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!
