La Mort de Louis XIV

This film features stunning period accuracy and exquisite silence until, bafflingly, the Kylie from Mozart's Mass in C minor comes blaring across the soundtrack. Music from 60 years after the events of the film, written by an Austrian. Make it make sense.

Acting, set design, writing, sound, and costumes all superb.

I don't have much more to say about this film but I have to write another two hundred and twenty seven characters to have this review accepted by I em dee bee for some reason so the typing continues.

Anyway it's really my kind of movie and for the right person, they'll love it, especially if they can ignore this bone-headed music cue.

I expected a slow movie, with not much action going on. I mean, it's about a guy dying, so that's says it all.

But my goodness, I didn't expect such a lack of activitiy. Everybody seemed to move in slow motion. Everybody seemed to TALK in slow motion. It got to the point where I seriously checked if this movie is a satire. Because in no way this reflects actual events in those times.

One of the most disturbing (or hilarious) scenes was the one were Louis wakes up at night, feverish and sweaty, and asks for some water. First, he has to ask several times because there is no servant in the room with him. Finally, a door opens and a very sleepy person stumbles in, has to be asked several times again before he - after a ridiculous amount of time - enters again with a glass of water. Now, the water is served in the wrong kind of glass and Louis refused to drink it.

Okay, I get that this scene was about how etiquette was more important than dying of thirst in those days. Maybe it was, I don't know. But the whole set up lacks every understanding of the importance of Louis XIV, and how the court worked. It was an absolute honor to work and live in Versailles and only the best of the best (the creme de la creme) of servants would make it to being a personal servant of him. And they would run, fly, to fulfill his every wish. It would be like serving Queen Elizabeth, only multiplied by a 1000 times. It's completely unthinkable that there was no servant present and some stupid incompetent person was the only one to attent to Louis, in slow motion.

There were much more mistakes like this in the movie. So I decided to view it as a satire. It's actually not so bad as a satire. Oh, and some parts I doubled the speed. That helped a lot too.

The biggest wonder of this film is that it had most of its audience sitting all the way through. For almost 2 hours of every minute detail of the last days of Louis the 14th, the greatest king France has ever known. Truth is though we do follow every minute detail we don't really see every thing. In fact what we do see is mostly close ups of the faces of the protagonists (mostly the face of Jean-Pierre Leaud who does a superb work as the dying king betrayed by his body, but keeping his mind sharp to the very last moment), we often only get to hear whats taking place while we keep on seeing these close ups. The result is a very beautiful, claustrophobic film, with very little plot development and very little action. Theatrical in the most cinematographic way - namely it's very theatrical but we always get to see it through the eye of the camera, did I forget to mention loads of close ups. So I did stay focused all the way to the end. And I do appreciate the technical mastery of the director and the cinematographer. And the acting was first class. But there's too little of any other element that could make it into a real masterpiece.

I totally agree with the assessment of the first reviewer: it is a beautiful, claustrophobic film with very little "drama". One thing I would like to add is that the film depicts the dying king with great respect and dignity. Having touched by death of elderly family members in recent years, I appreciated the film's compassionate and dignified portrait of Louis XIV and the people who served him closely. There is no political intrigue or ugliness in the film. It quietly and matter-of-factly tells a story. So even though the film's main theme is death, it is not a depressing film and you leave the theater marveling the fine acting of Jean-Pierre Léaud.

This is certainly a film that does what it says on the tin. The sole focus of the film is the death of Louis XIV the Sun King and it is interesting that the sun is notably absent from the film which for the most part resembles a series of Rembrandt paintings in its lush tones surrounded by darkness. This is not an exciting film, in fact it is quite boring in parts. But then that is death, as anyone who has sat watching over an aged relative will know. It is quiet, it is slow, drawn out over hours and days in hushed tones. This is the king of France, one of the most noted kings of France, and here he is fading from life like any ordinary person. Attended and fussed over but unable to stop the enevitable decline or gain much comfort. If I have a quibble it is that the dialoge is often painfully slow and dull in a manner that is, I feel, a bit of a cliché in this type of film. It fits the mood but was, I felt, somewhat overstated.