As US political film is mostly dead (© by Miracle Max), what's left is
perhaps worth mentioning.
[machine translated from
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-fabelhafte-Welt-des-Kapitalismus-4485903.html
]
The fabulous world of capitalism
03rd August 2019
Rüdiger Suchsland
The latest film by Canadian Denys Arcand about the demise of the
American Empire
Nobody can tell you how much of it is in circulation, we are talking
about billions, if not trillions "- even this dialogue sentence is a
fable, because actually one would have to speak of trillions. The
world's cash sum alone is a two-digit billiard number. In any case, the
main actor of this film is the money. There are quite a few of them, but
quite a few really have enough.
Everything is about money
Everything revolves around money, it is at the center of the action. The
main human protagonist is called Pierre-Paul. He is a young and highly
intelligent man, but at the same time a kind of urban neurotics alien to
life, as Woody Allen could not paint more precisely and happily.
He works for a low-wage parcel courier in Montreal, Canada, and in his
free time reads philosophers. His girlfriend, Linda, is a bank clerk. He
gives her long lectures during a joint date in a mixture of despair and
intellectual arrogance:
"The great writers were all stupid as straw." Dostoyevsky has shifted
his wife's furs, he was addicted to gambling, he was sure to win, he was
blind to the laws of probability, Tolstoy forbade his servants to be
vaccinated, and Louis Ferdinand Celine fled from France and got lost in
the SS - a complete idiot Hemingway saw himself as a boxer - what a
great genius! "
Justified inquiry: "If you are so smart, why do not you run a bank or
work in the university?"
"I am too intelligent, intelligence is no advantage"
Pierre-Paul's answer: "I'm too intelligent, intelligence is no
advantage, it's a handicap," he says, quite without vanity, but with
very sober analytical power. After all, he has a doctorate.
Pierre-Paul's ability to grasp the depths of this world in its
complexity provides legitimate depression.
Someday everything will change. Life breaks down with power over
Pierre-Paul's existence, so that he can no longer escape from him. Now
his theories about the stupidity of the wise will either be confirmed or
he will refute them. Because, by chance, he witnesses a bank robbery
that ends so bloody that at the end of it a handful of corpses and two
huge bags full of banknotes lie on the street.
Before the police arrive, Pierre-Pauls stuffs the bags in his van.
But what should he do with the money? Especially since all the gangsters
of Quebec and of course the police are behind the bags.
The disenfranchised and insulted are finally defending themselves
Together with the escort girl Aspasia and the clever ex-rocker Sylvain
(Rémy Girard), the random millionaire forms an outsider gang of the
marginalized - driven by the Stoic Marc Aurel and his principle of Amor
fati, the love of destiny.
With them, Pierre-Paul also gets an insight into the less visible world
of money laundering.
It is used, for example, by politicians who transfer legal money
directly to Bermuda because they can not afford the media to jump on it.
Or from noble prostitutes. Anyone who pays them basically donates to a
charity.
The new film by French-Canadian director Denys Arcand continues the
film's critique of the materialism of contemporary society that has
shaped Arcand's previous films: "The Fall of the American Empire" (1986)
and "The Invasion of the Barbarians" (2003).
His new work is a comedy and a comic thriller and thus quite
old-fashioned - more than a Woody Allen movie, it's reminiscent of a
Peter Sellers comedy like "The Pinky Panter" by Blake Edwards. The
original title of the film is "The Fall of the American Empire".
The basic idea is convincing: Arcand wants to explain the world and uses
for it a political-philosophical gangster film. Money is not a mere
fetish and an excuse to show beautiful men beautiful things, at work,
kissing, shooting and driving, so it has a deeper (social) meaning.
The disenfranchised and insulted are finally defending themselves. Films
such as Bertold Viertel's The Adventures of a Ten-mark Certificate
(1926), Max Ophüls' "Comedy of the Money" or Robert Bresson's "L'Argent"
("The Money") are the inspiration for this.
As a director, Arcand does not always have his complicated story under
control. The mood fluctuates sharply between a harsh, sometimes brutal
thriller, a bitter social drama and a light romance. The dialogues,
which initially seem a bit sluggish, but become more playful and witty
with increasing film duration.
Arcand connects with all the deeper meaning, namely a critique of high
finance, of everyday social corruption and political conditions in the
West: "Just as pathetic are the politicians: George Bush, Nicolas
Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi - they are all losers Donald Trump!" - "63
million Americans have chosen him." - "Of course, idiots worship idiots."
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