Hors Satan

People in a rural French village believe a mysterious drifter possesses healing powers and one troubled young girl in particular has embraced the stranger as a deliverer to ease her sufferings. The stranger spends most of his time walking and meditating like some Old Testament prophet in the desert. When he does speak it is only in terms of banalities. As we watch Bruno Dumont's "Outside Satan" we are drawn to this mystical figure. Is he an ascetic on retreat from the world? Is he a cult leader seeking gullible apprentices? Does he possess powers that transcend this world and if so what is the source of that power: good or evil? His behavior defies easy classification. I've never seen anything quite like this film and there will inevitably be numerous interpretations. David Dewaele is mesmerizing as the enigmatic protagonist. Alexandra Lematre is the sensitive young girl who travels from Goth rebelliousness to faithful acolyte. "Outside Satan" moves at a slow tempo punctuated with some jarring moments resembling the natural course of life and this is enhanced by the purely naturalistic soundtrack completely devoid of any musical accompaniment. This is avant-garde cinema and won't appeal to all tastes but if you're looking for something unique this certainly qualifies. It's been said that the notion of a devil provides religions with the means to reconcile the existence of evil with a world governed by a benevolent God. Perhaps it is this idea that Dumont is probing in "Outside Satan". What if there were no opposing forces and instead there was just one mysterious all-encompassing creation that offered no easy answers?

I am not going to write a summary about this film or explain what it is about.

This is a film where you have to let go the concept of 'story'. Don't search for a narrative structure. This film is all about 'feeling' and 'experiencing'. In my opinion something that is harder and harder to find in modern cinema, that is mainly there to 'entertain' audiences.

This is a film that redefines the concept of 'interpretation'

I would like to give a short explanation why...

The moment I started the movie and watched the first images I was immediately absorbed by the sheer beauty of the landscape and how this landscape is framed (done by the fine French cinematographer Ives Cape). I learned in these first few minutes that the framing is key in this picture. In 'Hors Satan' it is not merely the framing (observing) of a composited shot. It is much more...

What happens in 'Hors Satan' is the constant shift between the objective view and the subjective view of an image. We (as an audience) see two figures, traveling trough a desolate landscape. Through forests, plains of sand, a small quiet village (the center point in this landscape). They don't talk much. They just walk along. Their facial expressions tells enough.

This is the objective side of 'Hors Satan'. The camera and the spectators 'observe' But in 'Horse Satan' one will also find a high amount of subjectivity. In this film the two protagonists are constantly 'watching', and we see them doing just that! We see what they see. A meadow, branches of a tree poking into the air. This brings us closer to the projected image. It seems as if Bruno Dumont literally places the camera on the exact spot of the eyes of the watching actors. By doing just that, we observe the characters watching and then we too are able to observe what they see. In fact that doesn't seem to be a lot for the observing audience, but at the same time there is a lot of information within these frames. Part of the message of the film, of the subtext, is hidden. This 'watching' of the landscape trough the eyes of the protagonists makes the film much more of a subjective experience.

It seems that this alternative form of film making, of a different film language is very rare these days. There are few authors who do it. And if you liked 'Hors Satan', you should definitely have a look at the rest of Dumont's oeuvre (the films: La vie de Jesus, L'Humanité, Twentynine Palms, Flanders, Hadewijch) and also check out film makers like Bela Tarr, Leos Carax, Terrence Malick, Aleksandr Sokurov and Matthew Barney.

You, as a spectator (I include myself as well) has to create a different way of 'reading' films like this. Let the story structure go, except questions that will not be answered, and again, don't search for a narrative safety line. Just let it roll over you.

This film is not going to go down well with the "I don't like slow films" crowd. Similarly, there is no music soundtrack, little dialogue, and many scenes are deliberately extended while "nothing much" goes on.

However, gradually a picture emerges of what might be happening, as the strange drifter affects the small community in various ways, and intervenes in an often-brutal manner.

Most striking for me was the combination of cinematography and sound design, where many of the scenes played out in long shot against the impressive landscape, while (for example) even the footsteps on the sand came through clearly. Maybe that's why it felt so involving?

Different.

This strange film is set on the northern French coast around Calais.A vagabond(David Dewaele)lives in the wilds of nature,with a small fire to keep him warm.His companion,a teenage dark-haired virginal goth(Alexandra Lematre), walks with him everywhere. They are both lost in a mirage of naturalism,supposedly beyond both good and evil,'hors Satan'. There is no back-story.The man gives to people what they want:to the young girl he is a protector,refusing to have sex with her and killing the guard who harasses her,he's also killed her step-father for abusing her at the start of the film.Police make enquiries about the murders. The goth lives with her mother.

To a hitch-hiker he brings sexual bliss,so she is frothing at the mouth. For the mother whose daughter is possessed he drives out the demons by raping the possessed young girl.He moves around his territory like a hunter-gatherer, but the territory is spiritual and he seems to commune with nature,kneeling,taking in the land and sky.He can knock at any door and get a bite to eat,as the people who live around here trust him.His young companion gets raped and dies and he mysteriously takes her body out into the landscape and lays it in a certain way and leaves it.The strange ritual is a form of resurrection.He is a holy fool or shaman,a phalli-centric worshipper of nature.

What do we make of Dumont's purpose here? He has taken the character who was marginal in his last film,Hadewijch, but was pivotal as the natural man in saving the central character from committing suicide, and he's made him the central character in this film,which has no music; you hear only the sounds of nature,breathing,walking,the wind, leaves, water and birds.The characters have no names.This is a new world of primitive,mythological fantasy.The objective lens pans the countryside, dunes,trees,marshes, hills,streams,capturing sunrise,magic-hour,the long shots are slow,panoramic, the dialogue minimal,impregnating us with the image like a Poussin or Constable painting.

The character can be seen as both evil and good,being one and the same thing.The characters are half-way between symbol and reality.Dumont is the atheist moving towards Bressonian subject matter(The Devil, Probably),bringing in religious themes. In this society we seem free of the ills of capitalism and modern technology,in marginal space,a magical zone,outside the normal rules that would apply in urban life in cities and towns.There is a serial killer rapist in the vicinity,who has a dog.When the police capture him,the natural wanderer takes his dog and walks on to his next location.This ends a trilogy of films made on spiritual themes. Absolutely astonishing.

Much has been written about the role of the environment in this film. Rarely can natural (and outwardly naturalistic) settings have been so crucial to the action and ambiance of a movie. Manhattan springs to mind as another work in which the setting functions almost a key character (bet you didn't expect to see a comparison with Woody Allen in this review).

The director forces the audience to see something explicitly religious (and in the case of the guy, Christ-like) in the two leads, by depicting overt religious symbolism in their actions and gestures. There is nothing simplistic in this portrayal, however: the characters' actions are always underpinned by a faint whiff of shamanism, nature-worship or even downright satanism, bringing a delicious - and potentially controversial - complexity to the film.

The action appears to take place outside the modern world, or at the very least parallel with it (I referred to the "medieval" atmosphere evoked by Dumont's work in another review, and Hors Satan is a little like that too). In this strange parallel world, the police, for example, don't act as expected - in fact, nobody acts as expected. Despite the slow pace, however, I never got the feeling that the story was not moving forward (and I'm baffled by the failure of one reviewer to identify any storyline at all).

Much of the tension lies in the audience's fear - of what the characters will do to one another and to the landscape, of what the consequences of their actions may or may not be, and of what the movie's ultimate outcome will be. It is this elemental drama that drives the film forward - in a slow-burn movie in which death accounts for an amazingly high proportion of the "action" that actually does take place, life and death are in the balance in an extremely immediate and terrifying way. The central Christ-like character can be violent, and his actions incomprehensible, perhaps reminding us that Christ was himself capable of unexpected violence (for example when throwing the money-lenders out of the temple). Although of course the director also leads us towards a view of the lead character as a Satanic figure, particularly in one almost unwatchably horrible scene.

Perhaps the central achievement of this film - by an apparently atheist director, remember - is to have created a powerful drama with a complex Christ-like figure who reflects the mysticality and profound unknowability and yet the intangible magnetism of the original biblical Christ, while incorporating elements of the satanic into the character too. A difficult comparison for Christians to swallow, though.