Francofonia

Sokurov explores the connection between politics and art by using the Louvre during WW2 to ask questions about the significance of art in the human story. Why have people sought to preserve and/or possess art, often through extreme means? What's its importance to culture/history beyond being obvious symbols of status and wealth? What does art tell us about ourselves and our shared past? Sokurov's mixed media approach doesn't always work, but this is a fascinating experiment nonetheless.

Napoleon and Marianne as mental patients. It is pathetic how Sokurov is helpless here. He uses every cliché of the modern documentary (awkward and uncalled for dramatizations, elegiac long shots, even CGI), but the results he achieves are well below average. Were it made 30 years ago, it could "reinvent" something; today it's just what everybody does by default. Check out Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" to see a documentary really reinvented by an artist.

Very very bad filmmaking

I'm sure if I could look past the kitschy soliloquizing, there would be a better film than the one that I found, but I couldn't.

My kind of night at the museum.

My first Aleksandr Sokurov, but Francofonia (2015) is probable not where you start with this guy. A documentary about art gallery Louvre and what went down during the days of Hitler. He take a creative approach to the story, but it's a little blurred to get the best out of it. Still a interesting curiosity.

Aleksandr Sokurov's fantasia on the history of the Louvre, with a particular focus on the relationship between its then-director and Nazi overseer during the Occupation. There are also scenes involving Napoleon, Marianne, and a shipload of artwork which seems to have some connection with the production. There are interesting ideas bandied about throughout, and the imagery is agreeable, but it never really amounts to much. Certainly it is no substitute for visiting the real deal.

It's a bit unfocused, at points needlessly obtuse and at others disappointingly close-minded, but at its best, Sokurov's filmmaking coalesces into a grand history lesson, and a beautiful reminder of why we create in the first place. I also enjoyed it as a Godardian piece of self-reflexive cinema; it opens with Sokurov telling a friend that he feels his latest film - the film we're about to see - is unsuccessful, and ends with a man tossing up his hands and lamenting, "What ravings."