REVIEW - MICHAEL KOHLHAAS

Arnaud des Pallieres takes a low-spirited approach to his film adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's novella, instead diverting the film's energies toward its technical and artistic qualities. He thus creates a dichotomy between the subdued, respectful contribution of the script and the acting and the relative flamboyance (as far as that term could apply to anything in Michael Kohlhaas) of elements such as the score, the sound mix and the cinematography. It renders the film, as a whole, somewhat uninvolving, yet individual aspects or scenes do frequently possess a distinct beauty in their presentation. des Pallieres' approach may be tinged with hints of pretension, but even the most pretentious directorial devices can have their uses, and he is surprisingly benevolent at finding them here, considering the restraint he seems to coax out of his performers. But von Kleist's story being over 200 years old, there's plainly too much going on in the most basic narrative framework of Michael Kohlhaas that a strictly minimalist technique wouldn't have fit, so des Pallieres' propensity for embellishment, however subtle or brief, doesn't feel as out of place as it could have. von Kleist's (posthumous) input is perhaps of the greatest worth: this is a story of an ilk we don't have the privilege of seeing much of any more, wherein the obvious dramatic marks are not all necessarily hit, and the easy options not all taken. He, like so many novelists of bygone times and so few of contemporary, had conviction in the content of his prose to buoy interest in his story, and possibly also in the value of devising a plot that follows more a realistic trajectory than a crudely satisfying, melodramatic one might have had. It is a positive attribute of this film, then, that des Pallieres has taken such a low-spirited approach. He resists any modern urges to sensationalise a tale that undeniably would have suffered under anything of that sort.