Why do people go to war? Most of us would probably choose a common reply: to gain territory or resources, to exact revenge, to gain freedom from an oppressor. Alexander Sokurov has made Francofonia to propose an unexpected answer: people go to war to gain art.
He makes his point by telling the history of the Louvre, concentrating on the Nazi occupation years. Most of the paintings of the museum had been spirited away to houses around France, but the sculptures and the building itself remained in Paris. Sokurov reenacts the wartime relationship of Jacques Jaujard, the French civil servant who oversaw the museum, and Franz Wolff-Metternich, the German official charged with cataloguing and protecting art. Both had fought in World War I on opposite sides and had no trust for each other, but they shared a love for the art. Metternich never collected the missing paintings, worried that they could suffer in bombings, but he re-opened the museum. How could such a great museum be kept closed?
By the end of the war, Hitler had reprimanded and replaced him. According to Sokurov, one of the reasons Hitler invaded France was to loot the Louvre, and he wanted to bring the spoils back to Germany. The Allies liberated Paris before that could happen. On the post-war testimony of Jaujard, the French people counted Metternich a national hero for protecting their artistic heritage.
But Francofonia isn’t just a historical reenactment. Sokurov also gazes at many works in the Louvre now, as well as the museum itself. Into those shots step two ghosts from France’s past. One is a peasant woman who represents the ideals of the Revolution – all she ever says is “Freedom, equality, brotherhood.” The other is Napoleon. He tells us that he went to war to bring back the spoils of other museums, and we see the Egyptian and other collections as he brags that he succeeded.
Sokurov associates the idealistic revolutionary with the artists and their works, their drive to express themselves and create something for the good of the world. He associates Napoleon with Hitler, warriors who desire not works of art but Art as a whole, who pride themselves on taking the best of those they conquer. The surprise to Hitler was that Metternich was on the side of the artists. He loved the works and the museum for themselves and chose to protect them.
But France and Germany are not the only nations at play in Francofonia. Sokurov himself is Russian, and he points out that Hitler had no hesitation to bomb the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, another palace that became an art museum; Sokurov’s earlier film, Russian Ark, meditated on the Hermitage as the repository of Russian culture. The subtext of Francofonia’s exploration of this effort to save the Louvre is a bitter question: why was the French museum respected and valued more than the Russian?
Francofonia is an excellent collage of a film, mixing historical reenactment, documentary presentation, and symbolic reverie. Sokurov’s art-centered perspective on war and history adds a fascinating interpretation to these familiar figures and their motivations. He never makes the point, but he can take pride in the history that both Hitler and Napoleon saw their momentum fizzle out when they tried to conquer Russia. They may have bombed the Hermitage, but they never conquered it.