France Against the Robots (Jean-Marie Straub, 2020) (Patreon)

In just under ten minutes, Straub's newest film disrupts any lingering ideas we may have about historical progress, if it doesn't invalidate them altogether. A speaker (Christophe Clavert), seen mostly from the back as he walks around a lake, explains very patiently that if revolution comes, it will be total, potentially devastating, and absolutely essential. He speaks out against moderation, the idea of a "planned revolution, as one speaks of the 'planned economy'." He asserts that capitalism in its current form cannot be reformed, and that it relies upon, and foments, racism, nationalism, and an eventual lurch into totalitarianism.

The speech is heard twice, as we see Clavert walk around the lake in two separate but nearly identical shots. The first is at dusk, the second apparently mid-afternoon on a cloudy day. What is notable about Straub's repetition is that, without very close analysis -- perhaps showing the two shots atop one another -- it is impossible to tell whether this event actually took place two times, or if the second shot is the "original," the first an example of day-for-night (nuit américaine), the common cinematic trick for simulating nighttime.

Because repetition is at the heart of France Against the Robots. Straub takes his title, and the spoken text, from a 1944 text by Georges Bernanos. In describing the "free world" as a mirror image of fascism (and the Soviet Union a refracted image of the so-called democratic states), Bernanos and Straub insist that capital never changes, that authoritarians are always in the offing, and that there is no virtue in the middle way. As the camera follows Clavert from a few paces' distance, Straub reminds us that our understanding trails behind Bernanos, who saw our own time so clearly.