Written and directed by Robert Bresson
Charles, a young man, is going through it. The tidal wave of the French Cultural Revolution can now be stifled in a kiddie pool, and he’s turned his back on all politics. Life disgusts him, death disgusts him, sex, women, drugs, petty stunts, idling around proves no refuge. Even his hair has given up, parting in the middle to hang aimlessly on either side of his callow face. What else is there? God’s dead, and he left nothing in his will.
The Devil, Probably features a despondent youth shorting their future. Charles is not alone in his bleak outlook, as his friends, editing a documentary about environmental collapse, list all the crimes against nature with a cadence reserved for the phone book. If there’s still any outrage to be found at the state of things, it’s hidden deep within an apathetic mass of youths who are still going through the motions of resistance, but sleepwalkingly so, opting for tired words and childish stunts meant to offend civil society.
The preoccupations of Bresson’s movie are crushingly familiar almost fifty years later, and while there’s sometimes comfort in knowing our present fears and doubts are not new, there’s another sting of misery in realizing very little has come from these fears. The children of the Cultural Revolution grew up to give up.
Bresson couldn’t know that, but The Devil, Probably still burns with indignation, showing us a 70-year old Bresson who sheds finesse and with a heavy hand wants to shake his audience by the collar. Yes, the older generation are to be condemned for the world they left these kids, but there’s nothing sadder than a teenager who thinks they know the world and believes it cannot be changed. Victimhood will not save you, Bresson seems to say, as Charles flops around Paris.
Bresson makes Antoine Monnier (Charles) and fellow cast members flatten their performances into droning monotone, suggesting they’re already dead and they’re just wearing down the streets as they ambulate around. Similarly, the plot of The Devil, Probably has the feel of running down the clock, with makeshift encounters punctuated with listless dialogue where characters seem to just fill the air.
Not a tear is shed, by young nor old, and The Devil, Probably is a work by a filmmaker who knows his craft, and puts in the necessary effort to produce a solid platform from which to berate his fellow men and women. It isn’t a no-holds-barred polemic, Bresson still knows the greatest anger is reserved for those in power, but the disappointment is tangible, and the want to show the hollow stance of apathy is evident.
As mentioned, the causes of concern in 1977 have not changed, but only intensified. What are we like today? Has social media pacified us into a mindless state of resignation, where those angry feelings can only produce a half-hearted meme about the fall of society? If someone could show Bresson’s corpse a view of the world today, his spinning corpse could probably power Europe. If he had a say in the matter, he’d also vehemently refuse to be put to such a use.
The Devil, Probably is an insolent thing, a provocative act borne from intense frustration, and while it’s certainly lucid, it’s also light, stretching itself into a feature film when the short story format would have done just fine to convey Bresson’s scorn of those who scorch their eyes just because they no longer wish to see.
Mikkel Frederiksen 