In a very enlightened docu-fiction, Arnaud Desplechin pays a moving tribute to the 7th art by focusing not on those who make the films, but on those who watch them. Spectators!presented in the official selection in a special screening at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, is released in theaters on Wednesday January 15.
This tribute film, like a cinematographic essay, is constructed in a hybrid form, between fiction and documentary. The director stages his favorite character Paul Dédalus as a double of himself, who we find at different periods of his life, played successively by Louis Birman, Milo Machado-Graner (Anatomy of a fall), Sam Chemoul and finally Salif Cissé.
These fictional scenes with a strong autobiographical content alternate with an assembly of various elements – interviews, archives, film extracts – which nourish a free reflection on the 7th art, in a historical, technical, analytical, but also sensitive, almost carnal approach. . A voice-over, like a whisper, and chapters mark the narration, which essentially focuses on the experience of cinema as a spectator.
Where do we like to sit in the dark room? How many times do we go to watch the films again and again? Are we afraid? Are we crying? What is our favorite movie? These very simple questions adjoin other more technical and philosophical questions, such as that, posed with Stanley Cavell, of knowing what happens to reality when it is projected.
In this variation, we travel through a history of cinema, with the projection of extracts of all kinds, from the Lumières Brothers to Fantomas, including Alien, Truffaut, Bergman or King Kong, a random and joyful inventory of the immense wealth and diversity of the 7th art.
“Invented for the underprivileged, for children, for those who cannot read”cinema is also a political tool. “The films have never stopped welcoming the vanquished”says Arnaud Desplechin in voice-over, evoking Griffiths, and “this fault” who never stops “haunt”: “the ignored Indian face”. “We can only really film the one we recognize”adds the director, like what Richard Ford did with The Cheyennes : “filming in the light a people parked in the shadows”.
A long sequence is given to Shoah by Claude Lanzmann and the shock felt by Arnaud Desplechin when he saw this film, screened over two days for the first time in Paris in 1985.My life was radically changed in nine hours of screening,” confides the director, fascinated by the power of cinema. “I took stock of the world I had inherited.”
With this film tinged with melancholy, in which we ourselves, the spectators, are at the center, Arnaud Desplechin pays a moving tribute to this art which “helps to live”which we “puts in front of what is important”Who “allows us to reclaim the world”. A beautiful declaration of love which, even if it can sometimes seem a little learned and talkative because it is so fiery, arouses a furious desire to rush into the cinemas to discover and rediscover the treasures of cinema.
Genre : Drama, Documentary
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Actors: Mathieu Amalric, Dominique Païni, Clément Hervieu-Léger
Pays : France
Duration : 1h28
Sortie : January 15, 2025
Distributer : Losange Films
Synopsis : What is going to the cinema? Why have we been going there for over a hundred years? I wanted to celebrate cinemas, their magic. Also, I followed the path of the young Paul Dédalus, like a spectator’s coming-of-age novel. We mixed memories, fiction, investigations… A torrent of images that carries us away.
