Julian posted about F for Fake yesterday, which prompted me to watch a few more clips of the film scattered around the internet. I have to admit that I'm not familiar with much of Orson Welles' body of work beyond Citizen Kane and his famous War of the Worlds broadcast. So I had assumed that there was no more complete and cruel affirmation of Welles' final, nihilistic hopelessness than his next-to-last acting credit: the voice of Unicron in the Transformers movie. But it appears that history has come up with innovative new sleights since then.

Within F for Fake there's a monologue about Chartes Cathedral in which Welles expresses the idea that our individual impermanence doesn't imply futility — that there's dignity to be had in the moment and within our collective history. It's quite beautiful.

Anyway, be sure to check out the associated Youtube comments, which together form a convincing rebuttal. I especially like the one comparing Welles' work (unfavorably) to that of Quentin Tarantino.