GRADE: 8.5
Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option.
Original Title: Le diable probablement
Director: Robert Bresson
Country: France
THOUGHTS:
Late Bresson is every bit as uncompromising as earlier Bresson. In this one, a young man becomes numb to any feeling for life, as the world around him is overwhelmed by pollution, the Cold War, the proliferation of nuclear arms, and other ills. He dips into politics and religion, but ultimately swears them both off and develops his own logical nihilism, which leads him to take his own life. The title offers a good reading of what the film is getting at: that to live with the pain, injustices, and stupidity of humanity, stripped of the ability to experience any of its joys, is to exist in a kind of Hell from which death appears the only true escape. Bresson offers no rays of hope. He simply offers that finding engagement in the world at large, no matter how revolting that world may be, is a do or die proposition.
Charles, the protagonist, reminded me at times of Johnny, from Mike Leigh’s Naked. His devotion to his own apathetic creed can almost come across as heroic.