August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest king of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.
La mort de Louis XIV, Der Tod von Ludwig XIV., A Morte de Luís XIV, Смерть Людовика XIV, La mort de Lluís XIV, La muerte de Luis XIV, 14. Louis'nin Ölümü, 1715: Smrt Krále Slunce, Смъртта на Луи XIV, 路易十四的死亡纪事, Śmierć Ludwika XIV, 루이 14세의 죽음
France
Cannes Film Festival
Germany12
Munich International Film Festival
Israel
Jerusalem Film Festival
New Zealand
New Zealand International Film Festival
Poland12
New Horizons Film Festival
Australia
Melbourne International Film Festival
Canada
Toronto International Film Festival
USA
New York Film Festival
UK
London Film Festival
USA
FranceU
Portugal
Brazil
UK
Netherlands12
Switzerland0
JapanG
UK
Netherlands12
Australia
Brazil
Canada
France
Germany
Israel
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Poland
Portugal
Switzerland
UK
USA
A body horror movie in which a pampered king is forced to lay in bed and experience his body rot from the inside out. The monarchic poison running through his veins kills him.
Jean-Pierre Leaud gives a masterful performance - it seems, especially near the end, like he’s doing nothing at all, but it’s a portrayal of a prolonged, painful, clouded death that some viewers (myself included) will recognize in the pit of their stomach. Has any other actor ever given such definitive performances so early and so late in their career?
The frailty of man and the ceremonial of death. Leaud (as usual as much an avatar of Nouvelle Vague vitality as an actor) wasting away at the hands of rigorous current cinema. The pastoral horror mood of Story of my Death applied to radical different space. A study on stillness and the relationship between drained colors and reds. The more Serra takes away, the closer his film comes to become a formalist thriller.
39/100
I can see why folks are impressed, but this is the kind of film that would be little harmed if most of its scenes were reshuffled in random order. Watching it is like spending a couple of hours staring at thousands of studies of the same Renaissance painting. Gorgeous to behold, and conceptually admirable, but each five minutes is the same five minutes. Everything we learn about the king is embodied in his rejection of desperately needed water because it's not served in a crystal glass. His doctors and attendants exude impotence and servility start to finish. Basically, I "got" the film early on and then endured another hour-plus of Serra repeating himself. Eschewing narrative is fine, but some sort of dynamism should take its place. This is the wrong medium for stasis.
Film oftentimes shows death as the ultimate dramatic feat. Someone struggling to talk through the pain, forcing to tell someone they love them with their last words, saying something profound before staring into the distance and peacefully dying.
It's probably not gonna blow anyone's mind to say death is more monotonous, painful, grueling, and at times boring than that. If you've ever wondered why a film has never portrayed a more realistic form of death, then this one is for you. You will feel an old man's death slowly coming for 2 hours.
Now if you WANT to experience that or not as a viewer, that's a whole other question
If this is supposed to be some meta narrative where the audience is supposed to feel like they're dying while watching this, just like King Louis XIV, then it's a masterpiece.
Jean-Pierre Léaud plays the slowly dying Louis XIV. Without Léaud, this would have been a waste of time. Both the king's wig and spleen are larger than life.
Of course, through the whole film I was thinking of how its director (Albert Serra) made one of the worst films I've seen in my whole entire life: Liberté, which I had the displeasure of viewing at Cannes in 2019. Still, I was grateful that The Death of Louis XIV was slow instead of insupportable.
Vegan alert:
Bull's blood, bull's sperm, and frog fat are ingredients in the elixir for the king
I would be exactly 17% less depressed if a small group of people followed me around and politely clapped whenever I accomplished anything minor.
(7/15)
I'm so used to see a young, irreverent and charismatic Jean-Pierre Léaud that seeing him at the age of 75 or 76 as the bedridden Louis XIV is a shocking experience.
He doesn't say much, he doesn't move much, he cannot due to the immense pain he carries in his body, so he just stays there and suffers the injustices of old age. It's a terribly slow film, especially if one does not pay attention, because this is one of the best performances by the french actor. Not because of how different this part is from the others we are used to seem him perform, it's the way he shows how terrible it is to be old and to have…
Hé just died? Wow. Ai didn't know zat, ai just, you'ré telleng me now fair le first time. He lived an amazéng lifé. What else can you sai? Hé was an amazeng man, whéthair you agree air not, 'e was an amazeng man who lived an amazeng life. I'm actual-lee saddéned to 'air zat. Ai am saddened to 'air zat, thank you vairy much.
To suggest that such death and decrepitude exists not in spite of but because of beauty is Serra's greatest formal accomplishment here, specifically in that Leaud's lack of autonomy is frequently contested by the vibrancy of the places around him - in fact the only time Louis XIV ever seems alive is when we are allowed to focus on his eyes; to understand that way he sees, how that is plasticized... Louis as a character even consciously acknowledges the structure he lives inside. "We don't lack pretty fruit or vegetables in our gardens." No - but we lack gardens.
