Pickpocket

Why does Michel steal? What causes him to be a recluse? Was he ever connected to others? These questions, as well as others, are left unanswered in Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. However, it is not a story with closure that Bresson sought out to portray, it is the compulsive obsession of Michel he wants us to experience and not necessarily understand.

The stoic and systematic main character, Michel never seems to have open discourse with others: his mother, his friends or authority figures. However, he openly communicates to other petty thieves and his journal. This theme of limited communication accentuates the significance of sound and body language through out the film.

I found myself intoxicated by Michel’s frame of mind. The eyes are almost blank in expression, pierced by a dark mind. The ambient sound of shoe soles, transit signals and dollies set a trance for theft. Michel also seemed to be shot from the wrists up while he was prowling for new victims. The erotic focus on fingers and palms gripping, folding then relaxing, forced me to follow his fixation on mannerisms.

A pickpocket needs to be aware of: sound, body language, the hands of others and his own. The questions we are left with are not meant to be answered because Michel does not care if we understand. Therefore, we are only given his point of view, awareness of sound, obsession with hands and their mannerisms and the faces of unsuspecting-sacrificial victims. I believe that Bresson’s purpose was to place us into the mind of Michel, as cold as it was. If Michel rarely communicates with others throughout the story, why should Bresson communicate the voids of him to us? Who ever really knows why people do what they do? Brilliant.