Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Mouchette


I saw Robert Bresson's Mouchette two weeks back and was trying to write something about it ever since. But now I give up. Not just because it is forbiddingly difficult (which of course it is), but also because, to intellectualize the film's effects would be betraying its intentions. The film is such a brutal slap in the face, an angry, damning, stinging denunciation of this world and humanity itself. A young girl relentlessly driven to suicide -- is this Bresson's idea of God's grace? After watching this I think I will never again be able to see those films which celebrate "triumph of human spirit" without any suspicion. I am just wondering, and what I don't understand is, why is Bresson called a "spiritual" and christian filmmaker when his worldview (in this film) would make even Nietzsche (of his books, not the real man) flinch?

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