Germinal

In 1867, Karl Marx theorized the struggle of the proletarian masses in economical words. But the emotional resonance rang from Emile Zola's "Germinal", 18 years after "The Capital" and the impact was so strong that at the death of Zola in 1902, a group of coal-miners marched during his funeral shouting "Germinal".

Scholars look as it as a masterpiece of naturalism, a genre where Zola was the figurehead. His method consisted in collecting information from knowledge, then researches, on-the-spot investigations (as far as going down into the mine for "Germinal"). While he could collect notebooks with hundred pages worth of information, Zola insisted that the lion share of his story was the result of his own imagination and intuition, mirroring even his old friend Flaubert's conviction that a writer should also learn to make notebooks to better despise them.

Personally, I do trust Zola's approach as I discover in the book characterization as rich and labyrinthine as a mine's gallery, from Lantier, the idealistic 'troublemaker', Maheu the quiet family man, Maheude, his hot-tempered wife or the brutish, alcoholic Chaval. Zola's book might say more about the torments of the working class (whose condition history slightly rose above slavery) than any documentary, and Zola's stance during the Dreyfus Affair cleared any doubt about the man's humanitarian motives.

And "Germinal" is humanitarian as it reveals deep and disturbing truths without romanticizing the coal-miners: idealistic, rude, sensitive, ugly, or disillusioned. Lantier, portrayed by Renaud, embodies the outsider's perspective, the most likely to be the spark that ignites the wrath, as people from the mine are too alienated by their routine they can't see the machines they became. Yet there are no villains either, as the bourgeois are portrayed with similar impartial exactitude, just failing to inspire pity because they can eat. Movie-wise, "Germinal" is no Eisenstein material.

Indeed, after the storm is gone, everything gets back to normal, Zola's final paragraph seems to predict that the next time will be the right one, but history didn't echo Zola's optimism although the prediction didn't necessarily imply for the last century. The problem with Claude Berri's film is that it is one century too late, and we have enough perspective to accept the ending as a defeat, the voice-over narration doesn't cancel the downer feeling. But who said you couldn't make great film out of a failure?

Berri proved to be a lucid painter of human corruption, judging by his two masterpieces "Jean de Florette" and "Manon des Sources". And in "Germinal", he reminds us that the worst human traits transcend classes. One of the key characters is Chaval, a brute infatuated with Maheu's daughter Catherine. Jean-Roger Milo plays with gusto the street-smart man who's no less idealistic than the next schmuck but whose soul is already rotten by life's meaninglessness. Judith Henry, as Catherine, is sweet and submissive as going down the mine lowered her self-esteem in the process and made her believe she deserved Chaval more than the decent Lantier.

The matriarch, (played by Miou-Miou) isn't the voice of consolation either, she resents Catherine because she now belongs to Chaval and so does her wage. That's one of the subtle lessons of "Germinal", coal-miners are as driven by money as capitalists, maybe more because it's a matter of life and death. The company gives them a house (the 'corons' in the North of France are an architectural heritage of the industrial era), and enough money not to die from hunger. They make children, as many arms to work but as many mouths to feed, stability depends on this fragile balance. But the film, following Zola's method and echoing the didacticism of John Ford's "Grapes of Wrath", explains why the strikes start.

Minders are paid for the coal, but not the timbers they use to shore up the shafts, so they put less spirit in the timbering, causing more accidents. When the company pays the shoring, the wages for coal are reduced, leading to an even less profitable situation. On an intellectual level, "Germinal" works, so well in fact that the film might be less impressive when it gets spectacular. Indeed, Berri is never as efficient as during intimate or subtle interactions, when the rich daughter Cecile doesn't give the whole sweet bun to Maheude's children, only the half of it, it mirrors the way rich people hardly renounce their share.

Miou-Miou is never as effective as in the quieter moments, her weird grunts at some tragic moments made me turn down the volume so my neighbors wouldn't get the wrong idea of the type of movies I watched. Renaud is a natural, he was the reason Berri wanted to make the film like Coluche for "Tchao Pantin" and Yves Montand for the Provence two-parter, as the singing Vox Populi, Renaud was meant to play Lantier. And Gérard Depardieu plays the brave old chap in a role that (I guess) wasn't too demanding. Some scenes are rather unnecessary as they had nothing to the big picture and all the "big" scenes with crowds of workers marching over the hills say less than the infamous cadaver's mutilation that contributed to the film's most shocking image.

I won't spoil the scene but the look on the man's faces says a lot about the way things get easily out of control and it says something more about human nature. Berri adapted two movies from Marcel Pagnol, s about the basic need for water but saying so much more about the unlimited vileness of greed. "Germinal" works in a reverse way, on the surface, it might feel like a hymn for dignity, but maybe it's a film that also shows how far people go, when driven by some force as desperate and uncontrollable as hunger, to show, or to warn us.

A straightforward, generally fast-moving, recounting of a gripping social struggle, portrayed without any special effects for special effects' sake (though I think there was plenty of unobtrusive special effects), with the emphasis always on the dramatic line; good acting by all concerned; generally plain, clear photography that served the story-telling and not some "artsy" vision--all these added up, for me, to an enthuasiastic vote of "ten." Cannot praise this film enough. No, it's not some summit of art, but it's a textbook example of how to tell a story, keep the audience's attention, and honor the dramatic basis of the project instead of indulging in "artistic" whims and triviliaties that will appear dated in five or six years.

I'll be watching this one again. (By the way, I found the distant shot of the striking workers marching across the plain especially moving. And I had the feeling throughout the film that this was how things really looked at that terrible period of French, and European, history.)

Reducing Zola's masterful but monstrously long novel to a movie is the problem that Claude Berri does not seem to have resolved. He sticks close to Zola's text, which means that we get lots of undeveloped snippets of what were very developed scenes in the novel. If you don't know the novel, this probably causes a certain sense of confusion. If you do know the novel, and it is well-known in France, you have the sense that you are just skimming the surface. I think that Berri would have done better to be less faithful to the novel, or at least less comprehensive in his adaptation of it.

That said, there are most certainly good things in this movie. Miou Miou delivers, in my opinion, the movie's best performance. No, she is not at all the earth mother that Zola's la Meheude is. But she acts with her face, saying far more with a facial gesture than many words would have said. In a movie that skims over a lot of material, that makes for very effective acting. Depardieu is sometimes very good - physically he is perfect for the part of le Maheu - sometimes he seems to deliver the lines without thinking about them. The actor who plays Souvarine is very striking.

The cinematography is nice, but does not convey a lot of what Zola emphasizes in the novel: the heat and lack of space in the mine tunnels, etc.

A good movie if you haven't read the novel; a disappointing one if you have.

"Germinal", based on a novel by Emile Zola, is an epic film which studies the anatomy of a strike in a 19th century French coal mine. During it's 2.5+ hour run time, the film shows the wretchedness of coal miners, their deplorable living conditions, their attempts to organize, negotiations, strike, rioting, police suppression, sabotage, etc. The story is woven around a handful of characters who represent the forces at work; management, union, profiteers, scabs, etc.

About Zola's novel, Havelock Ellis wrote: "It was neither amusing enough nor outrageous enough to attract the multitude". So it is with the film which emphasizes realism over romanticism and exists more as a study of a timeless social/political issue than pure commercial entertainment. A must see for cinema buffs but not likely have broad commercial appeal.

Prior to this most recent cover of Emile Zola's novel by Claude Berri, they were various renderings on the silver screen before. A silent version was shot in 1913 and remains difficult to watch. In 1962, Yves Allégret's version of Zola's sprawling novel followed very closely the thread of the storytelling which came to the front while the descriptions of the working-classes and the upper classes took a back seat. 30 years later, Berri got down to a new transposition of the novel to the screen to locate her in the vein of French heritage. Developed by the Mitterrand government, this trend spawned films which were meant to be a popular quality cinema facing American blockbusters and to show French culture in literature at key-moments in French history. This movement was at its peak at the dusk of the eighties and the dawn of the nineties with "Jean De Florette", "Manon Des Sources" (1986), "Cyrano De Bergerac" (1990) or "Madame Bovary" (1991). Generally, these films were financially profitable but weren't up to scratch from an artistic perspective. "Germinal" belongs to this category. Probably the most famous installment in the Rougon-Macquart saga, "Germinal" is also one of the most potent French novels ever written. It was a perilous task to transpose it to the screen and Berri partially did well his job. His film follows very closely the staple framework of the novel and only keeps its main installments including some grisly ones (the sequence of the castration). Hence a simplified and watered-down version in which certain moments are clumsily linked up. Overrall, Berri's piece of work joins the list of films derived from novels in which to be as faithful as possible to the basic work can hamper the artistic potential of the film.

Before being a filmmaker or an actor, Berri is especially labeled as a producer and for "Germinal" which was partly sponsored by French government, he had a Pharaonic budget at his disposal to reconstitute a prickly era of French history. Lavish costumes, an authentically built pit village are clear signs of this budget. Places, manners and the living standards of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie which encompassed deep inequalities are faithfully depicted in a hard-hitting way. There's a noticeable detail during the party: the fight between the cocks is an evident metaphor of the class struggle. A blatant gap between the stark pit village, especially the dour house of the Maheu and the lascivious residences of the Gregoire is enhanced by a photography with evocative colors. Berri faithfully captured Zola's novel and his budget was up to scratch to the demands of the novel. But as I mentioned above, Berri is first and for most of a producer. As a filmmaker, his job remains limited to make him go in the restrained circle of the seminal contemporary French filmmakers. Zola's ground-breaking sweep also encompassed a plea in favor of the working classes who lived in squalor and a condemnation of the bourgeoisie in their posh universe. These features are perceptible in Berri's film but that's all. The director contents himself to shoot the watershed and momentum moments of the book without developing his own perception or bringing his personal touch. Berri is unable to create a cinematographic language to render the strength of the most harrowing or blackest moments in the novel. That's why his directing has an academic feel. So, the most blackest aspects of Zola's novel vanish on the screen. In the sequences after the strike, the writer depicted in an incredible harsh style, the Maheu's tawdry conditions and their bigger misery caused by the fiasco of the strike but one doesn't really feel this misery. Then, on the scene when Maigrat the greedy shopkeeper gets emasculated, Zola wanted to raise the wild side of the miners, especially women and it's not palpable in spite of the commendable efforts of the actresses.

The cast gathers a bevy of actors who are representative of French cinema but certain choices are debatable for different reasons. Renaud, one of the most popular and finest contemporary French singers plays his game well as the lead Etienne Lantier but he was a little too old for the role. On the paper, Lantier was about 20-25 years old and Renaud was in his forties when he acted. Beside him, Gérard Depardieu is physically Maheu but his character is psychologically subdued than in the book. The frail Miou-Miou wasn't the ideal actress to epitomize the stout and weakened Maheude. But Laurent Terzieff, a very ambitious thespian only appears for about a quarter of an hour in the whole film but effectively taps his little underwritten part. He just has to pronounce little lines to unveil his great skills of actor. The same goes for Jean Carmet whose character name and moniker, "Bonnemort" (good death) took an ironic dimension when he passed away shortly after the movie reached the streets. Jean Roger Milo was ideally cast as coarse, hairy Chaval.

I don't want to demean Berri. His movie is thoroughly watchable but it is proof that Zola's work needs something else on the screen. His simplified cover hardly does justice to Zola's potent cry of revolt. It is at best mildly entertaining and for the non- speaking French viewers, it can be gratifying but for the French viewers who are Zola insiders, it might be a little frustrating. But it didn't stop this epic movie to ride high in the French box-office and to line Berri's pockets.