The Devil, Probably (1977)

How does ome make a movie about the entire culture being an endless cesspool or an inexhaustible abyss? Robert Bresson, 70 years at the time, gave it a shot in one of his last films, The Devil Probably, a film exploring youth culture and existential pain. This is Bresson at his most Joy Division, his gloomiest view on human life and civilization: religion, capitalism, activism, love - everything is false, or rotten, he seems to say. Robotic mannerisms abound. All is vanity & nothing new under ze sun. The world is a garbage heap and documentary (?) images of environmental disaster are inserted. Oil spills, nuclear weapons, a seal clubbed to death. As some reviewers have pointed out, the film also represents Bresson's attempt to be, well it is hard to say it but here it comes, - chic. The swaggering & lethargic protagonist, Charles, is a young nihilist who sees no reason to NOT kill himself. His friends are a group of cynical kids who sometimes opt for political pranks, sometimes for their private little world of love games. Bresson turns these young people into deadpan almost-zombies, lolling around Paris, playing drums, chatterboxing and bickering in political meetings. Charles himself has the air of existential (anti-)hero, and here's what worries me about the film. He finds death sublime and the world bores the shit out of him. "My sickness is seeing clearly" he declares. But the very end perhaps punctuates any inclination to see anything heroic in this death-longing cynical youth.

 - - - What I found striking - and worrisome - was how little the film itself distances itself from the perspective of its protagonist. The risk is that Bresson's own perspective simply takes the cynicism to the next level, and places the main character as an emblem of contemporary culture. So, he seems to say that there is something true to this cynicism. What is also problematic is that Bresson almost tries to make this cynicsm a bit cool, a bit hip - it is supposed to look good. I might not overstate my case if I call the film a French Zabriskie point, only much more austere and fragmented. Bresson even brings in some bleak humor into it all (I diddn't know he had it in him): a box of chocolates thrown on the street, a repudiation of psychoanalysis and then a sort of cosmic joke that puts an end to our dear protagonist. When critics' talk about The Devil, Probably as a "deep, uncopromising, compelling drama" I am not at all sure whether I agree (even though it is, of course, a film I did not regret watching and it has good things in it.)

 - - - In the end, maybe I find I hired a Contract Killer to be a more reasonable film about what it means to be tired of life. Also based on how he directed his actors and how he stripped down the settings to stylized skeletons, I guess Kaurismäki must have seen The Devil, Probably.