French film 'Notre salut' at Cannes dissects Vichy-era complicity

Emmanuel Marre's 'Notre salut' offers a profound and unsettling look into a dark chapter of French history, daring to confront the 'banality of evil' that permeated France during the Vichy regime. As reported by EFE, the film, which premiered at Cannes, is not just a historical drama but a deeply personal exploration, drawing from the filmmaker's own family history through letters exchanged between his great-grandparents.

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The problem is to get out of the question of guilt.

Marre's approach is particularly striking. He focuses on the everyday actions and language of collaboration, moving beyond grand political narratives to reveal how ordinary individuals navigated and even benefited from a compromised society. The film's title itself, referencing a political treatise by his great-grandfather, hints at the complex legacy being examined. This is not about assigning blame, but about understanding the gradual descent into complicity, a process Marre likens to ascending a staircase, where each step must be understood to grasp the final destination.

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Collaboration is a 'phantom memory' in France, not because it is not 'very well documented,' but because society has made an 'emotional cut' regarding what the era of Philippe Pétain's government meant, unlike what happens with the 'Gaullist myth' and resistant France, which conquered the imaginary.

In France, the memory of collaboration is often a 'phantom memory,' as Marre puts it. While well-documented, there's an emotional distance, a societal 'cut' from that era, unlike the more dominant narrative of the Gaullist resistance. 'Notre salut' challenges this by insisting on the need to 'look at everything' to comprehend how such a system functioned. The film's observational documentary style and the actors' improvisational approach, based on descriptive notes rather than a rigid script, further enhance this sense of raw, unvarnished reality, reminiscent of 'The Office' but with devastatingly real consequences.

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Today we can look at everything because we have the need to understand.

This film is a crucial intervention in how France grapples with its past. By delving into the mundane aspects of collaboration, Marre forces a confrontation with uncomfortable truths, suggesting that understanding requires shedding 'shame' and examining the 'small facts' that enabled a violent, authoritarian system. It’s a perspective that resonates deeply within France, prompting a necessary, albeit difficult, national conversation about complicity and memory.

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It is the only way to understand how one gets lost in collaboration and accommodation, something that happens, as in a 'staircase': one must look at all the steps to understand how one reaches the end.