Page - 11 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

In Search of the Human | 11www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 9–14 transform and become something new; second, when simple, concrete physi- cal actions express a complex human reality that goes far beyond a simple act;4 and third, in the possibility for viewers to experience an intersubjective relation- ship between the materiality of the film and its images and their own embodied existence,5 as they are invited to “enter into a physically and morally charged space”.6 Offering images of pure materiality and physicality with their capacity for transcendence, as Isabella Guanzini shows in her contribution, the films of the Dardennes contribute to restoring belief in the world, a belief that, according to Giles Deleuze, was disrupted in modernity and to whose re-establishment cinema can make a major contribution today. In a way, belief in the world might be seen as a secular form of faith – within an immanent horizon – in the reli- ability of reality, the events we experience and the relationships with other hu- man beings for which there is no evidence but which is a matter of trust. From the perspective of the study of religions, this provides interesting material for a reflection on the nature of faith and belief in what is often called a post-secular society, in which the material world becomes the primary point of reference. From a Christian theological perspective, the transcendent quality of the mate- rial that the realist filmmaking of the Dardennes suggests is an additional inter- esting contribution to the ever-new task of thinking about the material world as the space of encounter with the divine. In addition to their focus on material and existential aspects, the Dardennes pursue a second strategy in the search for the human by employing an ethical mode that asks about how to relate to the material situation in which human beings find themselves. How do dehumanizing conditions distort the human being and its relationships, and how is it possible to discover glimmers of hope in despair? How is it possible to disrupt the cycle of violence and hatred in sim- ple, small gestures of solidarity and care? Here, too, attention to the concrete is favored over against generalizing statements: the Dardennes offer “dramas of interpersonal relationships that are microcosmic versions of the agonies at large in the lower social strata.”7 In my own contribution, a gender-sensitive reading of the social-justice issues related to the world of work and family that are raised in the films, I note how close attention to the concrete individual case allows the directors to investigate a situation in all its complexity and tensions, rather than offer easy solutions, without denying the effects on the individual of the larger structures of injustice in late capitalist societies. In their films, the Dardennes critically describe broken relationships, ruthless competition, and 4 Cf. Mosley 2013, 7. 5 Cf. Mosley 2013, 15, with reference to Vivian Sobchack. 6 Mosley 2013, 14. 7 Mosley 2013, 12.