Le radeau de la Méduse (1998)
Iranian Iradj Azimi directed this French historical drama re-creating events depicted in the famous 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa by Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault (1791-1824). The ill-fated voyage of the frigate Medusa begins when it departs Rochefort for Senegal in 1816. After striking a sandbar off the African coast, 150 civilians row safely to shore, but Captain Chaumareys (Jean Yanne) orders 140 soldiers and sailors onto a raft (minus supplies) and has it cut loose. Only 14 survive from the 140, creating a scandal back in France. Gericault (Laurent Terzieff) later talks to three of the survivors while researching his painting. Work on this film began in 1987, but sets destroyed by Hurricane Hugo caused delays, so the film was not completed until 1990. However, it then remained undistributed until an incident in which writer-director Azimi slashed his wrists in front of French Ministry of Culture officials.
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Best movie of this year hands down!
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
A movie inspired by a tragic maritime event happened in 1816 and a movie produced in France and in Iran, "le radeau de la Méduse" is a movie that required 4 years of work! During this very long time, you feel that the director, Iradj Azimi significantly put a lot of time and effort in his project. But his efforts weren't vain at all because the result is terrific.In his movie, Azimi's speaking to the spectator. It means that he tries to understand and explain us how such the "Méduse" drama could happen. Thus, his directing turns out to be rigorous, precise and sometimes inventive. There's also a quiet but sustained use of the voice-over.If the director chose to shot his film with a special photography (that spawned several gorgeous pictures), it's because he wanted to find similar colors again as the ones used on Géricault's famous painting. It deals with dark but a little shiny colors. This photography gives more strength to the dramatic side of the story. You can also notice that Azimi decided to shot the appalling castaways' living conditions with a minimum of reserve. Thanks to this, it avoids the movie to fall into the sordid.A stunning movie supported by a quite weird but fascinating photography and Jean Yanne's extraordinary performance.