Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, April 1: FRANCOFONIA
Alexander Sokurov’s hybrid meditation on art through the lens of a Nazi-controlled Louvre made its debut at Venice last year, where it won two awards. The film went on to screen at Toronto, London, San Sebastian, Thessaloniki, Reykjavik, Haifa, and Vancouver, among several other events.
Resistant to easy classification, Sokurov’s latest combines elements of essay film, archival documentary, and fiction to explore the intersections of culture, history, and politics through the museum. While the bulk of the film is concerned with the Louvre under the Nazi Occupation, and focuses on the complex relationship between museum director Jacques Jaujard and Nazi Kunstschutz officer Franzikus Wolff-Metternich – portrayed by actors here – Sokurov expands beyond a conventional fictional retelling, inserting his authorial voice via a running essay commentary and, far less successfully, aborted Skype communications with a sea captain transporting valuable works of art in a storm and intermittent explorations of the museum’s holdings via the spirits of Napoleon and Marianne, the female representation of the nation of France, who just repeats “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” If these esoteric trappings don’t quite cohere, the director, allowed seemingly unfettered access to the museum, nevertheless captures the Louvre – and a particularly fraught period in its history – from a decidedly unique perspective, making for an often engaging curio.
what (not) to doc 