Le diable probablement's poster

Le diable probablement

a.k.a. The Devil, Probably

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epicureanlotus's avatar
epicureanlotus
A bleak yet profound portrayal of depression, nihilism, and the "illness of seeing too clearly", Le Diable probablement is fascinated with the horrors of the modern world, which it presents to the viewer in a detached, emotionless, quintessentially Bressonian manner. The film continually forces the audience to look at and to face these uncomfortable realities—just as the film's characters continually force themselves to confront their own powerlessness against corporate pollution, ecological destruction, and our species's impending extinction—and each major character accordingly embodies a response or attitude that we as audience members could also choose to take. Although the film feels a bit scattered at first, with needlessly convoluted character relationships and a number of extraneous plot points for instance, what was the purpose of that bookshop owner character?, it picks up more momentum in the second half, and by the end it had left me with plenty to ponder.

To quote Rainer Werner Fassbinder: "Le Diable probablement is the most shattering film I've seen this Berlin Festival. In the future—and this world will probably last for another few thousand years—this film will be more important than all the rubbish which is now considered important but which never really goes deep enough. The questions Bresson asks will never be unimportant."