Very few directors make successful films about poverty, or about the people whose lives are spun out in its shadow. It’s not only that Hollywood producers have little interest in the subject, the blame also rests with us, the audience. It’s rare that we feel inclined to watch truth in all its hopeless chaotic injustice.
Perhaps this vacuum exists because the stories behind contemporary poverty seem too familiar, too inevitable. Because we know there are no simple solutions and therefore happy endings are unlikely.
In 19th century England, many outrages were brought to light through parliamentary lobbying, popular fiction or local campaigners. In Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies we meet Tom, a child chimney sweep, who
cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the week..”
The book proved a partial catalyst in the passing of the 1864 Act for the Regulation of Chimney Sweepers. Dickens’ Oliver Twist helped usher in reform of the workhouses.
Perhaps these past social wrongs – child chimney sweeps, malnourished orphans – were in some sense easier than ours: easier to identify, to condemn, to regulate. The abuses we are left with seem truly obstinate. If you watch Lukas Moodysson’s heartrending film, Lilya 4-Ever, about sex trafficking – one of the worst scourges of our society – you will be left feeling not only traumatised but also powerless: there are already laws against it, there are whole police divisions working on it, and yet still women are being trafficked for sex.
All of this is partly why the Dardenne brothers are cultural heroes of our time: they make films that star the poorest and most marginalised of our society. The other reason is that they are simply outstanding film-makers.
Their latest film, Lorna’s Silence, is about an Albanian immigrant in Belgium, who wants to open a snackbar with her boyfriend. In order to do this, she must become a citizen. So she marries a heroin addict, on the proviso that after some time, they will divorce. The problem is, the heroin addict starts to get better. And her underworld handler, who arranged the marriage, has another scheme: Lorna is to marry a Russian mafia member who also needs citizenship, and if necessary, kill her addict husband. Talk about moral dilemmas.
Exploring the limited options of impoverished people in tight corners is a Dardenne speciality. Their 2005 film, L’Enfant, which won the Palme d’Or, is shocking because it shows with brutal honesty what happens when a ‘child’ – someone who, though adult, has been given no moral or ethical guidance – conceives their own child. It is a film that, like Moodysson’s Lilya, is difficult to watch, yet it manages to be compelling, and more extraordinarily, to make us care deeply for its damaged protagonists.
These are filmmakers on the outskirts of the industry, and their films are only ever given limited release; they do not promise escapism. But still we should be grateful they exist at all.
