Monday, March 11, 2013
ART FOR LIFE AND LIFE FOR ART
Today's film, the conclusion of Jacques Rivette's
There is a sequence at the end of the film where the six characters each have a word with each other separate from the rest. It is like a musical coda. What they have learned. What we have seen.
Rivette is thought of by some as the father of the New Wave. No less a personage than Truffaut said so.
In this late film I think that Rivette sums it up. The artist in the story, a painter, is distilling a lifetime into the work. He creates a masterpiece but only a few people will see it.
We, actually, do not see it.
But we do see every action up to the great creation. The sketches, the line drawings, the poses of the model. The dialogue between artist and model, electric.
This film is four hours long and yet it passes very quickly. Rivette's magic.
Rivette is living longer and producing more than any other New Wave auteur. Unlike the artist in this film, he has far from completed his work.
The story, almost inconsequential, aside, the film bursts with color and "views". Frames of luscious color and composition. If one thinks there is a distance between a film and a painting, and of course there is, Rivette does everything he can to minimize the distance.
There is very little music in the film. Opening and closing. Intermission. Stravinsky.
All the rest is ambient sound amped up for us to hear the creation and not just see it. Doors slam, stools scrape, curtains slide open, birds sing, people in the town are heard here and there. The pen strokes and brush sounds are, indeed very Stravinsky. The beat of the rite of spring.
I am not sure if I have the stamina to see this again but I think I will do it anyway.
Oh. Michael Piccoli as the artist. Whew.
That makes this a 5 out of Netflix5.
In this scene, we see the first sketches being made. There will be pages and pages and sheets and sheets. A full painting will emerge from all this work.
Labels: films
