Let There Be Light!

1998
6.4| 1h50m| en| More Info
Released: 08 July 1998 Released
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

God comes to Earth in order to make a film.

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Reviews

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.
Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
etherially By a fireside in a Gothic ruin sits an invisible God watching the world below on a television screen. Disparate images of war and dispossession intersect with images of religious observance. The television set implodes. The invisible God has existential problems. He's sometimes not quite sure whether he exists or not. However he does have a mission. He's working on a script which will bring humanity together. But will he be able to find the right director? Once upon a time he was in love with Joan of Arc. Her death still plagues his conscience. Is there a modern Joan of Arc somewhere down there who can bring his vision to the screen? I first saw 'Let There Be Light' some years ago on SBS. When I went looking for it recently I found that there wasn't an English language version available on DVD, which seems a real shame. It's an immensely enjoyable film. It has a broad scope and works on many different levels. It's funny, thought provoking, beautifully paced and deftly put together. The music is bright and there are great moments of editing. Sure, it is a wildly preposterous premise and yes, I did watch it fearing that it might plummet. But actually I found it did the opposite.At the heart of this film is a sense of gentle bemusement at the foibles of flailing humanity. This particularly shines through the heroine, played by Helene de Fougerolles. She is disarmingly unpretentious throughout and at times almost translucent. Tcheky Karyo does a suitably beguiling Mephistophelean character with relish and God in his many manifestations is a multifaceted wonder. At the end of the film there is a mirroring of that lonely image of God the writer which came at the beginning. Not a bad transformation for an old bloke.
jshoaf This film was just good fun, not-quite-two hours of entertaining suspension of disbelief--literally, since if one does not believe in God, or believes anything in particular about him, one has to forget that. Which is easy, because every little idea and character is worked out just enough to keep the viewer engaged: yes, the Hebrew typewriter (on which God is typing his screenplay--he is woefully underendowed with electronics and evidently doesn't even have cable, though there is a satellite in his neighborhood) goes to the right when God hits "return"; yes, God is a baby-ditchdigger-pigeon-garbage man; yes, some kind of wings will appear in the proximity of the angel René until he gets his "real" ones. The Burning Bush becomes a hot-dog roast, a woman who reads the newspaper tells God off for allowing the news to happen, the devil has his own rewrite department. There is some kind of dumb or clever joke, visual or verbal or both, every minute. Maybe every thirty seconds.The movie God makes provokes the one long sequence with relatively few jokes: people watching a movie. It reminded me quite a bit--and was surely meant to--of the movie scene in Sullivan's Travels, with men at the lowest ebb of dignity laughing at Mickey Mouse. But this audience is not a chain gang; it is all the people of Paris, cushioned by a social safety net (at one point René says that if he gets fired as an angel he'll have to apply for unemployment; hospitals are evidently good places to die or go crazy; you need a permit to make a movie; the police always seem to be in place whether needed or not; the more dangerous bits of the Eiffel Tower are roped off). Perhaps if there is a message it is that a society is better at providing safety nets than God, but that he survives because our imaginations need him (or, in the movie, vice versa).
Film Viewer This film should finally be released in America. In fact, there should be an American remake, yes! It is such a charming, hopeful, witty and entertaining film, for all ages. I am surprised it wasn't ever released in America(!) IT SHOULD BE! Sorry, but I just don't see the French market as appreciating and giving worthy respects to such a fantastic and imaginative film from a French Filmmaker of their own (they seem to only give recognition to American filmmakers in this respect). But trust an American viewer, if you want to see an uplifting film, without any violence or profanity, the kind of film that leaves you smiling on your way out of the cinema, go see "Que La Lumiere Soit", (Let There Be Light). I am sure they sell it on the internet. Remember, if you live in America, make sure you buy one of those Multi-Standard DVD Viewers, because if you don't have one already, you are unfortunately missing out on so many wonderful foreign films, like this one here by the Great Arthur Joffe.
jf34 God has written a script "Let there be light !" and is searching for a good and adequate film-maker. In order to reach this aim, He will temporarily live in the body of many human-being and animals, helped by his favorite and irresistible angel !A deep and original subject, with subtle theological considerations, and treated with a lot of humor, simplicity and generosity.

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