L'hypothèse du tableau volé

With enchanting aestheticism and the theological investigation of art, of its creation and speculation, of its interrelationships with cinema, in particularly the recreation of a printing in a cinematic scope. Its a stylistic and fascinating, moderately surreal work by the master Raul Ruiz, but only to an extent, afterwards, the movie creates a incomprehensible concept by both the dialogue and the exploration of the idé itself.

We begin with a narrator discussing a missing painting by the fictional painter Tonnere. We then join collector Jean Rougel, who has six other paintings by the artist. Using them, a series of people in various tableaux vivantes, minor details in each painting, and a fictional roman a clef novel, he concludes what the absent painting looked like, what the series means, and then to reject his own hypothesis, because he finds it distasteful.

Raúl Ruiz' black-and-white mockumentary can be viewed as a burlesque of the art documentary that infests high-minded television shows. It certainly goes around Robin Hood's barn to do so. It can also be viewed as the sort of detail-obsessed reasoning that infuses novels like The Da Vinci Code, the Q-Anon conspiracy, and the tendency of many modern neo-fascists to see a series of vast conspiracies motivating everything they disapprove of, with the lack of evidence engorging the reach of such conspiracies, and their failures to predict what happens next as evidence of false-flag operations, or some longer-range effort, with an exhortation to "stick to the plan."

Having been brought up in an atmosphere of evidence-based rationality, I find such hypotheses to be idiotic. I believe that you notice events, work up a hypothesis, use the hypothesis to make predictions, and use the success or failure of those predictions to verify or falsify the hypothesis. Those who believe in these elaborate theories, when confronted with falsifying events, merely make their hypotheses more elaborate, adding epicycles to the epicycles to the epicycles of their assumptions. Neither are my personal wishes and tastes matters to be considered -- although as a fallible man, I am subject to the same flaws as Rougel.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this movie is a long exercise in seeing evidence in details that, like as not, are of no importance. The fictional Tonnere's details may be significant, but they may also be simply habits, or callbacks to other works, what are called "Easter Eggs" by the the detailed-obsessed, pseudo-rational loonies that infest our society. I have better ways to spend my time than to seek out meaning in nonsense, and find works like this, making obscure digs at the despicable, a bore.

There's a blanket term in film criticism, reflexivity. Its an odd word. It denotes something where outside and inside are merged or mixed, where viewer and viewed overlap. And yet the word itself is not reflexive, it stands aloof. While the root comes from reflection, and the direct form would be reflective, the whole thing smacks of an invented concept that sterilizes the user from the phenomenon it denotes.

Its a word that drives me a bit crazy, in part because it is applied to several different types of things that have little to do with one another. The concept as used by the most prominent writers just appears as if it were built into the universe as some by-product of intelligent design, a sort of natural effect like dreaming that writers can reference.

I've tried to repair that by redefining a larger class of effects as "folding," teasing out the various types, and attempting to explain why they were invented and to serve what narrative utility. Without this, you get philosophical notions that are refined away from life; and then artists that quote those refined sugars in art as if they really indicated life.

Like we have here.

I've decided to get into Ruiz in a serious way. I saw his corner of Swann's Way and was impressed. Reader emails have indicated that he shares space with Greenaway, who I admire. So I went with this because it is supposed to be his most abstract and "pure." It is photographed by perhaps the best folded cinematographer who has ever lived.

I admit, it is clever, in a "Saragossa Manuscript" sort of way. We have several levels: us; our disembodied narrator; our on-screen narrator; a collection of actors that in a simple movie would be giving us a story and here do tableaux instead; our painter that is a narrator in seven paintings; and under that a score of narrators-in-life: families, religions and societies in knots.

The idea, the folding, is that these layers merge and shift one into another.

With a little work, you can get the point, and it is a worthwhile one.

But you can do this, all of it, with even more bizarrenesses without draining the blood and breath out of the thing. It is possible to fold all that into life and present us edges of that life, stuff that sweeps us in and gives us the stuff of structured dreams. This is an essay with some artistic vocabulary; it isn't art.

Damn the French for messing us up so. I'm sure Ruiz eventually found his way to judge from what I saw of his Proust. But this. Its worth watching as an exercise, but if you are looking for bits of cinematic bone and flesh from which to construct your being, look elsewhere. This is a cadaver.

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

This is a strange, cerebral, surreal, esoteric film. If there is such a thing as "intellectual horror" cinema, this film is it. I started to get scared and wish there was someone else watching it with me, and it barely has a plot! I'm going to have to see this film again multiple times before I feel I really understand it. If you're the kind of person who likes "My Dinner With Andre" and films by Godard, or if you do a lot of mind-altering drugs, you will probably enjoy this film. Wow.

I must say I was impressed the cinematography was amazing, the frames close to perfection and the way he built up the tension around a subject that sound more like a dreadful bore is beyond be.

The film is about two narrators, one seen, one unseen. They are both trying to explain the significant of a series of painting that caused a scandal a long time back. The film is all about theories and explanations of views but the conclusion is quite shocking I must say. Definitely a film that deserves more than it's 171 votes.

With only 66 minutes to play out it's plot the film still felt like a complete work. Fantastic direction! I must say far better than Blood of the Poet which it for some strange reason remind me a bit of.

I suppose you can call it by the slang word "artsy". It's pretty much just a lot of professional talk about various theories and stunning visual effects but the crew and Ruiz did pull it off. At least for me. An amazing film.