Robert Bresson has been described as the
most Christian film director of all time. From his very first film – Diary of a
Country Priest – to his last – L'argent – he stood firmly by an almost ascetic
view of life. Pickpocket, his third film, may not have been his masterpiece:
but it establishes his style perfectly.
His vision of life –
hermit-like, ascetic, unemotional – is expressed through the banal
routine of a Parisian thief. The thief has no double life: his entire daily
life revolves around an almost sexual routine of picking others' pockets and
stashing away his "treasure" within a hole by his bed. He has a
mother, who dies half-way through, and a friend, who becomes a hypocrite at the
end. But beyond this, he has no other life.
Martin LaSalle plays the role of the thief,
Michel, and the camera records his movements as we see his hands creep out from
one pocket and into another.
At one point he teams with two other
emotionless thieves: in a celebrated sequence that is almost ballet-like we see
one hand grabbing from a pocket while another quickly takes the purse, empties
it into his pocket, and drops it into a bin. Bresson achieves this with his
stringent attitude to his characters: his characteristic trademark was his
frequent takes of actors. After the penultimate take, the actor would usually
play his role with no emotion, almost mechanically – like a robot.
Michel's eyes are our guide to his
intentions. In them we see not fear, not hate, but a sensual desire to feel
others' pockets. His motives are not vulgar, of course, but we also get a
passing glance at his condition with his conversations with a Police Chief. He
discusses with him about who he calls "supermen", who will be able to
rob and steal for a higher purpose, without the law catching them. The Chief,
who we are made to think suspects him, begs to differ: all thieves are equal,
and deserve the same punishment.
The exchanges between the inferiority
complex-ridden Michel and the Chief reflect those found in Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment, which also told the story of a Police Inspector
entrapping a criminal through subtle hints, albeit there it revolved around a
murder. Here we have a simple thief: in certain sequences, especially those
with his friend Jacques, we get it that he may have become a more dignified,
respectable man, but he just let the opportunity pass. And the second aspect to
Pickpocket's story – his romance with a girl called Jeanne – will figure in his
redemption at the end.
Bresson's films are hard to criticise: none
of them, it has been said, has any form of artifice or pretension. Pickpocket
very easily can become, in certain sequences, a showcasing of film form over
content: especially in those scenes of thievery. But the director shoots them all
with absolutely no frills running beneath. He followed this up with two more
quiet masterpieces: Au Hasard Balthazar, which harmonised a donkey's and a
village girl's plight in an almost musical way, and Mouchette, which relayed
the story of an outcast village girl with quiet
sympathy.
He called himself a "Christian
atheist", but in no other director, some critics think, can we find a
near-perfect conjunction of cinema and religion. Pickpocket, of course, has no
religion attached to it: Michel finds his release at the end, paradoxically in
prison, with him realizing his love for Jeanne ("Oh Jeanne," he says
in a monologue, "to find you, what a strange path I had to take."),
and not through a priest or confessional. But it achieves just as well the same
end: to place the individual, small-time man as a reflection of universal
redemption.
Written for: Ceylon Today ESCAPE, January 30 2014
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