Le Diable probablement (1977)
Directed by Robert Bresson

Film Review

The existence or otherwise of free will is a theme that runs through Robert Bresson's entire oeuvre but in Le Diable probablement, the last but one of the thirteen features he directed, it is the paradox around which Bresson composes his bleakest and most provocative film.  With its sombre meditation on predestination and grimly Dostoyevskian mood, this haunting existential poem forms a perfect diptych with the director's next film, L'Argent (1983), another examination of the limits of free will.  The film was highly controversial when it was first released - some saw it as an incitement to suicide and it was consequently issued with an 18 certificate.  Despite the adverse criticism, the film had some outspoken defenders (notably Rainer Fassbinder, whose own destructive lifestyle led to his premature death) and it was honoured with the Silver Berlin Bear award at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival.

Of all the films that Robert Bresson made, Le Diable probablement is the one that probably has the most powerful resonance today.  Indeed, it is uncanny how pertinent the film still feels, as if it were made to depict the world today rather than one forty years ago.  Significantly, this is the only one of Bresson's films with an original scenario conceived by its director - most of the others were inspired by historical events or pre-existing literary works.   The film sprang from Bresson's growing concerns in the mid-1970s over man's impact on the environment and the direction in which civilisation was heading - towards a future where there was no place for individuality and sheep-like hoards were governed by a selfish, greedy élite.  Four decades on, the same issues are no less relevant - we're just somewhat further down the same track, with even more things to worry about.  As in many of his earlier films, Bresson confronts us with the following question: if man is genuinely free to choose his own destiny, why would he choose such a perverse outcome?

This is the question that preoccupies a group of young people in Le Diable probablement.  Most of them seem to reckon that the future isn't as grim as it might appear, that man will change his ways and somehow find solutions to all of the problems that threaten his future survival.  Only one, Charles, thinks differently.  His belief is that man's lot has already been decided and that nothing can save him from the impending self-made apocalypse.  The fact that Charles's own fate appears to be pre-determined (Bresson stresses the inevitability of his suicide by revealing this outcome at the start of the film) seems, ironically, to vindicate his thesis.  There are some obvious similarities with the director's earlier Une femme douce (1969), which also opens with a suicide.  As you watch either of these films, you have the same sensation of a tapestry being unrolled before your eyes.  Everything that we see has already happened, etched in the fabric of time - or is happening according to celestial design.  Bresson's idiosyncratic style of filmmaking merely adds to this impression - particularly his use of non-professional actors trained to give flat, inexpressive performances, which make them appear like marionettes.

Charles is one of Bresson's more interesting and ambiguous protagonists, his nihilistic outlook and morbid self-absorption at odds with his passive, Christ-like appearance.  His relationships with people appear superficial, his actions are those of the stereotypical youth drop-out, and yet by his words he shows himself to be a man of profound insight.  "I am not depressed," he tells a psychoanalyst.  "I just want to have the right to be what I am...  I don't want to be a slave.  I do not want to die.  I hate life but I also hate death."  By this admission, Charles says everything about himself that we need to know.  He also reveals an acute sensitivity towards man's evil impact on the world.  In a forest, as trees are felled all around him, he is visibly in torment.  He clamps his hands to his ears, as if the trees are screaming in agony.  In no other Bresson film do we see a character in such obvious distress.

Charles' lucidity of thought is frightening and his rebellion is clearly not without cause.  He is disgusted by the life that is on offer to him - meek submission to an arbitrary set of conventions that mean nothing.  He is comfortable with being an ape (sensual pleasures are the only things in life he values), but the idea of being an ape in an Armani jacket or Nike trainers, working from nine to five and paying off a mortgage for the rest of his life appals him.  Materialism is merely the ultimate expression of man's vanity, the brass-plated totem that points the way to his doom.

'Who is it that delights in playing games with humanity?  Who is manipulating us on the sly?' asks one passenger on a crowded bus.  Another has a ready reply 'The Devil, probably.'  The bus then promptly comes to a halt (you fear that man's ultimate end will come just as suddenly).  This casual verbal exchange crudely puts into words what Charles feels is so wrong with the world.  Man is unable to take responsibility for his actions.  It isn't the Devil or any divine forces that are guiding man to his destruction; it is man himself, wilfully lured towards the precipice by his unquenchable greed.  Man has free will, and by exerting that free will he has chosen self-destruction. 

To prove the veracity of this, Charles must convince himself that he, as an individual, has free will, and this means wrestling with the basic existential conundrum: to be or not to be.  By choosing to die, rather than meekly accept the polythene wrapped artificial pseudo-existence that society has manufactured for him, Charles is affirming rather than denying his freedom.  In a similar vein to Bresson's portrayal of Joan of Arc in his earlier Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, Charles's acceptance of death is a transcendental moment in which the individual triumphs over life.  It is the reversal of Albert Camus's view that suicide is a rejection of freedom. Charles's willingness to embrace suicide is a vindication of man's ability to decide his own fate, and therefore it offers hope that man may at some point divert from his present course of self-destruction and choose life over extinction.  (Camus would of course argue the exact opposite.)

But as we watch Charles go through with his pre-meditated suicide, we can't help being struck by how mechanical it all seems.  All too predictably we arrive at the point where the film started, with a young man's body lying dead in a graveyard.  Does Charles really have free will, or is he deluding himself?  Is he merely doing what he is programmed to do, one of the Devil's less fortunate playthings?  If so, then an entirely different conclusion is to be drawn from the film.  Not only is man's experience of free will an illusion, but his destiny is indeed a thing that cannot be altered, like the words drawn by the Moving Finger in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. After guiding us into a metaphysical quagmire, Bresson leaves us to draw our own conclusion.

Le Diable probablement was released in France in June 1977, just a few weeks after The Sex Pistols issued their controversial single God Save the Queen, with a refrain -  'no future' - that became a punk slogan in the late 70s.  No Future could just as easily have served as the title for this film, because this is the impression that Bresson leaves us with, having led us to the darkest place in his imagination.  Far easier to blame it all on the Devil than admit that we've brought destruction on ourselves.

Film Synopsis

The body of a twenty-year old man, shot through the head, is found in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.  There is a loaded gun in his hand.  What at first appears to be suicide is later classed as a murder.  Six months previously, the man, Charles, is leading an aimless existence, dividing his time between the two women in his life, Edwige and Alberte, neither of whom he loves.  He shares the concerns of his generation about the way the world is heading, with man causing one ecological disaster after another in the mindless pursuit of wealth, but unlike most of his peers he does not believe that man is master of his own destiny.  For him, the human race is already doomed.  He dissociates himself from his militant friend Michel, and falls in with a druggie, Valentin.  Concerned over his friend's state of mind, Michel advises Charles to consult a psychiatrist.  It is the latter who unwittingly provides the solution to the young man's dilemma...