Petit Bulletin LYON - Cinema Lyon: Men - Lucas Belvaux: "there should not be an unhealthy pleasure in watching violence" - article published by Vincent Raymond<

There is a clear link between Chez Nous (2017) and this film which is almost a prequel to it…Lucas Belvaux: It was born out of the previous one, yes. I had read Laurent Mauvigner's book when it came out in 2009, and at the time I wanted to take the rights and adapt it. But Patrice Chéreau already had them, and then he fell ill and didn't have time to do it. I had given up and, over time, not seeing the film being made, I became interested in it again. Especially after Chez nous: there was a logical continuation. I reread the book, I found it still as good and my desire to adapt it was intact — which is a good sign after ten years.

In addition to the “news” of your desire, there is that of the subject: one has the impression that we are only just beginning with the treatment of “liquidation” of the Algerian War. It's still new… Strangely, because this subject has remained eminently political and has always been treated in the terms of 1960: for or against. But in recent years, since the generation of grandchildren, or children who have grown up, there has been a fresh look. Those who write about this war today did not make it and are not the children of those who made it.

Benjamin Stora, among others, says that the Algerian War is three wars: a war of independence between the Algerians and the French, an Algerian-Algerian civil war between the FLN and the MNA, and then a Franco civil war -French between supporters of French Algeria and the Republic. All of this makes for an extremely complex knot that you can't get out of. The war of independence is exploited by the FLN or what is left of it - still in power in Algeria -; the Franco-French by the descendants of the OAS or what is left of it… This war is still exploited today on both sides. There would be need for a “truth and reconciliation” commission to set things straight and say what happened. It's the job of historians and journalists - what they've been doing since 1962. But we don't want to hear it because it's always easier to blow on the embers than to try to build from a traumatic episode.

For grandchildren, the question arises differently

1962 corresponds to the Évian agreements. Unfinished agreements? From 1962, lead screed, dust under the rug, no one talks about it anymore… There was a state silence: nobody had an interest in talking about it. The families did not want to know that their children, their brother, their fiancé had committed horrors in Algeria — because there was a fantasy, we knew that a lot of horror had been committed, but we did not know by whom among called them. The state covered up what happened, because we had to find relations for oil, gas, immigration, labor… So we stopped talking about all that. In the Evian Accords, an article says that countries will not sue each other for war crimes, torture, etc. There was therefore no trial, which means that the former torturers of Algeria will brag about it. But if there is no trial, there is no culprit and therefore no innocent either... This means that all the conscripts who, for 90% of them or more, have nothing fact, had to bear the weight of the common accusations.

There was no absolution for them… The veterans of Algeria will carry this collective fault, have this image. It's horrible. This trauma has impacted the whole family. Their children, who cannot ask questions, have also suffered: they have suffered the consequences of these alcoholic, violent fathers, they have been slapped, they have not really been able to forgive and it has remained like a kind of problem for two generations. For the grandchildren, the question arises differently: they know that the grandfather went there, they weren't told much about it, they weren't taught at school or very little...

You shot in Morocco; however, you did location scouting in Algeria. Was it to immerse yourself in the sets? At the time, I was hoping to be able to shoot in Algeria. And then I realized while doing location scouting that it was more complicated to shoot in Algeria than in Morocco and that there wasn't much left in the sets. It has changed a lot. And there was no point in inflicting so many political and practical difficulties to earn so little: less and less is being turned in Algeria. In Morocco, you arrive with your hands in your pockets: the infrastructures and the technicians are of international level, rather among the very good, because they are people who shoot big American films, big Italian series all the time. A Moroccan technician shoots more than a Frenchman. For Men, I worked with one of the best camera assistants I've had. So it's "comfortable".

I didn't want to traumatize the viewer

Adapted from a novel, the film plays a lot on the word, the revelation. It is also a visual testimony which does not show what is of the order of the unspeakable. How did you decide what would cross the boundaries of representation? I didn't want to traumatize the viewer like the soldiers were traumatized, I didn't want to “take them hostage” — even if I don't really like that expression. The spectator in his armchair cannot save himself, nor intervene, nor save people, so what is shown to him must retain a certain measure. What interests me is to tell him about the shocks, the traumas, the suffering, not to cause them to him. To make a story that eventually supports a reflection, but not that it runs away.

So, what can we look at, can we accept what we see? The idea is not to put the viewer in the position of a voyeur. From the moment he is part of a voyeur, it no longer works. He must remain a spectator. There shouldn't be an unhealthy pleasure in watching violence. The way is narrow but it is marked. It is out of the question that I show the little girl killed; moreover, in the book, Mauvignier does not describe it, he says “men had done that” and that is enough. The reader imagines what he wants. Either way, it's appalling. It's an attempt to tell the unspeakable which passes by not showing the unshowable and assuming it.

The filmed documentation of the Algerian War — in any case, that made available to date — is not very rich… There are photos, images which are of incredible violence, which I did not want to put in a movie. They are found on the Internet or they are shown in documentaries. Me, I couldn't. Images of execution, I don't have the heart, the courage, to instrumentalize someone's death in a fictional film; I find it unbearable. Each spectator is capable of imagining it.

When the majority of theaters projected in digital, I went through it without real regret

How did you compose the characters, insofar as, the film unfolding over several periods, these are diffracted and supported by several actors? A character is built by two. They are in charge of the incarnation, of something that totally belongs to them and about which I can do nothing. Me, I am somewhat in charge of bringing them material on which to build it and then guaranteeing that, in the end, it will have something that is coherent. It is the marriage of the two that makes the screenplay and the incarnation. I like that idea there. I make a character proposal and then they appropriate it, embody it and it doesn't really belong to me anymore… but a little bit nonetheless.

Two eras respond to each other, but also two lights. What work did you do on the photo to obtain this result? We didn't have the same series of lenses in Morocco and France, because the renderings and aberrations are not the same. Today in digital, we can make a fake cinemascope by shooting with usual focal lengths and reframing, but here we shot with real scope focal lengths — and there are sometimes distortions on the edges. So we changed the focal lengths between Morocco and France, depending on the skin of the actors, the aperture… We worked with less light in the French part, indoors. It all plays. It's quite exciting to do, but it was a long preparation: we tried five or six sets of different focal lengths in Paris before finding the right ones.

Guillaume Nicloux shot The Ends of the World in 35mm, which has a certain connection with your film. Did the question of the film arise on this film? No. Digital makes life easier on many things. Then there is the digital rendering which can be unpleasant. But I shot with cinema lenses that are 40 years old, the cameras have made a lot of progress, we are starting to have something very good. The game is no longer worth the candle anyway since everywhere in France we project in digital. I was probably the last filmmaker to switch to digital grading: I shot up to 38 Witnesses in digital in 2011-2012, and I graded in photochemical because the majority of theaters were showing 35mm prints. When the majority of theaters screened in digital, I went through it without real regret. Maybe on certain close-ups… Because in the close-up, things happen and it's only in the cinema that they happen. The melancholy of a look, the fixity, it tells things and allows the viewer to project themselves. I strongly believe in the Koulechov effect: that the spectator projects what he wants. If you direct a little bit, you can go quite far in introspection — including for the viewer.

Landmarks

1961: Born in Namur (Belgium) on November 14

1980: Debut as an actor. He was revealed by Allons z'enfants by Yves Boisset and rose to prominence with Chicken in Vinegar by Claude Chabrol (1984)

1993: Sometimes too much love, first feature film as a director

2003: The "Trilogy", An Amazing Couple, Cavale, After Life, a project of rare ambition and great success (partially shot in Grenoble) receives the Louis-Delluc Prize

2021: Men, his eleventh feature film for the cinema, in the Cannes 2020 selection, is finally released

The film

Men: poorly extinguished fires

Young conscripts who left to serve in Algeria, Feu-de-Bois and Rabut returned internally marked by what they had experienced, suffered, seen, done or…did not dare to do. And their lives have been changed. Forty years later, a banal birthday party awakens the demons of the past...

Who would believe that, behind the staggering ogre belching his racist curses, hides a wounded and traumatized kid? Suddenly drunk in spite of himself, Feu-de-Bois metaphorizes the continuous ravage wrought by “events”, a machine for crushing bodies and minds on both sides of the Mediterranean. Events still unresolved, and that time and silence worsen. It is precisely with these two parameters that Belvaux composes to mark the slow dislocation of beings: he alternates eras (the past thus devours the present, contaminates it like an original and obsessive rot that cannot be cured), and reduces the dialogue , entrusting voice-overs with the task of conveying not only the story, but also unequivocal truths that cannot really be confronted. Everyone then remains a prisoner of their pain, of their loneliness, until the fatal outcome. Harsh and yet powerfully beautiful in tragedy.

★★★☆☆ By Lucas Belvaux (Fr, 1h41 with warning) with Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Frot, Jean-Pierre Darroussin…

Men

By Lucas Belvaux (Fr, 1h41) with Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Frot, Jean-Pierre Darroussin

By Lucas Belvaux (Fr, 1h41) with Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Frot, Jean-Pierre Darroussin

They were called to Algeria at the time of the "events" in 1960. Two years later, Bernard, Rabut, February and others returned to France. They were silent, they lived their lives. But sometimes it takes almost nothing, a birthday, a gift that fits in your pocket, for forty years later, the past bursts into the lives of those who thought they could deny it.