Injecting political truth into on-screen drama, French director Laurent
Cantet uses real-life labor conflict and its substance and emotions as the
stirring ingredients in Human Resources. The story of a son who
takes a managerial position after college in a factory where he is hired
to effect the layoffs of lifelong workers including his own father,
Human Resources wrenchingly and insightfully pits family and social
loyalties against one another.
The film concludes with a strike action that dramatically consolidates
these contending passions with a resolved and revitalized shared
consciousness. Cantet spoke with me about his methods and techniques for
creating a powerfully renewed worker cinema for the millenium.
Prairie Miller: What was your inspiration for Human
Resources?
Laurent Cantet: I just tried to remember stories that my friends
have told me, whose fathers are workers. So I thought back to their lives
when I wrote the film.
PM: Why did you want Human Resources to take place mostly
inside a factory?
LC: I wanted to film in a factory because you almost never see
factories in a movie. I think nobody wants to see that part of society,
because the life of people in the factories is so hard that I think nobody
wants to know that.
PM: But don't audiences go to see movies about tragedy?
LC: Yes, but work is not a tragedy. It is tiring and boring. But
I think for the past five years in France, people are returning to an
involvement in social issues. So French movies are reflecting that
tendency. I'm not sure this is just happening in France, but social issues
are becoming very important in France right now.
PM: Why do you feel there is a renewed social conscious
evolving?
LC: I think society is changing, and people are now
understanding that something is going wrong. It's because unemployment has
been increasing, and a lot of people felt threatened. So they began to
share their problems and anxieties with one another.
PM: Where did your own reverence for workers originate?
LC: My grandfather was a baker who worked with his hands, and
had a reverence for work. The old factory worker in my movie who is laid
off could have reminded me of my grandfather; his connection to his work
was so similar. And I believe that reverence for work was transmitted to
me, as I am now transmitting it to my own children.
PM: Why did you choose nonprofessionals as actors for your
movie, and did they have similar experiences in their own lives to those
of the strikers in Human Resources?
LC: All of the actors except the main character Frank are
nonprofessional. And I found them on the unemployment lines. Yes, most of
them have the lives of the characters they are playing. Danielle Melador,
who plays the strike leader, is a real trade unionist. Jean-Claude Vallod,
who plays the old metal factory worker, has been a factory worker since he
was 14, doing the very same job we see him performing in the movie.
But I love the way nonprofessional actors perform. Maybe it's not as
smooth as the professionals, but I feel it's more authentic. And with an
actor like Vallod, his body is speaking as much as what I wrote for him.
It's in the way he stands in front of his machine, that's something that
nobody could actually simulate, I think.
PM: Did these workers have any advice or input into the
story?
LC: Some of them were really involved in what the movie has to
say. The trade unionist, for example, considered that what she did in the
film is just a continuation of her political activity. And when Human
Resources was released in France, Danielle went to many of the
theaters to discuss the movie with audiences because she wanted to carry
out her activism through the film.
And at first I wasn't sure of what I was writing, because I couldn't
truly know about life in a factory. I needed these workers to advise me,
and they would tell me when I could go further in what I was saying.
Sometimes there were situations that might be perceived as caricatures.
For instance, there is one scene where the old factory worker is
humiliated in front of his son by the boss. I thought I might be making
Vallod's character into too much of a caricature. But they told me, no,
you can go there; and in fact that humiliation could be much worse in real
life.
PM: So in a sense some of these workers were co-directors?
LC: Right. They helped me a lot.
PM: What is Danielle doing since the movie?
LC: In fact, she is unemployed. But she is the leader of an
unemployed committee. Danielle was fired from her factory when she was 52
years old, and couldn't find any work since then.
PM: In Human Resources, Danielle is denounced by the
bosses as a communist. Was that just name calling, or is she actually a
communist?
LC: Danielle is in a trade union that is linked to the French
Communist Party. It is a workers' federation that is very close to the
Communist Party.
PM: What is the significance of the title Human
Resources?
LC: There are two reasons for my choice of the title. The first
reason is that we use this expression "human resources" without even
thinking about what we are saying. It's just an administrative expression.
In fact, it's quite cynical because you are talking about human beings in
the same inanimate way you would talk about money or energy.
The second point is that all my characters at the beginning are
identified only in a social context, as factory workers. And then the
story gives them a chance to reveal what is beneath those social labels,
what is more human. So perhaps it is ultimately the resources of humanity
itself.
By the end of the film, people can hardly speak. They're just
speechless. One woman, her eyes red from crying, said, “Your film is
awful.” I was stunned, but then she continued: “The film was too awful, it
looked just like my life. But please, thank you for making the film.” So
it's painful for people to see Human Resources, but they thank me
for having made it.
PM: What do you hope Human Resources will say to
audiences?
LC: The film asks a lot of questions about the place of any one
of us in society and the world. And also what it means to find or not find
our place. And the second point is the price of commitment.
PM: We never see movies treat the issue of class in the US. Talk
about how you focus on class in Human Resources.
LC: I think that they would like to have us believe politically
and in factories that class issues don't exist anymore. But after spending
a few months in the factories speaking with workers and bosses, it is
obvious that class divisions are still very much alive.
When I was visiting different factories to choose one in which to make
this movie, I heard so many things. The power relationships haven't
changed at all. Those class relationships can still explain the world.
From World Socialist Web Site
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