There are many brother directors in the world film industry today, such as the Coen brothers, the Russo brothers, and the Nolan brothers that we are familiar with.
If you are the most favored by Cannes, it must be the Dané brothers.
Left: Jean-Pierre Dardenne Right: Luc Dardenne
Since Rosetta in 1999, every film has been shortlisted for the main competition in Cannes, and almost every film has won. It can be described as a real "Cannes concubine".
At last year's Cannes Film Festival, the brothers, who are almost a rare year old, were shortlisted for the main competition unit of Cannes for the eighth time with their new film "Young Ahmed", and finally won the Best Director Award.
Young Ahmed / Le jeune Ahmed 2019
So far, the awards that can be awarded in the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival have been won by the two brothers almost repeatedly.
In Cannes last year, the Dané brothers, who won the best director award
After the premiere in Cannes last year, the first wave of media evaluation of the film did not seem to be as good as ever. The score of 2.4 points (out of 4 points) in the field magazine can only be regarded as decent in the sequence of works in the same session.
However, as more and more viewers have watched it, the overall evaluation of the film has also rebounded. Nowadays, the score of Douban has exceeded 7 points, which is a masterpiece worth watching.
Now that everyone has finally been able to find out, why has it been gradually "overturned" after experiencing the general bad reviews in Cannes? Where is this "award-winning professional household"?
"Young Ahmed" tells a story that can be almost summed up in one sentence —
The young Ahmed was a devout Muslim, influenced by extreme religion and instigated by the Imam, who considered his female teacher to be an "infidel" who needed to be "cleaned up."
So he assassinated his teacher. After the failure of the first operation and being imprisoned in the juvenile detention center, Ahmed still did not give up, always looking for opportunities to realize his ideas...
The whole story is brightly paced and short and pithy.
On the basis of the Dane brothers' consistent focus on the underlying narrative, this time, the two also focused on the impact and persecution of extreme religion in the entire wave of migration in Europe.
The film as a whole is still the Darné style that the audience is familiar with: handheld long lens + natural light + zero soundtrack, and the entire play and audiovisual level maintain a high degree of externalization and unity.
It's hard to imagine a little boy who looks so well-behaved as to want to kill his teacher
The director cuts out all the other sideburns of the story, leaving only a series of actions of the entire event character.
Therefore, the main contradiction of the whole film for the audience is only two points:
The first is whether the assassination will eventually succeed?
The second is whether Ahmed, who was imprisoned in a juvenile detention center, would change under indoctrination?
In the film, the camera always maintains the posture of keeping up with the character, participating in a series of behaviors of the character from the perspective of "presence".
Ahmed, who rarely shows a positive image, bows his head or faces sideways, as if unintentionally or intentionally dodging the camera's gaze, it is difficult for the audience to see the emotions on his face, let alone the inner world of this little boy.
And this is precisely the point that many viewers have reservations about this film.
Most of the time it is difficult for the audience to see the true emotions on Ahmed's face
At the beginning of the film, Ahmed's appearance gives the audience a certain strong visual impact in this "impersonal" way.
He was reluctant to shake hands with his teacher and say goodbye; he was not inferior to his family; and even when his mother showed a gentle side and wanted to show affection to him, he used his "clean gift" as an excuse to respond coldly.
In Ahmed's world, the fanaticism for religion seems to occupy a major part of his life. Brainwashed and controlled by this radical consciousness, he saw his cousin, who had given his life for jihad, as an example.
That's pretty much all we know about Ahmed: his father absent, his mother drunk, an extreme activist, a religious fanatic, a child who is always "expressionless" but deliberately trying to get rid of what he sees as an "outlier."
However, we do not know how he became like this. His inner spiritual world, in his "repeated dodging" in front of the camera, blurs into a mystery that is difficult to solve.
There was always no expression on Ahmed's face
The line at the beginning of the film tells us, "It was Mr. Ines who made you overcome the dyslexia and read." "A month ago you were still playing video games, and there were those posters on the walls. Now you don't even want to wear short sleeves."
It can be seen that the former Ahmed may be no different from other ordinary children.
But that's what the audience was curious about:
What happened to Ahmed that led him to where he is now?
Even Ahmed, who is proud of the "martyrdom" of the holy war
All of these psychological motives are omitted from the outset by the director, who sees Ahmed as merely the "executor" of a series of actions.
In other words, Ahmed is like a puppeteer held back by some invisible thread, his every move is mechanical, numb, and even predictable.
The background of the film gives a hasty glimpse of the "big hand" behind Ahmed, religion, but the film does not explain more about what the invisible line between this hand and Ahmed is.
Ahmed prays "religiously" repeatedly
Perhaps this is also why last year's film premiered in Cannes, there were many bad reviews.
Many comments believe that the whole film is difficult to let the audience "empathize", ignoring the portrayal of the inner level of the characters, and it is difficult for the audience to enter the heart of Ahmed.
Partial pre-evaluation after the Cannes premiere
In fact, if you have seen the previous works of the Dane brothers, it is not difficult to understand this film.
"Empathy" has never been the main purpose of their films.
Because "empathy" leads to "empathy," excessive "empathy" may slip into the moral judgment of "over-emotion."
In their works, there is never a lack of calm and restrained bystander perspective. The camera never bears the burden of a judge with some kind of moral yardstick, but more like an observer of real society.
The Dane brothers loved to portray stories of children or teenagers.
The teenagers in the "Dane Universe" are hardly good angels, but more like some kind of combination of good and evil. Most of them live at the bottom, from which they can observe the pathology of the whole society.
The little boy Iago in La Promesse (1999) seems to lack a clear line between good and evil when he grows up.
On the one hand, he has to keep his promises, but on the other hand, he risks disobeying his father's wishes.
Stills from "A Promise of a Thousand Gold"
The impoverished Rosetta in "Rosetta", but at a young age, bears the heavy responsibility that does not belong to her.
At the lowest point, he met a little boy who reached out to him. However, in the face of the helplessness of reality, she also had to "sacrifice" this friend she had so hard to make, just in exchange for a job that could be fed.
Stills from Rosetta
In Le Gamin au vélo (2011), poor Cyril, after being ruthlessly abandoned by his father, is hostile to the kindness unleashed by others.
He tried everything he could, even to stab the strange woman who had been taking care of him, to help another person carry out his evil plan.
Cyril's melancholy eyes in "The Bike Boy"
Even in the movie "L'enfant" (2005), which made the Dane brothers win the Palme d'Or for the second time, a idle young man became a father, but the young man's heart was also a "child" who had not grown up.
Bruno, who has just become a father in "Children", is just a "child" who has not grown up
The complexity of the adult world often requires a strong heart and a thorn in the coffin to survive countless uphill battles.
And those children who grew up barbarically, like untamed little beasts, on the battlefield of life, believing in their own laws of life, rampaged, scaled all over, but still trying to move forward.
They don't need other people's understanding, because they naturally understand other people in turn.
Therefore, whether it is technical or thematic, "Young Ahmed" is just another re-combing and inheritance of the Dane brothers' past works.
Ahmed, who wants to break free from discipline
As the plot progresses, the film quickly moves into the passage where Ahmed is sent to the juvenile detention center. Before that, the only time we heard the "title" in the title of the line: when Ahmed failed to assassinate his imam, he showed a look of nervousness and fear for the first time.
He asked, "Will they lock me up for a long time?"
"No, you're still young, a month or two at the most."
The imam's lies still make Ahmed believe in them
"Young" is the trait that Ahmed possesses, and it is actually the entrance for the audience to temporarily understand Ahmed.
Ahmed claims he is "changing"
What really made Ahmed's inner world begin to shake was the appearance of the farmer's daughter.
The advent of love on the one hand tortures Ahmed's heart, and on the other hand, it makes him doubt his own behavior at any time.
The girl's bold gesture of overtures is like throwing a small pebble into the calm inner lake of Ahmed, stirring up layers of waves.
This scene is also the only time Ahmed smiles in the whole film. In the face of the girl's confession, Ahmed's heart also softened
Will love eventually melt the icy Ahmed?
One of the subtleties that has always been in the Dane Brothers' films —
From an objective "alienated" perspective, we should calmly look at everything that is happening in society, ask questions, and think about problems.
Then give the right to choose to the audience.
This may have something to do with the way the two directors see the world, and it also has an important connection with the creative trajectory of the two of them.
In fact, neither brother studied film. His older brother, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, was born in 1951 and studied drama at university; while his younger brother, Luc, who was three years younger than his older brother, studied drama. Luc Dardenne studied philosophy at university.
The Dané brothers lived in Serland in the Wallon region of Belgium, an industrial powerhouse that held the economic lifeblood of the entire province's mineral and metallurgical industries.
In the 1960s, there was a frequent labor movement in wallonia; by the 1970s and 1980s, Belgium was facing an important industrial adjustment, and many social problems followed: factory closures, worker unemployment, air pollution, food and clothing.
The headquarters of the European Union is in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Therefore, as two Belgian brothers, the perspective of the problem naturally brings a "all-Europe" perspective
Perhaps it was the adolescence that laid the foundation for the restless brothers' future creations, who were interested in the world of workers and people at the bottom.
So the brother made a series of documentaries focusing on social issues, and after his brother graduated, he founded their first production company.
Since then, they have always focused on the ordinary underclass, at the rough life of the common people in their city of Selan, to tell their hearts and pains, the various real problems that are happening in society, and the unknown lives.
The brothers' early documentary, "The First Voyage of Leon Mazi's Boat on the Meuse River," recalls a general strike 20 years ago through video footage and interviews
After filming more than 60 documentaries, the brothers began experimenting with other forms of expression.
Due to their years of documentary shooting experience, their works always incorporate the realistic style of documentaries, and at the same time there is no lack of tension shaping of drama films, and the plight of the characters is always placed in front of reality in a natural state, not only allowing the protagonists themselves, but also allowing the audience to participate in the construction of the entire topic.
In 1996, they filmed the feature film "A Promise of Gold".
Although this is not their feature film debut, it is the first work that strictly speaks, makes the brothers famous. By then, the brothers had begun to pay attention to the problem of illegal immigration in Europe.
"A Promise of Gold" made the brothers famous
By 1999, the brothers had made the iconic Rosetta.
Rosetta was the brothers' first entry into the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, taking home a Palme d'Or trophy and Émilie Dequenne, then an 18-year-old actress who appeared in a film for the first time.
This "tragic" film profoundly unveiled the invisible scars in society and made the Belgian government aware of the seriousness of the problem of youth unemployment in township society. In the same year, the Belgian Government passed a Youth Employment Act as a means of guaranteeing the legitimate rights of youth in employment.
Due to the huge sensation caused by the film, the bill was also named "Rosetta".
Rosetta is a "movie that changed the country"
In this regard, the brothers are very open-minded.
They think they're just doing their part and not trying to get involved in politics. Younger brother Luc once said: "We want our films to talk to people and influence them, but we never wanted to change the world."
Since then, however, the brothers' works have always been marked with "political overtones", and the themes revealed in their works have always been closely related to the issues of the whole society.
Six years later, their "Kids" once again topped the Palme d'Or, making the Dane brothers the sixth (pair) director to enter the Palme d'Or.
Jérémie Renier, who played the role of father in "The Child," collaborated with the Dane brothers on a number of works
The film tells the tragic story of a young man who has just become a father, sells his children for money, and then tries to redeem his mistakes.
The film ends abruptly in the characters' mourning, and this treatment becomes the signature passage of the Dane brothers, and it is often seen in their later works.
The crying at the end of "The Child", Dane's signature "abrupt stop" ending
In fact, in a way, the Dane brothers have been making the same kind of film all along.
In their image world, we can see this pair of old leftist directors from the middle class, who naturally exude a certain concern for society and a deep sense of responsibility.
What the brothers are good at is not showing extreme situations in life, but a true portrayal of reality. Most importantly, even if their shots always stand on the "evil" side of the character's heart, they never forget to leave a trace of warmth and goodwill.
The Dane brothers were good students by standards, "politically correct" enough to go wrong. But even though they've made so many films, and they're all talking about some similar subject, I know I can always expect from them.
Because, in their films, the flower of goodwill that blooms on the soil of sin hides the most essential and simple conscience of the old director.
At the Cannes Film Festival, the Dane brothers and their "muse": Arta Dobroshi," "The Silence of Ralna" (2008)
At the Cannes Film Festival, the Dané brothers and their "muse": Cécile De France, The Cycling Boy (2011).
At the Cannes Film Festival, the Dané brothers and their "muse": Marion Cotillard's Two Days and One Night (2014)
At the Cannes Film Festival, the Dane brothers and their "muse" in their film: Adèle Haenel,"The Nameless Girl" (2016)
It is not difficult to speak up for others, but it is difficult to always speak up for others.
That's why these two brothers are so awesome and so respected.
This article was first published in the Adventure Movie: Cinematik
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