L'Argent

One of Robert Bresson's last films, made in 1983.
This is a film about the cycles of violence, of redemption. It can even be read as regarding the fall of mankind. Bresson is essentially a master of disaster, of gloom, of wreckage upon wreckage being piled on characters. We see how it is not their fault, how they come to represent all the struggles of mankind. And then we have the question of redemption; is it possible? Do we even want it? Here Yvon seems to become a psychopath; but does he get any more redemption than the perpetrator of ine of the original evils, the more obviously villainous Lucien. Bresson takes the further step and we see the character of sorrows kick out, ruin their own chance of holiness.
This collection of catastrophes does make his films rather predicatble; with one exception, this film could have been thematically deduced from the first twenty minutes. It makes it rather easy to drift.
Bresson talked alot about cinematographic writing, which appears to mean the balance of sight and sound. The visuals, in the distinctive manner of the minimalism and focus on the object, does have a freshness to it, though again it does not offer variety (Bresson's short lengths are really very necessary, in this respect). The sound is as innovative and masterful as ever, the amplification of the diagetic side noises, along with the ritualised scripts, given the impression of a slow stream flowing.
This film is predictable, but never strained or banal. Interesting and with a little pleasure.