Film-Philosophy 15.

2 2011

Review: Joseph Mai (2010) Jean-Pierre and Luc

Dardenne. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 156
pp.

R.D. Crano
Ohio State University

Since the Dardenne brothers first broke onto the international cinema scene
with La promesse (1996) a decade and a half ago, their work has enjoyed
immense critical acclaim and an encouraging degree of popular success,
garnering two Palme dOrs at Cannes (for Rosetta (1999) and Lenfant
(2005)) and launching the careers of several wonderfully gifted non-actors
(Jrmie Renier, Emilie Dequenne, and Olivier Gourmet, to name but a few).
Joseph Mais Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is the first English-language
monograph on the brothers, and as such is a welcome contribution to
contemporary European cinema scholarship. More specifically, its
publication is indicative of a rapidly growing academic interest in the
Dardennes ethically and emotionally charged style, which Mai explicates
with great care and, in some of the books most poignant moments, elegantly
juxtaposes to the banal, high-gloss filmmaking that dominates late-capitalist
culture.
Organized chronologically, Mais book opens with a patient, stage-
setting exploration of the Dardennes youthful documentary projects and
early, decidedly immature, forays into fiction filmmaking. In these pages,
Mai dutifully identifies nascent manifestations of certain motivations and
themes that come to flourish in the brothers later films: attachment to place,
specifically to the industrial city of Seraing (their longtime home) and the
river Meuse; commitment to the social and economic welfare of the working
class; dedication to the Levinasian ethical imperative of face-to-face and
dialogic engagement with the Other; and deep regard for the tactile
properties, textures, and weights of the bodies and objects on screen. Here he
neatly catalogues the career-spanning technical tropes that define the
Dardennes style their rhythmic editing composed almost entirely of
long, absorbing sequence shots joined by abrupt cuts. Finally, in the first
119
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

third of the book, we are also introduced to many of the cinematic influences
which resurface throughout the Dardennes career, ranging from the obvious
(Bresson and Rossellini) to the unexpected (Capra and Hawks). These latter
serve as pleasant surprises in an otherwise conventional which is not to say
insignificant academic undertaking.
Moving beyond cinematic predecessors, Mai highlights the brothers
youthful collaborations with people like radical Italian theater director
Armand Gatti and the Belgian playwright Jean Louvet, providing a concise,
well-rounded picture of the intellectual and cultural milieu from which the
Dardennean cinema emerges. Socioeconomic context, with regard to subject
matter as well as to directorial methods and cinematographic techniques, is
also of vital importance. Mai lucidly explains the perpetual feedback loop
that the Dardennes have engendered between the content of their films and
their chosen mode of cinematic production. As socially estranged and
morally alienated characters turn towards in each other in a gesture of love,
there is an analogous turn away from directorial control toward
collaboration and mutual commitment (xiv). The middle-budget
filmmaking that the brothers have arguably perfected thrives on networked
creative practices that directly condition the final output of their labour. In
like measure, they are able to carve out space for transformative
spectatorial experiences; theirs are, for Mai, not films viewers love, just
films that love viewers (xv).
From their militant documentaries and earliest fiction works
through their most recent Le silence de Lorna (2008), the Dardennes remain
driven by a deep desire to represent, with emotional intensity, history in the
present, in all of its thickness [] as it is imposed on individual
subjectivities (xi, 37). The toll of oppressive social and economic
configurations, in their films, is incorporated into the bodies and behaviors
of characters that struggle to subsist in the social periphery. The point where
the past impinges on the present actualized in the form of an individual
body and its mode of relating to other bodies in the world around it is also
the point of intersection between the personal and the political. For Mai, this
is almost exclusively a matter for ethical thinking, and it is Emanuel Levinas,
we discover, who is in fact the true star of the Dardennean oeuvre.
According to Mais narrative, which follows closely Luc and Jean-
Pierres own critical self-assessment, the crucial turning point in the brothers
career comes on the heels of two disappointing attempts at feature-length
fiction Falsch (1986) and Je pense vous (1992). Despite working with
many of their favorite motifs, these premature efforts failed, on formal
grounds, to ethically frame their actors. Only with La promesse would they
fully realize the means of determining space by that which fills it. Further,
these early fictions were plagued by producer interference and the lack of any
120
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

genuine communal bond among cast and crew. After these self-avowed
mistakes, the brothers determined to fund their own films and establish
closer, longstanding relationships with the various members of their
production team.
The remainder of Mais book is devoted to the simultaneous
explication and unabashed veneration of the films that follow. Rather than
rehash his already succinct analyses, which are in themselves a pleasure to
read, I will use this space to elaborate a few general comments from the
perspective of film-philosophy.
In its scope and its tone, Mais book reads more or less like an
intellectual or filmographic biography of the Dardennes. This comes largely
at the expense of in-depth philosophical engagements with anyone not
explicitly referenced by the Dardennes themselves. There is a ubiquitous, if
largely unstated, rejection of Theory in Mais writing that is often
refreshing, but just as often regrettable. On the one hand, he is able to offer
astute scene analyses and discuss the technical minutiae of film production
without getting distracted by esoteric abstractions. On the other hand,
however, many of his most poignant claims would only stand to gain from
more rigorous conceptual framings, especially when assessing the social and
political aspects and intentions of the Dardennes work. To this end, there
are moments in the book, not entirely infrequent, that fail to resonate to their
full potential. For example, Giorgio Agambens increasingly influential
genealogy of the figure of homo sacer would be particularly useful in Mais
reading of Le fils (2002) as an exploration of how to keep ethics from
spiraling into sacrifice (95). Claims about the brothers obsession with
vehicular tracking shots could beneficially mine the work of, say, F.T.
Marinetti or Paul Virilio, among others. Those about the function of
relational speeds in Lenfant, where wider perspective produc[es] [] an
excruciating slowness (104), detrimentally ignore Gilles Deleuze and Flix
Guattaris rich analyses of the topic.
Perhaps Mais theoretical shortcomings can be attributed to his
unswerving obedience to authorial intent, his refusal to stray from the corpus
of texts directly cited by the Dardennes in interviews and especially in Lucs
shooting diary, published in 2008 as Au dos de nos images, 1991-2005. Too
often, it seems, Mai contents himself with citing Lucs citations or relying
solely on secondary readings rather than actually going back to source
materials, for example in the case of the Sartrean undertones of the brothers
latest work (116) or their personal and professional interest in the
utopianism of philosopher Ernst Bloch (23-4). There is something troubling
about this sort of dogged adherence to the masters stated influences,
something that vaguely contradicts the genuinely collaborative spirit of both
their filmic recreations and their middle budget mode of production. But
121
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

more troubling still are the few moments when Mai fails even to clearly
perceive these influences. One particularly glaring omission occurs in the
books opening pages, in Mais detailing of certain of the Dardennes militant
documentary tropes and techniques. Their interest in the dialectical
relationship between image and text, their ironic treatment of archival
footage, and their frequent utilization of a pedagogical voiceover all
transparently recall the film work and theoretical writings of Guy Debord a
fertile connection if ever there was one, but one that Mai entirely,
inexplicably disregards. In a most curious passage, he recounts the brothers
formation in 1974 of a social video workshop they named Collectif Drives:
The word drives [] refers to wandering, or drifting, [] but it also
evokes more post-1968 libertarian thought the brothers have said that they
took the concept form the Situationist International group. If so, it should be
noted that drifting in their sense comes from an opposite direction from the
Situationists more famous notion of dtournement (8). Questions of
retrospective fame aside, minimal research into the Situationist movement
(1957-72) reveals their pioneering platform of psychogeography and
concomitant practice of urban drive to be among their most frequently
discussed lines of thought, and, by all accounts, far from opposed to either
the Dardennean usage of the term or the Situationist Internationals own
practice of dtournement. (Adding to this readers great perplexity, Debord
and the Situationists remain likewise absent from last years summative
anthology Committed Cinema: The Films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.)
Mais reading is at its best in its attention to the tactile qualities of the
visual image, and in its meticulous elaboration of the Dardennes stylistic
departures from mainstream filmmaking. A scene of pure anguish and
paralysis in Rosetta would in a more typical film have been the stuff of
romantic comedy (75). Sudden bursts of violent action in Lenfant strike
us as utterly tragic where they would otherwise be played for suspense. In a
world where each Hollywood film is, legally speaking, a self-contained
corporation, the Dardennes seek to transform the theater into an ethically
charged space in which spectators and characters can interface in radically
unprecedented ways (118). This is achieved not through any sort of
Brechtian alienation-effect, but, on the contrary, by absorbing us into the
affective dimensions of each characters life.
Dialectically opposed to the motives, modes of production, aesthetics,
and marketing tools of corporate cinema, the Dardennes art remains
suffused with uncompromising ethical intentions, which Mai emphasizes to
the point of sounding, at times, somewhat didactic. Their films aim to
condition viewers to become more sympathetic social actors; they are, if
nothing else, empathy-producing machines (xv). Rather than capture us in
spectacle they teach us [] to be sensitive to bodies and objects that we
122
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

may normally ignore or overlook [] to perceive better than before in order

to readjust our views and behavior (x). Given this outlook, the importance
of Levinas to both the Dardennes and to Mais treatment of their work
should be quite clear. Prescient but predictable, Mai repeatedly illustrates this
point. La promesse, for example, explores the difficulties involved in
overcoming the others unbridgeable uniqueness and difference through a
mutually respectful relationship that depends on language in the form of
conversation and accountability (51). And in Le fils, we learn how
dialogue builds a discursive bond almost against Oliviers wishes (97).
Given especially Lucs frequent citation of Levinas in his journals, the
applicability of such a philosophical framework is apparent, but the extant
scholarship on the Dardennes, slim though it may be, has fairly well covered
this ground (see Coopers Moral Ethics piece in Film-Philosophy 11
Cummings entry in the Committed Cinema anthology, and Mais own
Corps-Camra in LEsprit Crateur). This is not by any means to suggest
we reject the Levinasian interpretations, only that, at this early stage in the
development of a critical discourse, it might be more fruitful, or at least more
provocative, to open up new and unforeseen lines of inquiry.
More often than not, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne reads like an
impressive literature review taking in everything from critical essays and
film reviews to the copious interviews the brothers have given over the last
decade and a half. This is far from a bad thing, but it means that Mais
analysis lacks much in the way of complication, and that it too often risks
stagnating around intentional fallacies. Like clockwork, Mai quotes Jean-
Pierres affirmation of the odd affinity between Rosetta and Rambo and
proceeds to thoroughly illustrate the war-film analogy: in the Dardennes
film, banal sounds become explosions, ordinary actions demand
extraordinary prowess [] Rosetta lives with her mother in a trailer on a
campsite; fills her jerrican with water from an outdoor pump; washes her
clothes in a plastic bucket; carries a water bottle that she opens with her
teeth like a canteen; hides her boots in a drainpipe in the woods [and] []
moves like a wounded soldier (70, 74). Mais attentiveness here is inspiring,
but his purpose seems merely to prove that what Jean-Pierre said should be
taken to heart. He never extends the analogy beyond this superficial account,
to say, for example, that by creating this warlike atmosphere, the Dardennes
seek to unmask the raw brutality hiding just underneath the surface calm of
the neoliberalized global village.
Though he certainly demonstrates an undeniable awareness of the
Dardennes strong political motivations, Mai never teases them out with
regard to their later work, instead narrowly focusing on the not-unrelated
ethical questions having to do more with interpersonal relations than social-
structural critique. Admittedly, the militant labour documentaries give way
123
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

to more polished stories about individuals and the various Others they
encounter, but this, to my mind, does not make the Dardennes cinema any
less political. Perhaps as important as any of the ethical questions their films
raise is precisely what they do not and cannot show us namely, an
organized resistance to the onslaught of global capital. Mai does well to
highlight this from time to time, in his astute socioeconomic asides (for
example, the plight of Francis in Le fils is a perfect illustration of the need
for rehabilitation centers (90)), but does not seem to have the theoretical
tools to deliver more than a cursory gloss on this crucial absent centre in the
Dardenne catalogue.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is a thoughtful and comprehensive
indexing of where we stand at present with regard to these innovative
filmmakers, but it leaves little space for their innovations to flourish beyond
what they themselves have already envisioned. Mais keen scene, shot, and
frame analyses, his rousing attention to gesture and texture, and his
comprehensive grasp on the evolutionary trajectory of the brothers career
make for readily accessible and highly effective reading. However, much of
the broader interpretative work offers little that has not previously been
rehearsed. More film criticism than philosophy, and more breadth than
depth, Mais book will likely be cited in the years to come as a fitting
foundation for what will surely be a vast body of scholarly research. At
present, it serves as a strong reminder that much remains to be said on the
topic of the cinema Dardenne.

124
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615
Film-Philosophy 15.2 2011

Bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
Daniel Heller-Roazen, trans. Stanford: Stanford UP.

Cardullo, Bert, ed. (2009) Committed Cinema: The Films of Jean-Pierre and
Luc Dardenne: Essays and Interviews. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing.

Cooper, Sarah (2007) Mortal Ethics: Reading Levinas with the Dardenne
Brothers, in Film-Philosophy 11.2: 66-87.

Debord, Guy (2003) Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents.

Ken Knabb, trans. and ed. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Brian

Massumi, trans. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.

Dardenne, Luc (2008) Au dos de nos images, 1991-2005. Paris: Points.

Mai, Joseph (2007) Corps-Camra: The Evocation of Touch in the

Dardennes La Promesse, in LEspirit Crateur 47.3: 133-144.

Mai, Joseph (2010) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Urbana: U of Illinois P.

Marinetti, F.T. (2006) Critical Writings. Gnter Berghaus, ed. New York:
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

McDonough, Tom, ed. (2002) Guy Debord and the Situationist

International: Texts and Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Virilio, Paul (2006) Speed and Politics. Mark Polizzotti, trans. New York:
Semiotext(e).

125
Film-Philosophy | ISSN: 1466-4615