Despite numerous indications of a Constructivist style in Bresson's late films discussed in chapter four, Bresson's work equally shows a close affiliation with American Minimalism. While French critics have tended to focus on Bresson's embodied style, Anglo-American critics have instead stressed Bresson's ascetic, Minimalist qualities. Susan Sontag's seminal essay on Bresson's spiritual style, for example, argues that his work is one of the most successful examples of the reflective mode in art, which stresses emotional detachment and a contemplative temperament. Although Sontag never uses the word Minimalist—instead preferring Bertold Brecht’s concept of “alienation effect”—her description closely corresponds to such a style: reflective, passive, ascetic, and stripped of dramatic tension and the anecdotal. Subsequent links between Bresson and Minimalism have predominantly traveled by way of Andy Warhol. Paul Schrader finds, in both Bresson and Warhol, an interest in the everyday, a drive toward stasis, and an emphasis on boredom that prevents the spectator from becoming emotionally invested in the work. Steven Shaviro concludes that both Warhol and Bresson are “literalists of the body” because they sacrifice signification in favor of the actions and reactions of the flesh itself. If previous chapters have privileged the French view of Bresson as a filmmaker of the body, then this chapter instead takes up the American view of Bresson through his affiliations with the avant-garde movement of Minimalism.