Francofonia

Aleksandr Sokurov's Francofonia is an audacious exploration of art, power, and historical memory, defying traditional cinematic categorizations. It hovers somewhere between experimental non-fiction and a dreamlike essay film, offering a fragmented, yet visually poetic reflection on the Louvre Museum and its entwinement with French and European identity. While the film's conceptual ambition is undeniable, its execution oscillates between enthralling and disorienting, leaving the viewer in a state of contemplation-though not without moments of frustration.

From a technical standpoint, Francofonia is a masterclass in Sokurov's signature visual style. The cinematography evokes the textures of classical paintings, with muted tones and painterly compositions that envelop the viewer in a tangible sense of history. Sokurov's camera glides through the Louvre's corridors, transforming the museum into a living entity. His use of archival footage interwoven with contemporary sequences and re-enactments creates a layered narrative tapestry, though one that occasionally feels too fragmented to fully resonate.

The film's sound design and musical choices add another layer of complexity. Sokurov's narration-delivered in a contemplative, almost melancholic tone-acts as a philosophical guide, though it can veer into opaque soliloquies that risk alienating the audience. The integration of historical soundscapes with modern audio elements underscores the timelessness of art while subtly reminding us of its fragility.

Performances by the actors portraying historical figures, such as Jacques Jaujard and Count Metternich, are understated yet effective, capturing the quiet tension and mutual respect between these two unlikely collaborators. However, the symbolic appearances of Napoleon and Marianne, while visually striking, feel overwrought and detract from the film's thematic coherence. These moments attempt to inject a mythic quality into the narrative but come across as heavy-handed and repetitive.

One of the film's most compelling elements is its philosophical inquiry into the relationship between art and imperialism. Sokurov doesn't shy away from pointing out the Louvre's history as a repository of plundered treasures, raising provocative questions about cultural ownership and the ethics of preservation. Yet, his meditations often lack clarity, leaving viewers to wade through abstract musings that don't always coalesce into a clear argument.

As a companion piece to Sokurov's earlier Russian Ark, Francofonia is both a continuation and a departure. While Russian Ark dazzled with its audacious single-take structure and cohesive narrative flow, Francofonia opts for a more fragmented and introspective approach. This shift in style is both its strength and its weakness: it offers moments of profound beauty and insight but also tests the viewer's patience with its meandering structure.

In the end, Francofonia is less a film about the Louvre than a meditation on the intersections of art, war, and human ambition. It demands a viewer willing to engage with its complexities and forgive its indulgences. For those seeking a traditional documentary or a straightforward narrative, this may feel like an exercise in pretension. But for those open to Sokurov's idiosyncratic vision, Francofonia offers a singular-if uneven-cinematic experience.

Revered Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's paean to the Louvre Museum and mankind's art treasure is an inventive genre-buster but also a bemusing underachiever. Reconstructing the scenarios of Louvre under Nazi occupation during WWII, Sokurov blots out the distinctions between documentary and fiction filmmaking: archival documents and vintage photos, recurring shots of an anonymous apartment at present where video footage of a struggling cargo ship amid the choppy ocean is playing on the computer, interlaced into a lax narrative re-enacting the story between Jacques Jaujard (de Lencquesaing), the director of the French National Museums and a Nazi officer, Count Franz Wolff-Metternich (Utzerath), predominantly, their so-called Kunstschutz (art protection) movement during WWII, which has spawned a feeble Hollywood dramatization, George Clooney's star-studded THE MONUMENTS MEN (2014).

Yet, the film's overall effort fails to pass muster as a competent infotainment which dissects the cardinal situation where arts and warfare corralled together, Sokurov's platitudinous commentaries breathe with a wisp of solipsistic sentiment, although perambulating inside the Louvre is inherently enchanting, and Sokurov's slick camera-work guides viewer to the ensconced masterpieces with his trademark aplomb and dexterity, not to mention the awesome temporal morphing panorama feat. Personally, the segment where the camera slithers around a mummy exhibit is quaintly numinous. But our tour is often interrupted by a resurrected Napoléon Bonaparte (Nemeth), repugnant and irksome in his boosted egoism, and Marianne (Korthals Altes) repetitively uttering the incantation of "liberty, equality and fraternity", when you have the entire Louvre at your feet, but we are only allowed to glance at such a limited purview, rank dissatisfaction inevitably materializes. Stripped off the "single take" stunt with which he has stunned the world in Russian ARK (2002), this belated pendant work haplessly betrays that Sokurov's ambition and talent has ebbed away significantly, especially when his disaffected grouse can be overtly detected through counterpointing the disparate circumstances between France and his fatherland, a close-minded overtone of editorializing writ large woefully.

After "Russian Ark" (2002) this is Sokoroev's second film about a museum. After the Hermitage in "Russian Ark", this time he meditates about the Louvre.

The film has not a real plot but is build around various contrasts, none of which was very convincing to me.

In the first place the film seems to suggest that while the Hermitage is real Russian (in "Russian ark" Sokoerov used the Hermitage to explain Russian history) the Louvre is not real French, containing too much art from abroad. To accentuate this point there are scenes in which Sokoerov himself has contact with the captain of a ship transporting art. I don't think Sokoerov's point is very convincing. I don't know how much of the collection of the Louvre is foreign in origin but I do know that the Hermitage is very proud to have more Rembrands than the National Museum in Amsterdam.

The second (and in my opinion best) contrast the film makes is the relation between the German Metternich and the Frenchman Jaujard. The order of Metternich is to rob as much art for the Third Reich as possible. The job of Jaujard is to protect the collection of the Louvre. Both men are civil servants in the depths of their soul, so Metternich goes at great length to obey the orders of his (culturally barbarian) superiors as minimalist as possible. In this regard the job of Jaujard is more easy than that of Mademoiselle Villard in "The train" (1964, John Frankenheimer). Mademoiselle Villard also has to protect the collection of a French museum but has in Franz von Waldheim an opponent that was far less understanding. As a result "The train" has far more action than "Francofonia".

The last (and in my opinion most puzzling) contrast is that between Marianne and Napoleon. Both of these prominent figures of Fench history are wandering through the Louvre, but what do they symbolize? It becomes clear that Marianne symbolizes the values of the French revolution. Values that have become worn out over time. Where Napoleon stands for remains a mystery (to me).

Sometimes what we've seen before is enough. Director/ Writer Aleksandr Sokurov, who did so well with 'The Russian Ark,' a seamless, one-long- take tour of the Hermitage, does fails heavily with the Louvre. The computerized opening is mere gadgetry; a sour Napoleon brags about the art he stole for the Louvre; Marianne, the personification of France, appears serially, glumly droning Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité rather too often. Earlier Mariannes (e.g. Bardot, Deneuve, Casta) were at least lookers. Too much time is spent on stuff long-since covered by 'Monuments Men' and at least one TV documentary on the Nazi occupation and art looting. As nothing new is added, 'bored stiff' will have a literal meaning unless your theater has really good seats.

This is the last Aleksandr Sokurov movie I'll ever see. I'm sure this guy means well, but his cinematic instinct isn't very entertaining, even though someone with money clearly thinks otherwise.

I recently visited the Louvre. It is far more impressive than you would think seeing this movie which attempts to avoid responsibility for showing it to you by purporting to be an brief account of it during the German occupation. It fails even at that rather small ambition.

There are a few flashes of adequacy but they're so few and far between that it's not worth sitting through it all. Watching this was a big waste of time.