Francofonia is a
2015 French drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. It was screened
in the main competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film
Festival and in the Masters section of the 2015 Toronto International
Film Festival. Variety defined it as a "dense, enriching
meditation on the Louvre and specifically (but not exclusively) the
museum’s status during WWII".
Venice Film Review: ‘Francofonia’
Jay Weissberg
It will be
impossible to neatly package “Francofonia” into a brief and
accurate description, since Alexander Sokurov’s dense, enriching
meditation on the Louvre and specifically (but not exclusively) the
museum’s status during WWII defies categorization. View the trailer
and you might think the film is essentially a Sokurovian
dramatization of the uncertain relationship between the Louvre’s
wartime director and the Nazi officer in charge of preserving
France’s artistic patrimony. Watching the film, however, a larger
picture emerges, in which Sokurov, via his rather too present
voiceover, engages with Paris itself and the philosophical concept of
a great museum. More accessible than “Faust,” though definitely
not one for the History Channel, “Francofonia” will please the
Russian auteur’s fans but is unlikely to win him new converts.
Viewers who have
been following the director’s career since the early days will be
especially attuned to the way he incorporates so many themes he’s
addressed before, from the early documentaries about artists (works
by French painter Hubert Robert get handsome closeups) to his pics on
20th-century rulers and, of course, “Russian Ark.” It would be
wrong though to think of “Francofonia” as a summation, since that
word connotes a certain finality, and it’s clear that Sokurov has
much more to say about art’s often precarious journey through
history. In fact, in some ways the film feels almost like an intro
(it runs just under 90 minutes), as if the helmer’s verbose
narration were a lead-in to a fuller engagement with his musings.
A constant shuffling
of layers is one of the film’s hallmarks: It cuts from deathbed
photos of Chekhov and Tolstoy to a Skype conversation that Sokurov
has with a ship captain, then shifts to the warm glow of 1940-set
scenes between Louvre head Jacques Jaujard (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing)
and German officer Count Franziskus Wolff Metternich (Benjamin
Utzerath). In between are lessons on the Louvre’s centuries-long
construction; archival footage of Parisians getting on with their
lives during the Nazi Occupation; reflections on how portraiture
shaped European civilization; and the spirit of Napoleon (Vincent
Nemeth) walking the museum’s grand galleries, occasionally
encountering the personification of France, Marianne (Johanna
Korthals Altes).
Does it all come
together? Well, yes, if viewers think of the film as a freewheeling
poetic essay, highly personal yet captivating. The pic’s core (or
perhaps merely the hook?) is the relationship between Jaujard and
Wolf Metternich, vanquished and conqueror, and how both men were
intent on protecting the Louvre’s treasures. By the time the Nazis
rolled into Paris in 1940, almost all the works of art had already
been transferred to a series of safer chateaux across France, but the
highly cultured, French-speaking German aristocrat would go on to
defy his commanders and continue to keep France’s museum holdings
protected from deportation to the Third Reich.
Sokurov, a devoted
Francophile, ponders why the Nazis safeguarded Paris while
deliberately destroying so many cities of Eastern Europe, especially
Leningrad, whose Hermitage suffered so greatly during the War.
Perhaps it’s the same reason why we still feel a kick in the
stomach when watching footage of Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower:
Paris represents more than just France, just as the Louvre is more
than a building full of extraordinary masterworks. Napoleon, of
course, understood this, which is why so many of the Louvre’s
holdings can be directly traced to him — Sokurov has his ghost
repeatedly say “I brought all of this!” while Marianne
continuously exclaims, “Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.”
Through the
vicissitudes of time, the art itself stares back with unblinkered
directness: Assyrian winged bulls and Clouet portraits have been
bargaining chips through no action of their own, and history, like a
stormy sea, occasionally drags them down into its unmarked graveyard.
Museums act as bulwarks against such erasures, which is why Sokurov
plays with the ship metaphor via his invented Skype chats with a
captain whose cargo of art treasures is at risk of either sinking the
ship in a wild tempest or being jettisoned to save the vessel.
Whether such a metaphor works in a film already loaded with
interconnected subjects will greatly depend on how much viewers
understand what the director is doing with these sequences.
Most everyone,
however, will agree that “Francofonia” looks terrific. Working
again with noted d.p. Bruno Delbonnel, Sokurov has designed a rich
and varied palette of textures and tones that makes for constantly
renewed visual pleasures. Some images have an amber patina like the
centuries-old varnish on Old Master paintings in the Hermitage, while
dramatizations from the early 1940s have a flickering glow that
imitates color nitrate stock screened through a carbon-arc projector.
Some of these “films” are treated like artifacts themselves, with
the sound strip visible, and at other times, with the sprocket holes
showing. Oddly, no production designer or art director is credited;
the print shown in Venice has a sweeping orchestral coda at the
finale but no end credits.
Reviewed at Venice
Film Festival (competing), Sept. 3, 2015. (Also in Toronto Film
Festival — Masters; San Sebastian Film Festival — Zabaltegi.)
Running time: 87 MIN.
Production
(France-Germany-Netherlands)
A Sophie Dulac Distribution (in France) release of an Ideale
Audience, Zero One Film, N279 Entertainment presentation of an Ideale
Audience, Zero One Film, N279 Entertainment, Arte France Cinema, Le
Musee du Louvre production. (International sales: Films Boutique,
Berlin.) Produced by Pierre-Olivier Bardet, Thomas Kufus, Els
Vandevorst. Co-producers, Olivier Pere, Remi Burah.
Crew
Directed, written by
Alexander Sokurov. Camera (color), Bruno Delbonnel; editors, Alexei
Jankowski, Hansjorg Weissbrich; music, Murat Kabardokov; costume
designer, Colombe Lauriot Prevost; sound, Andre Rigault, Jac
Vleeshouwer, Ansgar Frerich; sound editor, Emil Klotzsch; line
producers, Claire Lion, Tassilo Aschauer, Ann Carolin Renninger,
Marianne Van Hardeveld; assistant directors, Alexei Jankowski, Marina
Koreneva: casting, Andy Gillet, Britt Beyer.
With
Louis-Do de
Lencquesaing, Benjamin Utzerath, Vincent Nemeth, Johanna Korthals
Altes, Andrey Chelpanov, Jean-Claude Caer. Voices: Alexander Sokurov,
Francois Smesny, Peter Lontzek. (French, Russian, German dialogue)
No comments:
Post a Comment