Intuition is an
artist’s most powerful tool. However, it can also lead to an artist’s full
disclosure. If there’s no talent and personality involved, it’s just an ugly
mess. Lack of depth, lack of vision and lack of artistic integrity.
Alexander Sokurov, who has
over the years frustrated and delighted me in equal measure, seems to have
finally done it. Frankofonia is
complete artistic intuition, half-thoughts catching on half-ideas and breaking
into spontaneous revelations and illogical eurekas. A rich, strangely engaging
and horribly relevant meditation on Paris and art. It’s the eternal ‘art versus
human life’ question, and Sokurov just riffs on it for an hour and a half.
But when it's done by someone of such artistic integrity and such powerful intuition, you sort of wonder why he breaks it up at some point and asks: 'Are you not bored yet?'
No, not even close.
