Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson)

Audiences have a very clear set of expectations from film adaptations of the Arthurian legend. Chivalry, adventure, romance, shining armor. Dashing knights and deliciously bountiful bosoms. Movies in this cannon elucidate a genre as well-defined as any, but what can we expect from "Lancelot du Lac" by Robert Bresson, the French auteur who's entire conception of the cinema stands completely apart from (and in opposition to) everything we've come to understand of the medium? It took him 25 years to get funding for the project, if that's any clue.



Clearly, you can throw out the shining armor, bountiful bosoms, and adventure. Bresson's domain had always been the hidden interior, and the superficial ostentatiousness of the genre could only serve to conceal this from us. Also, most films about the knights of the round table gloss over the more barbarous aspects of the mythology, but not Bresson's. From its opening montage, we witness gloriously dispassionate decapitations, stabbings, hangings, burnings, and even temple desecration. Rivers of blood improbably squirt from even the smallest of wounds, coating their dull, dirty armor, while faceless knights casually seek out more carnage. A perfunctory introduction tells us that in the quest for the holy grail, the knights have turned on each other, dying by each other's hands as often as not, and after this brief exposition, we find the knights returned to their castle, their ranks decimated, their king disheartened. The knights openly squabble, and even the horses bay in fear, presumably tormented by the horrors they've witnessed.



Bresson's real purpose is the "why"? Why did the quest fail? Why have they turned on each other? Has God forsaken them (as Arthur openly wonders), or were they corrupted by their own greed and lust? These two opposing theories are (inconclusively) played out in the love affair between Queen Guinevere and her knight, Lancelot. Lancelot contends that their sin brought ruin to the enterprise, though Guinevere counters that only his pride and arrogance could lead to such a conclusion. They sought not the grail, she says, but God. They wanted to own Him. How could it have turned out otherwise?



Of all of his mature films (i.e., from 'Diary of a Country Priest' onwards), 'Lancelot' may come the closest, at least superficially, to approaching a more conventional narrative form that we can relate to. The tragic plot is practically Shakespearean, through Bresson does his best to subvert it's dramatic peaks and valleys. Employing entirely non-professional actors (or "models" in Bresson's terminology), they speak and move with a kind of thoughtless, glazed automatism. Their clumsy, impractical armor constantly invades the film's soundtrack, and Bresson ties together scenes with only the most minimal segues. We're often left wondering how much time has passed, our attention forcibly magnified as we strain to fill in the narrative gaps. We take cues from even the smallest of sounds, and find beauty not in any particular image - each of which has a peculiar flatness unique to Bresson - but only in their relationships, their juxtapositions.



Though many see the mystery of grace as a constant thread in Bresson's films, it's hard to fathom God's hand in the mutual annihilation of King Arthur's knights. Bresson can be accused of many things, but he has always intentionally avoided didacticism or ideology. If we learn anything from this film, we can't name it. It's only felt, brought to us through some kind of inner dynamic, an interior touch paradoxically rendered by the elimination of any exterior signs of it. How can we find feeling in a character without emotion? How can we find beauty in a 50mm lens? This is the real mystery weaving it's way through all of his films. The violence in 'Lancelot': crude, yes, even laughable by today's standards. But the mystery is there. A river of blood, bathing them and us.



Last Word: 'Lancelot' is at once Bresson's most violent and most approachable film, yet will likely not sate the uninitiated. Prepare for multiple viewings and endless introspection.

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Bergman's "Trilogy of Faith"

Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - viewed spring 2006

Winter Light (1962) - #479 TSPDT, viewed Jan 3, 2009

The Silence (1963) - #459 TSPDT, viewed Jan 4, 2009

Ingmar Bergman's so-called "Trilogy of Faith", a cinematic powerhouse, deserves viewing by anyone who loves film - art-house or otherwise. They're short chamber pieces with small casts; their plots unfold over the course of a day or two. They're visually arresting (photographed by legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist) and emotionally and intellectually engaging. They question our existence, our beliefs, our aspirations, our anxieties. They challenge our faith (and, paradoxically, our lack thereof) and beg us to examine aspects of our being that we'd probably rather forget. And they accomplish all of this without fanfare or pretension. These films are stripped down, economical.

Yes, obviously I love Bergman. But it's an appreciative love that allows for criticism. For me, each of these films trounce their predecessor.

Through a Glass Darkly, the first in the series, mercilessly drops us into the weekend gathering of a broken bourgeois family, consisting of a father, his son and daughter, and his daughter's husband. The daughter Karin suffers from schizophrenia, and was just released from an asylum, while her father David, a second-rate novelist in denial, has just returned from a long trip abroad. Minus, the son, desperately seeks his father's affection while harboring less than proper feelings for his beautiful and deranged sister, and Martin, Karin's husband, is unable to cope with his wife's illness.

Although infinitely watchable (and in the end, shocking, at least in its suggestions), I consider this the least effective of the three simply for the plethora of fractured relationships laid bare for our examination. Bergman, wise enough to resist the temptation for moral lecturing, instead attempts to examine a specific philosophical dilemma in each of these films. By his words, Darkly "conquers certainty." Frankly, Religulous conquers certainty. Darkly conquers (unintentionally) our hope, and I believe the source of this incongruity lies in the films scattered focus.

Part II of the trilogy, Winter Light, considers the plight of Tomas, a country priest. He's asked by a woman in his congregation, Karin (no, not the same from Darkly) if he will speak to her husband, Jonas, who's suffering from an existential crisis apparently brought on by rumors that Mao's China has acquired "the bomb." He agrees, but faced with a dwindling congregation and a loveless, secret affair with the atheistic and obsessed Marta (engrossingly portrayed by Ingrid Thulin), he finds that he has only doubt and self-loathing to heap upon the already suicidal Jonas.

The film's a masterpiece of quiet desperation. The opening sequence of the service in the nearly empty chapel subtly communicates the indifference, boredom, and mind-numbing ritualism that any of us who've ever been to church have had to endure. Even more fascinating is the powerful verbal battle between Tomas and Marta that takes place during the film's second act; the emotionally dizzying turns from hatred to love, defiance to subservience, foreshadow Bergman's verbal epic of the following decade, Scenes from a Marriage. For me, the only flaw sprang from the implausibility of both the source and resolution of Jonas's dilemma.

Part III, The Silence, abandons any remaining inhibitions from the first two films and dives headlong into the heart of the matter: sex and death. Because when it boils down to it, modern-day Christianity, for all its self-righteous spirituality and hypocritical proclamations, is actually about nothing more than our fear and fascination with the two most defining human experiences: sex and death. The Silence - a film about two sisters and a son who disembark their train early in a foreign land on the brink of war - is complete with nudity, masturbation, fornication, lesbianism, incest, asphyxiation, and midgets. I promise you won't soon forget it.
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Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

#34 in the list of the 1000 greatest films of all time

Ordet (directed by Carl Theodore Dreyer) seems to pop up on a lot of people's "greatest films" lists. I'm not exactly sure where I'd first seen it promoted; it may have been Jonathan Rosenbaum's Top 100 or TSPDT's 1000 greatest films. By the time I saw it top Art and Faith's list of 100 most "spiritually significant" films (a list whose definition of "spirituality" is broad enough to encompass the works of David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson), my curiosity was piqued. I added it to my NYPL leopac queue a couple of days ago, picked it up from the 96th St. Branch this morning and watched it this afternoon.

The film is set in the religiously austere Danish countryside of the mid 1920's. The Borgen family farm has seen better days, and grandfather Borgen's three sons have each incurred his orthodox wrath. Johannes has lost his mind and believes himself to be Jesus Christ. His glazed look and ghost-like figure constantly haunts the film, tying scenes together with his eerily intoned blasphemies. Borgen's oldest son, Mikkel, has rejected faith altogether, while his youngest has set his sites on marrying Peter the tailor's daughter. Peter just happens to be Borgen's arch nemesis; both Borgen and Peter refuse to recognize each others religious sect. Even Mikkel's wife, Inger, has failed old Borgen, having born only daughters.

The film proceeds at a snail's pace; the dialogue, though at times intriguing, pales in comparison to the unflinching spiritual examinations of Dreyer's contemporary Ingmar Bergman. The camera work is slow and steady; there is only one principle closeup in the film, and it comes at the film's climax. The film, based on a play, also embraces the play's aesthetics; the Borgen home set has the three-wall feel of a stage, not unlike a modern-day sitcom. What distinguishes Ordet from filmed plays and sitcoms is the camera's incessant wandering, swiveling, and panning throughout the space. It all adds up to a slow, challenging experience, and it certainly sowed plenty of doubts in my mind that the payoff would be worth the wait. My wife couldn't take it, and left just minutes before the climax.

Spoiler alert: I'm about to discuss the ending. I realize I haven't given this film much of an enticing description so far, but nevertheless, I highly recommend you experience Ordet on your own before reading any further.

The entire film up to the climax is entirely devoid of the miraculous. Their world appears as our world appears: unrelentingly ordinary. Grandfather Borgen's existence is petty at best; his son Anders becomes little more than a pawn in his spiritual war against Peter the tailor. Mikkel and Inger's existence is simple, but happy, and Anders's and Anne's love, despite the Romeo and Juliet overtones, is actually entirely prosaic. Johannes's insanity is tragic, but explainable.

Inger goes into labor in the second half of the film, and for many reasons, we expect the worst. In the middle of it all, Johannes tells Inger's daughter that he will let her mother die so that he can bring her back to life. After Inger died, I kept thinking to myself, "How hokie would it be if Johannes actually raised her from the dead." I hoped that the film would continue its rejection of the miraculous and end on a brutally realistic note, or that any miracle would simply be the miracle of the ordinary.

And so I was surprised that when Inger rose from her open casket, hugged Mikkel, and wept, I wept too. I learned something about myself. It was exactly what I didn't want, and it was shattering! Even I, an unrepentant atheist, desperately crave a world where miracles are possible. Perhaps we all do. I guess that's what gives religion its seductive power.
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