Francofonia | Little White Lies

Fran­co­fo­nia

12 Nov 2016 / Released: 11 Nov 2016

Couple in military-style attire, woman has long red hair, man wears a tricorn hat
Couple in military-style attire, woman has long red hair, man wears a tricorn hat
4

Anticipation.

Aleksandr Sokurov’s willingness to make a film that fits the material is always interesting.

4

Enjoyment.

A simple statement made with effortless poeticism.

4

In Retrospect.

In praise of art, but also a reminder that we need to treasure what we have.

Russ­ian direc­tor Alexan­der Sokurov takes a dance with the music of time in this mov­ing plea for sav­ing art.

You can’t help but be stunned by the insou­ciant con­fi­dence dis­played in Alek­san­dr Sokurov’s daz­zling plea for soci­ety to take bet­ter care of the art that it pro­duces. We gath­er up the trea­sures of antiq­ui­ty and store them in an impen­e­tra­ble fortress like the Lou­vre. But nowhere is immune to the rav­ages of the envi­ron­ment or, worse, the destruc­tive hand of man.

Fran­co­fo­nia is a mel­liflu­ous, mul­ti-dis­ci­plined exam­i­na­tion of the ways art helps to define who we are as well as being a phys­i­cal mark­er of a spe­cif­ic moment in his­to­ry. What is France with­out the Lou­vre?” he asks. The film is also in thrall to those who make it their busi­ness to qui­et­ly exert their lim­it­ed pow­er to pre­vent our cul­tur­al lega­cy from falling into the wrong hands.

Jacques Jau­jard is the hero of the piece, a tac­i­turn bureau­crat who went against the col­lab­o­ra­tionist grain of the Vichy gov­ern­ment to pre­vent the Nazis loot­ing the Lou­vre dur­ing the occu­pa­tion of 1940. He was secret­ly assist­ed in his endeav­ours by Franz von Wolff-Met­ter­nich, a Nazi art his­to­ri­an charged with index­ing the the art, to give col­lec­tors like Hitler and Goebbels first dibs on the spoils. Sokurov isn’t inter­est­ed so much in the mechan­ics of the pair’s scheme, more the intel­lec­tu­al dri­ve behind it. He’s clear­ly impressed that peo­ple might risk their own lives to artic­u­late their belief that art is more than a com­mod­i­ty to be trad­ed, or a sta­tus sym­bol for the owner.

Maybe we need more peo­ple like that now? Though there are drama­tised sequences with actors play­ing the cen­tral parts, this is fore­most an essay film that attempts (and large­ly suc­ceeds) in plac­ing this tale of admin­is­tra­tive der­ring do into a wider cul­tur­al con­text. Like much of Sokoruv’s work, this film looks to the ugly cor­ners of life and his­to­ry and locates pro­found bit­ter, beauty.

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