Francofonia (2015)
Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.
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10 films that influenced Francofonia
What critics say influenced Francofonia
After Russian Ark, his 2002 tour-de-force set in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage, it’s the Louvre’s turn to be put under his whimsically intelligent historical magnifying glass.
Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov’s latest film, Francofonia, can be considered a companion piece to his best-known work, Russian Ark, in the sense that both of these cinematic meditations on history and art take place in great museums and share Sokurov’s distinctive style that is at once painterly, like that of an Old Master, and experimental.
And yet, a French version of Russian Ark this is not.
This was also the central idea of Russian Ark , the pièce de résistance of Sokurov’s career—a technical marvel, shot in one Steadicam take that mimicked the first-person of a time traveller (voiced by Sokurov himself) as he slipped through the centuries of history, grandeur, and suffering contained within the walls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum.
At one point, the two are shown sitting on a bench in front of Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” as Napoleon exclaims, “It is me!”
Sure, their films get small arthouse releases here, and may even show up on Netflix (as has Weerasethakul’s mesmerizing 2010 masterwork Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, presumably to the baffled chagrin of the average Netflix and chill viewer).
Given that the director won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2011 for his last opus, Faust, it's doubtful whether he will wear the same crown again so soon, but could be – it’s the kind of film that forces admiration.
It’s been four years since the Venice Film Festival awarded Aleksandr Sokurov the first major prize of his career, and whereas Faust was the unexpected final entry in his Men of Power tetralogy, his latest work seems to only superficially hark back to the 2002 one-take waltz through St. Petersburg’s Hermitage.
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Because Sokurov does almost everything in pairs or series (see: the Tetralogy Of Power, Mother And Son and Father And Son , his St. Petersburg Diary and Elegy documentaries, etc.), it was only a matter of time before he would make a companion piece of sorts to Russian Ark, set at another world-class museum.
It’s a question that was elegantly addressed last year in Volker Schlöndorff’s excellent Diplomacy, and is here reworked by Sokurov as the starting point of a meditation rather than the quest for an answer.
As with the complicit relationship between another French cultural figure and another Nazi described in Volker Schlöndorff's 2014 film, Diplomacy, Jaujard (played by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and Wolff-Metternich (Benjamin Utzerath) were enemies on paper.
You can find a more straightforward telling of this story in the 2009 documentary “The Rape of Europa” (and, presumably, in the recent French television documentary about Jaujard, “Illustrious Yet Unknown” ).
He is certainly drawn to them: “Moloch” (1999) is about Hitler and Goebbels, “Telets” (2001) is about Lenin, and “The Sun” (2005) is about Emperor Hirohito.
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He is certainly drawn to them: “Moloch” (1999) is about Hitler and Goebbels, “Telets” (2001) is about Lenin, and “The Sun” (2005) is about Emperor Hirohito.
This is surely not true, but Sokurov has a tradition of ascribing odd motives to dead dictators in such solemn historical burlesques as The Sun (about Hirohito) and Moloch (whose protagonist, Hitler, has an archival-film cameo in Francofonia, touring Paris after its fall).
Because Sokurov does almost everything in pairs or series (see: the Tetralogy Of Power, Mother And Son and Father And Son , his St. Petersburg Diary and Elegy documentaries, etc.), it was only a matter of time before he would make a companion piece of sorts to Russian Ark, set at another world-class museum.