If Maurice Pialat's "Under the Sun of
Satan" reminds you thematically in some small way of Bresson's "Diary of
a Country Priest" perhaps it's because both of them are based on novels
by Georges Bernanos and both deal with a priest's lack of faith but
whereas "Diary of a Country Priest" was rooted very much in a terrible
reality Pialat's picture is largely phantasmagorical, you might even say
supernatural. Gerard Depardieu is the doubting priest and Sandrine
Bonnaire the misguided, possibly 'evil' girl whose soul he tries to save
and it's so dour and po-faced it feels like a parody.
It's
obvious we are are meant to take it all very seriously but this is the
worst kind of intellectual tosh; at least those dire exorcist horror
movies involving priests don't have any pretentions to being anything other than what they are on the surface unlike this nonsense which controversially won the Palme d'Or but was booed by a large section of the audience who obviously saw through it. There are those who think it's a masterpiece but when set beside the Bresson picture it seems to me to be something of a travesty.
If Maurice Pialat's "Under the Sun of
Satan" reminds you thematically in some small way of Bresson's "Diary of
a Country Priest" perhaps it's because both of them are based on novels
by Georges Bernanos and both deal with a priest's lack of faith but
whereas "Diary of a Country Priest" was rooted very much in a terrible
reality Pialat's picture is largely phantasmagorical, you might even say
supernatural. Gerard Depardieu is the doubting priest and Sandrine
Bonnaire the misguided, possibly 'evil' girl whose soul he tries to save
and it's so dour and po-faced it feels like a parody.
It's
obvious we are are meant to take it all very seriously but this is the
worst kind of intellectual tosh; at least those dire exorcist horror
movies involving priests don't have any pretentions to being anything other than what they are on the surface unlike this nonsense which controversially won the Palme d'Or but was booed by a large section of the audience who obviously saw through it. There are those who think it's a masterpiece but when set beside the Bresson picture it seems to me to be something of a travesty.
No comments:
Post a Comment