Francofonia, le Louvre sous l'Occupation

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.

"Francofonia" (2015 release from France; 90 min.) is a non-fiction movie loosely about the Louvre museum in Paris. As the movie opens, we hear a certain Alexander (that would be the movie's Russian director Alexander Sokurov) in conversation with a certain Dirk, who is on an ocean liner with art in one of its containers. It's not long before Sokurov directs his attention to June 14, 1940, when German troops overtook Paris, including archive footage of Hitler inspecting the Eiffel Tower and muttering "Where is the Louvre?" Eventually, we are introduced to Jacques Jaujard, the Louvre's museum director at that time, and Count Metternich, entrusted by Hitler to supervise the Louvre's art collection for the Nazis. At this point we're not quite 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience. You'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest oeuvre from writer-director Aleander Sokurov, best know for "Russian Ark" (about the Hermitage in St. Petersburg). In fact it can be said that "Francofonia" is a spiritual sequel to that movie. Going in, I knew that "Francofonia" was about the Louvre, but didn't know more than that. And while it is true that the movie's primary subject matter is the Louvre, it is in equal measure about the WWII occupation of Paris by the Germans, and a bunch of other things as well ("why are portraits so important in European culture, whereas they are non-existent in the Muslim culture?", asks Sokurov). Even while it's not always clear what the ultimate aim or direction of the movie is, that's not a problem for me. The only jarring thing for me was the occasional and unnecessary appearance of actors impersonating Napoleon (whom we see staring at the Mona Lisa, while repeating "C'est moi!") and France. And oh yea, we do get to see a bunch of paintings and other works of art from the Louvre. In the end, I was surprised how quickly the 90 min. had flown by, so while this movie is rather strange, it certainly is intriguing and held my attention.

This movie made quite a splash at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. "Francofonia" opened without any pre-release fanfare or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati a week ago, and the Thursday early evening screening where I saw this at was one of its last, as the movie was gone the next day. I was frankly surprised how many people there were (about 10), but maybe they had the same thought as I did (better see this before it's gone!). If you are in the mood for a deeply subjective non-fiction film (but don't call it a documentary) about the Louvre, I'd readily suggest you check this out.

Director Sokurov eschews the usual form for this type of film, which would be documentary, in favor of a sort of historical drama. It switches back and forth from the present era to WWII to the 18th century. It is an attempt to explain the history of The Louvre by integrating several different phases in its existence; The acquisition of much of the artwork by Napoleon in his conquests, transporting it out of harms way before the Nazi occupation, and a contemporary recap of the logistics and hazards involved in each phase.

Can I be frank? I found the whole exercise somewhat confusing. I would get the gist of a particular scenario, only to have the director switch gears and move to another era and another circumstance, and having to readjust my focus and concentration on this new problem (where are we now?, I kept asking myself). I enjoyed glimpses of the Great Hall, the Mona Lisa and several other treasures that go to make The Louvre the epicenter of western culture. All I was asking was a little clarity.

Maybe he just could have made it a documentary.

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.

I am sorry to say: what a chore. Who is Sokurov and how does he get any producer to give him money to produce such drudgery? The man had already lost track (and sight) of his audience when he inflicted on it his overly long and deliberately confusing "Russian Ark", whose only redeeming value was its one terrific camera trick. Russian Ark, as a historical documentary, had no substance, no coherence, and displayed both huge gaps and bias. Alas, here is our mad Russian director at the task again , examining this time the Louvre museum, and extemporaneously droning on …well, what exactly is his topic? A mishmash of disconnected anecdotes, vague philosophical remarks, ridiculous or pompous -and mostly reactionary- statements on art and history. And, as he did in Russian Ark, he reprises his lethal habit of using as our "guide" an annoying character about whom we know nothing and care little about. In Russian Ark, it was an exasperating curmudgeon who literally whined about everything from room to room; Here, it is apparently Sokurov himself, seen only in silhouette as the narrator, speaking via Skype to a mysterious ship captain named Dirk, or via camera to count Wolff Metternich, or more often than not, to himself indeed while preaching to his captive theater audience. For every one good idea, 10 bad ones kick it off the screen. In the 1950s in France, was a filmmaker/playwright/actor and bon vivant named Sacha Guitry who produced, directed and acted in many self aggrandizing movies about France history ("Si Versailles m'était Conté"is the most famous), but while picking and choosing his anecdotes as director and acting in them as the narrator - like Sokurov- Guitry was always witty, fast and light on his feet: he never lost track of his audience's needs and pleasure. History was his pretext, entertainment his goal. Mr Sokurov…is no Sacha Guitry. I venture to say that, between the mysterious Captain Dirk recurrently moping on his ship, "Marianne" trolling around the Louvre with her ecstatic and repeated utterance of "Liberty, Egalité, Fraternité", and Napoleon himself running around the Louvre like a petulent child bragging "it is me!", one can actually question the sanity of the director responsible for a script as sophomoric as this. I saw the film in a Berkeley theater: the movie went on for what seemed like 4 hours -when it is only 90 minutes. Those were 90 minutes I never wish to waste again.