I’d hoped for more out of the final
film from Robert Bresson, and though I was ultimately disappointed, I cannot say
that it is not a fitting picture for his directorial swan song. Bresson made films about people that hurt
others—but not necessarily other people—out of ignorance, shame, and greed, and
L’Argent (1983) certainly fits that
bill. It is not a film on the level of Bresson’s
best work, which is Au Hasard Balthazar
(1966), or his most exciting, which is A
Man Escaped (1956), but like both of those works it does manage to feel
broad in scope despite a focus on relatively few individuals.
Based on the Tolstoy short story “Faux
Billet,” the film spends much of its first hour following the path of a forged
500-Franc note. The bill is introduced
to the story by a young student who offers it to a friend after his father has
denied him his allowance. Where exactly
the note originated is never made clear, but like everyone who touches it for
the remainder of the film, the two students will come to act as though they
have been the victims of someone else’s crime.
They pass it off for change at a photography shop where a suspicious
sales woman eventually accepts it. Her
boss later reprimands her, but rather than turn the note in and risk a
significant loss he has his stock clerk pay a utility bill with the bogus
bucks.
 |
| I like this poster for the film, but feel that perhaps this design contributed to the idea that the picture is an out and out condemnation of capitalism, a viewpoint that I felt it failed to convey. |
The bill is accepted by Yvon
(Christian Patey), who is scolded by his supervisor for taking it as payment,
but when he returns to the photo shop with the police to point out the clerk,
the man swears he’s never seen him before.
Again, the shop owner has done all he can to avoid any losses, this time
bribing his stock man to lie to the authorities by threatening his job. Yvon is eventually sent to prison on the testimony
of the clerk and the shop owner, and there he is transformed. Separated from his wife and his child, he is
overcome with the desire to escape and seek retribution from those who put him
away.
What I find most remarkable about
this film as that so many critics’ reviews treat it as an indictment of
capitalism. Yes, that may have been
Tolstoy’s intension, but more than anything I took the film as an indictment of
the “victimless crime.” Certainly the
unscrupulous shop owner is representative of the bourgeois, but I felt the
picture spoke more to issues about the morals within class divisions than the
financial state which creates those divisions to begin with. Yvon is an innocent worker who is perhaps not
wise enough spot a phony note, but the film did not create in me the impression
that those who took advantage of him did so simply because of his class
status. Yes, it played into their
choices no doubt, but they seemed more intent to simply avoid punishment themselves. They felt that they had been had, and rather
than stop the cycle of dupery and admit their mistake, they chose to perpetuate
it. That to me is a question of morals
first and money second.
L’Argent
ends with an almost unspeakable tragedy that seems destined from the moment
Yvon goes to prison. There he’s
corrupted by that system and by the belief that there is some way to get even
for all that has happened. Thus he
perpetuates and escalates the cycle of wrongdoing. He is not a bad man when he goes in, but the inhumanities
of prison take their toll. The prison
sequences comprise only a short potion of the film, likely due to the fact that
Bresson loathed cliché in his movies.
However, I believe that more details about Yvon’s time behind bars would
have benefited this film. But perhaps
Bresson wanted there to be more questions than answer in that case, as he did
with so many things in his pictures.
As it stands, this final film from
Bresson serves as a reminder of what a wonderful filmmaker he was for a
time. It doesn’t stand up well to comparison
with his other films when it comes to their quality, but it reminds us how
powerful they were. In that respect L’Argent does have its value, but it’s
hardly the best film to start with if, say, you’re looking to introduce new
viewers to Bresson.
Language: French
Runtime: 85 Minutes
Grade: 1.5 Hats Off
0 comments:
Post a Comment