Il figlio

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.

[ S P O I L E R S ]

In the Dardenne brothers' "Le Fils" ("The Son"), Olivier (Olivier Gourmet) teaches carpentry in a trade school for wayward boys that's a transition from juvenile detention to life in society. The camera focuses on Olivier, tightly on his head and shoulders, relentlessly on him. He walks around the workshop and school. First he makes sure a board is run through a chain saw properly, then he denies a new boy entry into his class, then surprisingly he sneaks around, running, breathless, to peek at the boy as he sits in the office. The boy, Francis (Morgan Marinne), wanted carpentry, but is put in metal shop. Later Olivier goes back to the office after a short period of spying on Francis and says he can come into carpentry after all. Thus begins a relationship between Olivier and this boy that seems to have odd overtones.

We see Olivier at home. He has a back problem and does sit-ups to strengthen his abdominal muscles. He is visited by his shyly smiling ex-wife, Magali (Isabella Soupart), who is to remarry, and will have a child. Olivier is alone, immersed in his work, of which he says only "it makes me feel useful." What we learn is that this new boy in the carpentry class killed their son. Magali is shocked to hear of his appearance: Olivier doesn't tell her the truth: that he has taken the boy into his class. Olivier has decided to nurture the boy; to spy on him; to confront him. It's all of those things.

The Dardennes, who were once documentarians and have made the dramas "La Promesse"(1996) and "Rosetta" (the 1999 Palme d'Or at Cannes), are relentless in their dedication to the mundane lives of working people. The intense narrative focus, which abjures any extraneous amusement or aesthetic flourishes, and the closeness of the handheld camera work, make constructing a wooden box or playing a game of arcade soccer or nearly falling off a ladder into momentous events. Every scene is so bluntly clear and in-your-face it almost hurts to watch. But it's a good hurt -- the hurt of passionately committed filmmaking.

There is no music, only the loud sounds of machinery and woodworking as a background for human voices. The Dardennes show some of the same ability to use a dogged devotion to an everyday reality to get at the essence of their characters and to dissect profound moral dilemmas that we also see in Bruno Dumont's Zen poems of dead-end French provincial life, "La Vie de Jésus" (1997) and "L'Humanité" (1999). One might also think of Rossellini or Bresson. But the Dardennes are Belgian. Olivier Gourmet, who stars in all three of the Dardennes' films, has a harsh, wooden manner. He rarely does anything but bark commands. His glasses hide his eyes.

In "The Son," Olivier is the essence of fairness. Imagine losing your son, and taking his young murderer as your protégé. Magali's reaction is hysterical when she discovers this. But Olivier calms her and procedes with the trip to his brother's lumberyard, where Francis will learn a lesson in recognizing types of wood and where the final showdown (though it is really a beginning) will occur. Neither Gourmet, who has acted in many films, nor Marinne, who has not, seems like an actor. Both have a stolid opacity and an independence that make you accept them as real, mysterious human beings.

Carpentry is an ideal métier for Olivier. Wood expands and contracts: the rules aren't absolute. But the work is honest and the job must be done right. Olivier is experienced, firm, and fair, and his eye can judge the exact distance between two points. No wonder Francis is diffident and respectful toward his teacher and quickly asks him, on this trip to the lumberyard, to be his guardian. For all his gruffness, Olivier is a great and good man. (Interesting that as the father in "La Promesse," Gourmet used much the same manner to convey a man who was cruel and dishonest.) Neither man nor boy is at all good looking or charismatic; both are unsmiling and determined in manner. But both of them earn our profound sympathy and respect in this astonishing, rigorous, humanistic film.

A theft that led to killing, intimacy with the murderer of your own son: these are primal, almost Oedipal situations, and "The Son" for all its ordinariness contains the stuff of high tragedy. Olivier's bluntness and strength and the boy's eager innocence allow truths to come out quickly. The early scenes may seem grating. The tight, jittery camera work is almost sick-making. But the later scenes are more and more moving and cathartic. At the end Francis and Olivier stand side by side in the lumberyard, dirty, wet, exhausted, and speechless. Nothing further needs to be said. Few films leave one with a fuller sense of completion and resolution. It's a superb moment. "The Son" teaches a very profound moral lesson: a wrong can be healed by returning it with goodness. For all the seeming roughness of the technique and the lack of flourishes, the effect is masterful. Gourmet received the prize for best actor at Cannes last year for his performance.

`Rosetta', the previous movies made by the `brothers' - as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are referred to in Belgium - was great. What makes `Le Fils' even more enthusiasting is that the authors have now reached a point of perfection where they can tell us a sophisticate story which deals with some of the most devastating feelings we could face; but still, they treat the subject with an amazing simplicity and humanity. I could only compare this movies with some pieces of music by Charlie Haden: essential.

The Son is a movie about forgiveness, and how the very act of forgiving propels you forward as a human being. And to not only forgive the person who took away your son, but to become a guardian, a teacher to that person is an act of grace. Olivier exhibits this grace throughout the movie, but it is a grace that is not evident by just watching him on a day to day basis. You have have to follow him, listen to him, be with him constantly and understand his circumstances to realize this. I suppose, in a way, that many people possess this grace, but its hard to find it in them if you can't follow them around with a camera. Olivier, on the surface, would not seem like a very interesting person if you saw him on the street, or worked with him on a daily basis, and the boy seems like a dolt, but this movie makes them so interesting, so compassionate, not as characters, but as real people. It teaches you to look beneath the surface of things, of human beings, and if you look hard enough, you'll find beauty everywhere.

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.