Anyone who has made as many masterpieces as the French experimental director Jean-Claude Rousseau deserves his occasional oddities and indulgences, but his new 10-minute short Requiem isn’t going to be what convinces novices of Jean-Marie Straub’s usually justified claim that he is one of Europe’s finest filmmakers. It’s best not to use it for a judgement call as to whether to watch more of his work. The film’s description deserves credit for easily summarizing the entire film: “As the orchestra choir settles into the church choir, the trombonist blows into his instrument as a warm-up. Mozart’s name appears at the top of the score to be performed, whose title is also that of the film: Requiem.” We get the opening shot of the trombone player blowing his instrument, a fade to black that covers the opening of the piece before he enters, and then the image resumes when he begins his contributions to the performance. The unbroken second shot covers the remainder of the film until the piece is finished and the applause begins, taking us to the credits. Rousseau shoots all this from directly behind the trombone player, in a cramped composition mostly emphasizing the back of his head and clearly shot quixotically on his smartphone. While it’s something of a noble gesture to emphasize the trombone player’s contributions to the performance, and it’s hard to object to getting to hear a lovely performance of the Requiem from an unusual perspective, this ultimately isn’t much of a movie. (Smartphones mean the raw rushes of shooting get used as unadorned pieces of art in their own right more than ever before.) It lacks the recontextualization and variation that marks the best of single-take movies, and is probably going to ultimately serve as little more than a footnote or a curio in the Rousseau oeuvre.
Published as part of FIDMarseille 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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