This is a demand we make almost exclusively of the “political cinema,” which makes it the only movie genre we judge on the basis of its effectiveness at raising public awareness of an issue or situation. The danger, however, with this kind of thinking, is in how close it comes to the dour, utilitarian view that art is some kind of tool designed to serve a useful purpose. Art can, of course, serve a useful purpose – and it does – but  at the same time, there’s something insidious about evaluating art in this way, because it totally misses the point: that the human condition is the one essential social condition. And it is by not losing sight of this that Philippe Lioret succeeds with his film Welcome; he has given us a political story on a human scale.

Welcome is about Bilal, a seventeen-year-old Kurdish immigrant hoping to reunite with his girlfriend in Britain, but who instead ends up stranded, with countless other migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia, homeless in Calais. These men hope to stowaway on the trucks carrying freight through the Chunnel. Risking asphyxiation, they wear plastic sacks on their heads to elude the customs agents’ carbon dioxide detectors.

After one such harrowing attempt, Bilal, played with naïve appeal by newcomer Firat Ayverdi, concludes that the only way he can make it to Britain is swimming the English Channel. Thus he meets a former swim champion named Simon, played by Vincent Lindon, whose reticent sadness is the standout performance of the film. Simon is teaching at the local pool, and, in hopes of impressing his soon to be ex-wife, a teacher and community activist played by Audry Dana, he takes the young man into his home, to the chagrin of his neighbors and the local authorities. (A draconian law called “article L622-1” empowers the French authorities to detain people caught assisting illegal immigrants.)

Much of the film feels like a study in extremes, and this is a key to its success. Through stark camerawork, Calais looms cold and imposing, with its monotone shoreline and colossal port. Against this inhospitable backdrop, Simon’s modest apartment is the sanctuary where we watch him slowly and gradually invest in Bilal hopes for a happiness that he himself has squandered. You can’t find a more natural actor than Lindon; it’s the sort of extraordinarily ordinary performance that carries a film and brings the audience along on a moral awakening.  Unfortunately, as Simon comes to see, happiness, like wealth, is a luxury doled out unjustly.

I spoke with Philippe Lioret over the phone about the circumstances and political situation that gave rise to the film.

The Rumpus: It seemed to me, while watching your film, that we can change the situation in Calais just by simply acting in a humane way. But I also felt like world is absurd, that it overwhelms our small acts of kindness…

Philippe Lioret: It’s the world order that’s absurd. It’s governed by regulations and laws drawn up by lawmakers who never take into account individual circumstances or simple humanity. No one ever talks about the young Kurdish boy who wants to go to England to escape the war, we only talk in terms of “flux migratoire” [human migration].

Rumpus: un flux migratoire…

Lioret: Right. And there’s quite a difference between what we call “migration” in the official record and a 17 year old boy who’s fleeing a war zone; it removes the human element. We have [in France] ministers who continue to puppet the same line “no, no, this all doesn’t exist.” But of course it exists! And it’s shameful the way we’re treating these kids [in Calais.] It’s shameful.

Rumpus: And you witnessed this first-hand while preparing for the film…

Lioret: The things I saw. I had to be somewhat secretive, because the police were extremely suspicious; I couldn’t let them see me…  but it became obvious that all the reporting we see on television is slanted, because whenever a television camera is present everything takes place so politely.

Rumpus: Really?

Lioret: But when there aren’t TV cameras, what happens isn’t polite. Out come the tear gas and the night sticks, the humiliation and incessant, incessant persecution. We do not have the right to allow this situation to continue.

Rumpus: You hear a little bit about this in the French media, but not so much…

Lioret: In France, what we’re trying to do is simply block the pipe without repairing the leak. Here’s what I mean: Ten years ago, when all these young immigrants began arriving in the north of France, they came from Kosovo.  The Calaisiens today still call the illegal immigrants “Kosovars.”  Except, there’s not a Kosovar among them. Do you know where all the Kosovars are today?

Rumpus: In Kosovo?

Lioret: They’ve gone back to Kosovo!  Because, at last, there’s peace.  It’s their country, it’s their culture, their families, their roots… they returned home, and everything’s fine! The day when there’s no longer a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Afghans will return home, too, and the problem will be solved. You have to fix the problem at the source. To pacify Afghanistan, Darfur, this is what needs to be done. But the international community… it’s ridiculous. As long as we fail to pacify these war zones, there will be illegal immigration fleeing humanitarian disaster, people risking their lives. And here [in France], we don’t know what to do with them all. The least we can do is try to welcome this flood of people in a humane fashion. What France is doing now is simply undignified. Of course people can argue, “but we cannot compensate for all the miseries of world.” Okay, fine. We live in an extremely rich country compared to the extreme poverty of these places. At the very least, we could put these immigrants up in a hangar with beds for the winter, not leave them to live in the mud like animals. Even dogs in France are better treated.

Rumpus: You found the story for your film in this milieu. In a way, the film was made in reverse, because you didn’t go looking for a location. It was the location that spawned the story…

Lioret: Yes, indeed. I built the story around the facts. Even this kid who wanted to find his girlfriend in England, I actually met him. I met a seventeen year old boy, who later left for England to join his girlfriend. He was the inspiration for Bilal. And then, the humanitarian volunteers who worked there told me that there had been countless attempts by immigrants to swim across the channel.

Rumpus: What happens to most of them?

Lioret: Most of them are returned to the French coast by the currents. They are usually found extremely weak, but alive. But the volunteers also told me a story about a young man who had left one day to make an attempt, and no one had heard any news. He never telephoned to say that he made it, so they feared the worst. I drew on all of this to tell my story. I didn’t relate anything in the film that doesn’t exist. And that’s the worst part: I wish it was fiction, but it’s all true. It’s been happening for a long time, young people forced to swim across the sea or finish their journey by jumping off a boat, as happens every day in the Adriatic, every day at Gibraltar.

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In the Electric Mist ran into post-production difficulties, which delayed its release. The producer’s cut of the film was released straight to DVD, and has received mixed reviews. Tavernier’s version, soon to be released internationally, is fifteen minutes longer, and was nominated for a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film festival. It’s an absorbing, if somewhat irresolute film, far from your average police procedural. Brooding, atmospheric — the picture summons the murky landscape of the Bayou, and then gets lost there. Along the way, it lavishes attention on the fine performances of its actors.

Mr. Tavernier is sitting in the bar at the Hotel Normandy near the Grand Palais in Paris, sharing a tea.   

The Rumpus: You’ve made a tremendous variety of films. You’ve done Simenon, you’ve done medieval drama, you’ve done science fiction, lots of noir. What do you think links all of these films together?

Bertrand Tavernier: One of my mentors, the great British director Michael Powell, said he made all his films because he wanted to learn. I think the link between all of my films is the desire to explore and understand a lot of different periods, places and milieus. I knew very little about the subjects of my films before I started. I think also, in many of my films, the main character is trying to do his best, to do his work in the best possible way. And just by doing this, he becomes a pain in the ass for the institution. Just by trying to do his work well, he reveals all the problems inside the institution. These are heroes fighting for what George Orwell called the common decency.

Rumpus: It’s interesting to look back on some your films in light of all that’s changed since they were made. I’m thinking of Death Watch, how many of the technologies and obsessions that are central to that film have become a real feature of popular culture today…

Tavernier: I think that Death Watch was, alas, ahead of its time. A strange thing happened: when I made the film it was a science fiction film; 10, 12 years after it’s become a realist film. And I found that very, very sad.

Rumpus: You believed it was more of a dystopic film than it turned out to be…

Tavernier: Yes. I thought it was going to happen in 30, 40 years, and it happened very, very quickly. But, I do not think a lot of my films are dated. All the things that I showed about the French police in L.627 — it would be possible to make exactly the same film today. There have been very, very few changes, especially under Sarkozy.

Rumpus: Maybe Death Watch seems more realistic today because it’s a science fiction film with very few of the props of science fiction. That sort of genre-bending approach, I think, characterizes a lot of your films. Even In the Electric Mist is like that, in the sense that it’s Southern Gothic meets noir. But, it’s also Gothic meets noir: it’s a ghost story buried in the midst of a detective film.

Tavernier: Yeah, absolutely.

Rumpus: What excites you the most about genre, and the possibilities of genre?

Tavernier: To find a way… [laughs] to get away from it. I think films should be like an exploration. So I have made very few genre films that feel like genre films. At the same time, in films like L.627 and Captain Conan, I have always stuck to the same principle, which is, never cross the line, never show the point of view of the people you are fighting. L.627 is told almost entirely from the POV of the cops, never the dealers. And in Conan, you’re always in the point of view of the French soldiers, never the Bulgarians or the Germans. I think if you cross this line you must have a really good reason. When Terrence Mallick did it in The Thin Red Line, it was to show that the Japanese were suffering in the same way as the Americans. However, if you cross the line just to add a different shot of machine guns shooting at the American soldiers landing on the beach, like in Saving Private Ryan — I find that very debatable. It’s a shot that reduces the Germans to killing instruments, as if they are not entitled to be treated like human beings. The Americans are treated like human beings, but the Germans are just machine guns. I prefer my principle, which is to stay with one camp and never to show the other camp. You only see them when they are dead or wounded. I think it’s more interesting, I think it’s more honest.

Rumpus: In your most recent film the characters played by Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Saarsgard are shown struggling with alcoholism. Self-destructive characters seem to show up in a lot of your films. Dexter Gordon, in ‘Round Midnight, was a very self-destructive character…

Tavernier: Self-destructive, but trying to fight against that self-destruction. A lot of my films deal with people who I think are heroes, if you take the definition of hero given by Romain Rolland, who said, “a hero is somebody who does everything he can, while others don’t.” I love Dave Robicheaux [the hero of In the Electric Mist] because he is an idealist, a knight transplanted into the wrong period. But he has, also, a rage, against the arrogance of criminals, the arrogance of corruption, the arrogance of murder. He has these sudden bursts of violence, yet he’s full of guilt, and that makes him a very complex character. I think Tommy Lee Jones brought all that out, and he brought something else — a vulnerability. Moments where he is helpless…

Rumpus: That jumped out at me right in the beginning. In the first scene, after he’s visited the crime scene, then he walks away, he makes a sign of the cross…

Tavernier: Yeah…

Rumpus: Though, right before that, he looks trepidatious, like he is unsure what to do with himself…

Tavernier: Yes!

Rumpus: Right then, I understood, this wasn’t Tommy Lee Jones being a cowboy…

Tavernier: No — it’s why it was a big shock when I saw an American review that said he was only replaying The Fugitive or Sheriff Bell from No Country for Old Men.  I think it’s the opposite.  The sheriff of No Country would never have said, “I’m helpless.” I think Tommy Lee was very conscious that he was going away from his usual territory.  He already did that, to a certain degree, in his own film, Three Burials, but here he went further. I think he is one of the greatest actors I’ve ever worked with. I think he has a tremendous intensity, a tremendous economy.

Rumpus: The film is very beautifully shot, in very rich, saturated color. And throughout, there is the ever-present sound of the bayou. Was there a moment while you were shooting that said to yourself, “Wow, this is beautiful”?

Tavernier: I tried to shoot Louisiana bayou as Dave Robicheaux sees it, not as a tourist. Robicheaux knows the region, loves its beauty, and he understands its violence. He knows that under the roots of many trees, you have dead bodies. And he knows, as Burke often wrote, that if you dig in the levy at Angola, you will find the bodies of hundreds of black people shot by the guards. Robicheaux feels — and this is an obsession of James Lee Burke — that the past is not past, it is connected to the present… I’ll tell you a great story…

Rumpus: Okay.

Tavernier: I was living in New Iberia in a house, which had a beautiful garden that ran down to the Bayou Teche. Near the Bayou was a big oak.  And that oak, Jim Burke told me, was called “the Jean Lafitte oak.” Why? Because it was where Jean Lafitte used to chain the slaves he was selling to New Orleans, there to that oak tree. And in Burke’s youth, he went with his father, and they dug around in that tree, and they found pieces of iron still in the tree. The past was there; they could touch the past. They could touch slavery. And it is still there, present, as something never really dealt with. This is an obsession with Burke, and it’s something I can understand. It’s why I wanted to do the book.

Rumpus: John Sayles, I noticed, is in the film…

Tavernier: Yes, yes…

Rumpus: It reminded me, while I was watching it, of the similarity between Electric Mist and his film Lone Star…

Tavernier: Ah!  A film that I love. It’s also about the past, connecting the story of Alamo to the present. Yes…it’s the kind of film I love, and the kind of story I love. I think Sayles has made three or four films that are among the great political American films.

Rumpus: You’re thinking of Matewan…

Tavernier: Yes. And I’m thinking of The City of Hope, even the first one, The Brother from Another Planet.

Rumpus: Oh, right [laughs]. I haven’t seen that in a while… Buddy Guy is also in the film….

Tavernier: That was an idea of Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones contributed a few casting ideas, which were brilliant.

Rumpus: Did he also bring Levon Helm in…

Tavernier: Yes that’s right…

Rumpus: From Three Burials?

Tavernier: And Coal Miner’s Daughter.

Rumpus: Is that right?

Tavernier: They’re both in Coal Miner’s Daughter… [Tommy Lee] has a great admiration for Levon Helm, who is a terrific actor. When I showed his scenes to Burke, Burke said, “but he looks just like Robert E. Lee!”  [Laughs].

Rumpus: He’s very gaunt, and his voice is something else…

Tavernier: I had the privilege of working with many actors with great voices. Tommy Lee, Levon Helm, John Goodman — John Goodman has a wonderful voice; Peter Saarsgard has a beautiful melodic voice — and Mary Steenburgen, and of course Buddy Guy. I remember the reaction of my production sound mixer, Paul Ledford, upon hearing Buddy Guy, he said,  “you can hear, he’s not a real actor, and this is good; he pronounces certain words in a way that is typical of that part of Louisiana.” Southern Louisiana is a complexity of accents. So, the accent of Buddy Guy should not be the same as John Goodman, or as a deputy sheriff in St. Martinville, or a guy in the ninth ward in New Orleans. I remember Robert Mitchum saying, “an accent is a behavior.” I remember there was a review that said Mitchum did the best Australian accent in the movies. To which Mitchum said, “but ‘Australian’ is not an accent, it’s a way of life!” [Laughs] It’s the same thing in Louisiana. It’s not an accent, it’s a way of life.

Rumpus: James Lee Burke wrote the voiceovers for the film…

Tavernier: Two or three of them he wrote for the film. The first one…

Rumpus: About the tombstones…

Tavernier: Yes. Because I asked him, I said “I have the beginning I do not like.” I don’t want to deal with police cars, with cops talking on the radio… I’ve seen that 500 times. Anyway, if did that, it wouldn’t be as good as most American directors could do. I wanted a more lyrical, a stranger beginning. So he wrote this new beginning… I knew that the film was asking for those voice-overs. I used Jim’s writing for three or four of them. Then, during the editing, I went back to Jim, and he added two more; the rest I wrote myself in Paris and had Tommy Lee record them in, I think, San Antonio or Dallas. Those voice-overs were a way of keeping what makes Burke’s books completely unique. I love him as a writer — the fact that he cares more about characters than plot. I hate to be a prisoner of the plot.

Rumpus: How do you think your experience as a director has changed you as a person?

Tavernier: Difficult question. I think the films I did… made me more educated about certain subjects, but the fact that, very often, they were difficult to make… [Laughs]… maybe I became more quickly irritable. I have to fight against that now, because I’ve become more and more impatient in front of stupidity or arrogance. I’m getting too old; I don’t want to lose time. But I also think I learned. I knew a lot about jazz, for example, and yet, just by spending time with Dexter Gordon, and all those marvelous people, Herbie… The first director I ever wrote was Delmer Daves. When I was young, I admired a lot of Westerns he did. Delmer, in one of his letters to me, said: to understand is to love.  To learn is to understand, and to understand is to love. And I think he was right.

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A Review of Costa-Gavras’ Eden À L’Ouest

Film directors who invent genres gain a particular kind of notoriety, which isn’t really the same thing as celebrity, otherwise the name Pietro Francisci would be bandied about more often by film buffs. Alas, the director of Hercules (1958), a film that inspired countless Sword and Sandal flicks, is all but forgotten.

Not so Costa-Gavras, whose 1969 film “Z”, and the genre it initiated, have seen something of resurgence. Here was the original suspenseful political thriller-the French call it “cinéma populaire de gauche“-centering on a political assassination and its cover-up, all of it a thinly veiled recreation of actual events, which took place in the director’s native Greece under the rightwing junta. A lot of recent Hollywood films like “Syriana,” “Traffic,” and probably “Babel,” would fit nicely into a taxonomical chart with “Z” at the top.

The renowned Greek director’s latest contribution to the field, “Eden À L’Ouest,” takes on the contentious question of illegal immigration in Western Europe. The story’s about a naive young illegal immigrant named Elias (played by the very handsome and green-eyed Riccardo Scamarcio) whom we first encounter in a rusted tanker off the shores of the unspecified middle east. We watch as he and the other passengers destroy their identity papers, and look back at the trail of their lives disappearing into the sea.

There’s something very self-assured about a director willing to let the symbolism in a camera shot speak for itself.   And this film really works like a sequence of such set pieces. At times, they can feel a bit artificial, but more often there’s a light ironic touch to it. The most memorable of these happens when Elias jumps ship in the night to elude capture. He swims off into the pitch black, only to awaken the following morning, like Odysseus on Calypso’s shore, at a resort for the rich and the nude called “Eden.” The cops are soon threatening to storm the place, and round up the illegal immigrants hiding on the grounds, but the liberal and right-minded patrons are having none of it. Meanwhile, Elias takes refuge as the boy toy of a German femme d’une certaine age, played by the lovely and sympathetic Juliane Köhler. At first, I was suspicious of the casting of Scamarcio-perhaps this was illegal immigration bowdlerized and easy on the eyes-but Elias’ obvious male beauty turns out to be critical to his survival, an object lesson in what we value in the west.

But looks will only get you so far. Before long, Elias must set out for Paris, encouraged in his vague plans by the offhand remark of a magician he meets at the resort, played by Ulrich Tukur (so wonderful as the boss in “The Lives of Others”, 2006). Of course, the journey is arduous. Unfortunately, the story relies rather heavily on police chases for propulsion.

What makes this all worthwhile, however, are the glimpses we catch of the other Europe, the anti-Europe-Roma caravans in the woods, soup lines of sans papiers, and the unscrupulous employers eager to exploit them. Neither does the film spare the good Samaritans, who so often prove self-aggrandizing, patting themselves on the back for minor acts of kindness-the waiter at the terrace restaurant nice enough to allow Elias to scarf down the scraps of food at an abandoned table. The grateful young man scurries off, and the camera lingers, as the waiter stands there, pleased with himself.

Then there are the sudden news crews Elias runs across. They materialize out of nowhere, filming a horseback rider in the field or interviewing an intellectual in a café or watching as policemen round up angry youths. I was reminded of what Slavoj Zizek said about “Children of Men” (2006), that the focus of that film is in the background. Something similar is happening in “Eden À L’Ouest”-a wealthy society is shown examining itself, and pleased with itself for its self-awareness.

In spite of its moments of alertness, the film ultimately disappoints, settling on an open-ended conclusion as vague as Elias’ aspirations. Costa-Gavras seems stuck on the symbolism of the old left — cops are mean! But the political reality is a muddle — political parties of every stripe are complicit in the western world’s cruel and arbitrary immigration systems. So it’s regrettable when a film, seeking to reach the widest possible audience, mimics the politician, by hanging lofty but vague aspirations upon modest goals. Such is the ploy that enables conservative voters to feel virtuous. If this is what passes for a political thriller these days, I’m sorry to say the cinéma populaire de gauche has moved to the center.

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