Sublime

Perversely, irony relies on some remains of cultural capital in order to coherently express its destructive message. If elevated beyond commentary and analysis to its own pedestal of artistic value, its essence become desacralization and the making trite of deep truths we might prefer to respect and conserve.

The subtitles, which make the most muffled speeches comprehensible, are an interference, though the raggedness of the sound makes Pialat's point: this isn't rhetorical dialogue, addressed to the audience to make dramatic and character points, but speech considered as a sound effect, part of the natural content of the image.

The film lionizes the rejection of narrative but, in a notable irony, places Brad Pitt at its centre. Neatly contradicting its own thesis,

The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose. This touches upon questions of copyright for reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, the total policy of public art galleries and museums. As usually

contemporary accounts of proximity and distance, particularly those from post-1968 ideological critics, treat them as if spectator “positions” were effects of the textual