"Les Justes"

Camus, quoted:

N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.

Il y a dans les hommes plus de choses à admirer que de choses à mépriser.

Je ne connais qu'un seul devoir, et c'est celui d'aimer.

Il faut créer le bonheur pour protester contre l'univers du malheur.

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.

I'm still thinking about the NAC production of Camus' Les Justes that I watched about a month ago, its message less optimistic than in some of those famous—wonderful!—lines selected above, from other works by that writer.

Émmanuelle Béart as Dora in Les Justes

It's exhausting to have to concentrate on a foreign language for two-and-a-half hours non-stop, but the actors' French, being Parisian, meticulously enunciated, with an artificial slowness, allowed no one to miss a point. The current French Theatre director at the NAC, Wajdi Mouawad, whom I admire very much for his stand against conventional thinking at the NAC and for his courage in confronting the nastiest politics of the modern world without flinching in his own plays, acted the part of one of the terrorists portrayed in Les Justes, the most intransigent one, in fact. The other actors were from France, the most interesting to watch being Émmanuelle Béart. She had a severe character to play here and a severe haircut to match, but still looked as vulnerably beautiful as in the films she starred in, Manon des Sources and Un Coeur en Hiver. Once again, as in the latter film, I heard her say with furious, growling intensity,

Il faut aller jusqu'au bout!

but in the Camus play that line was spoken in a political, not a sexual context. I was once again bowled over.

The Camus play is a sort of Socratic discussion of whether and why ends might sometimes justify means, in the struggle against hopelessly unjust régimes. It is set at the start of the twentieth century, in Russia. Is it right to assassinate a Grand Duke as a gesture against despotism? Camus' four just men and one just woman believe so, some more assuredly than others. The "poet" among them is all in favour and about to throw the fatal hand-grenade when he sees (in Act II) that the Grand Duke is accompanied by his wife and children. That is when the questions start:

I could not predict this...Children, those children especially. Have you ever looked at little kids? That serious look they have sometimes...I couldn't stand that look...A minute before, however, in the corner of the little square, I was happy. When the lamps of the carriage started to shine in the distance, my heart was thumping with joy, I swear it. It beat harder and harder as the carriage rolling got louder. It made so much noise inside me. I think I was laughing. And I was saying, "yes, yes." Do you understand? I ran toward the carriage. Then I saw them. They weren't laughing. They held themselves all straight and looked out at nothing. They looked so sad! Lost in their parade poses, hands folded, the doors on either side. I didn't see the Grand Duchess; I only saw them. If they had looked at me, I think I would have thrown the bomb. To at least put out that sad look. But they looked straight ahead.I don't know what happened. My arms got weak. My legs shook. One second after that, it was too late. (Silence. He looks at the floor.)

Camus himself was torn over these questions. He was too intimately involved with the France-Algeria conflict to set his play in either of those countries, and the deliberate, Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt of using distant Russia as his setting is reinforced in this production by a symbolically stark, abstract set and very little physical movement on stage.

The consequence of seeing this play is that it makes you realise that terrorists are human. All of a sudden your attitude to the world is not as straightforwardly black and white any more. You are forced to reconsider.

Le rôle de l'art dans la vie

I was at the NAC again last week (Centre National des Arts) to see the French Theatre production of Cyrano de Bergerac, for which I was lucky enough to get a free ticket. Before the show, I also had the privilege of hearing Wajdi Mouawad, current director of French Theatre at the NAC (who incidentally keeps a blog), give a talk about the importance of the arts and our support of the arts. Having grown up as a French speaking Lebanese immigrant in Montreal, he spoke in beautiful French, quietly but passionately.

For Wajdi Mouawad there are countless possible answers to "What is art for?" or "What is an artist?" but he was not going to try to answer those questions except by giving us a couple of pictures ("images"). The first picture he wanted us to imagine was that of driving a car along a road in stormy weather, the rain lashing at the windscreen, the night very dark, so that the oncoming headlights dazzle and tire us. To keep us going along in the right direction, we put our trust in the occasional roadsigns and the centre lines. We concentrate on them for all we're worth. Of course those lines painted on the road are important in fine weather too, but all the more so at moments of crisis, when we have to face something terrible, like death. Art is like the road signs and white lines, "une chose visible et précieuse" which will prevent us from coming to grief "quand il ne fait plus beau."

It is at such moments that we are at our most receptive to art. For example, a Mozart concerto.

Dans les périodes de crise, ça vous boulverse soudain...

His other image was that of the little scarab, or dung beetle of the Middle East, that feeds itself from what other animals' bodies have rejected. From their excreta—crotte—the scarab makes a perfect ball that it rolls into a secret place to consume at leisure. This is like Artists (the "naifs", the "pure" ones) who nourish themselves from what others have rejected or found useless.

Un artiste est un scarabée qui trouve, dans les excréments mêmes de la société, les aliments nécessaires pour produire les œuvres qui fascinent et bouleversent ses semblables. L’artiste, tel un scarabée, se nourrit de la merde du monde pour lequel il œuvre, et de cette nourriture abjecte il parvient, parfois, à faire jaillir la beauté.

An Artist such as Wajdi Mouawad will put these things into words to let us see what we may have missed:

...des choses profondes, belles, incroyables, des choses fragiles...

(Exactly the message of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal !)

One of the audience asked whether Wajdi Mouawad's present place of work, the national capital, had affected his choice of plays for the theatre. Oh, definitely, was the reply; that was a good question. The slogan of this year's French theatre programme is Nous Sommes En Guerre. Apparently, Wajdi Mouawad discussed what it means with his team. We can be at war for the sake of something, against something or with someone. It all depends on our point of view.

En guerre en Afghanistan, en guerre pour conserver le sens des choses ... le théâtre, c'est un geste actif ... pas passif ... On se combat pour rester éveillé...

We fight in order to stay awake.

I like this man, and I really approve of what he says.