Le lieutenant Fontaine : "While waiting in the courtyard, I'd gotten used to the idea of death."By Robert Bresson
With François Leterrier and Charles Le Clainche
I can't recall how I met this film. The rating, story and era encouraged me to see it
1943 in the French town of Lyon, World War II is raging and France is occupied by Nazi Germany. The movie starts in a car with three men on the backseat. Two of them are handcuffed together, and the third one is loose because the one in the middle has a broken arm on the left so he has no handcuff there. When the car stops to let a tram, the man opens the door and makes a run for it. He is caught and beaten up then put into jail. This is Fontaine, a resistant, and this film will methodically follow his slow, patient plan to escape.
This movie is one of the most bare and methodical I've seen. Every detail is narrated and the slow process of, for example, moving planks of wood from his door is detailed minutely, a work that took one month and had to be covered up every day. More than a film, this might be a documentation of the true story of a prisoner, or at least that is how it felt. Every single noise has a meaning - footsteps in the hallway, rocks under feet, Morse code against the wall, spoon scraping against the soil etc. The intro is in fact a note from the director saying he tells the story without ornament and that is exactly what it is.
This movie felt real. Is it a good thing to aim for such realism? In this case, definitely. I don't know if it would be the case for any story but this was perfect. The viewer is stuck with Fontaine in the cell and they both want to escape. I wouldn't call it a perfect movie, but it's a perfect telling of a true story. I really enjoyed some details--for example, I think it was an awesome note of suspense when Fontaine gives the priest a note of everything he did in order to escape in case he doesn't make it. The viewer is then taken back, realizing that maybe he died while escaping or he got caught and we only know the story because of that note he gave the priest. It takes away the certainty we had that since we were being shown a true story, then the main character must have lived to tell the tale.
The movie will appear a little slow to anyone used to the contemporary standards. I guess this shows a thriller doesn't have to create anything more than a threatening environment. The dialogues aren't really important either as the narration tells us pretty much everything there is to know that the action doesn't reveal already. In any event, dialogues had to be short as the prisoners were constantly reminded that they couldn't talk to each other.
I liked: Creative and crafty, I wouldn't be surprised if the real instruments used in reality were recreated. Importance of sounds.
I disliked: Slow paced. Hard to distinguish the work of the film maker or the author.
80/100
A true thriller without any fast paced action. Skillful.
No comments:
Post a Comment