Directors Daring to Tackle the Inexpressible: A Look at Their Unique Approaches
Well, well, well! Grab your popcorn because we’re diving into the cinematic attempts to unpack one of the heaviest topics imaginable: the November 13, 2015 attacks. Yes, three directors have decided to explore these tragic events through their lenses, and let’s just say their methods are as varied as their hairstyles. Cédric Jimenez, Alice Winocour, and Kilian Riedhof have each produced films that wade into the murky waters of representation with a mix of audacity and caution. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy, yet enlightening ride!
Method 1: Moving the Subject – Or Just Moving On?
First off, let’s talk about how these filmmakers have decided to tackle the subject by, well, not tackling it head-on. It’s like attending a fight club, but instead of punches, we get heartfelt dramas and psychological thrillers! Who needs to show horror when you can explore grief, memory, and the aftermath instead? Films like Amanda and You Won’t Have My Hatred stake their claims on the emotional wreckage left in the wake of tragedy rather than the tragedy itself. I mean, who wouldn’t prefer a good cry over a terrifying spectacle, am I right?
Method 2: Replacing Bullets with Buzzers
Next, let’s examine sound—or the alarming lack thereof. Cédric Jimenez, in his film November, is steadfast in his decision not to include the actual violence onscreen. It’s like ordering a steak without the meat. You want the experience, but you’re not prepared for the reality, so instead, we get ringing phones. Yes, that’s right: instead of the sound of gunfire, we hear the incessant buzzing of phones! And wouldn’t you know it, that might just be what makes you feel claustrophobic! If you ask me, I’d rather hear a phone ringing in a horror film than have a buddy call in the middle of a Netflix binge—talk about cutting the tension!
Method 3: A Fictitious Attack – The Art of Creative License
Now here’s a plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan—turns out, some directors decided to invent their own attacks! Alice Winocour’s See Paris Again revolves around a fictional shooting in a brasserie, because apparently, life is just too mundane without adding a bit of fictional carnage! It’s like going to a restaurant and ordering the chef’s special, only to discover it’s not even on the menu. Who needs a direct representation when you can make up your own horrors? It’s a creative workaround that gives new meaning to ‘What’s your poison?’ in cinema!
Method 4: Changing Perspectives – The View from Nowhere
Speaking of perspectives, let’s chat about how different vantage points can change the narrative. Take Claude Lanzmann’s famous stance against representing the Holocaust; it’s a philosophy that lingers in the air like stale popcorn. While some filmmakers grapple with this problem, others like Paul Greengrass seem to throw caution to the wind—after all, what’s the fun in being careful? It’s a fascinating contradiction that raises the question: should we be tiptoeing around tragedy, or shoving our hands in the popcorn and diving deep?
Method 5: Finding an Outlet – Balancing on the Tightrope
Finally, let’s talk about balance. Jimenez attempts to walk the fine line between fact and fiction, blending news footage with characters who are as fictional as a unicorn in a film noir. It’s a careful dance of representation that begs the question of how much is too much. When representing one tragedy, it almost seems like you’re obliged to create another for art’s sake. Is it okay to say, “This is how we feel about it?” Let me tell you, this kind of tightrope act has more risk than a cat at a dog show!
So, what have we learned today? The unrepresentable remains unrepresented, yet these directors still manage to craft stories that speak to the human condition amidst chaos. They remind us that while tragedy is overwhelming, the resilience of storytelling can bring about solidarity. And really, if we can’t laugh about it, then we’re just going to end up crying, right? Let’s celebrate their brave, if sometimes quirky, attempts to shed light on humanity in the darkest of times. After all, it’s not just cinema—it’s therapy!
This article coverage intermixes humor and reflection, keeping in line with the comedic styles of Jimmy Carr and Lee Evans, while invoking the observational wit of Ricky Gervais and the physical humor of Rowan Atkinson. Enjoy!
Cédric Jimenez, Alice Winocour and Kilian Riedhof did it… Three directors released films inspired by the attacks of November 13, 2015. Deciphering five of their methods for depicting the unrepresentable.
Anaïs Demoustier in “November”, by Cédric Jimenez (2022). Récifilms and Chi-Fou-Mi productions
Published on November 3, 2024 at 5:47 p.m.
Updated November 3, 2024 at 5:51 p.m.
Seven years after the night of horror of November 13, 2015, and two months after the end of the trial of those still alive, three films more or less directly inspired by the terrorist attacks at the Bataclan, the Stade de France and on the Parisian terraces, were released in theaters. Always with the same challenge: talking about them without showing them. This is how these works, but also the precursor Amanda (2018) or even Come I’ll take you (2022), wield the art of dodging.
By moving the subject
Is it because there is nothing to prove about the barbarity of these attacks? All the films take the attacks as a starting point in order to explore something else. Amanda, de Mikhaël Hers, a 2018, et You won’t have my hatredby Kilian Riedhof, observe the reconstruction of the victims’ loved ones. See Paris againby Alice Winocour, focuses on the survivor of a shooting who has lost her memory and seeks to remember the event. Novemberby Cédric Jimenez, reconstructs the hunt for the terrorists of November 13, and emphasizes the exhausting work of the investigators. Come I’ll take youby Alain Guiraudie, probes the paranoia that grips a city at the time of the events. Note also that the first season ofIn therapy (2020) deals with the psychological consequences of November 13 on a small Parisian microcosm.
By replacing the sound of bullets with telephone ringtones
When asked if he thought about showing the attacks, Cédric Jimenez is categorical: ” Never. I would have found it obscene, truly obscene… If I had read the slightest effect in this sense [dans le scénario], I would never have made the film. » (1). November However, it begins on the evening of November 13, in the streets of Paris. A jogger runs along the banks of the Seine, the bars are connected to France/Germany, an anti-terrorist police officer follows the match on his computer. We won’t hear the bullets but the phone ringing. One, then two, then dozens: a police officer (Jérémie Renier) tries to answer the calls but it quickly becomes impossible, he is already underwater and will take five days to come out.
It is also the telephone which is a trigger in You will not have my hatred, the true story of Antoine Leiris (played by Pierre Deladonchamps), whose wife died at the Bataclan. We see him babysitting his son, reading him a story, going out to buy cigarettes, trying to read a book in bed while waiting for his partner, and starting to worry when friends text him to see if he is safe . So he turns on the TV, watches the news and makes more phone calls.
By inventing a fictitious attack
All French filmmakers agree on the impossibility of reconstructing these horrors. ” Besides [présent au Bataclan la nuit du drame, ndlr] made me understand that there was something of the order of the unrepresentable”, confides Alice Winocour. See Paris again is therefore revolved around a fictitious attack, in a Parisian brasserie.
Mikhaël Hers invented a shooting in the Bois de Vincennes to Amanda. Inevitably, these are the two films which show the most things. In Amanda, the brother of a victim (Vincent Lacoste) arrives just after the tragedy, and the camera moves to some of the bloodied bodies.
See Paris again places us at the heart of the carnage. We lie on the ground, under a table, and we pray that the attacker will take us for dead. It’s daring, violent, but the rest of the film will never stop re-examining these memory images, suggesting the idea that it is a post-traumatic reconstitution of the heroine, played by Virginie Efira. In the end, maybe we didn’t see anything there either.
Finally, Alain Guiraudie also imagined a fictitious attack, in Clermont-Ferrand, in Come I’ll take you, but his case is different: he has chosen the comic register, and we will see nothing other than the contradictory information from the TV channels.
By changing your point of view
We think of the anathema cast by Claude Lanzmann on the representation of the death camps: cinema can only approach such monstrosities by taking a step aside. Is this modesty Franco-French? The killing perpetrated by the Norwegian Anders Breivik on July 22, 2011 was meticulously reconstructed by the American Paul Greengrass seven years later in July 22, Netflix movie. The same Greengrass, who comes from journalism, had in 2006 reconstructed one of the plane hijackings of September 11, 2001 in Vol 93. Also in 2006, Oliver Stone came out World Trade Center. This fiction about the intervention of the police forces on the day of the tragedy showed the towers in flames, and even went so far as to film the suicide of a man who threw himself into the void. For now, it must be said that these images, the real ones, have gone around the world. Of the shootings of November 13, only a short video of the Bataclan remains, when the first shots replace the musical notes.
This video, which can be found on the Internet, is watched by the character Antoine Leiris in You won’t have my hatred. German director Kilian Riedhof chooses to show it to us, until Antoine violently closes his computer when he hears the sound of bullets. His film is clearly the one that comes closest to the massacre, even if it cautiously tries to take a slight distance: “Our film shows the point of view of a man whose wife was murdered. » Except that’s not quite it. It is not just any man and child, as in Amanda. It is Antoine Leiris and his son who are represented. However, it becomes obvious, from the first image, that the cinema cannot live up to this story. A film cannot achieve the intensity of the grief of this man (who simply met the authors and gave his approval without participating in the project).
By finding an outlet
Between fiction and reality, November stands on a very tight rope, and tries to keep his balance by injecting small doses of both. There is certainly Blaise Matuidi shot during the France / Germany, François Hollande’s speech, the television news, the photos of the terrorists, but the investigation has been simplified, and the anti-terrorist police agents are fictional characters . “It was obviously necessary not to reveal what could be detrimental to this service and to the judicial investigation,” Jimenez justifies.
Finally, the scene most modeled on reality is perhaps the assault on the Saint-Denis apartment where Abaaoud is hiding. The whole film converges towards this climax, which “replaces”, in some way, the attacks. A long and very impressive scene, filmed both from the point of view of the Raid agents and that of the investigators who remained outside the building (never the terrorists), and whose raison d’être is not questioned. Not sure that Jimenez asked himself the question: this violence, according to him, is obviously representable.
Article published on November 11, 2022
F someone who lives this tragedy, while trying not to represent the horror directly,” explains Riedhof.
This complex relationship with the representation of violence also reflects the tension within the French cinematic landscape, where filmmakers grapple with the ethics and implications of depicting real-life atrocities. The decision to refrain from direct representation can often lead to an exploration of the human experience surrounding such events: grief, memory, trauma, and resilience.
these films illustrate a specific approach to storytelling in the face of historical trauma, emphasizing emotional truths over graphic depictions of violence. They invite audiences to engage with the aftermath rather than the act itself, fostering a deeper understanding of the individuals affected and the societal repercussions of such calamities.
Ultimately, this cinematic strategy reflects a broader cultural imperative: to honor the memory of the victims while navigating the delicate terrain of representation with sensitivity and respect.
