Quite beautiful in an austere, Gertrud-like way, brilliantly goes past the mere trappings to contemplate what they mean and why they’re there, part of its breadth is found in the fact that this obscene and fascinating splendour wasn’t just to distract the court and insure loyalty because of vast obligation (fascinating idea, evidence of all the infinity of things we never think through and figure out), but maybe to keep the nobles out of the hair of the commoners and thus enable them to live they’re lives with some degree of decency or normalcy; is this a reactionary idea? I’m insufficiently informed but Rossellini here gives again the essential truths that there’s more than meets the eye and that everyone has his reasons, the ending, where Louis doffs his get-up to reveal again the plain human underneath, is marvellously ambiguous, simultaneously containing the dizzying heights that man can reach and the furnace that he can be consumed in