by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Claude Berri
CAST: Michel Simon, Roger Carel, Paul Préboist, Alain Cohen
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Fresh
PLOT: In German-occupied France during World War II, a Jewish child is sent away from his family and conceals his religious affiliation from the anti-Semitic elderly man that takes care of him.
What are we to make of Pépé Dupont, the grandfatherly old man at the center of Claude Berri’s film The Two of Us? Here is the kind of craggy, crotchety, yet endearing old man we’d like to turn into when we get to be his age. He loves his 15-year-old dog almost as much as he loves his wife, if not more. He’s a vegetarian who doesn’t like it when his wife cooks rabbit for dinner. “Cannibal!” he exclaims. He makes friends easily with Claude, the little 9-year-old boy who comes to live with him and his wife in the French countryside in late 1943, sent away by his Jewish parents who feared for his safety during the German occupation of Paris.
But Dupont makes some comments at the dinner table about Jews that makes it very clear: he is anti-Semitic. He quotes statistics about how the percentage of Jews in political office is vastly higher than the percentage of Jews in France. The little boy, Claude, is instantly cautious and tentatively asks Dupont, how can you tell if someone is a Jew? “Why, by their smell, and their large noses, and their flat feet that keeps them out of the army, but look how fast they run to make money!”
These scenes and others like them are intentionally jarring because they emerge from a man who is utterly unaware he’s talking to a Jewish child. Dupont’s deep-seated bigotry is as much a part of him as his beloved dog, Kinou, but it is so blindingly wrongheaded that he completely overlooks the fact that Claude is Jewish himself. It’s a situation that is both funny and heartbreaking at the same time: funny because we laugh at the ignorance of someone blinkered by his prejudices, and heartbreaking that such attitudes are harbored by a man who would otherwise be the perfect picture of a loving grandfather. (Or surrogate grandfather in this case, but you get the idea.)
The Two of Us is based on the actual experiences of director Claude Berri, which makes the film even more poignant. Over the course of the film, little Claude will cautiously befriend Dupont, but he is careful to never let Dupont’s wife wash him (it wouldn’t do for her to see he has been circumcised). He memorizes the Lord’s prayer. He assumes a new last name – Longuet instead of the more Jewish “Langmann.” Over time, he even becomes bold enough to tweak Dupont’s ignorance. When Dupont says all Jews have large noses and curly hair, Claude gleefully points out Dupont’s own bulbous nose and frazzled hair and runs away in mock terror: “You’re a Jew!”
Perhaps I’m making this film sound like a dreary exercise in pointing out the obvious – anti-Semitism is wrong, DUH – but it’s far more than that. Berri’s film is very careful to never, ever include a scene in which Dupont is shown the error of his ways. The closest we get is when Dupont’s son refuses to enter his house because Dupont supports the Vichy (pro-German) Prime Minister Pétain as opposed to Charles de Gaulle. Aside from that, we are simply allowed to observe Dupont’s behavior and Claude’s reactions. Berri is smart enough to realize that people (generally) know right from wrong on an instinctive level and do not need to be preached at. So few films dare to assume their audiences have a brain that it’s a relief when one is discovered, waiting in some long-forgotten corner of cinema history.
The dichotomy between Dupont’s beliefs and his obvious affection for Claude define the word “provocative.” It forces us to realize that not all bigots are loud-mouthed blowhards. They can be just as charming and effusive and loving as your best friend’s favorite uncle or aunt. Is Dupont evil in The Two of Us? Some of his core beliefs are rotten, for sure, but I started to take pity on him a little bit. Like so many other racists, his attitudes were probably taught to him by his own parents, and he simply accepts them as reality without realizing how deeply wrong he is. The phrase “the banality of evil” has perhaps been overused of late (especially in the wake of Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant film The Zone of Interest), but it occurred to me time and again during scenes showing Dupont playing with Claude, doing chores with Claude, helping Claude with his first crush, and so on. We get lulled into the idea of a wonderfully jolly fellow…and then he says something anti-Semitic, and it all comes crashing down again.
Not only that, but we get hints and omens of what is occurring on the wider world stage during the war. At Claude’s new school, children’s heads are checked for lice. When they are discovered on another boy’s head, the teacher immediately sits him down and shaves his head, right then and there, using a pair of uncomfortable-looking clippers, to the amusement of the other schoolchildren. As the boy’s hair falls to his feet in clumps, and the other kids are laughing, Berri cuts to Claude, who observes the process without a trace of emotion. What is he thinking? Is he aware of the concentration camps? Or were they still just rumors to everyone else in France in 1943?
The Two of Us feels like a Fellini film (poignant reminiscences of childhood) cross-bred with a Stanley Kramer message picture, minus the sermonizing. It shifts between delight and solemnity with no warning, making each shift stand out that much more, and enhancing the storytelling by making us passive observers, letting us make our own judgements without guidance from an overanxious screenplay. This movie was made to be discussed around the water cooler, or on a podcast, or in a movie chat room, just so we can try to wrap our heads around exactly what this film is trying to say by making the kindly old man at the center of the film the source of all of its moral and ethical conflict.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 