Le révélateur

Looking round online a year ago,I stumbled on a video someone had made, where they had blended a completely silent French film, with tracks by the Post-Rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Trying to view it a few days later,I was sad to see it had been removed. Making a note of the title,I found the silent version recently,and after turning the local radio music station on, (felt bit odd watching it with Brexit news updates every so often!) I got set to see how the film develops.

View on the film:

Featuring no official score, no subtitles,and with the exception of a title card,no intertitles (not even a cast/crew list) editor/writer/director/producer Philippe Garrel marks the fading light of the Paris Revolution with a starkly black and white avant-garde tale. Filming the adult members of the cast on LSD, Garrel and cinematographer Michel Fournier sips the film into minimalism light caked in rows of shadows which linger on in long takes. Staying at a distance in giving outlines, but not clear viability to a plot, Garrel skids on the lines with startling manipulation of two film speeds running within the same frame, and the long,lingering takes being abrasively clipped by long tracking shots running along with the developing family.