O Dinheiro

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"They are not intrinsically evil, but their behaviour has evil consequences." - Bresson

Economist Frederic Bastiat once wrote "the parable of the broken window", in which he examined the economic implications of a boy breaking a shopkeeper's window in a fictional town. After the window's destruction, so the parable goes, the townspeople then observe that the shopkeeper will need to pay a local glass-maker to fix his window, that the glass-maker might in turn spend these earnings at a bakery, that the baker would then spend this profit elsewhere, and so on. Therefore, the townspeople conclude, the broken window turns out to be not a loss, but rather a stimulus that starts an unending ripple effect of new economic activity. Rather than a problem, the boy's act of destruction seems to be a way to give the economy of the fictional town a boost.

Bastiat's point, however, is that whilst this "stimulus" is easily observed, there is a corresponding absence of spending, along with motions elsewhere within the system which go on unseen. For example, forced to spend his savings on a replacement window, the hapless shopkeeper is now unable to pay for other things, like a new display case or shelves. The expense of buying a window is thereby a silent, unseen loss of potential business expansion. So while the glass-maker may benefit from the increased business in the short term, it has come at the expense of others. Overall, the total wealth in the economy has been decreased by the cost of a window.

Indeed, if wealth could somehow be increased by breaking windows, why not break every window in sight? If a glass-maker's increased business constitutes economic gain, why not destroy the entire town so that the whole population could be put to work rebuilding everything? Despite the resulting "full employment", this scenario would represent an enormous and senseless destruction of wealth. Though of course such wanton destruction is sometimes the aim; war loves profiting off destruction, and destructive cycles are often precisely what keeps our economic systems afloat.

Regardless, Bastiat's parable relates to our current economic crisis (the late 2000 financial crisis and subsequent measures, bailouts and tax breaks) in other ways. If governments can benefit economies by paying off the debts of a few, why not pay off the debts of all? Why not take on the mortgages and credit card debts of entire countries? Bastiat's answer (which even basic physics told us centuries ago): spending money creates no wealth and aggregate debt must perpetually increase. The "economic activity" we see as a result of government spending is but the transfer of wealth from here to there. Indeed, when the overhead of government bureaucracy is taken into account (and the fact that the government lends its money at zero and is then forced to buy it back at 3 or 4 percent, along with the contradictions of interest-based/issued money) it actually results in a long term loss; an entropy effect if you will. Today governments are unveiling a slew of stimulus packages which are based on the premise, or wager, that the economy can be renewed and led to wealth creation. But while such "stimulated" financial health may seem obvious or desired in the short term, it always comes at a higher cost down the road; deeper holes to fall into and future bondage.

Robert Bresson's final two films, "The Devil Probably" and "Money", are implicitly about hidden costs and the invisible currents of our economy, though Bresson is more concerned with how such things intersect with issues of spirituality, personal autonomy and existentialism. In this regard, "the Devil" of "The Devil Probably" alluded to "invisible market forces" which "influence everything". Struggling to concoct a means of ethically living within such an all-pervasive system, our hero thus opts to commit suicide, Bresson finding a certain spirituality in his hero's revocation of the material. "Money", however, presents the flip-side of "Devil": the grotesque toll living within the system has on the soul, spirit and body. Note that by this point Bresson was fully atheist. His conceptions of "soul" and "spirituality" are here more akin to a code of ethics.

The plot: the son of wealthy parents is in debt. He counterfeits 500 dollars - think of him as a central bank, printing money when it suits him - and knowingly passes this money onto a photography shop, who just as knowingly passes the money to Yvon, an oil delivery man. Yvon attempts to use this counterfeit money at a restaurant, but is arrested because the proprietors have no faith in him and his money. The word credit itself comes from the Latin word "credere", "to believe", the system as a whole fuelled by a kind of irrational faith.

Yvon then quickly descends into life of crime, before meeting a woman who offers him redemption. He murders her for cash instead and then guiltily turns himself over to the police. Like "The Devil Probably", money, labelled the new divine by everyone in the film, is seen to have a life of its own, controlling everyone and everything in society. As it circulates, humans impassively disadvantaged fellow humans, whilst the wealthy use their power to escape both the law and such "trickle down" disadvantages. In the impersonal detachment of contemporary society, money serves as the surrogate for human emotions, which are frivolously expressed through its casual exchange. But money also exhibits a near biological behaviour: virulent and infectious, the notes contaminate everyone who comes into contact with them, sins escalating, snowballing and slowly destroying souls. Yvon himself struggles to summon the will necessary to escape money's grip and the futures it foreordains. He is forever held in its sway. The film's narrative trajectory is literally from a ATM machine's mouth to perpetual confinement. It's a reverse of "Probably's" suicide: slow, pitiful and ignoble.

7.9/10 – Multiple viewings required.