Coward
TIFF Film #1
“I don’t want to dance on the dead anymore”
What kept ringing in my ear while watching Lukas Dhont’s Coward is abrasion. The opposition of cowardice and camaraderie, the entanglement of masculinity and femininity, the shifts presented in the individual vs the communal. Throughout its runtime you’re constantly presented with opposing forces and you feel that weight bearing more and more on our central characters.
Setting up these conflicting forces against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict of World War I takes these emotions and throws them into a pressure cooker. Everything feels like life or death because for some, it is.
Dhont places us so intimately in this world by never letting us escape the emotionally weight of our central character, Pierre. The camera rarely leaves his emotive face, you feel every inch of ache, joy and rage so deeply. It’s a gorgeously nuanced performance so beautifully portrayed by Emmanuel Macchia in his debut, and Cannes award winning, performance.
I’ve noticed people citing the quality of face acting when it comes to standout performances, something which has notoriously grinded my gears, as face acting is simply acting. However the “face acting” Macchia demonstrates throughout the film is nothing short of spectacular.
Pierre is straddling multiple worlds - he at once understands the abhorrent violence and consequences of war and also understands the respite that “the rejects”, those who performed for soldiers to lift their spirits, provide. This places him in a unique position to see that the performances are simply perpetuating the cycle of violence that he so desperately wants to be rid of, that despite not inflicting violence, the camaraderie and nationalism that these performers elicit is equally as dangerous.
In his queerness he also understands the brotherhood and acceptance that many queer people may have lacked in the real world. Suddenly under the crushing weight of war, these men who were outcast have a place to feel at home. They have a purpose, they’ve found purpose in a horrible situation and really that’s all there is. Community is power, belonging to something larger than yourself may shift how you feel deep down as the thrill of acceptance is addicting.
The exquisite sound design really enhances this, every time the soldiers banded together to cheer in unison, every time the performers songs echoed in the fields, buildings and barns, there was an immense sense of community. This was normally sharply followed by the absence of sound, I found myself getting lost in the noise, getting drum up and enamoured by the homogenising of the men, only to find my feet back on the ground right after.
Finding joy in the hardest of times seems wrong, it seems in direct contradiction to everything that surrounds these men. But what else is there to do? For some they get lost in this high, they forget about the horrors, in the hopes of community they forget about their individual self. Perhaps it’s cowardly to perpetuate these evils being inflicted, perhaps the brave thing to do, is to turn your back and walk away.
“I don’t want to dance on the dead anymore”
Perhaps you have to open your eyes, not have them shut to an imaginary world where the horrors have stopped and the sun shines. To realise the thrills are insults to those who don’t get to enjoy them…. but also is that not what you have to do.
This quote keeps ringing in my ear as it parallels experiences which are quintessentially queer. This guilt over getting to live open when so many had to suffocate and hide who they really were, these men in this film are a prime example of this. The ways in which freedom of expression, artistically, sexually, and romantically are entangled in this movie is simply masterful. All of these are mining at the same idea of wanting to live a truly authentic life, to not be commanded on how to live your life. To make your own choice, to pave your own path.
The intimacy in this movie is so naturalistic and feels like this shedding of layers of people burying themselves, showing their true identities. A detail I loved in the movie is the way that costuming reflects uniformity and the oppression that uniformity can have on a person. This is done through the soldiers gear, but also in the performers the masks that they don't hide themselves. But when all of that is removed and all that's left is skin and bones. You witness real, true intimacy, and that can be both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time The more that I sit with this film, I just think it is doing a lot with very little. It's an intimate character study of two people falling in and out of line with their position as part of this troop while also exploring these vastly grand ideas, but never feels burdened by all that it's trying to explore. It perhaps goes on a tad longer than I'd wanted as I feel it does come to a natural conclusion. However, where we end up is still equally as interesting. Maybe the brave thing to do is to not fall in line with the others and stand for what you love