Link: A Man Escaped

Summary: A man escapes from a prison.  It’s as simple as it gets.

Thoughts: This is the second film by French director Robert Bresson that I’ve watched, and I enjoyed it more than Pickpocket.  Bresson’s otherwise annoying directing style serves the focused nature of this particular story very well.  The film title itself establishes the character’s goal, and the story remains focused entirely on the main character achieving his goal.  We don’t even care why he’s in prison (it’s Nazi occupied France, so I suppose we assume the reason is unjust).  No backstory, no big subplot.  We are given every detail of how he escapes; nothing is left conveniently unexplained.  Though the pace may be slow at times, I found myself captivated watching as the main character scraped the end of a spoon into the crevices of his door to loosen its boards.  Given the title and the past-tense narration, we know the character is going to escape at the end, it’s just a matter of discovering what exactly he will do to escape.  I also enjoyed the use of Mozart.  Fun movie.