There are filmmakers so dominant that you can detect their influence in the works of other filmmakers throughout the years, around the world — Ford, Kurosawa, Scorsese, Spielberg. It’s there in grand conceits and tiny motifs, in style, tone, structure, and plot, subtle here and overt there. And then there are filmmakers of equal talent, equal importance, equal renown amongst industry, critical, and cinephile communities, but whose influence is markedly smaller. Not to diminish their greatness, but there’s a certain accessibility to the styles and signatures of the above directors that is lacking from the works of more singular, idiosyncratic directors — filmmakers like Deren, Akerman, Tsai, Bresson. It takes exceptional ability for a filmmaker to draw influence from names like these, their films less available, their reach less widespread, their methods and meanings less immediately intelligible.
It takes also discipline to do what Robert Bresson did; discipline was at the core of his artistic thesis. Aside from the general understanding of the word, Bresson considered “cinematography” as a process of his own definition, a new cinematic syntax developed through rigorous rules and exhaustive fine-tuning during production. Each image and sound was carefully cultivated and refined to serve his thesis, and the rigor shows through in every film he made — austere, cerebral (though definitively not unemotional), patient depictions of profound personal and spiritual turmoil rendered by casts of non-professional actors in stoic, near-expressionless monotone. And each image and sound was juxtaposed with the same care in a pure, persuasive deployment of the key tenets of the art and the medium of cinema: sights and sounds, movement, and cuts, each unit conveying its purpose in interaction with each other unit.
This adaptive process of defining each aspect of a film by its relationship to each other means that, for all the apparent stolid frigidity of Bresson’s films, they’re also fluid and delicate. This manifests not only in action — the simple touch of a hand, ephemeral and unaccented, can possess a power in a Bresson film that even the most momentous occurrences may lack in others’ — but in emotion, too. Lancelot of the Lake may not be among the most admired of the celebrated director’s films, but it arguably epitomizes the pared-back, even severe style that was his trademark, the simplicity of his primal formal expression most discernible when applied to a period tale with specific mystical and mythical attributes. In Bresson’s telling of the Arthurian legend, the knights have returned, substantially depleted in both number and vigor, from their fruitless quest for the Holy Grail. At a humbly realized Camelot, decorated with simple tents and plain wooden furniture, the events, glories, and ignominies for which they are best known are now behind them — all they have are their regrets, squabbles, and lingering passions. Bresson cast non-pros in his ensembles as a rejection of the emotive movement of professional actors from the interior to the exterior; with few plans and fewer prospects, the characters of Lancelot of the Lake inhabit modest environments with precious little to do, and so the stage is set for this film within their minds — movement from the exterior to the interior. The body rests as the mind remains active, and the existential and emotional ruminations of these characters form the shape of the story, each figure’s competing desires interacting with the other’s, mirroring that of Bresson’s formal units and also informing them.
Thus, there is absence in Lancelot of the Lake (the quest unseen, several knights unreturned, even an extended jousting sequence that avoids actually showing almost all the jousting), but never atrophy. Events are observed often only in their aftermath, since Bresson is less concerned with their details as he is with their effects. The external is repeatedly transmuted into the internal, and the film as a whole works as a kind of exoskeleton, restricting its own scope (limited locations, frequent close-ups) and forcing one’s attention in toward cerebral, emotional, and spiritual concerns, as the cumbersome armor sported by the knights restricts their physical movement. It also reveals their frailty by adjacent contrast, revealing tender, delicate human beings beneath. They’re driven by desires, raw and fundamental, whether for religious transcendence, romantic affection, sexual fulfillment, or otherwise, though Bresson remains resolute in his refusal to exhibit these desires with the passion they supposedly ignite in his characters. We’re effectively informed of this passion — the dialogue lays it out quite succinctly — rather than shown it, so instead of witnessing the experiences of others, the viewer is invited to meditate on them, and thereby participate in the thoughts and feelings they inspire. We ponder over what the characters ponder over, and Bresson’s design of his formal limitations only intensifies this – this is no grand, extravagant, fundamentally unfamiliar take on a wild and implausible tale, but a recognizable reality with recognizable sights, sounds, and sentiments.
Bresson’s commitment isn’t to some semblance of realism, though. Garish flourishes of artifice pepper Lancelot of the Lake, like the off-screen sound of a fleet of riders fleeing a massacre, their apparently substantial number contradicting the stillness of the on-screen image, or the frenzied spurts of fake blood emanating from bodies in the film’s swift, jarring opening sequence of cartoonish violence. These artificial touches perform a dual function. Ironically, they don’t establish the kind of arch distance that one might expect them to between film and viewer, but rather they establish a sense of the reality of the film’s production. Its filming becomes actualized before our eyes and ears, the nuts and bolts essentially exposed, and the film and its theoretical function are accentuated, becoming as recognizable as each element within. The absurdism achieved through the juxtaposition of these touches with the more naturalistic aspects of the film demystifies it, grounding even its theological musings in a palpable reality. It’s telling that Merlin, the key mystical figure in the Arthurian legend, is entirely absent here, that absence training one’s focus on both the tangible and the spiritual with no intermediary, no concrete manifestation of one in the other.
Additionally, and crucially, the artifice of Lancelot of the Lake precludes direct emotional identification at specific moments. Bresson doesn’t build peaks and troughs shaping his film, sentimental currents that might guide the viewer through it in the conventional narrative fashion. He builds a whole, even and consistent, in which every shot, every gesture, every sound carries equal weight, and all at his design. It’s an expression of artistic purity, but no work of art is complete in its mere expression. As the audience for any work of art — be it film or music or painting or any of the innumerable others — communes with it, it reaches a state of completion in that communion. Expression requires interpretation, lest it be no more than an empty cry into an endless void. There’s a disconnect here in what Bresson seeks to achieve, basically freezing out the viewer’s interpretative capacities in what can, at times, feel less like a participatory presentation and more like a lecture, even as he remains perpetually aware of the viewer in his constant effort to convey a clear, set meaning to them.
But there can be few better lecturers in the history of film than Bresson, and if his films have a distinctly didactic, hermetic timbre to them, they’re nonetheless extraordinarily rich in detail, not least for their ostensible economy of aesthetic and incident. He was a genuine master filmmaker, the specificity of his style tailored consummately to its intended purpose, and so exclusive to him that his relatively small influence on more recent generations of filmmakers speaks less to his ability and more to the inability of others to accurately replicate it. Even in his time, he bucked trends, existing alongside both the Tradition de Qualité and the Nouvelle Vague in French cinema, trained by the former, praised by the latter, yet acolyte of neither. Lancelot of the Lake’s reputation may trail that of several other Bresson titles, yet such was the magnitude of his skill that it can still be understood as a remarkable work of art, and a fascinating application of a most particular style to a most famous story.
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