Review: Francofonia

Francofonia is the latest film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov, who is perhaps best known for his 2002 documentary Russian Ark, an ambitious and awe-inspiring one-take trip through St Peterburg’s Hermitage museum during the Russian Revolution. In Francofonia, Sokurov once more returns to the themes of art and war and museums, this time focussing on the Louvre during the Nazi occupation of France.

As someone who doesn’t get on terribly well with documentaries, I found Francofonia rather intriguing as it played with the documentary form and fused narrative with truth and reconstruction, past with present. We see Napoleon wandering the halls of the museum, we see the German officer in charge of dealing with the Louvre meeting with the then head of the museum. Sokurov himself narrates the documentary and appears on screen as one of the film’s central figures, talking to the characters while also being depicted as trying to piece the film together and not knowing how because the nature of culture is too overwhelming.

But the film itself is not a failure – the nature of culture is overwhelming, and this is intentionally presented in the daunting and elusive way that it is. The fragments of history are all woven together in a way that urges us to draw our own conclusions in the way that Sokurov tries to over the course of the film.

While at times disappointingly Eurocentric in its analysis of culture and the significance of culture, Francofonia still provides plenty of food for thought. What is culture? How much is it worth and who needs it? Who has a right to it? Perhaps the most interesting facet for me was the parallel drawn between Germany capturing the Louvre during its invasion in WWII and Napoleon invading other countries during his reign and bringing back countless artefacts to be displayed in the Louvre. Plus there’s a lot of fascinating snippets about the museum’s formation and the particulars of what it went through during the Second World War.

Complex and at times confusing – in a good way – Francofonia has a lot to offer, even if we have to do a bit of work to piece it all together.

Francofonia opens October 6.

Written by Ben Volchok.

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