me sit up in my seat and shake my head in amazement. However, Bresson's directing style is very different from most. He'll pause and hold moments in time expecting the viewer to stay with him. He'll also decide to leave out parts of a film that most would deem very important (generally, he avoids showing too many scenes that are similar to each other) which can be confusing. But when it comes to paying attention to this film, you'll get much more than you give... I go back to this movie every now and then and find something new to love about it. Rating? easily 10/ 10.

The plot simple and realistic: corruption to money. Usual from the Italian neo-realism movement. The worst was that acting was just not there. People were colorless and emotionless. They were living tragedies and none of them screamed, or cried(except one scene) or laughed at all. They were non humans! It was like reading a newspaper, a dry and with not soul at all journalistic article. I'm sure that Tolstoy's novel was not like this. The story reminded me movies of the Italian neo-realism movement, yet this one was not to be compared with some masterpieces of De Sica, Visconti etc...