802 Paris Belongs to Us

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
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Drucker
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#26 Post by Drucker » Wed Mar 15, 2017 10:14 am

Kino are the rights holder, and the edition currently out from them and Masters of Cinema in the UK are the best versions out there.

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Red Screamer
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#27 Post by Red Screamer » Fri Aug 25, 2017 9:23 pm

I agree with the other comparisons in this thread, and want to add that this film also reminds me of Welles, particularly during the early party scene with all of its discontinuity, distorted angles, interruptions, and strange paranoid-comedic-tragic-surreal tone.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#28 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 2:03 am

Before Pynchon dropped his first novel, Rivette gave as a paranoid postmodern noir set in the streets of a familiar Paris, eyeing the familiar Bohemians as pre-Lynch flesh-and-blood fugue-stated walking dead, and asking rhetorical existential questions rooted in corporeal blind spots that innately refuse to provide any concrete response. The detective here is a naive innocent rather than experienced and worn apathetic vessel, chasing catharsis in all the wrong places- the physical, palpable, traversable corners of Paris don't hold the key to the mystery actually being sought.

Right from the beginning Rivette stabs us with social fragmentation, siblings and strangers alike surrendering as soon as they begin a conversation, succumbing to the fatalism of communication’s futility. The fatalism doesn’t stop there, but instead spreads like a disease to contradict the delusion of the film’s title- the inevitability of thwarted belongingness that comes when one pays attention to the enigmatic core within the conventions that bind us and evoke a false sense of comfort. The title could be viewed as being stated by this omniscient cosmos, reinforcing the objective lens we seek but cannot comprehend. Rivette makes any evidenced plot developments rendered impotent with an isolating anti-paranoia, the ultimate form of loss for an individual searching for answers in a social world. This is a horror film that traps us in a subjective state of emerging awareness to the inherent impossibility of accessing the void of objectivity, the lonely space of being sober to the existence of a higher power beyond our understanding or attainment- triggering a Sisyphean journey of torment and confusion.

Unlike others, I fail to see how any of the last act delivers answers that spoil the mystery. Any closure of leads confirms only a speck of affirmation to tide one over until the meaninglessness behind it all becomes even more exacerbated and we recognize information as red herrings to the insoluble questions that actually haunt us. The motives for all sides seem to contain a need to create meaning via control in an overwhelming fog of uncertainty, but there is an equal absence of bearings on the big picture for the Terrys of the world as for the Annes, and thus both are victims of the existential tragedy, vying to assert agency in the vapid, perpetuating or receiving glimmers of secrets that exist merely as protective defenses against nothingness. This is a film about people playing games with no purpose, fortifying the isolation self-imposed against the friction of a neutral world.

Not even artists can be spared the nihilistic magnet that threatens to infect the minds of possibility with their own Achilles heel of intellectualization as a dysfunction. Anne’s brother Pierre tells her at one point to “come back to reality” but we know that he’s referring to the safety of hiveminded ignorance, while she is operating in a treacherous dimension of truth-seeking with no endpoint. Gerard and Anne agree that the world is less absurd than some think, but such is a delusion of necessary complacency, and one that disintegrates as they posture at the peripheries of the bubbles they’re trapped in- unwittingly playing the most dangerous game of all. Gerard’s fatalistic attraction to his own demise is only superficially planted onto the femme fatale trope- it’s the unknown Godly force, translated as inescapable allure toward suffocating systems, that destroys his free will. Rivette has made a film where actionably attempting insight into God is a form of hell on earth. Later in the 60s, Godard would proclaim cinema as dead, but a decade earlier before Godard had even made his first film, Rivette would secrete the death of philosophy, culture, and being.

I haven't been shy about holding the unpopular opinion that this is Rivette's masterpiece, and a recent revisit only confirms this fact. I'm looking forward to Adrian Martin's commentary on the BFI disc to see if we see eye-to-eye like usual, or if his interpretation trashes all over the above.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#29 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:04 am

I always like to think that Rivette had encountered some PK Dick (which had appeared already, albeit it not yet translated when he started this project). Crazy American expatriate, with initials PK. A definite PKD-ish feeling of paranoia. Maybe a coincidence. But I prefer not to think so. (I do know Rivette did mention PKD favorably -- but not during this time period).

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#30 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:26 am

I'm listening to Martin's commentary (on the BFI) in pieces this morning (surprise, it's terrific), and one aspect that I already love is how he describes Rivette as attempting to create an essay film to investigate what the nature of power is, and to what degree he has control or no control himself. In that sense, it's a great self-reflexive detective venture by Rivette to get to Truth that he can only trek through his imagination (also the nod to trying to make Pericles and restore unity to that which is enigmatic). It's also great to hear Martin reinforce the subjectivity-as-objectivity idea where even if this is all coincidence, the terror affects the characters and thus it's real (this is where Rosenbaum's anti-paranoia comes in)

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