☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Lacombe,
Lucien (1974) – L. Malle
Louis Malle has set himself a
particularly difficult challenge here: to compose a character study of an
inarticulate man-child. But he has a
purpose, for Lucien Lacombe is meant to represent the kind of French adolescent
who might have been drawn to collaborate with the Nazis during the Occupation. He’s not mature yet and vaguely frustrated with
his lot (working at a nursing home in a small rural community) – he might be
willing to join the Resistance but is turned down for being too young and
unfocused. So, he is easily seduced by
the power and decadence of the collaborators.
As others have suggested, Malle (like Marcel Ophuls in The Sorrow and
the Pity) has aimed to portray the “banality of evil” as produced by average
individuals who, under other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have acted this
way. That is an open question for sure
but the combination of person (Lacombe, Lucien) and situation (Vichy, France)
may ignite to produce horrors. When
Lucien becomes attracted to a young Jewish girl, the Gestapo power he possesses
allows him to act willfully and to initiate actions that have terrible
consequences; we just aren’t sure whether he fully understands what he’s
doing. If this is really how evil
materializes, we will all need to be on our guard.
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