Le Roi de Coeur
Today is one of these days where I am amazingly tired. I want to go to sleep early and have time to kill, because I don’t think I can do anything productive. The things I could do are: Watch a movie and blog about it, write e-mails to friends, read newspaper articles, clean up my apartment and wash dishes, do actual work. Thinking about it, when I am home, these are the only things I do. I started cleaning up my apartment but it’s boring and tedious. I am interested in von Randow’s analysis of Sarkozy, but my brain does not compute enough to handle such articles articles and for the same reason, I feel like I should not write e-mails when the result might be bad. The people I have to write to deserve better than that. Now, I watched a movie and am worried that my blog post will succumb to the same fate, but then I realized that “Le roi de coeur” actually stirred up emotions which I thought were interesting.
At first, “Le roi de coeur” seemed unlike any other French film. Just by glancing at it, it looks dated, very much unlike the timeless style of the Nouvelle Vague. The clothes here belong into a theatre, not into a movie. Since the storyline also seems fairly chaotic throughout the whole film, I wasn’t really sure what to make out of it at first. But as expected, I came to understand the eccentricities of the film very quickly. They just dress like that, they are crazy but actually not crazy at all. When I got that the film has to be understood as a fairy-tale, that unlike most other films about crazy people, this film is not supposed to be realistic by representing actual mental people at all, I felt different about it. In fact, above the superficial and silly side, I thought the film was actually extremely subtle and deep. The film goes very closely into the direction of theatre and the members of the mental institutions are a slightly modernized version of the fool from the Middle Ages. They can say all these things that “normal people” would never say; by presenting you with their own logic, they make you realize that not everything we do makes sense at all. Certainly soldiers won’t just kill each other at sight like they do in the film, but as an allegory there is some truth to it – soldiers in war are the craziest thing, and that was just a humorous way of showing it.
“Le roi de coeur” is a little bit like “Turandot” – very poetic, very symbolic and it follows its own rules. Despite the lack of realistic characters and obvious humor (it’s not a ha-ha-ha kind of film but the humor is more subtle), the film showed an amazing humanity. These crazy characters are so fascinating and enthusiastic and likable. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that generated a few immensely touching scenes especially towards the end. I was much more moved by this humanity than I ever would be by listening to Shostakovich’s “Leningrad”.
I heard that the film was not popular in France, but very much more so in the U.S. Well, truth to be told the Frenchness of the film does indeed look… odd. It might also not help for the French that French people speak French, Germans speak German and the Scottish speak English here. Plus the Scottish kilts are funny to the point of being almost sexy but they might offend your average French machismo. Considering that the film has a plethora of continuity errors and totally a confusing plot, I am also not surprised that it became something like a cult film. It’s also much closer to the American image of France with all their brothels and silly costumes, but I like that. I am happy to see a French film that is neither Nouvelle Vague nor overly intellectual (I do count “Les Valseuses” or “Themroc” as intellectual film).
You must be wondering why I watched the film in the first place. Indeed, none of my usual sources of films (recommendations from any of you guys or lists of best films or certain websites like “They shoot movies don’t they?”) would actually contain this film, and even if it did it probably wouldn’t have caught my eye. The solution to the mystery is the following: I got a recommendation for this film from the category “professors I had a crush on” (as Loris would have put it). I come to the realization that I really have a certain for life in other epochs and was quite fascinated by the fact that grew up with all these movies that we watch today because we are culturally interested people. Of course I asked him if he watched a lot of western too, and he said he prefers Italian over American western films.
If you feel like watching something different, which is so entirely different from anything you have seen before, go and see “Le roi de coeur”. It is special in so many senses.