"The Crusade"
Abel (Louis Garrel) and Marianne (Laetitia Casta) discover that their 13-year-old son Joseph (Joseph Engel) has secretly sold their most precious possessions. They soon find out that Joseph is not the only one, all over the world, hundreds of children have joined forces to finance a mysterious project. Their mission is to save the planet.
The film seems to look at these children with a mixture of approval for their commitment and slight concern at their extremism. For now, the children are demonstrating. They're only protesting. The idea in the film is that they don't just protest, they take action, they go all the way. They discuss feasibility, study the benefit/risk ratio, find financing, in short, they act. The first sequence is funny because of it's contrast, the parents are disconcerted by the actions of their son Joseph, who has sold their belongings without any warning. What Joseph is doing is shocking at first. We can get rid of the superfluous, the luxuries. We all have things at home that we don't use but whose mere presence reassures us. Joseph hasn't sold anything vital. Imagine if we sold everything that's superfluous worldwide, we would end up with a great kitty for environmental projects. The kids idea is a good one.
The scene of the particles alert is very stressful, bringing about a change of register in the film, which is rather light. And by the way, the final scene concludes the film on a note of hope. We've delegate our future to the kids. It's an ending worthy of a fairytale, a fable. The film tends towards dream, towards utopia. This doesn't rule out more distressing sequences, like the scene of the alert. This sequence of "The Crusade" is an alert in the film and an alert for the viewers, so they can think; 'We mustn't allow such a thing to happen one day'. It's logical that at the end, only the mother is on screen, and not the father. The mother is less sceptical than him, she agrees more quickly with the children's project. We think she's naïve, but in fact, she's simply logical. The end is a mirage, a mirage of cinema, which means that the film itself believes in this utopian project.
The film is a about environmentalism, based on Jean-Claude Carrière's book 'Le Pari 1972'. Jean-Claude Carrière was a French novelist. He received an 'Academy Award' for best short film for co-writing "Heureux Anniversaire" (1963), and was later conferred an 'Honorary Oscar' in 2014. He recently passed away on 8 February 2021. Kids passionate about environmentalism! A Swedish teenager who had gone on hunger strike, decides to go into action for environmentalism, no longer able to stand the fact that no one is doing anything about it. It was Greta Thunberg. "The Crusade" has a live coverage side to it. But at the time, this quasi-anthropological collective surge of young people didn't exist. This delayed start doesn't detract from the film's political relevance, or our pleasure watching it. The film works because of this live coverage feel, and because of the kids. No one could have ever thought that 10, 12-year-old kids would go into action this way. We've to look at these children because they're alien to us. There's nothing more insufferable than a radical militant film. "The Crusade" is more dialectical.
The film chooses a light comic tone to balance the seriousness of the subject, to avoid preaching. You open more doors with humour. The problem with most militant films is that they don't take the viewer into consideration. They give ready-made answers, they define Good and Evil, and the spectator just has to follow. With a humorous approach, the spectator has his or her place. The principle of comedy is to push reality a little further. This is precisely the first scene; how far did the kid go? This way the audience can feel the pleasure of a comedy that also explores an existential concern. "The Crusade" loves the idea of dealing with a very distressing topic in a cheerful way. Moving water from the sea to arid regions is possible. We send rockets to Mars, why can't we move a sea? There are geographers and engineers who've these kinds of ideas, far-fetched at first, but possibly brilliant and feasible for global ecology. The kids' project in the film isn't so far-fetched. The planet will become inhabitable in fifty years. So we think everything must stop now. We think it's exaggerating, it's too radical. Then Covid comes along and bang, we're all facing our own death. And just like that, we're able to stop everything with the lockdowns!
"The Crusade" puts it's finger on an aspect that seems important to us, what's shocking about Greta Thunberg and the kids who follow her commitment isn't so much their ideas as much as their age. We find it difficult to accept that minors are appropriating subjects deemed for adults only. If nothing happens, if there's no environmental policy followed by results, we're not going to be immune to more violent actions. No one knows what could happen in the near future. If it becomes clear that we're heading towards extinction, the life impulse is so strong, that we don't see how we can avoid violent reactions. We defend environmentalism, not on a day-to-day basis but at the level of heads of state; it's up to them to make radical decisions. If they don't, the coming generations will be radicalised, and the planet will become unliveable. Nonetheless we can feel that things are changing, eco-districts, self-sufficient buildings, electric and maybe soon hydrogen cars, solar and geothermal energy. But it's all too feeble, too slow, too timid. Things are happening, but will it be enough? And on the other hand, we keep our blinkers on. We can't live all day with the notion that in thirty, forty years the earth will no longer be habitable, or we'd stop living. So we try not to think about it.
Written by Gregory Mann.
