Il figlio

I saw "le fils" last Saturday during a sneak preview with the directors and actors. All I can say is that this movie moved me. One can say that the shoulder's cam make him/her sick (this was my case). One can say that this movie is boring and that nothing happens (that is also my case). One can say that half of the screen is wasted by the Olivier Gourmet's face close-up. But, at the end of the movie, you can feel the power of the movie. You are moved by this movie because Olivier and the Dardenne expressed the purest emotions.

The Son, the latest film from Jean and Luc Dardenne (La Promesse, Rosetta) challenges us to look at our capacity for forgiveness and, in the process, articulates what it means to be human. According to the directors, the film is about "The moral imagination or the capacity to put oneself in the place of another". Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a lonely carpentry teacher at a vocational rehabilitation school in Belgium, is a stolid, ordinary looking, and inexpressive man. His eyes are hidden behind thick glasses and his back is protected by a support brace. His entire being seems to be "in permanent disequilibrium" but conveys a pent-up energy that seems ready to explode. Olivier has been separated from his wife Magali (Isabella Soupart) since their young son was murdered during a bungled robbery and the half-hearted way they interact indicate the mourning has not been completed. When Francis (Morgan Marinne), a 16-year old boy just released from reform school, appears at the workshop, Olivier, seems strangely obsessed with the youngster, at first rejecting then taking him on at the school.

Not much happens during the first half-hour. The focus is on the minutiae of the workplace, the techniques of woodworking, the source of lumber, precise measurements, how to hold and carry wood and so forth. The claustrophobic camera follows Olivier around the workshop, breathing down his neck, back, and ears, creating a disorienting rhythm of almost unbearable intensity. There is no soundtrack other than the hammers and electric saws. Olivier follows Francis around with his eyes and we suspect there may be something unusual going on. This is confirmed when Olivier secretly steals the keys to Francis' apartment and lies on his bed. Later he meets the boy at a fast food place and impresses him with his ability to gauge distances with his eye. He then invites Francis to join him on the weekend to pick up some wood at a mill about 40km away. There is little dialogue on the trip and the tension is palpable. When the boy asks Olivier to become his guardian, the teacher demands to know the reason why he was locked up for five years. Their arrival at the mill leads to an inevitable confrontation and a startling conclusion of profound beauty.

The directors of 'The Son', brothers Jeane-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, are together experienced documentarians. This is made explicitly clear in the film's style, which affords the camera the rare opportunity in modern cinema to see rather than show. The difference is immense. Renoir, Ozu and Rossellini understood the difference, and now the Dardennes can be added to that illustrious list.

The Dardenne brothers are masters of exploding the minutiae of everyday life to beautiful, poetic proportions. Their films are largely concerned with observing people at work (see also Rosetta and La Promesse), obsessively detailing the intricate structures and routines of the mundane, the everyday. Hitchcock famously described film as life with the boring bits removed; a Dardenne film is life with the boring bits dissected, investigated and ultimately celebrated.

The film is about all the sons - the sons that were, the sons that are and the sons that will be - and all should see it.

The rapt watchfulness of this film is almost intolerable.

The minutiae of the woodwork instructor protagonist's drab and solitary daily existence merely repel us at first: his opaque, inexpressive, sulky-looking face (on the rare occasions that we see it, as opposed to the back of his neck) seems to confirm that there is nothing here for us, nothing but the muffled dullness of a dead-end existence, nothing but the droning of power tools in the sullen workshop and the heating-up of tinned soup in the bare little apartment.

Then the film's remorseless attention to the mundane starts to hint at some turmoil of this man's inner life, which is being kept rigorously in check by everyday rituals: the conscientious painful sit-ups, the critical measurement of the trainees' clumsy work. Something unbearable is being borne. Some terrible price is being paid. Olivier is like some powerful caged mammal, ever darting just ahead the camera's reach. We fear for the boys in his domininion -- especially for the new trainee, whom he stalks with a feral intensity.

And now we learn the awful sadness of what ails Olivier, and what has brought everything to a head. Now the camera watches his every move with mixed dread and wonder. Now every little thing he does matters, as we struggle to gauge what he will do next. Now the details of just what nail to use, of the trick to carrying a heavy wooden lintel (so like a cross), become utterly compelling -- not as displacement activities, but as things that can be relied upon, as tangible truths.

And finally, on long drive to a timber yard one late-autumn weekend, we watch a miracle unfold: halting, clumsy, almost wordless, although there is a sort of confession, and a sort of catechism. Wet leaves still stick to the boy's back from a momentary struggle in a wood as the newly-cut planks are stacked, silently, in the trailer. Master and apprentice are joined by the mystery of their craft. A father without a son has found a son without a father.

And now, at last, we understand that the film's watchfulness has been Olivier's own: his need to observe, to assess, to measure up (something for which he has a peculiar knack), in order to decide how the right thing is to be done. For only then is it done decisively, deftly and truly.

That a film of such simplicity, unflinching honesty and moral intensity can be made today is itself little short of miraculous. In both its symbolic language and its belief in the possibility of grace, it is firmly rooted in a particular north-European pietistic (and specifically Catholic) tradition. But never mind about that. This is a genuine and beautifully modest masterpiece of humane realism.

How do you make a film to capture the mindset of a stalker; or of an uncertain individual, sizing up an unknown enemy? The Dardenne brothers' solution in this movie is to shoot almost the entire film over the shoulder of its principal protagonist, giving the audience the same view, the same sideways glances and stolen observations, as the character. It's effective, but it doesn't make this the easiest movie to watch: at times it feels that everything you want to see is deliberately left out of shot. A film about a pair of fairly non-communicative people, it also contains almost no expository dialogue, so we are left to guess what each of them are feeling from their actions: in fact, as well as being terse or even silent, the characters are arguably people who don't really know what to feel any more. The film is thus an effective look at the bleakness of life in extreme circumstances, but again, this doesn't make it easy to relate to. The unusual method does bring some dividends: at first, it one thinks this will be a movie about a pervert, a mistake that owes everything to clichéd thinking and nothing to surprising honesty the directors and cast bring to this movie. In a sense, it's a film about the possibility of revenge, but with a more awkward, truthful and ultimately humane take on this notion than any you are likely to find in Hollywood. It's an interesting film, therefore, and deserving of praise; but not particularly fun to see.