Paul Schrader’s American Carnage

A young man with his face pressed between the bars, holding a young woman’s hand to his lips: this is how Robert Bresson ends Pickpocket, his 1959 film modeled on Crime & Punishment. For the preceding seventy-five minutes, Martin LaSalle’s Michel has committed petty robberies across Paris and eventually throughout Europe. He enjoys the transgression, the sense that he belongs to a select few men who can break the law with impunity. He is also good at it, an aptitude which Bresson depicts as a symphony of subtle gestures, minute movements of the palm and fingers—as an art form.