Le Fils - The Son; a film about grace (but not the one you might think)

This review cannot be written without spoilers. And no movie will be so destroyed by spoiling it, paradoxically: because there is no plottwist in it, no jack-from-a-box. Still: should you wish to watch this film, read the review only afterwards.

A small film of masterful proportions, something like that, is this film. About the divorced Olivier, the woodworker, who helps teenagers learn a trade after they have had to spend time in juvenile detention. We follow him with a shocking handheld camera, seemingly, just not getting a good look at what it does look for. Most of the time, we watch Olivier's neck; as he advises the boys, tips them, helps them, drives through Liege in the car, talks to his divorced wife.... as if we were looking into the world through him. An hour and a half; no trappings, no music, no impending sense of impending doom, nothing like that: silence, observation, like a documentary.

Le Fils was directed by the Dardenne brothers (Luc and Jean-Pierre) and released in 2002. The brothers are Belgium's great directors and are considered “socially engaged” filmmakers. But that description falls just short of theirs. They could then be seen as a Belgian version of Ken Loach, the well-known English director who denounces the wretched state of the northern English underclass. But the Dardennes are not like that. Their films are about something else, according to themselves about a “guilt that frees you, opens you up to life. Yes, well, the protagonists are often ordinary people from an ordinary economic class with ordinary jobs; that doesn't make them “socially engaged.”

They care about something else: guilt, repentance, grace. Deeply religious themes, in other words. One of their best films is La Fille Inconnue; as simple as it is intense. About a young family doctor, or a young woman about to become a family doctor, who is on late duty. It's late, she's had a long day, there's a knock and a ring; she doesn't open the door. A day or two or three later, it becomes clear that that girl has died. The family doctor, legally innocent, morally perhaps guilty, from that moment on, sets out to find out the name and identity of that girl who died. Once again “guilt sets you free, opens you up to life. Someone knocked on the door, she looked away; and now she has to deal with that.

That looking away is a central theme for the Dardenne brothers. For example, they say they would have preferred to make a film about Cain and Abel. Or more: Cain with (opposite?) God, who asks him where his brother is. To which Cain replies, “Unknown to me, am I my brother's keeper?

Dardenne is interested in the silence that falls after God asks Abel. Silence as looking away. Cain is looked at, and he, one imagines, beats down his eyes, and falls silent, to realize in the most drastic way what he never realized before his manslaughter: what a brother is. And he then expresses this realization with a question as distraught as it is rhetorical: am I my brother's keeper?

God, as is well known, punishes Cain with life. 'Wandering and straying you shall be on the earth's land.' We are all descended from him, as are the characters of the Dardennes. And everyone who sees him, the Dardennes man, moves her or him in, the man with the guilt that liberates, opens up to life.

Back to Le Fils: the son. Does the liberating guilt also have a role here? Olivier, as mentioned, is a divorced woodworker. We find this out when his wife visits him. Olivier is doing the dishes, his wife talking to his neck while we as viewers are watching his face right now. She is going to remarry, she says. She has to move on. Olivier remains calm, he seems to understand, not entirely clear, unreadable as his face is. Then she tells him she is pregnant; now he is no longer undisturbed. Touched. But he continues with what he is doing, he continues to look away from his ex-wife.

Of course, the film is not only about woodworking. Central is a boy who joins. At first Olivier does not want to hire him, he says he is already full, but then he pursues him. Watches him sleep, follows him into an alley (we've been conditioned to think all kinds of perverse things now, but it's not an American movie), and then decides to take him under his wing anyway. He gives the boy overalls, explains the basics to him, and helps him master the craft of woodworking.

Then we see Olivier at the store where his ex-wife works. Now he does look at her: he apologizes and congratulates her. Then he says he has been asked to take Francis under his wing. His wife, ex, flinches: no, he didn't do that anyway. He can't do that. After all, that boy, that Francis, killed their infant son. Olivier looks at her, again doesn't look away, and promises her he didn't.

We know better.

So Francis, the boy he was following, killed his infant son. And probably led to him and his wife no longer being together and him no longer working for his brother. In short: Francis has been the source of an existential blow, a negative turn, Francis the killer; Francis, a boy of 16, just free and searching and needing help; Francis, the killer, Francis, the boy.

And all the while we are on Olivier's skin, looking out into the world with him, smoking a cigarette with him, driving with him through the God forsaken city of Liege, watching Francis with him.

The last half hour of the film is among the most poignant moments I have seen. And seemingly so little happens. They are in the car together, on their way to Olivier's brother's house to get wood. They talk a little, there is no music, we move into the car with them. Francis is tired, because he uses sleeping pills to sleep. By now we also know that, given his parents and background, well; a killer it is, but unequivocally certainly not. And they are on the road together. It's almost as if we literally spend the actual duration with them in the car. They talk about what Francis did - stole a car radio - but you don't get five years for that? Francis doesn't answer. Later he tells them that he also committed a murder, by accident. There was a little boy in the back of the car and he wouldn't let him go, he grabbed him by his neck - no you strangled him, Olivier says - otherwise he wouldn't have died. Francis again doesn't respond. Looks away.

Later, Olivier asks if Francis regrets his act. Sure he regrets, he says as befits a 16-year-old. It cost him five years of his life. In Olivier's eyes, of course, exactly the wrong reason to be sorry. After all, he still has a life.

Finally Olivier opens up: it's my son you killed. Francis is startled, runs away, is chased by Olivier and manages to get outside where they end up struggling in the woods. And for a moment Olivier has no control, his hands around Francis' neck, as he must have done to his infant son. In time, thankfully, he comes to his senses. Stands up, walks away and loads the keeps into the car. Then Francis arrives, grabs wood, loads it into the car. They say nothing to each other.

The end.

As viewers, we know that there has been a catharsis. That Olivier, without wanting it, has attached himself to Francis, yes, even started to care about him. This, this struggle, they had to go through that in order to actually connect with each other. The air has, it seems, cleared. We also know, through the entire style of the film, that this will not be easy: Olivier cares about Francis, maybe even understands him, and maybe even manages to forgive him, but he will never really stop hating him. The idea that forgiveness and hate are opposite is nonsense, says Julian Barnes: they can coexist perfectly well. We know: for Olivier, that will be the case for now.

'Guilt that sets you free, opens you up to life' - I don't know if this applies here. Rather, it seems to be here: anger from which you need to be freed, to open up to life. Olivier here is not the one who has fallen short, like the family doctor in La Fille Inconnue; Olivier here is the bearer and bringer of mercy; but mercy is not always lovely or gentle, it can also be harsh, through struggle - just read the entire Old Testament.

Nowhere do the Dardenne brothers go for effect, or for the easy fix or for manufactured suspense: there's just a moment when they've turned on the camera, we happen to follow a couple of people who are involved with each other in one way or another, and then they close the camera again. Without some big ending. It feels like Olivier, Francis, Olivier's ex-wife, are still walking around Liege now, we just happened to be able to watch them for a moment and experience through them or with them something of guilt, hatred, remorse, anger, grace. 'Nothing more' I would almost say; but what is more substantial than that?