The first 100 minutes of this roughly 160 min film is a complete bore. I'll be the first to admit i don't know much about the stock market and how it works but i don't think i need to be an expert in econometrics to enjoy a film yet that's how i felt during the first 100 mins. Its unusual for a story to care so much about such details and i would commend it if it was used to showcase how finances can go wrong in a brutally realistic way even if i don't understand it but the film throws all of that away to focus on simple lies and mischiefs, effectively making the first half of the film pointless. And is it me or a bank's financial state should be reliable enough and hedged correctly not to be completely dependant on whether a plane crashes?
Thankfully, the film picks up after the 100 min mark and is a good enough watch until the end.
The characters are more multidimensional than i expected for a film called "L'Argent". During the opening, saccard is shown to have lost his fortune. 15 mins later he goes to a restaurant where his peers visit and he doesn't seem to actually care about the money. After interacting with people that prefer to ignore his existence and seeing Line Hamelin (played by Marie Glory) he decides to lie his way back to success. Maybe he wanted respect? Maybe love, maybe money to buy love? Hard to say.
The same goes for line, she condemns saccard for "having only one creed ... money" yet she has no problem enjoying all the gifts and spending couple hundred thousand francs without hesitation. She tells her husband she "wants money for him" but none of her actions reflect that. She's far from the innocent girl she acts like.
Unfortunately, this depth and "greyness" of characters hurt the overall story. If the story was supposed to be about greed and money corrupts/enslaves, it actually never sent that message and how everything was blamed on saccard was moronic since everyone else used that money as well and "the heroic flight of hamelin was made possible by a single force". The ending was as idiotic as saccard blaming everything on gunderman.
As for the cinematography, regardless of whether you find the different unique shots brilliant or gimmicky, it suffers from inconsistency. Its obvious more care and attention was given to the first and last 20 mins of the film. As a result , you go from a shaking displaced rotation around an overwhelmed character in a large room with a map as paint to 2 hours of normal generic close-ups during conversations and amateurish fast cutting when saccard tries to force himself on line.
Thanks for reading.
Thankfully, the film picks up after the 100 min mark and is a good enough watch until the end.
The characters are more multidimensional than i expected for a film called "L'Argent". During the opening, saccard is shown to have lost his fortune. 15 mins later he goes to a restaurant where his peers visit and he doesn't seem to actually care about the money. After interacting with people that prefer to ignore his existence and seeing Line Hamelin (played by Marie Glory) he decides to lie his way back to success. Maybe he wanted respect? Maybe love, maybe money to buy love? Hard to say.
The same goes for line, she condemns saccard for "having only one creed ... money" yet she has no problem enjoying all the gifts and spending couple hundred thousand francs without hesitation. She tells her husband she "wants money for him" but none of her actions reflect that. She's far from the innocent girl she acts like.
Unfortunately, this depth and "greyness" of characters hurt the overall story. If the story was supposed to be about greed and money corrupts/enslaves, it actually never sent that message and how everything was blamed on saccard was moronic since everyone else used that money as well and "the heroic flight of hamelin was made possible by a single force". The ending was as idiotic as saccard blaming everything on gunderman.
As for the cinematography, regardless of whether you find the different unique shots brilliant or gimmicky, it suffers from inconsistency. Its obvious more care and attention was given to the first and last 20 mins of the film. As a result , you go from a shaking displaced rotation around an overwhelmed character in a large room with a map as paint to 2 hours of normal generic close-ups during conversations and amateurish fast cutting when saccard tries to force himself on line.
Thanks for reading.