The Dar­d­enne broth­ers: ​‘To make films, you must believe that you live with ghosts’

Every new movie by the Dar­d­enne broth­ers is a cause for cel­e­bra­tion, hav­ing con­sis­tent­ly wowed the cinephile ranks since their glo­ri­ous Palme d’Or vic­to­ry for Roset­ta in 1999. Pos­si­bly the most con­sis­tent­ly great direc­tors work­ing now, the broth­ers have had an unim­peach­able run of movies which include The Son, The Child (which net­ted them their sec­ond Palme), The Silence of Lor­na and The Kid with the Bike.

Their lat­est, Two Days, One Night, stars Mar­i­on Cotil­lard and is quite pos­si­ble their most aston­ish­ing feat yet, telling the sto­ry of a woman fight­ing to retain her job at a solar pan­el fac­to­ry which trans­lates as a qua­si-reli­gious para­ble which bal­ances up the joy and futil­i­ty of exis­tence. LWLies hopped over to Paris to meet the mighty (and very fun­ny) twosome.

LWLies: Why did you decide to make a movie which is essen­tial­ly the same scene played over and over?

Luc Dar­d­enne: Why not?! Oth­er peo­ple have asked us if we were con­cerned about it, but we do think it was essen­tial for the jour­ney this woman takes. She needs to ask the same ques­tions, and they too are ask­ing the same ques­tions. What are the oth­ers doing? What have they decid­ed? Would I be in the major­i­ty or the minor­i­ty? It’s eas­i­er to be part of a major­i­ty – you feel less respon­si­ble. San­dra, in the very begin­ning, is a very qui­et per­son who believed she was about to go back to her job. She learns that her col­leagues vot­ed for a bonus and against her rein­te­gra­tion, there­fore she feels like an out­cast. She doesn’t dare to speak her mind, to say what she thinks. Her hus­band helps her in real­is­ing that she has to fight. Through this jour­ney, she’s able to exist again and believe in herself.

Why did you choose to make San­dra a woman?

Jean-Pierre Dar­d­enne: The char­ac­ter of San­dra has been accom­pa­ny­ing us for about 10 years. We man­aged to start writ­ing the script only when we start­ed to think of the hus­band char­ac­ter, Manu. In these 10 years, there was a brief moment when we thought about hav­ing a male pro­tag­o­nist, but I think the rea­sons why we opt­ed for a woman are that, sad­ly, women are more frag­ile and weak with­in the envi­ron­ment of work. They are more inclined to be fired than men are. We also want­ed to work with an actress, and when we start­ed writ­ing the script, we imme­di­ate­ly thought of Mar­i­on Cotil­lard and nobody else. I think it was a sub­con­scious thing, though. We want­ed to work with her with­out real­ly real­is­ing it.

LD: We can’t rea­son on every­thing. To make films, you must believe that you live with ghosts – things you can’t com­pre­hend or con­trol. A French poet said, ​“An artist can nev­er be the mas­ter of his own house, because he doesn’t know what’s hap­pen­ing in all the rooms.”

Have you heard of work­ers being forced to make a deci­sion like this?

LD: Not exact­ly the same sit­u­a­tion, but sim­i­lar. In our region, in Bel­gium, in small com­pa­nies with less than 50 employ­ees you would not have any trade union del­e­ga­tions or rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and there­fore there’s weak­ness. But we’ve also heard about oppo­site sit­u­a­tions, where employ­ees have agreed to reduce their salaries in order to help col­leagues to retain their own jobs. We were impressed with a speech giv­en by Barack Oba­ma when he was vying for his sec­ond term. He thanked the work­ers of two com­pa­nies who had accept­ed a decrease in salary in order to allow the com­pa­ny to over­come dif­fi­cul­ties. There were also real­i­ty tele­vi­sion pro­grammes we saw in the US where the crew vis­its a small enter­prise and the game is, who’s going to be fired next? It’s like say­ing, who’s going to be sen­tenced to death next? The sit­u­a­tion in our film is dif­fer­ent, as it chron­i­cles – lit­tle-by-lit­tle – Sandra’s real­i­sa­tion of her right to exist.

Do you see your­selves as polit­i­cal film­mak­ers? Is Two Days, One Night skep­ti­cal about democracy?

LD: No. In the film, the char­ac­ters lit­er­al­ly recre­ate a demo­c­ra­t­ic sit­u­a­tion. It is true that in real life democ­ra­cy isn’t able to total­ly car­ry out the dreams of equal­i­ty and free­dom, but I still think it’s the only way to get there.

Was col­lab­o­rat­ing with a bona fide movie star dif­fer­ent to work­ing with the non-actors you’ve worked with before?

JPD: Being a film­mak­er, it’s nat­ur­al to see what it would be like to work with a big star. Why not? It’s a chal­lenge. And the real chal­lenge when work­ing with some­one like Mar­i­on is not just for us, but for her. The way we did this was try­ing to make her think that she was mak­ing her first film. That is to say, we want­ed her to get rid of all those things she would nor­mal­ly car­ry with her – images, sur­round­ings and the star lifestyle. She had to be ready to embody the role of San­dra. The rea­son why we chose her was based on the fact that we felt she was able to be San­dra – to give her life, feel­ing, intensity.

There’s a focus on peo­ple eat­ing food in the film. Is the film say­ing that peo­ple are actu­al­ly more well-off than they think they are?

JPD: It’s true. We usu­al­ly just have a cou­ple of fried eggs in our movies. We gave Manu the job of a cook in a restau­rant, so there’s that. But also because food is some­thing that you share. We thought it was a good idea to open the film on a scene of a moth­er doing some­thing for her chil­dren – mak­ing a tart. It’s a sign of life. It’s a moment of shar­ing. It’s a film about sol­i­dar­i­ty, and this is just anoth­er part of it. There’s much more eat­ing in this film than pre­vi­ous films. A dirty mind might say that’s because we’re grow­ing old and we want to eat well and we love food, but that we’re not quite at the stage of adding sex to our films. Which we might do in the next one!

LD: Yes, more sex!