Germinal (1993) - film review

In France of the 1870s, an unemployed machine-worker, Étienne Lantier, arrives at a coal mine desperate for work.  He is given a job in the mine and is befriended by a miner named Maheu, who has a wife, Maheude, and seven children.  When the mine’s owners decide to reduce the miners’ pay, the miners, prompted by Lantier, go on strike.  Although the strike begins peacefully, passions are aroused when workers at a nearby pit go back to work and when the mine’s owners draft in Belgian workers.  The strikers decide to vent their anger in an orgy of violence...

Emile Zola’a classic 1885 novel, Germinal, gets the Claude Berri treatment, and no expense is spared.  In a typically lavish Berry blockbuster that cost over 30 million dollars (the most expensive film ever made in France at that time), we have a doggedly realistic and uncompromising depiction of life in a French mining community towards the end of the nineteenth century.  With scenes of hunger, death and mutilation vividly displayed, this is one of the most graphic and disturbing historical dramas made in France (on a par with Patrice Chéreau’s La Reine Margot).  However, whilst Berri wins on realism and visual effect, he is less successful in drawing on the tragedy of his characters’ situation to achieve any great emotional impact.

The film’s strongest point, without any question, is the visuals.  The reconstruction of the mine, both above and below ground, is breathtaking in its detail and the set really does look like a working mine, not just a mock up.  The photography is nearly as impressive, giving the film a truly epic feel, reminiscent of earlier French epic historicals.  On the acting side, there is an exceptional performance from star actress Miou-Miou as the tragic young mother who suffers more than most but who still clings to her beliefs right up to the bitter end.  Renaud and Depardieu are also on fine form.

Where the film is less successful is in its plot structure and overall pacing.  The first half of the film is genuinely impressive, with an interesting and moving depiction of how the notion of workers’ rights and trade unions came into being.  Here, there is some fine dialogue, as the protagonists argue the case for workers to club together for their own mutual interest.  Also, the poverty and exploitation endured by the workers is contrasted very effectively with the luxury and arrogance of their employers.

But then, as if overwhelmed by the weight of the tragedy it is depicting, the film suddenly stalls in the last 40 minutes and thereafter slowly drags along to its finish, like a slow death.  We are subjected to tragedy after grim tragedy as the main characters are killed off, in such a contrived and predictable way that any emotional impact is almost completely extinguished.  This is a shame because there is genuine tragedy in this last part of the film – particularly the final scene where Lantier is saying farewell to Maheude.   With some judicious editing, the film (which is too long anyway) would have had much greater impact and would really achieved the status of masterpiece to which it is clearly aspiring.

In spite of that, this is a film which is really well worth seeing – if only to get an appreciation of what some of our unfortunate forefathers had to endure during the 19th century.

© James Travers 1999

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