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The Worst Jacques Rivette Film That I've Viewed !!!

posted 9 years ago by JoeKulik
1 reply | jump to latest

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau

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I viewed five films by Jacques Rivette before this one, so I'm
accustomed to his bizarre style and, overall, I love it. However,
Merry-Go-Round, the sixth Rivette film that I've viewed is very poor
compared to the others. The "storyline" is a muddled mess that didn't
make sense for me either on a "straight", literal level, or on a
symbolic level.

Why would any sane man fly from NYC to Paris just because an
ex-girlfriend sent him a telegram asking him to do so? Why didn't
anyone, especially sis Leo, call the cops after Elizabeth was
kidnapped? Why would Leo and the attorney's secretary enter an
abandoned building alone to rescue Elizabeth, i.e., without the cops?
After escaping kidnapping, why would Elizabeth enter back into
negotiations with the very people who kidnapped her? After Leo and Ben
fail to find Elizabeth at the graveyard, they are counting pennies
between them to see if they have enough for cab fare back to the hotel,
suggesting that they came from Rome and NYC, respectively, with no cash
on them. Who would travel so far from home being absolutely broke? Why
was it necessary for the fake Mr Danvers to be a psychic medium? The
segments of Leo running in the woods, and the anonymous girl running in
the sand dunes didn't fit in with the film in any way.

Overall, the screenplay here looks like an assemblage of elements that
were randomly picked out of a hat.

This film is truly unworthy of an otherwise GREAT filmmaker like
Jacques Rivette. If you've never seen a Rivette film before, then do
not start here, because this film is a POOR representative of his work.

[–] Tartarlamb 8 years ago

... are you really watching Rivette films for the plot? Like a lot of Rivette's material, the story is paint-by-numbers, like revisiting a stock thriller plot on the ruins of a dream plane. You may as well complain that the Edwardian melodrama in Celine & Julie doesn't make much sense. What's important, or maybe just enjoyable, is the fictive games and conspiracies that make up not only the narrative, but the actors' relationship to the narrative. In this case, the film is basically jumping down the junkie rabbit hole with Maria Schneider and Joe Dallesandro. There's kind of an opiate haze as they wander through the Parisian suburbs and abandoned mansions (again, Rivette loves finding magical spaces in on-trod locales) trying to solve riddles.

To me, Merry-Go-Round is a companion piece to Pont du Nord. Both of them are explorations of the creative spirit set against the backdrop of capitalist conspiracy and ruination. They're poems about Paris as it entered the doldrums of the 1980s.

It's okay not to like it. I am very sure that many people would NOT like this film, or Rivette's approach at all. But I wonder if, having watched a number of his films yet, you might not yet have a good feel for his work.