What kind of person do you have to be to 'like' this movie?
SPOILERS
I really don't know what to say. is it wrong to say that I was hoping she would die?
This is my third film from Bresson, the other two were country priest and balthazar.
For me, this film fails on all fronts. I like it least of the other two Bresson's that I have watched and this has sealed the deal for me and Bresson. I can't really think of one area in which the fillm succeeds, other than being slow and unengaging.
There is no life in this film at all. I don't care if that was his intent or not, it doesn't make for good art. The characters speak at each other, nobody ever actually engages in a conversation. One character will say something, usually not even important, and then turns their back; or the character to whom they are speaking will walk away. And this is when they do speak. I'm not against 'silent talkies' but atleast in films from Tarkovsky or Ozu the compositions have life to them, and what the characters say matters. here nothing matters. This is also a film that needs some music and sound effects-the acting and cinematography are not good enough to carry this film, it needs something to breath a little life into this corpse-maybe a different director.
The back of the dvd says that 'bresson plumbs great resevoirs of feeling with the film, and that it is one of the most searing portraits of human dedsperation ever put on film'. There is nothing searing about this film. The movie not only failed to ellicit and emotional response of any kind other than indifference, but it also failed to engage me intellectually. I couldn't even in my mind care about this girl, the town she lives in, or any of the other charactrers in it.
And then there is Mouchette. Now, I understand that Mouchette has a father who doesn't love her and abuses her, but how can I care about a girl who throws rocks at people and rubs mud on people's rugs and stomps dirt on the floors of the church? She's a little $h!t. In real life, even lonely kids have friends, and the popular kids kick your butt when you throw mud and rocks at them. What is really sad, though, is that Bresson can not make me care about this girl. A girl whos life is so sad, who's father does not love her, who's mother is dying, who gets raped by a drunkard, who the town's people despise as a slut, and who eventually kills herself; and thanks to bresson, I didn't care. If it was his intent to make me as apathetic to her as the people in her town, then he succeeded at his game, but he failed as an artist.
Also, I checked out a small bit of the audio commentary that Criterion provided, and the atheist mr. rayns is about as boring as one could get. I can't imagine what this guy is like in person, but wow, he can make you care even less about a film that you never liked.