'l’argent' . 'koyaanisqatsi'

robert bresson 'l’argent' was his last film. i think what i most admire of both ‘mouchette’ which i have written about earlier and largent is the taut simplicity of the story. there are no meandering meditations, or metaphorical diversions. held together by a tightness of narrative and frame, it is through the very carefully developed clarity that complicated ideas get expressed. the movies were both so ‘constructed’ i think will be the word. the central character in l’argent is a delivery man whose life gets completely destroyed when he unwittingly uses a forged note in a restaurant leading to resulting violence on him and by him. i was reading about him on the net and i found out that he uses ‘models’ rather than actors. there is a particular way in whish they are used in the film, carefully and minimally.. i was trying to avoid the word, for some reason- but there it is. minimalism.. it made the trauma of the narrative somehow less overtly emotional and far more intellectual. i don’t think we were supposed to relate to the characters as much as try and understand and analyse their motivations and understand our own morality and ethics through them.
i don’t trust and cant relate to a wide eyed environmentalism that exults about the purity of nature and wails at the evils of man’s intervention; that harks back to a time of cave paintings and the untouched beauty of nature. are we really that separate from nature.. are we not natural? americans seem to feel this guilt far more than we do. one hour and 27 minutes of wordless , except for philip glass’ soundtrack going koyaanisqatsi in a drone periodically.. of spectacular images of nature and urbanity all trying to wake humanity up to the ‘life out of control’ that we have created. the naivety of the argument was awesome.. not that there was anything that resembled an argument – just a simplistic one liner.. ‘nature is so beautiful, man is so ugly’.

just like most of hollywood shlock.. beautifully made and terribly stupid.