Based on Dosteovsky’s Crime & Punishment, Robert Bresson’s classic film about the redemption of a criminal through a personal love affair tops the annual spate of best-films-of-all-time. The ending is a bit too sweet for my taste: after depriving Michel, the main protagonist (and, subsequently, the viewer), of any human warmth for nearly two hours, showcasing an almost machine-like precision in the art of pickpocketing and the depraved lifestyle that accompanies it, we get a sudden flood of sentiment from Michel, who realizes (too late?) that love has been waiting for him all along.
Even Bresson had to admit (years later) that much of his early work with regard to spiritual redemption was a bit naïve. Still most of the film is coldly stunning. I think, however, that Bresson’s A Man Escaped covers much of the same terrain, culminates and concludes far more successfully. Here’s what Matt had to say about that film.
by Marlin Tyree | Source: Criterion Collection
25 Jun 2007 5:55 PM | Comments (2)
Blame Dostoevsky for the ending. Maybe it’s a difference of sensibility (or the insufficiency of translation), but Raskalnikov’s redemption has never left me convinced. Ditto the Dardennes’ L’Enfant, which I am apparently the only person in the world to dislike.
At least Michel gets to utter what is to my mind one of the most beautiful final lines in all of cinema: “Oh Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take.” To me, the warmth of this line is made all the more lovely by the chilliness that has come before it.
Actually, while I enjoy most of L’Enfant, I also find the ending to be unconvincing, or at least insufficient and overly sentimental.
leo
25 June 2007
3:07 PM
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