The Devil, Probably

“Constructed as a flashback from news reports of a young man’s suspicious suicide, Robert Bresson’s splenetic 1977 drama puts the post-1968 world on trial and judges it unlivable. Charles (Antoine Monnier), a quietly imperious sensualist of blazing intelligence, lives idly in a bare garret and does little but brazenly chase women. Essaying the gamut of modern pursuits—politics, religion, education, drugs, psychoanalysis—he finds them all pointless, and his despair is deepened by atrocious documentary footage of dire pollution that he watches at the home of the writer and environmentalist Michel (Henri de Maublanc), whose girlfriend he steals. Bresson’s chilling visions of daily life—including a brilliant sequence aboard a bus that depicts the mechanical world as a horror—suggest its hostility to the passions of youth. The film, however, offers a near-parody of the tamped-down spiritual universe of Bresson’s earlier work: these children of the revolution tremble with uncertainty, and their loose gestures and shambling ways conflict with his precise images. Both the world and Bresson’s cinema are in disarray, and the signs of his inner conflict are deeply troubling and tremendously moving.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

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