Frank Cassenti’s gorgeous The Song of Roland is not exactly an adaptation of the French medieval epic. Rather than taking place in the tenth century, as the eleventh-century poem does, it takes place in the twelfth. Peasants on a pilgrimage to a holy site are accompanied by a band of travelling players who enact the exploits of Charlemagne’s soldiers. Their journey is upheaved by a peasant uprising, costing the lives of some members. However, Klaus, the actor playing Roland des Roncesvalles (Klaus Kinski, tremendous), becomes a hero himself by taking up the peasants’ cause.
Cassenti’s film is a meditation on life and art, but also on time and history. Filled with song and in-the-momentness, the pilgrimage seemingly suspends time, with its religious motive granting it an eternal component. The performances, though, enact a French history of war and betrayal. But in the present it isn’t foreign invaders that are the concern, but injustices stirring up homegrown rebellion. All this looks ahead to France at the time of the film’s making, when it was enjoying a respite of peace following wars of the 1950s and 1960s, in Indochina and Algeria, and mindful as well of the upheavals at home in the late sixties. It is time for France to tend to its people rather than obsessing on dangers from without. By way of meta-text, alas, France would again find itself worrying about a form of Islamic “invaders”—immigrants—up ahead.
In the course of this enchanting film, both peace and violence are shown—but “peace” as a rarefied realm that exists apart, and aloof, from righteous agitation. It provides a glimpse of heaven, perhaps, but there is raw and necessary work to be done here on earth, to bring justice as well as poetry into people’s lives.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
Dennis Grunes 