Why did they kill Jaurès ?(Jacques Brel)
The first scene is the key to the movie: the wealthy aristocrats can exploit and even hurt (in both senses of the term ) the working-class people with complete impunity : nothing seems to have changed since the Middle-Ages: hunting is forbidden and poachers are chastised ; the rich baron can drive away his "villains " who can't pay their rent anymore (he has outrageously increased it because a farmer' s son got married and needs a farm). But now,the nobles are no longer "those who fight" : the people becomes cannon fodder in the war ,and worse, a weapon for the wealthy to break the strikes ,and even to kill their own brothers .
The father is a yessir man ,a peasant to whom military service is a sacred duty (and he calls his drafted son who has deserted ,after being forced to shoot on the strikers,a coward);he has been slaving away his whole life ,and when the baron ruins him ,he hardly rebels.
Like his brother-deserter , Kamiel rebels but after being jailed as an agitator ,realizes that liberty ,freedom ,and justice in the future lie beyond his native country ,in a new land,where you can own your own land .
This country may be the promised land where an uncle has already emigrated ; all is in Désiré's precious little book he wants to give his sibling before he leaves for the broader horizons of the new world :"I could not go with you,I'm sick ":do they now about Ellis Island and its ruthless medical exam?
Romanie becomes a chamber maid because she naively thinks that the baron's son,Maurice , could be in love with her : her family is not fooled: she plays the princess in the château ,but the baron's son only sees her as a sexual object;religion, which is, along the army , the bedrock of an injust society ,appears lately in the movie,but when it does ,it's to justify the baron's despising attitude.
Eventually , the real rebel is Désiré :he is the first victim in the movie and his is the final desperate vengeance .
A precedent user wrote that "it isn't worth seeing for foreign people. Nonsense:"Hasn't he read Emile Zola and his depictions of the miners ' exploitation in " Germinal"? Hasn't he heard about French Jean Jaurès who urged all European working classes to stand together? Who was assassinated when he was the last man standing against WW1!
The first scene is the key to the movie: the wealthy aristocrats can exploit and even hurt (in both senses of the term ) the working-class people with complete impunity : nothing seems to have changed since the Middle-Ages: hunting is forbidden and poachers are chastised ; the rich baron can drive away his "villains " who can't pay their rent anymore (he has outrageously increased it because a farmer' s son got married and needs a farm). But now,the nobles are no longer "those who fight" : the people becomes cannon fodder in the war ,and worse, a weapon for the wealthy to break the strikes ,and even to kill their own brothers .
The father is a yessir man ,a peasant to whom military service is a sacred duty (and he calls his drafted son who has deserted ,after being forced to shoot on the strikers,a coward);he has been slaving away his whole life ,and when the baron ruins him ,he hardly rebels.
Like his brother-deserter , Kamiel rebels but after being jailed as an agitator ,realizes that liberty ,freedom ,and justice in the future lie beyond his native country ,in a new land,where you can own your own land .
This country may be the promised land where an uncle has already emigrated ; all is in Désiré's precious little book he wants to give his sibling before he leaves for the broader horizons of the new world :"I could not go with you,I'm sick ":do they now about Ellis Island and its ruthless medical exam?
Romanie becomes a chamber maid because she naively thinks that the baron's son,Maurice , could be in love with her : her family is not fooled: she plays the princess in the château ,but the baron's son only sees her as a sexual object;religion, which is, along the army , the bedrock of an injust society ,appears lately in the movie,but when it does ,it's to justify the baron's despising attitude.
Eventually , the real rebel is Désiré :he is the first victim in the movie and his is the final desperate vengeance .
A precedent user wrote that "it isn't worth seeing for foreign people. Nonsense:"Hasn't he read Emile Zola and his depictions of the miners ' exploitation in " Germinal"? Hasn't he heard about French Jean Jaurès who urged all European working classes to stand together? Who was assassinated when he was the last man standing against WW1!