O Dinheiro

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.

"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.

This is only my second Bresson, the first being "Balthazar." That was rewarding in a sort of intellectual Norman Rockwell sense. This is not.

If you don't know Bresson, he's celebrated in some film communities for his economy, his approach to cinema that supports one view of what it means to be cinematic. I happened to see this on a day I also saw a Matthew Barney project and within near remembrance of a Tarkovsky.

Watching Bresson gives the same reward as reading one of those stories that omits any use of the verb "to be," or perhaps disallows a certain consonant, or maybe more radically forbids punctuation. You're impressed by the extent to which the artist understands the medium, well enough to negotiate his way around certain conventions. But the art isn't in the artifact, its in the method, the approach, the philosophy.

So if you watch this lucidly, you'll be confronted with that philosophy, and whether you really go along with it. Really, this is serious business, because such questions are the stuff out of which we define who we are not. Sure, its cinematic, but how is what matters.

Its a matter of taking away instead of adding, of closing instead of opening, in some way of the small, the slight — but in that, colored by the influence of the insignificant. Intimacies are always small, but loves can be big. Here, it is small, and gentle.

Make your choice.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This movie is pretty strange. Although it is not a silent movie, the speeches don't last more than 10 minutes in a 90 minutes time. The story is about a truck driver, Yvon, that goes to jail because of a forged 500 franc note that he doens't know is forged. When the police catch him with the false note, he tries to convince them that he is innocent. But the man that gave him the note - and he knew that he was giving a forged note, denies that he the note to Yvon. In jail, Yvon starts seeing his live from a different angle and is tempted to escape. After been released from jail, abandoned by his wife, his life turns to murder and crime.

This would be a common movie about the fall of a man but it was directed by Robert Bresson, a director that prefers the silence to the sound, the reflection to the explanation. This style of directing can also be seen all other of his work, although this is the apex of his work.

This film expresses perfectly the affliction humanity suffers from because of it's devotion to money. It communicates at a level which is rather far beyond words and simple rhetoric, and which is easily understandable if you take the time to watch it carefully and with an open mind. It's the sort of film one should watch several times throughout life.