Bresson Truncated, Definitely
This film is unquestionably a five-star masterpiece, but be forewarned that this New Yorker release is EDITED. One notable omission occurs during the stock footage sequence of environmental destruction early in the film; the scene where the seal is clubbed to death has been cut out of this version, which of course sanitizes the horror of what Bresson is conveying about man's relationship to the world. Hoping Criterion will acquire the rights to this film as well as L'Argent, Four Nights of a Dreamer, Lancelot du Lac, Une Femme Douce, and A Man Escaped and give them all the deluxe treatment they deserve. Save your $$.
A Study of Nihilism
With a cool, quiet narrative tone & an absence of any theatricality, Bresson presents a series of tableaux involving a group of young people who confront evidence of danger & evil in the world. The tone is of disaster & imminent disaster, without redemption. Whether in hollow words of politic rhetoric or psychiatry, or in images of ecological disaster: the destruction of forests & oceans, atomic annihilation. The central protagonist is a figure who is unable to conform his despair: Outside of society & social mores he articulates his alienation & his nihilism. As with other Bresson films, the protagonist ultimately loses himself & in doing so attains a state of "grace" through his passage of suffering & loss.
The best expression of the malaise of our time!
Charles is a modern day fallen Angel and his quartet of friends ,deeply immersed in protests and committed against the pollution of an industrialized consumer society. But nevertheless is far to be satisfied, the psychoanalysis, the church, the revolution do not work out as devices and soon he will make a desperate bargain with a junkie friend
May be this film can express a late homage to the French New Wave, but I think this is a simple title. Bresson ' s stature is quite difficult to entitle.
Bresson is Bresson, unique, masterful and sublime.
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