L’argent

Robert Bresson’s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill’s passage from hand to hand and the resulting tragic consequences is rendered with a clean force that would be startling from a filmmaker of any age; coming from one in his early 80s, it was, and still is, astonishing. L’argent burns white hot—not with anger but with a perfect clarity of purpose: to direct us to see that habitual human callousness is what keeps us out of paradise. Restored by MK2, in 2K from a 4K scan of the original negative. A Janus Films release.