Two Days, One Night

“Oh those Dar­d­enne broth­ers — they’re are always mak­ing the same movie over and over.” It’s a tire­some refrain that is sad­ly echoed on arts pages and movie blogs world­wide. Bel­gian mae­stros Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne do indeed have a cin­e­mat­ic sweet tooth for a cer­tain strain of polit­i­cal­ly tren­chant and light­ly-poet­ic real­ism, as well as a predilec­tion for brusque sub­ur­ban fairy tales about the domes­tic strug­gles of those exist­ing on society’s hard­scrab­ble fringes.

Set­ting aside the fact that it comes across as a sun-dap­pled sis­ter film to their 1999 mas­ter­piece, Roset­ta, Two Days, One Night is also the broth­ers’ cun­ning riposte to any and all accu­sa­tions of rep­e­ti­tion. Down to the mar­row of its sub­ject mat­ter, this is a film which exam­ines the notion that, if one is ful­ly-attuned to fine nuance, that gen­uine rep­e­ti­tion is in fact beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of the human body and mind.

On paper, the con­cerns in this film trans­late as some­what small-fry, though the man­ner in which the Dar­d­ennes escort us through this quaint indus­tri­al proverb results in a work of near-incom­pre­hen­si­ble moral and polit­i­cal com­plex­i­ty, and not to men­tion Earth-shat­ter­ing import. In a sim­i­lar vein to their won­der­ful pre­vi­ous, The Kid with a Bike, the broth­ers are now mak­ing films which appear to share their DNA with both Eric Rohmer and Walt Dis­ney — minia­ture epics which are root­ed in the realms of clas­si­cal fan­ta­sy (is this their take on ​‘Snow White’?). Tin-pot union bureau­cra­cy has nev­er felt so utter­ly heart-wrench­ing, and the film this most close­ly recalls is The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc, Carl Dreyer’s silent con­tem­pla­tion of a lone, weep­ing woman bat­tling against the cal­lous and cor­rupt­ed bull­doz­er of ​“jus­tice”.

Mar­i­on Cotillard’s sad-eyed and saint­ly moth­er-of-two, San­dra, is fac­ing redun­dan­cy down at the local solar pan­el con­cern. Col­leagues have vot­ed to accept a €1000 bonus in lieu of keep­ing her on the pay­roll. Con­vinced there was foul play involved, San­dra — des­per­ate­ly forc­ing back a tumult of inter­nal emo­tions, many of which have seri­ous med­ical ram­i­fi­ca­tions — is set a week­end quest when the boss allows for anoth­er vote two days hence. With the aid of her dot­ing hus­band, she pluck­i­ly lob­bies for her posi­tion, and the film offers a sim­ple, episod­ic chron­i­cle of her expe­di­tion to save her self-respect, her fam­i­ly and her sanity.

Cotil­lard is pre­dictably immense in the lead, man­ag­ing to bring sub­tle vari­a­tion to the delib­er­ate­ly rep­e­ti­tious nar­ra­tive which in turn exhibits the refine­ment of her tack as well as a process of real­i­sa­tion that her endeav­our might just be entire­ly self­ish — how can her own finan­cial­ly secu­ri­ty be equal­ly weight­ed against that of her col­leagues? Her tear­ful erup­tions of self-doubt are dev­as­tat­ing, the first occur­ring in an almost unbear­ably upset­ting open­ing sequence where she receives the bad news over the phone. Per­haps the most mirac­u­lous aspect of her per­for­mance is the fact that there’s no hint of movie-star slum­ming, that she’s get­ting her hands dirty and doing a ​“small movie” for the cre­do, that her character’s appar­ent sim­plic­i­ty should pre­clude a total and com­plete under­stand­ing of motivation.

The film asks, what is pover­ty in the 21^st cen­tu­ry? Do peo­ple have the same con­cep­tions of suc­cess and hard­ship? Some may read Two Days, One Night as a cel­e­bra­tion of indi­vid­u­al­ism, while oth­ers might see some­thing dark­er, per­haps a judge­ment on human­i­ty as an essen­tial­ly ungovern­able morass of bod­ies who each define hap­pi­ness in dif­fer­ent ways. The broth­ers also cap­i­talise on the nar­ra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ty to ten­der­ly exam­ine the social and eth­nic diver­si­ty of Sandra’s col­leagues (inter­est­ing­ly, it’s the minori­ties who tend to be more empa­thet­ic towards her plight) and, by mid-way through the film, even the neigh­bour­hoods, streets and door-frames seem specif­i­cal­ly cho­sen to pro­voke a pre­judge­ment. In the back­ground, a sym­pho­ny of alarms and beeps and warn­ing sig­nals and ring­tones can be heard, a har­bin­ger of social automa­tion which we know can nev­er tru­ly be attained.

The genius of this film (to this writer, the broth­ers’ best) is the way that it con­stant­ly under­cuts pre­con­cep­tions. Just when you feel that didac­ti­cism is creep­ing in, that a side is being tak­en or a point is being pushed, there’s a twist and we’re right back to neu­tral. It’s dif­fi­cult to artic­u­late what it is that’s so great about the Dar­d­ennes’ cin­e­ma, but it per­haps has some­thing to do with being in the thrilling com­pa­ny of film­mak­ers who ful­ly com­pre­hend the intri­ca­cies of their own text — a skill which is very much tak­en for grant­ed. Their vig­i­lance as film­mak­ers is awe-inspir­ing. This movie is a miracle.