Francofonia: Louvre Sob Ocupação

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.

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.

I confess that I am not a big fan of Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov. Many consider him the greatest Russian director of the 21st century and Tarkovsky's successor on Earth. I wasn't at all excited (euphemism!) About 'Russian Ark', I liked more 'The Sun' and 'Faust', but none of them managed to get more than a grade of 8 on IMDB from me. 'Francofonia' made in 2015, his latest project that hit the screens, did not make me change my mind.

How could I describe 'Francofonia'? Maybe we can talk about it as a personal documentary, or as a filmed essay on art museums and their place in European history, some kind of a sequel to 'Russian Ark' from this point of view. The Hermitage is also mentioned, by the way. Sokurov takes us through the history of the Parisian Louvre without going into details, without dwelling too much on any work of art. There is a central story, that of the German occupation and the confrontation in the period between 1940 and 1942 between the French administrator of the museum, Jacques Jaujard, and the head of the German section responsible for art in the occupied countries, count Wolff-Metternich, which turned into a tacit collaboration. The museum's art treasures were spared destruction and transfer as war trophies to temporarily victorious Germany. This is a story that has also been told several times in writing and on screen.

The docu-drama element is quite fragile and does not bring anything new to those who are minimally familiar with the subject. The essay part includes comments (by the director, I think) about the fragility of art and museums that house heritage treasures. To support this idea, a side story is introduced in which the commentating director talks via the Internet to the captain of a ship carrying containers (maybe with works of art?) on a stormy sea. It combines in a free collage documentary sequences, elements of docu-drama, plus slightly ridiculous scenes with Napoleon and Marianne, the symbol of France, serving as guides through the empty rooms of the museum. The commentary is vaguely poetic, null in depth of information, and slightly historically biased when trying to draw a forced comparison between the fate of Paris and the Louvre on the one hand and that of Leningrad besieged during the war and the Hermitage. In short, a personal film, which tries to be interesting and original, but only manages to be flat and pretentious.

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.

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.