In addition to all the textual exploration, persuasion, and endless scrutiny of Bresson's unique film. What "Mushait" presents is the sadness that we cannot avoid in the situation since modern times. Mushayt's singing, the tears on her silver-plate face, her mischief, her love and hate, her predicament, her joy, and her inextricable pain. It is impossible for you not to feel heartache for this girl, nor to despair of the ruthlessness and cruelty shown in this world.
In an exclusive interview with Robert Bresson on French TV, he once said, "I am looking for the real, the expression of truth." As an unparalleled author in the history of film and film, Bresson, who has inherited the experience of painting, What is desperately sought is an extremely precise falcon connection between picture and sound, and a pure form of film writing free from the contamination of drama. In his Notes sur le cinématographe (Notes sur le cinématographe), he muses, "With every shot, I have to add new salt to my existing imagination". So the capture of every tiny feeling, the keen intuition, is magnified in a fleeting moment, resulting in what he calls Cinematography, a search for the form of truth.
"Instead of understanding a film, I want people to feel a film, not rational but feel." It seems to be a commonplace in filmmaking, but how should one understand" Production de l'émotion obtenue par une resistance a l'émotion ." (to create emotion by resisting emotion).
Bresson once confessed that he was a "believer" (Croyant), so "Muchette" has nothing to do with belief, but also about belief, it is a saint's footnote written by Bresson, a staunch skeptic of faith. That series of passions, sacrifices, and sacrifices of the innocent are all in the spirit of Christ. But the modernists could not help but doubt this spirit, as Tarkovsky concluded that Dostoevsky, "I want to believe in God, but I can't believe it." As Orson Welles bluntly and rudely answered a reporter in an interview about why the original ending of the film was erased, he replied: Because the Holocaust had not happened at that time. In this sense, Bresson's coldness and conscious rejection of the world are closely related to his own ideas. Create emotion with no emotion, question rationality with seemingly extreme rationality, and present the crazy human spiritual condition since modern times.
"Mouchette" is like Bresson's "The Virgin Fountain", but it does not need to resort to the form of medieval morality drama like Bergman. But can't we get the shadow of "The Passion of Joan of Arc" from "Mouchette"? After all, "an image communicates with the audience with an external image, without even needing an image medium." What is implied in is a homogeneous victim image. Isn't this seemingly logically contradictory conclusion the dark truth that the author is diligently seeking?
Mushaette's life is a life of being hunted. She cried out "Je suis perdu Monsieur, je suis perdu." in the precariousness of the storm, like a frightened and troubled little animal; The embarrassment and pain of the incompatible environment, and her suicide, were by no means understood by Werther, who was a teenage boy in the 19th century. It is the misery of a person who has come into contact with the truth of life early, like water touching lime, and the churning foam quickly corrodes the body and mind. The romance of wearing a gauze skirt, the joy of pouring milk, the rolling tears, and even after being raped, he still declares: He is my lover! The stubbornness of the unknown reason is more confused than romantic, more sad than happy, more cruel than tender, and the world gives her and our feelings. The last three tumbles were her final way of penetrating the world like light.
Returning to Bresson's so-called aesthetic concept of insisting on presenting events as they are is actually an extremely easy trap to fall into. As he did in "The Diary of a Country Priest," according to the strict restrictions of literature, but as Bazin revealed, it was a strategy to gain cinematic freedom, and when it comes to Bresson's mysteries, he is certainly not naturalistic, but very abstract. But simplicity always goes hand in hand with richness. And we can always see our own imperfections in the axe held high in "Money", in the shooting of "Maybe the Devil", and in the stubborn tumbling of "Mushait" again and again, from our hopelessness. In his optimism, he suddenly woke up.
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