awful
i've seen some other Bresson movies and liked them somehow: Mouchette, Balthazar, Jeanne d'Arc.
But this one completely breaks with all his other movies. There is no human being in it. I didn't manage to understand the young man at all. How could these bad experiences turn him into a psychopath? Of course all this will change him, but not in this way. It made no sense at all.
What's the point of the movie? That human beings have no power over themselves at all? That money can turn people into monsters? If he had no faith in humans at all, why make a movie? Why make art?
Good movies show human beings as they are, good and bad, vulnerable, but they leave a little point of hope. It is in the power of everyone to reject evil. If you look at reality, you will find out how people change their lives in prisons, they fight, some become religious etc. This young man in L'Argent was just like a dull sandbag, life hitting into him.
There are of course psychopaths in the world, but they don't make an interesting subject for art. They are boring. At least for people who want to understand. If I want to see psychopaths, I will watch Halloween, Friday 13th, Saw and so on.
Money didn't change the world from good to bad. Money is just a neutral tool, it depends on people and how they handle it. At the moment money is used to do bad things, there Bresson may be right. But it's not THE evil thing in the world.
Technically this may be a good film, but what concerns the message, this is one of the worst movies I've seen. It's like Bresson lost his soul while ageing.