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The Son- Directors Present at the HFA

May 31
Sun 5:00 PM
Location
Grafton Street Pub & Grill

1230 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138
617.497.0400

How to find us
"We will meet at a restaurant before the film."

Estimated attendance
 15  people attended.
4.50 4.507

Who organized?
Tom Green

The Son directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Belgium/France 2002 103 min. plus a 10 minute early short. The films start at 7 PM. We will meet at the Grafton Street Pub at 5:00.

The retrospective of the Dardenne brother's films is yet another example of the HFA presenting world-reknown directors in a Q&A forum. Twelve of their films are to be screened from May 17- June 1 with the directors being present for the last two evenings. I have not seen any of the Dardenne's films, but they do look interesting...

Characterizing themselves as "one person with four eyes," Belgian filmmaker Luc Dardenne and his older brother Jean-Pierre rose to the forefront of international art cinema in the 1990s with such uncompromising, socially aware dramas as La Promesse (1996) and Rosetta (1999), depicting life in Belgium's depressed industrial region near Liège on the Meuse River.

The Son is a stylistically rigorous, emotionally wrenching drama of moral reckoning. The first half-hour may cause a lot of head-scratching because of the Dardennes' deliberately elliptical storytelling, but once the central dilemma snaps into focus, the movie becomes unusually gripping. Dardenne regular Olivier Gourmet gives a standout performance as Olivier, a carpentry teacher who encounters his child's killer many years later. Now a teenager fresh out of juvenile detention, the student (Morgan Marinne) does not know who Olivier is -- and Olivier is not eager to fill him in either. What Olivier chooses to do with his new charge becomes the stuff of this movie's suspense. All Movie Guide

To call The Son a masterpiece would be to insult its modesty. Like the homely, useful boxes Olivier teaches his prodigals to build, it is sturdy, durable and, in its downcast, unobtrusive way, miraculous.
N.Y. Times

The Son is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen. Walk out of the house today, tonight, and see it, if you are open to simplicity, depth, maturity, silence, in a film that sounds in the echo-chambers of the heart. "The Son" is a great film. Roger Ebert

By the climax, we can hardly breathe -- The outcome is less important than our utter and complete empathy with this man. As we await what he does, we breathe with him, in and out. This is an astonishing movie. Slate

Hope to see you there,
Tom

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Who attended?

  • 15 attendees
    • “ The movie was not engaging enough for me. I could see what the directors were trying to do and it was admirable, but it couldn't really hold my attention. ”
    • “ I had trouble getting engaged with the film at first, the slow pacing and sole focus on Olivier's every minute action really hurt the early scenes. Things got much better once we got to "meet" Francis and the two characters were revealed to us through each other. And in this part of the film the slow pacing was a great strength-the way people who work with their hands communicate with each other. Oliver's role as a teacher was, in the end, what shaped his actions and reactions regarding Francis; F's profound need for a guardian in his life overcoming Olivier's equally profound need to rage against F's horrific act and his childish inability to acknowledge his wrong. ”
    • “ It was especially intriguing to hear the directors' perspective after viewing the film and how they worked with the cast to get the performances they sought. Thanks, Tom, for organizing this meetup. ”