Les Nympheas : Le grand rêve de Monet
The Water Lilies : Monet's Greatest Dream
Jean-Paul Fargier
2006 - 52 min - Vidéo HD - Couleur - France

At the age of 74, Claude Monet, the patriarch of the Impressionist Movement, decided to devote himself entirely to an implausible dream. A dream which had been on his mind for over twenty years. Finally, in 1914, as World War I was about to erupt, he chose to launch his own battle, that of the Water Lilies project.
Our film recounts this adventure.
This is how Monet lived it; isolated, with amazing perseverance, through a war, the loss of loved ones, the physical hardships of old age, and the dissatisfaction he constantly felt before the daunting task he had chosen as his final goal.
And how, after having bestowed this great work to France with the help of his friend, President Georges Clémenceau, he brought it to life as a vast mural collection at the Orangerie Museum in the Tuileries.
He painstakingly supervised the architectural proceedings at the Orangerie, so that the lyrical ode to nature that is the Water Lilies collection might become a harbor of harmony within the chaos of the city.