the silence of complicity
by
Douglas Messerli
Louis
Malle (writer and director) Au revoir
les enfants / 1987
I’ve
now seen Louis Malle’s moving portrait of World War II lost childhood innocence
three or four times, and I believe I comprehended the film the very first time
I saw it, probably soon after its premier in 1987. But seeing it again the
other day, in the context of the Trump administration’s continued attacks on
immigrant life, it seemed suddenly to be a very different film, its lovely
tribute to Chaplin’s early film The
Immigrant framing it in a way I had not previously perceived.
How could they not, given the Pétain rule
and the even worse Nazi control of Paris and other major cities? The fact is
that this particular Carmelite school took in, willingly, several Jewish
children, under different names, and valiantly attempted to protect them,
ending in their leader’s, Father Père Jean’s, arrest and eventual death in the
Mauthausen camp.
The Malle figure, Quentin, previously the
golden boy of this school, now has a new challenger, and is both frightened and
excited by the brilliant newcomer. At first, he, along with the others of his
classroom acquaintances, tries everything they can to make the newcomer, Jean
Bonnet (actually Jean Kippelstein, played by actor Raphaël Fejtö),
an outsider. As a born figure on the outside of French society,
Bonnet/Kippelstein knows perfectly well how to deal with it, even though, at
his young age, he is clearly and almost unbearably lonely and isolated. But his
searing intelligence and his insistence of being one of the group, prevails,
eventually convincing the equally questioning Quentin to form a bond with him
and to begin questioning what is going on in world around this somewhat isolated
societal viewpoint, which makes this film something special.
These lessons are not lost on the young
Jean, who gradually begins to perceive that he does not now believe he seems to
have been taught to; and even he questions his only family’s relationships to
the Jewish faith. It is a poignant moment, when he questions his mother if one
about their Alsatian aunts, a conversation which is quickly hushed up; but the
facts are immediately perceived by the quieter Bonnet, who clearly realizes
what is happening in his world. Yes, he is an outsider, but he exists in a
tangled prejudicial society that has stood for French culture for centuries,
even as many in the society refuse to embrace those connections. Bonnet’s
quietude says everything, as the young Jean Quentin suddenly begins to perceive.
I don’t know whether or not the events of
the film are entirely honest, but in Malle’s version, the Bonnet/Kippelstein
figure does forgive his young colleague by simply admitting that they would
eventually have discovered him, no matter what. It doesn’t quite feel
comfortable—might the Nazis truly have uncovered everything without the
innocent childhood glances? Perhaps Bonnet is correct, no matter what they
might have done, he’d, along with all the others, would have eventually been
tracked down, just as he had been in their scout games, where he was caught,
tied up, and eventually escaped.
Yet others, miraculously were not. The
gentle wave of goodbye (the Au Revior
of the title) is, alas, simply not enough. The totally innocent Bonnet was sent
to death simply because of his birth by religion, and, finally, the young Jean
Quentin had to come to terms with that. This is a film that does not say
“goodbye to a childhood friend,” but goodbye to childhood itself.
In the end, you surely can’t blame the
children, but you must blame their parents for not properly protecting those
children with the truth.
Los Angeles, February
21, 2017
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