Š-DR-LE FRERE DU GUERRIER de Marc Jolivet (2002) p3

03/12/2014 05:03 par tellurikwaves

Mélanie Doutey (très bien dans ce rôle): Guillemette

Š-DR-LE FRERE DU GUERRIER de Marc Jolivet (2002) p2

03/12/2014 04:55 par tellurikwaves

Résumé
Au XIIIe siècle, dans un village des Cévennes, Arnaud vit avec son épouse, Guillemette. Avant de mourir, la mère d'Arnaud lui transmet la science des plantes médicinales et de leurs bienfaits. Un jour, Arnaud se fait attaquer par un groupe de brigands. Roué de coups d'une violence sans pareille, il en perd la mémoire. Sa femme part alors à la recherche de Thomas, le frère de son époux et vaillant guerrier. Celui-ci doit l'aider coûte que coûte à guérir Arnaud. Pour ce faire, il doit lui aussi découvrir les multiples secrets que recèle la science des plantes. Mais Thomas, farouche combattant, doit avant tout apprendre à évoluer sans armes...

Š-DR-LE FRERE DU GUERRIER de Marc Jolivet (2002)

02/12/2014 17:05 par tellurikwaves

Le Frère du Guerrier est un film français de Pierre Jolivet, sorti en 2002.

*

*

*

Cast
Vincent Lindon : Thomas
Guillaume Canet : Arnaud
Mélanie Doutey : Guillemette
François Berléand : le curé
Brunelle Lemonnier : Hilde
Frédéric Lacave : Benoît
Thierry-Perkins Lyautey : le chef des brigands
Roch Leibovici : le Chauve
Manuel Le Lièvre : le Bossu
Christophe Vandevelde : le Casque
Augustin Legrand : le Moustachu
Anthony Decadi : Le Giton
Philippe Fretun : le créancier
Franck Gourlat : Adémar
Arlette Thomas : l'abbesse
Frédérique Moidon : la prieure
Josiane Lévêque : l’aumônière
Anne Le Ny : Mme de Moteron
Olivier Augrond : le compagnon de Thomas
Ludovic Schoendoerffer : le prisonnier noble
Catherine Davenier : la fermière
Pascal Leguennec : le marchand
Sylvie Herbert : la mère Cantien
Annie Mercier : la femme Castelet
 

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) fin

01/12/2014 05:02 par tellurikwaves

...and out into the dawn meadows with the children

His enchantment of the children occurs as a direct reaction to Melius’ imminent immolation. We don’t see where they go; some fairyland equivalent of Gavin and Lisa’s garden, perhaps. But they go there full of joy, singing and dancing. And anywhere is better than this world, it is suggested. Franz, supervising the execution, hears the flute’s dancing pastoral melody drifting off in the distance, and feels an instinctive loathing for its light-hearted, optimistic airiness. He drowns it out with a music more in tune with the world which he intends to build with his commercial and ecclesiastical allies – the uniform, martial beat of his guards’ snare drums.

 The pre-final credits historical summary, setting the film in context in classical Hollywood style, looks forward to the atrocities of the religious persecutions and inquisitions to come, which Melius’ execution anticipates. With the statement that they would ‘remain without parallel until this century’ we are brought into the present, and the contemporary relevance of this fable is made plain. The bowl of the guards’ helmets has a stormtrooper curve, with horned metal spikes at the sides giving it an extra satanic embellishment. The execution of Melius’, the Jew, and the suspicion cast upon the players, who are referred to contemptuously as gypsies, bring to mind Nazi genocidal murder and the repeated demonising of outsiders and ethnic groups as a verminous ‘other’ throughout history.

The chaos which descends on Hamelin at the end of the film, with people leaving on wagons piled high with their belongings, also brings to mind the mass displacement caused by warfare, ancient and modern. If the piper has led the children away from the world until it is a fit place for them to live in then, Demy suggests, that world has not yet come into being. In some ways, then, this is another 70s film about the failure of the 60s countercultural dream. It’s a sobering conclusion to this brightly coloured fable with a heavy and brooding heart.

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p26

01/12/2014 05:00 par tellurikwaves

Melius’ dawn execution forms the climax of the film. As he is led to the stake, the piper takes up his recorder once more and begins to draw the children from their early morning beds. It’s a symbolic awakening, leading them into a new dawn whilst their parents sleep or watch the execution, and is in contrast with his enchantment of the rats, which took place in darkness, with the powers that be looking on. Here, the gloomy, benighted world is being left behind even as its violent authority becomes more overt, made manifest in the daylit town square.

Donovan’s piper leads the children away from Hamelin, from the sight of Melius’ burning, from the plague, from conscription into foreign wars, and from a future of political oppression and religious persecution. They dance out of the town and into the meadows beyond, singing and playing instruments. Gavin struggles to keep up with them, desperately calling out for Lisa, but to no avail. And then, in the blink of an eye or the splicing edit of a frame, they disappear in a solar flare of lens glare. The piper’s act is seen as one of salvation rather than of terrible revenge for the duplicity of the burghers in not paying him for ridding the town of the plague rats.

This mercenary aspect to the old tale is not a significant factor in the film. When the payment initially agreed upon is refused, and the piper turns down a derisory alternate sum offered by the Burgermeister after the rats have been washed away in the river, his reaction is akin to a shrug. It’s as if this was no more than he expected all along. His salvation of the town from the plague is instantly forgotten, the onlookers drifting off with little more than awkward and muted thanks. He communes with a single rat which has been left behind, just as Gavin will be at the end. His otherness is further evinced by the genuine empathy he seems to exhibit towards this reviled creature. It’s an exchange which seems more genuine than those he’s had with the humans he’s encountered here. But his reaction is one of sadness rather than anger or disgust, and gives an insight into his motives for leading the children’s parade at the end.

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p25

01/12/2014 04:57 par tellurikwaves

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p24

01/12/2014 04:53 par tellurikwaves

Gavin is also in love with Lisa, the Burgermeister’s daughter, and has secret meetings with her in the enclosed garden of her house, as if they were characters in an Arabian Nights tale. The scene in the garden is one of sun-dappled innocence, the two children finding a moment together in a private paradise before going back out into the fallen world. They are like a new Adam and Eve in this corrupt and plague-ridden land, offering the possibility of a new start.

The contrast between innocent youth and debased maturity reflects the exaggerated generational divide of the 60s, a divide which was viewed by some in morally absolute terms. It is the elder Melius, however, who takes up the countercultural cry during his trial, holding out hope for an alternative to a deadening world of grubby power play, materialistic greed and oppressive religion. In what amounts to an explicit statement of Demy’s creed, he looks forward to a future in which we will have learned ‘to tolerate each other’s differences…and even to rejoice in them’. His words are met with snarls and sneering looks of contempt from his accusers. Melius is the outsider within the town walls.

He is visibly different in dress and physical appearance, and also suspicious in his book-learning, independent of any institutional support and sanction as it is and thus betokening a dangerous freedom of thought and belief. His is potentially the rational voice of scholarly reason, free from the distorting gravity of power. But the pull of that power on weaker minds proves greater than the vital need for truth, and his fate is thereby written and sentence passed. At the same time, the Hamelin authorities’ willed ignorance condemns the greater part of their town to death.

Š-DR-LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p23

01/12/2014 04:43 par tellurikwaves

Where Baron and Burgermeister use their children as bargaining pieces to gain position or wealth, Melius seeks to guide Gavin towards the fulfilment of his nascent artistic talents, pointing him towards the Netherlands and the new schools of secular painting emerging there. This was the time leading up to the establishment of the Flemish School under the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, which would reach a pinnacle with the paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and a little later the densely populated fantasias of heaven and hell by Hieronymous Bosch. Gavin makes a connection with the visiting players, recognising fellow spirits from whom he might learn.

Demy depicts his artists as outsiders, looking in on society from a slight remove. There’s obviously a fair degree of self-portraiture here. These artists are either a part of a group, have the support of a sympathetic patron (Melius in Gavin’s case) or are loners who follow their own muse (Donovan’s piper) and who seem to be not just outside of society but from another world entirely. At the end of the film, Gavin return disconsolately to Melius’ room. It’s still filled with the objects which mirrored the contents of his mind, but its now empty of his spirit.

He takes up the pipe and begins to play, and when the players turn up and invite him to join them, he agrees with scarcely a moment’s hesitation. He will travel to the Netherlands, explore new art forms and perhaps attain the almost supernatural power of the piper. A power which is achieved through art or music rather than sorcery, however.

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p22

01/12/2014 04:32 par tellurikwaves

The central characters outside the conglomerate circle of villainy, however, are Michael Hordern’s Melius, the Jewish alchemist, and his surrogate son Gavin, played by Jack Wild. Wild brings some of the urchinry he put to good use as the Artful Dodger in Oliver to the character. But here he has a settled home and a scholarly Jewish guardian with his best interests at heart. Melius’ laboratory cum library is a far more welcoming home than the Baron’s forbiddingly dark and labyrinthine castle. It’s filled with light, books, pots and bottles, alembics, bird cages and curios (preserved crocodiles and turtles) which suggest a lively curiosity about the wider world.

Its busy but relaxed atmosphere is in complete contrast with the morbid interiority of the Baron’s gloomy surrounds, or the fussy quarters of the Burgermeister and his wife, where harried servants are constantly having orders shouted at them. Melius and Gavin offer an alternative vision of family life, one which doesn’t involve direct descent, but which does involve a great deal more love.

Š-DR- LE JOUEUR DE FLUTE de Jacques Demy (1971) p21

01/12/2014 04:27 par tellurikwaves

The players remain essentially peripheral to the story, however, never becoming directly involved in its unfolding intrigues. Even the pied piper is a rather shadowy presence, a keenly observant onlooker from the wings who only takes centre stage to perform his three significant acts of musical enchantment: the waking of the Burgermeister’s daughter from her trance; the herding of the plague-carrying rats to the watery end; and the leading of the children in a merrily dancing parade to elsewhere. In a way, he is a little like Bob Dylan’s character in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (although a lot less twitchy) - the artist observer, taking in what he sees and storing it for future use.

In the Pied Piper, however, Donovan’s songs are directly incorporated into the story rather than serving as its background soundtrack. Donovan’s piper is a figure from beyond time. Whilst the theatrical band take up hurdy-gurdy, cittern and tabor to play through a medieval estampie dance, he carries his psychedelically daubed acoustic guitar and sings songs which could have been taken from Donovan’s own albums for children, HMS Donovan and For Little Ones. Songs steeped in 60s Pre-Raphaelite medievalism like Guinevere and Celeste make him something of a natural for such a role, and he would go on to write songs for Franco Zeffirelli’s portrayal of St Francis as hippy saint, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.