"Two days and One night" - a review.

"Two days and One night" - a review.

Here is a hypothetical situation; and I urge my sensitive readers to put themselves in the situation I am about to describe. Let’s say, you work in small organization of about fifteen employees, earning a salary just enough to lead a dignified life, raising kids and aspiring to remain secure financially You have recently recovered from a bout of depression (an emotionally bad phase), nothing serious, but just enough to put you in a slightly precarious position at work. You badly depend upon this job. It is not that you love it, but it pays you enough to lead a respectable life. And that’s all matters to you just now. Apart from a couple of co-workers, whom you consider friends, other respect you as fellow worker, and one or two remembers professional favors you have extended. Beyond this, there is no bonding between others and you. Your employer faces stiff completion from Asian market and takes a decision to cut down costs. This is the simple proposition he places in front of his employees: Either he fires you, and give the rest a decent bonus of $ 2000, or he retains your services and nobody gets a bonus this year. He takes a ballot, and the outcome - not surprising, is that you have to leave. All of them have voted for their bonuses goaded by a little non-coercive talk from your employer on company’s profitability and their job security. You are distraught, heart broken, not a highly skilled person and uncertain of your future. Your children are going to decent school, there is a mortgage on your home; and it has only been a couple of years that your Husband and you have seen some kind of existential security and financial freedom, after having lived under Government bailouts for a quite a long time. You plead with your employer to retain you; and he relents on a condition: A fresh ballot will be conducted on Monday (all this drama happens on a Friday evening), and he tells categorically that if you can convince the majority to forgo their bonus, he will reinstate your job. That leaves you with you two days and one night to talk to each of them and see if you can turn the tables around. Otherwise, you are in trouble and have to reevaluate your life choices once again.

This Ladies and Gentlemen, is the essence of the story of this most wonderful 2014 French film “Two days and one night”. From a land where Camus and Sartre lived, thought and wrote about man’s loneliness and existential predicament, there could not be a better work of cinematic art to capture the deep anguish, pain and paradox of modern man than this movie. Marion Cotillard, the phenomenal French actress, plays the role of Sandra - a working mother, who faces this crisis of having to let go of her dignity, self-respect and talk to each of her colleagues requesting their cooperation in holding on to her job. She doesn’t like doing it. Her upbringing, sense of worth prevent her; but practical realities forces her to do so. She meets each one of them, and asks to vote for her stay. The brilliance of the movie lies in the reaction of each of her coworkers to her plea - who like her, are caught in the web of “making a living”, “ making both ends meet” and all of those social obligation and commitments that modern man is painfully made to endure. Some of them willingly acquiesce, others blatantly refuse; some others feel sorry but are unwilling to surrender their good bonus; a few insult her. In all this, the actor in Marion presents the myriads faces of Sandra with startling realism and vividity: Her changing moods and phases, the terrible humiliation on having to do this without letting her Children know; gobbling anti-depressant pills, unable to cry with freedom, choking with grief on her supportive husband’s shoulders; contemplating suicide; winning small victories, losing a few, reassessing her value systems and outlook; progressively getting more confident and positive that no matter what happens Life will continue – in all this, we see a common man, living in an unequal world, unsure of tomorrow facing the horrendous psychological reality of Modern society - where an individual is nothing but a cog in a wheel to be easily dispensed with. In a world so dominated by economic realities of living, it is hard to accuse anyone of being selfish. The various protagonists in this story, who refuse to vote for Sandra are not wrong in their stand or views. They have reasons, in fact compelling reasons for wanting their bonus. Building a patio, School fees, mortgage payments, and travails of single income families - all of them valid and sound. And Sandra understands and empathizes with them. The most common word in this screen play is the French world “Merci” - meaning “thank you”. Sandra uses it at least fifty times. She feels bad asking such a big favor from her fellow workers, but who is to be blamed for this? The employer, market conditions, screwed living conditions in modern civilized world, evils of capitalism - which of this can be humanized and accused for this existential uncertainty. The long road to modern industrial (and now digital society) has been a steady transformation from “living a life” to “making a living”, and in that process, we have dehumanized ourselves to the point that we cannot make a healthy connection with one another without weighing relationships, values and common decency in economic terms.

Well, let me loop back to this film… Marion Cotillard! It is impossible that anyone cannot know her. She has been the face of Dior for about eight years now. And if we have ever flipped through a copy of vogue or Vanity Fair or wall street journal, among 200 other journals and magazines that have had her face on front covers – I am certain her expressive face would have passed before our eyes without consciously noticing it. Stunning, sultry, shapely extremely well spoke and literate (as most French Women are) – she transitioned in to movies very young. Widely considered as one of the richest, most bankable French heroines of the twenty first century Her moment of recognition ( in Hollywood) was in 2007, when she became the first (the only actor so far) actress to win an academy award for her performance in French film in French Language. I must confess, beyond this detail - I knew nothing of her until I saw this movie. And to say that I was overwhelmed by her passion, intensity and understanding of Sandra’s role, and its meticulous execution on screen - would be the grossest understatement I would ever hope to make as a passionate lover of the medium of Cinema. It was revelatory, to say the least. The Dardenne brothers, who made this movie could not have hoped for a better, more realistic exhibition of acting display than this. A deglamorized role, with just two costumes in the entire film ( I counted), unkempt hair, bereft of any gloss, expressions that effortlessly ranged from thwarted grief to rumblings of hope, an almost superhuman command of the script and flow of this arty story and script - Marion, in my books , played the character to perfection. There was not a single glitch. Marion, the glamour girl simply dissolves and disappears into Sandra Bya - the working woman who needs to keep her job to stay afloat.

Sound had no role to play in this drama. Hence there is no sound track. Not a single strain of violin or Cello to enhance the tautness of the moment. There are only grim silences punctuated by succinct dialogues, gasps and grief. In fact, one doesn’t feel the need for music. When art closely imitates life, sound becomes a distraction, and most profound works of visual art always deal with silences and white spaces and unsculpted marble.This film belongs to that league.

I would conclude this rather lengthy review with a poignant observation by French man Jean Paul Sartre in his frightfully stark book “Nausea” - a classic in existential literature

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life….”

“Two days and one night” presents this personal crisis in modern society, where life loses meaning even if contemplates death as a panacea to this robotic, impersonal and uncertain living… Watch it, and you will see what I mean….

God bless…

Yours in mortality,

Bala