User Reviews

If you don't know anything about France's Robert Bresson's concentrated work, it's almost a crime to start here- like getting into the most boring, baguette-laden video game ever, at the "expert" level. That said, this movie has some merit to it, and a dose of Bresson's twenty-something rebels could be valuable for viewers accustomed to Jason Biggs ' shenanigans. The Devil, undeniably, possesses a new way to capture discontent. A newspaper tells us of a suicide from the beginning; then there is a revised headline. It's killing now.Cut to six months earlier when, in a collective countercultural snarl, a bunch of sullen, unlikely thin Parisians lounge on the waterfront.

Our hero is Charles (Antoine Monnier), hair lank, stare blank and a floppy man-purse accessorized. He hates all: the "destructive" situationists' phony rebellion with their angry meetings, Christianity, environmentalism- even sex, it's suggested. Charles's just not in anything.The film charts its trajectory towards self-annihilation sympathetically; but the beauty of the film (as with all Bresson) lies in its focus on simple details: the clicking of shoes in nondescript halls, the fashion-spread-ready poses of sexy, ennui-laced young people. Here there is a higher dimension, not as clear as it is in the Mouchette or A Man Escaped director, but present the same thing. Hold on to something, implies Bresson, or you might fall in love with boredom itself. Look at it for the mood.

Robert Bresson was at the age of 70 when he made his 12th feature which also marked his second last film. The style is pure Bresson for its dogmatism of ideas and characters. Precise 'mise-en-scene', perfect development of aesthetics and astonishing construction of state characterize the stylistics of Bresson. The Devil, Probably is for its world view one of Bresson's most inconsolable films. It portrays Parisian youth and its consciousness but at the same brushes many current topics, such as; pollution, profusion of wood industry, slaughter of baby seals, the threat of ecological disaster, the decay of religion and politics, the cruelty of all social institutions and, the absurdity of consumer society. But as usually in the films by Bresson the essential battle is being fought inside man - in the zone of personal emotion, faith and morality.

The protagonist of the film refuses to be a part of this society. He doesn't want to compete in this rat race whose values he seems as absurd. In the middle of materialism and superficial values he tries to find spiritual deliverance from his friends and family - but can't, because they all are already slaves of this society. Eventually his friends suggest him to see a psychiatrist - the culmination of blind appreciation in our world. Thoughts of suicide begin to fill his mind, even that he can't bear the idea of being unable to see, experience and hear - Mozart's music. In the end he understands that any decent action in a corrupt world only reinforces the corruption of it and, intrinsically for a materialistic world he has to buy his own death.

An important observation is that in the development of aesthetics Bresson very rarely moves his camera. He edits and uses montage instead. This is Bressonian aesthetics; perfection of the state and composition. There are several unforgettable images in the film and together they form a spellbinding synthesis - the art of continuity; the film starts with an image where a boat suddenly enters the state and, ends with one where a man exits the state. The minimalism can be seen in both, aesthetics and narrative, and it reinforces the overall distressing atmosphere of the film.

The Devil, Probably has an incredibly pessimistic world view of the destruction of civilization but, at the same, it proves that there still is hope. How else mankind could have made a masterpiece like this? The images we observe force the viewer to think, watch closely and see the beauty in simple things. There is no love, nor hope to save the protagonist as there was in earlier films by Bresson but his unsentimental death will be remembered as the culmination of life and the mystery of it.

During the protagonist's conquest he seems to be failing miserably because there is no spiritual deliverance for him. This is the thesis of the film but, as an atheist, the Christianity of the film didn't bother me at all. The protagonist could just as well be searching for philosophy, for a deeper meaning in life - not necessarily from religion. Even that the title refers to Bresson's Catholicism it can also be read as an allegory. The Devil is the one who pulls the strings and enslaves us in this absurd consumer society. There is something much deeper, something that goes beyond the limitations of religion.

Ecology and other current issues are just part of the frame-story. The film goes much deeper in humanity studying themes, such as; the fragility of materialism, pressure of urban living, soul searching, superficiality and vacancy of modern life. In addition for its pessimistic world view of the destruction of civilization, the film is a remarkable masterpiece which proves that there still is the consciousness of man that will set us free from the chains of materialism and irrationality.

"Isn't there a limit to doing nothing?" – Michel (The Devil, Probably)

"Sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do." – Zizek

Robert Bresson's "The Devil, Possibly" opens on a newspaper headline which informs us that Charles, the young son of a wealthy property developer, has committed suicide. The film then proceeds to document the key moments leading up to Charles' death.

At first glance, "Devil" doesn't resemble Bresson's previous film. Early portions, in which French radicals rage against capitalism, scream mid career Godard. Gradually, though, Bresson's personality appears. If "A Man Escaped" was about rejecting a passive acceptance of God in favour for action and self-actualisation, its caged hero struggling to latch on to a sort of Sartrean "authenticity", then "Devil" posits the opposite. Here, the young Charles, a dejected kid with forlorn eyes, rejects action outright, accepting his own impotency and making the ethical choice to cease participating in a world which he deems abhorrent, which he can no longer support and which he knows cannot be changed through revolution, religion or politics. Committing suicide, in other words, becomes a moral statement, Charles not only the ultimate dropout, but the poster boy for radical non participation.

"Do you get pleasure from non action?" a psychologist asks Charles, hours before his death. "I'm perfectly aware of my superiority," he replies, "but if I did anything, then I'd be useful in a world that disgusts me." It's not only that Charles is crippled by his intelligence, but that he is both unable to find an "outside" of capitalism and is unable to ethically justify operating within it. It then becomes easier for Charles to imagine the end of all life than the end of his political-economic system. A system which, because it consists of an endless Eternal Now, no longer allows for a future.

Charles flirts with resistance at first – he hangs out with other disaffected youths and activists – but eventually rejects their "shocks to the system" outright. Their subjective outrage to violence and immorality simply blinds them to the objective violence endemic to a socioeconomic order in which they themselves are perpetrators of violence and not just innocent bystanders. Buy a stick of dynamite to hurt the machine, and your dollar fuels the machine.

What Bresson and all great directors were concerned about during this period, was the question of where political and revolutionary agency now lies. Where did the political radicalism, hopefulness and sense of urgency of French youth (and cinema) of the late 1950s and 1960s go? What Bresson finally hits upon is not post 60s political disillusionment and despair, not the rejection of all politics, not the admittance that political engagement turned out to be infinitely more complex than simple Lefts versus Rights, but the need for total fking suicide. This is a form of nihilistic conservatism, but intellectually, and ethically, Charles has no other choice. Ironically, even Charles' suicide is quickly commodified. He thinks techno-capitalism's the devil – the invisible hand which guides all things - and yet is forced to pay a friend to help him die (and 200 francs to his psychologist!).

Incidentally, Bresson's film was released at the same time as "Star Wars", one of many "fight the power!" orgasms routinely churned out by Hollywood. Lucas' bombastic climaxes were the kind of thing parodied at the end of Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point". Antonioni's climax was not an attack on consumer culture, as many think, but an attack on a cinema image bank that sells a specific, and desired, violent fantasy; the possibility of an apocalyptic purge. What Antonioni was concerned about was the seductiveness, flatness and perhaps impossibility of a very leftist fantasy.

As "Devil" unfolds, Charles' friends begin to deem him mad. Charles, though, recognises that capitalism requires psychosis. He thus views THEM as being insane; hypocritical apologists who offer nothing but distractions and dilutions and who unwittingly fuel a brutal machine. From here Bresson then splits the film in two, using heavily symbolic scenes and dialogue to examine where exactly, if at all, political agency now lies.

In "Devil's" first half, political agency is shown to reside with the masses; church gatherings, political rallies, bookshops and various group activities. Things then begin to fall apart after a bus scene, in which jaded radicals state that "maybe society is not run by us, but by the devil and other obscure forces". Inexplicably, the driver of the bus then stops and gets off. The point: both their radicalism and their very social order has no leadership, no conscious driving force. Who then controls things? The Devil, probably; the market's invisible, amorphous hands.

From this point onwards, the "group" disappears and Bresson focuses on Charles. Agency and morality now lies solely with the individual, but the only revolutionary action is seen to be suicide. As capitalism has no outside, Charles will remove himself rather than risk support. But this itself is merely a kind of apoptosis or programmed cell death, Charles' self annihilation becoming the very self-defence mechanism of his socioeconomic order; a "suicide switch" which gets rid of all contaminants, individual cell destruction rather than the death of the socioeconomic super-organism itself.

Typical of Bresson, the film is slow, sparse, heavily symbolic and filled with shots of faceless people and anonymous, tired bodies, all of whom have long succumbed. Though much hated, "Devil" has many supporters. Rainer Fassbinder loved the film and threatened to quit the 1977 Berlin film festival unless it won an award (clips of it are included in Fassbinder's "Third Generation"). Musician Richard Hell dubbed "Devil" the "most punk film ever made". Claire Denis, Leos Carax, Nicolas Klotz, Dennis Cooper, Elisabeth Perceval and Olivier Assayas all likewise champion the film heavily.

8.5/10 - Worth two viewings.

(WARNING: This review contains spoilers)

Was Bresson a 'materialist' or a 'transcendentalist'? For those new to Bresson this might seem a reasonable question-and it still is, to a point. Like it or not, Paul Schrader's theory of transcendental style still seems to be floating about out there (despite lofty opposition in Bresson scholarship from Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kent Jones). When I first started studying Bresson, I was immediately driven to two writers: Susan Sontag and Schrader. Why? Probably due to their name-value, and I think that many before me have taken this path as well. Which is a shame. For while the labeling of Bresson's film style as `spiritual' (pace Sontag) or `transcendental' might be suitable for his earlier films, the later ones, including Le diable, probablement, which is expressly secular, 'sensuous,' atheistic and contemporary, defy the applicability of such terms.

A shot of a nude Michel getting out of a tub in Pickpocket would have seemed awkward, even disruptive, yet this is exactly the kind of scenario in which we find Le diable's protagonist, Charles. A question worth asking ourselves is how Bresson has changed as a filmmaker so that he can come to include such an image in one of his films. As one comes to realize that one is being asked to 'look at' and 'feel' the texture of Charles' flesh, one comes to the point of the film-a fascination with surfaces as surfaces, their textures and ultimately their 'penetrability.'

One must recall a key distinction between Le diable and Bresson's best known works-his 'prison cycle': Pickpocket, Un condamne a mort and Le proces de Jeanne d'Arc-and that is that the former is in color. This might seem to be a platitude to some, for color has become an integral (and overlooked) part of film language. It is telling that nowadays the use of black-and-white stock is viewed as an 'artistic statement.' For an artist as careful and rigorous as Bresson, who began making black-and-white films, the use of color was the reverse-it is not coincidental that all of his films after and including Une femme douce (save Lancelot du lac) are set in the modern city. The use of color renders the image more complex, opaque; the eye has more difficulty attaching itself to one object in particular (the 'surroundings' captured in the frame become just as interesting as the central figure(s)). It would seem, then, that as Bresson sought to depict the toils of the individual in contemporary urbanity, he also became more interested in the environment that surrounds the individual.

This preoccupation with surfaces leads, in Le diable, to an investigation of their penetrability. To what degree are surfaces-images, sounds, persons, characters-seductive? While 'surfaces' can make us feel and react, to what extent do they truly convey meaning? Charles, it would seem, is impenetrable to the tools of excavation available to moderns (that is, to the friends, professionals that surround him), and as such, he is an emblem of Bresson's explicit refusal to acquiesce to our modern preoccupation with penetrating surfaces and extracting meaning. Bresson stops us at the surface of the film and denies access to a comfortable interpretive stance. 'Who is Charles?' and 'why is he so miserable?', the other characters ask. And this is a telling point.

In Le diable, many questions are asked (about Charles and the many problems, environmental, political, that afflict the world), many theories and answers proposed. Yet none are sufficient. This is a film in which Bresson denies the importance, efficiency, and even validity of discourse. Charles is confused, and this confusion is either spawned or enhanced by trivial, quasi-academic discourse. And so, to avoid contact with discourse, Charles rushes to pleasures of the flesh to remind himself that he is still human. Since he cannot locate the source of his angst and disenchantment by way of exchanges with others, he retreats into himself, making up his own social rules as he goes and snubbing those already in place. Charles is a young contrarian without a purpose, thus his singular pursuit of Eros. The perspective the viewer has of this pursuit is external and fragmentary; one 'sees' Charles and his episodic wanderings, yet one does not participate.

To paraphrase Keith Reader, Charles is the most unsympathetic of Bresson's protagonists. His point of view is cold, illogical, unfamiliar, and unprogressive. The film presents itself as a death-march, yet the final moment seems arbitrary-it just so happens that this time he succeeds (he attempts to take his life a few times prior to the film's 'climax'). In the end, Charles is an elusive character; we are unable to figure out his complexities. As a result, the characters with whom we identify are Charles' friends, who at different points employ various methods to either dissect him, or engage him and inject purpose or passion into his existence (Edwige and Alberte are not battling themselves for his affection, they are battling Charles, who displays varying degrees of indifference to both, unlike Pickpocket's Michel, who is 'saved' by his affection for Jeanne and hers for him).

Bresson, in showing the world and its surfaces as dazzling (or at least attention-grabbing), restricts the viewer's connection to the film to the realm of the purely visual and auditory, denying ultimate access in the form of narrative engagement or understanding. Naturally, this makes the film a challenge to watch. But the experience is not unrewarding. The film is, among other things, a healthy reminder of the limits of film as a medium of communication that works toward social amelioration. One should recall that Le diable was released in the aftermath of the failed revolution(s) of the late 60s, and works very much to capture the vacuity left in the wake. Some have compared early Bresson to Pascale, in his worldview and fragmentary style. I would compare the Bresson of Le diable to Emile Cioran, who wrote in fragments that were consumed by a stinging pessimism.