Dheepan

Homeless, landless, adrift, isolated, three Sri Lankan compatriots must take on roles to which they are unaccustomed and pretend to be a loving family while acculturating within a French ghetto.

Fortunate to have the jobs they do, ubiquitous crime and angst-ridden violence reminds them of the civil war they fled, as they take things one day at a time and do their best to productively integrate.

Husband, mother, child.

Suddenly existing as a distraughtly supportive family, trials test their ability to exemplify while Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) remembers the leader he once was.

Forced to adapt while remaining conscientious, submission conflicts with engrained volatility, peace of mind seemingly unattainable, grating and rasping, exasperatingly askew.

Jacques Audiard's Dheepan presents a desperate situation replete with complicated necessities which solemnly challenge the will to live.

A supreme exercise in extreme sublimation, appearing calm to reflect the nascence, impossibility contends with the imaginative as competing visions of the sure and steady clash effecting labour, language, schooling and family.

Race isn't really an issue in the film, but it reminded me of an idea I had a while back.

It has to do with racist horrors and the problems minority groups face when trying to integrate within the dominant culture at large.

Whether you're from Asia, Africa, Europe, or the Americas, people share common characteristics differentiated by culture yet unified through struggle, through the struggle to obtain work, food and lodging.

If a group whose skin colour or ethnicity is different from another group's systematically prevents that group from being able to access meaningful employment, nutritious food, and spacious lodging, simply because they don't possess a specific skin colour or ethnicity, the oppressed group isn't going to accept such a state of affairs and will continue to want meaningful employment, nutritious food, and spacious lodging.

Films often tragically examine the plight of ethnic minorities as they attempt to assert themselves in the face of overwhelmingly dismissive racist cultural attitudes.

Dheepan showcases members of an ethnic minority group struggling to better their lives in order to live without the constant threat of violence, good people fed up with having to live in fear, capable of taking the risks required to change things for the better.

It uses members of a minority group to combat racist attitudes by demonstrating their desire for peace, for a good life, universal human desires, without focusing on race.

By taking race out of the equation it skilfully finds common ground for every race and ethnicity without sensationalizing its subject matter.

Thought provoking, well done.

A family blossoming in the unconscious.

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone)

A principled yet free-spirited man (Matthias Schoenaerts as Alain van Versch), pugnaciously rolling with the punches, salaciously catering to his senses, daunting, brave, unconcerned, and powerful, instinctively yet rationally proceeds within economic and familial domains, until the interventions of both an unexpected expedient consequence and the structural features of the natural world, resolutely challenge.

To break through the ice.

Hedonistic and domestic conceptions of commitment and responsibility transformatively engage in Jacques Audiard's De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone), as financial arraignments tender psychological grit, and individualistic risk conflicts with collective sustainability.

The crucial component, the displaced modifier, the missing link, is love.

The endurance of emotional pain is maximized in this regard as competing applications of fidelity, flourish.

Through sundry strategic applications.

*Kermode felt the love throughout 2012. Thanks to everyone who enjoys reading this blog. Those who don't too I suppose. All the best in 2013.

**Bears