How sad is this?

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Films by Dardanne brothers tend to lack backstory and context. They have insinuations of what the backstory of the characters is, but it never definitively tells you what is that story. You have to either ignore the lack of context and go along with the story presented objectively, or to use your imagination and fill the gaps yourself. Watching a film by Dardanne brothers is like walking into someone's house for the first time. What I mean by this analogy, is that, when you walk into someone's house for the first time, you may catch a glimpse of what the history of the house is and the people who live/lived there was. You can look at the pictures of people who live there, or at the décor, and build your subjective version of its history, but you'll never know for sure. But just because you don't know the history of the house doesn't mean it doesn't have one. The thing that I appreciate in Dardanne brother's films, or indie films in general, is they intentionally deny you the obvious information to make the experience more subjective, thus more real. Which is something that I always admired in films, and which is what I wish was more prominent in bigger films. Sometimes, the lack of context can be an excuse for lazy screen writing. Sometimes, it can be a beneficial to the story. It depends on how the lack of context co-exists with the objective story we're seeing. Films like "Le fils" only benefit from lacking the context, because its story is very basic, it doesn't rely on sentimentality and schmaltz to sell itself. It's a simple tale, told in a very subjective manner, that grabs your interest by telling a story that, as it goes along, has a reveal that seems like a very pivotal moment for the film, but it never overdoes it, and rather shows you the ramifications of that pivotal moment in a very subtle and mundane approach. Which is why this is such a great film.

On the surface, The Son, the 2002 effort from the Dardenne brothers, concerns itself with a carpenter and his relationship with one of his students. The new student is a juvenile delinquent who got into trouble five years prior for stealing a car radio, and in the process killed the carpenter's son; the carpenter recognizes the young boy but the student does not know whose son he killed. This sounds like the set up for melodrama, in which the carpenter takes his bloody revenge, but in the hands of the Dardennes the film becomes a religious parable about what it means to be human.What moved me the most about the film, beyond the empathetic qualities of the acting and the writing, was the humanity of the storytelling and its implications. The stance of the minimalist camera is hard to pin down. Though seeming to be a contradiction, there is an absence of perspective, or even perception, in the movie. The compositions seem to stem from a non- existent entity. In that way it is as if god is holding the camera. The shots remain in a medium- close-up, usually positioned behind the actors. Common practice, especially in Hollywood, is to frame a character, face towards the camera to allow the audience to directly read the actor's emotions. Such a method implies that people identify with others based on their emotional readout. Yet in The Son, the inverse is true. Odd as it sounds, we recognize the characters as even more human even though we don't see them emoting; perhaps because, the film suggests, that to be human is not necessarily to emote or even to communicate but to be a contained entity capable of benevolence. The carpenter is a prime example. He mirrors Jesus not only in profession but also in forgiving mankind for its sins - in this case forgiving the young boy for killing his son. Yet the carpenter did not come to such a conclusion easily, which is why we are so moved when he does. The death of his son ruined his marriage and is probably the root cause for his bad back, a metaphor for his bottled up pain. At one point in the film, he even bullies the boy into confessing his crime. Before his salvation, he succumbs to temptation; in other words he is human. Unlike most films that derive from a dramatic fantasy, The Son is about life and life lived. If we are to remain with each other, we must treat each other with humanity. If bad things happen to us, we should accept them. If we are presented with a tough situation, we should transcend the possibility to do evil. The Son is not a film with a message; it is a film to live by.

The Dardenne brothers shy away from melodramatic flourishes: there's no music in the film, the performances are understated yet profound, and it's the gestures of the characters that are psychologically revealing--as opposed to the dialogue. "The Son" is a shrewd, highly controlled little film from Belgium that slowly builds to an unexpected emotional climax. Though distant and almost documentary-like in style, and it never stops taking us deeper into their personal lives. In other hands, "The Son" could easily have been just another straightforward revenge thriller. Olivier (Olivier Gourmet) is a carpenter who teaches carpentry to troubled teens in the juvenile criminal system learning a vocation. Olivier's routine is interrupted by the enrollment of a new student, Francis (Morgan Marinne), who becomes the object of the carpenter's inexplicable obsession. Initially, Olivier does not tell his wife Magali (Isabella Soupart) about the situation, but after careful consideration, Olivier reveals the secret to her--Francis is the teenager who murdered their child years before hand. After serving his sentence in the juvenile prison, Francis seeks to start anew, and eventually even asks the flummoxed Olivier to become his guardian. Olivier withholds his knowledge from Francis, even as a tentative relationship between the two develops. The tense scenario leads to a climactic confrontation, as the past finally catches up with teacher and student. Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne visual style is claustrophobically disorientating. The camera stays tight on Olivier Gourmet--he is in almost every shot, a hand-held camera films him from his shoulders up, subjecting him to a scrutiny we rarely encounter on screen. The scrutiny pays off, for soon we're able to read into the face of this unsmiling man and an underlying sorrow. This also adds to the sense of suspense and unknowing, while the jerky camera cuts suggest his internal agitation. The film is stripped-bare, and only the essential elements remain.The true challenge posed by the film is not piecing together the story, nor teasing out its meaning, but embracing its implications in our own lives. Not that "The Son" is a "message" film - it isn't - but it is one of the most profoundly moral and human films I have seen in years. On first viewing, the films rigorous method makes for a comparatively demanding viewing. The Dardennes aren't interested in entertaining the viewer-- but in something far more valuable. The difficulty of the first viewing can become challenging, though, ultimately becomes irrelevant in light of its extraordinary rewards.

Have you ever read a short story which seemed deprived of action but nevertheless had a profound effect on you?"Le fils" is reminiscent of this experience. A subtle, slow-paced work of art filmed with a hand-held camera predominantly pursuing the main character whose body language is as informative as scarce amount of words uttered throughout the movie. This seemingly simple film might be unjustly dismissed as dull but it is rewarding for those who are patient enough and bother to look beyond the surface. "Le fils" intentionally lacks any musical embellishment. Instead, it relies on sounds that surround us on an everyday basis emphasizing a mundane reality. No wonder Dardenne brothers' path through the movie industry was effectively set out by a documentary.