Word: depardieu
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What stands out on the film's surface is the irreconcilable contrast between the characters of Danton and Robespierre. The enormous, energetic, during Danton (Gerard Depardieu) stands worlds apart from the small meticulous, cautious Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak). Danton likes to drink and carouse; Robespierre is an asexual puritan. Yet more important than their personality quirts is what each man represents. Danton stands for mitigation, for human goals over abstractions. He controls for the moment public opinion. Robespierre ironically speaks for entrenched power for Spartan obedience to the revolution. He wields the machinery of the Terror. When these two Titans clash...
...Depardieu who triumphed in last year's The Return of Martin Guerre brings vitality and commanding presence to his character standing both figuratively and liberally above the Phrygian bone tied revolution Aries who surround him. His gruff manner endears, while Pszonisk's formality chills. One sees easily why crowds would flock to the moderate Danton. Still, Wajda makes clear the appeal of authority; Robespierre offers an ideal worth living and dying for and losses into the deal the coercive force of the guillotine...
Revolutionaries fall into two main types: the romantic and the quasi-religious zealot. Danton, as envisioned by Wajda and Writer Jean-Claude Carrière (Buñuel's sometime collaborator) and brilliantly portrayed by Gérard Depardieu, is the former. Lazy, sensual and, above all, egocentric, he believes that he need do nothing but raise his famed orator's voice in order to bring the people to the counterrevolutionary barricades. Convinced of his own star qualities, he neglects to look back to see if anyone is actually following him or, despite warnings, to take practical steps...
...begins with the marriage of a painfully adolescent couple. Bertrande and Martin, but Martin's immaturity ensures that their honeymoon is short-lived. Soon, Martin mysteriously disappears only to return, nine years later, as unexpectedly as he had vanished. Back from the wars, a bigger and stronger Martin (Gerald Depardieu) receives an enthusiastic homecoming from his family--especially his wife (Nathalie Baye) who has waited faithfully for his return. Gradually some villagers begin to wonder whether this new, improved Martin is really Martin at all. Which, by the way, isn't giving away the plot, since the bulk...
...star, Gerard Depardieu, had lambasted the film even before it played the festival: "The moon is in the gutter, but the movie is in the sewer." At the most vituperative Cannes press conference in memory, Beineix, flanked by his female leads Nastassia Kinski and Victoria Abril, gave as good as he got. "They are called moving pictures, not text," he argued. "My film is a symphony of images...