Méditerranée

One of the most incredible attempt of the cinema's history. 40 minutes and a single subject (glorious ambition) : how to film the Méditeranée ? Pollet built a space of sensation, putting things in line without explicit intentions. He didn't film himself more than a half of this movie, he has just ordering things (antique ruins, corrida, dead girl after the operation, factory, Horus) according with his own obsessions : darkness, morbid & illuminate feeling, chaos ('when there is life, there is death and there is chaos' he seems to say) and pain. In France, Pollet was considered as a great film director after it - he gave a shock. We can't believe he's unknown in other country so, react !

I gave it a 10 originally, but I don't know why. Nothing happens in this movie. Literally. Sound similar?

*Wavelength.

*Dog Star Man.

Yes, that's right. Mediterranee is avant-garde- a film genre where, according to Wikipedia, are:

"people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer."

This is simply a genre I do not care for, aside from Scorpio Rising. That is unique and very good. This is not.

I'm sorry,but experimental films, for the most part, fail as entertainment.

Pollet and Schlöndorff imagine the Mediterranean as a supernal arena.

"Pays multiples faussement endormis" (A host of countries wrongfully put to sleep) - as the narration goes.

The calm of the Mediterranean is an illusion, as envisioned by the metaphor of dragons-teeth in a harbour ("both calm and disturbed"). There are moments of tender beauty such as Seurat-ian water, and scenes from a wedding. The rest of the movie shows ruins, including World War II detritus and the temple at Vassai/Bassae, extremely bloody bull-fights, and an otherworldly hospital.

Méditerranée is morbid, insect buzzing is as much the soundtrack as the composed one of Antoine Duhamel. It's not much of a surprise that it didn't really get distributed outside Europe. Pollet's movie l'Ordre, which is a documentary about a leper colony, is further evidence of his obsession. The cycle of life is turned into something macabre, with the idea being that an impostor is waiting to take over the reins from you.

The imagination of the directors is a huge conceit, an outmoded conceit. Viewers who think that Méditerranée quotations in Godard's recent Film Socialisme show otherwise, think again, Godard was always of the same cloth as Pollet, quoting TS Eliot in Eloge de l'Amour, seeing Roman soldiers march over the landscape. It's an imagination that I lost myself in though, but accepting a cultural narrative like this is going to be a tall order for most in a post-modern era.