Pickpocket

Absolutely excellent film about a young man, Michel, as he struggles to deny all that is human within him, and in doing so, prove his superiority over every other human not like him.



The movie opens with a bleak white on black introduction accentuated by even bleaker somber music. It explains that the protagonist is forced to live a "nightmare" due to "weaknesses" that have led him to a life of crime.



The "weakness" alluded to in this introduction is Michel's need to see himself as a superman. The reason for this need is not made explicit, but director Robert Bresson leaves room for speculation (e.g., a fatherless childhood (father never mentioned), despicable actions (stealing from his mother), a failed/lack of respectable career (Michel is unemployed), grandiose self-importance (stacks of books covered with dust, keeping a diary), desperate living conditions (a room in a flophouse without even a properly working door).



We first meet Michel at the racetrack where he is "walking on air" with the "world at his feet" after lifting money from a woman's purse. He later challenges the police to prove their suspicions of the theft or to let him go. He gets away with both, and the next day he smoothly swivels off the tram in front of his mother place still walking on air.



Michel's refusal to visit with his (not well) mother provides a hint he is no ordinary pickpocket and illustrates his lack of empathy. He provides (cold, hard) cash for his mother (via a third party,) but grants no emotional support. It's not a cold refusal to visit, just a matter of fact refusal. Michel has willed all emotion from himself.



It's reason is explained in the next scene where Michel argues that certain men should be allowed to operate without regard to the law, and that society should have no role in deciding who these men might be. Michel also argues that the only criteria for these men to operate above society should be their ability to something very well. Intent has no meaning in Michel's world, only performance. It's why he doesn't respond to his friend when the friend asks if Michel will go to the addresses, and why he supplies only money to his mother. Michel believes himself to be one of these "supermen" and isolates himself emotionally to reinforce this delusion.



Michel blames his "stagnation" on society. He feels imprisoned. His revenge is to pick society's pockets. His early successes provide him not only with money, but the satisfaction of sticking it to the rest of society.



When another man baits Michel to come outside and then ignores him, Michel asks who he is. When he gets no answer, Michel has to follow this man who has the audacity to bait him and then refuse to answer him. Michel must be thinking: Could this be another superman? Michel follows him and in a few minutes they are single-dimensional comrades. Later in the film, a third pickpocket joins them.



When Michel' mother dies, the last remnant of emotion leaves him. He no longer has anyone to answer to. There's "no turning back." The reference to his three minutes belief in god was, and I really speculate here, the futile three minutes he prayed for a miracle and her recovery. The virtually soundless following scene in the hall of the bank reverberates Michel's emptiness. An emptiness shortly filled by his fellow pickpocket.



In the sparring match with the detective at the bar, Michel prophetically states that supermen don't get caught. When he does, Michel cannot deny that he is not a superman. The thought that he is like everyone else is "unbearable" to him. But, it's an admittance Michel can no longer deny and one that leads to his salvation.