Page - 25 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Reality and Paternity | 25www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 15–32 tionship with his father/semblance. Luc Dardenne writes in his diary, “There is something heavy, oppressing in existence. From here the irrepressible need for a break, an outside, emerges. A request for air is radiated with all our gazes, by all our words, by all our faces, by all our oppressed bodies. Extreme need for something that does not exist. Our epoch has serious breathing problems.”35 The Dardennes seem to continuously struggle against the bubble that suffo- cates and de-humanises subjects and does not allow them to breathe, trying to tear its thickness through the hard materiality of the bodies of strangers. In the kairos of Hamidou’s request, together with his gradual encounter with Assita’s mysterious face, body and gestures, Igor experiences a new beginning and a new birth that is a resurrection: “The resurrection of bodies. Why of the bodies? Because only the body can die and consequently only the body can be resurrected. And since only the body can be filmed, there is a relation between cinema and resurrection. It is an idiotic consideration, but it continues to amaze me.”36 Here, resurrection represents the possibility of interruption and a new beginning and the unpredictable emergence of kairos as a propitious time for decision and action in contrast to the deathly repetition of the same. The father of the horde (as identified by Freud) has to be abandoned in order to open a new humanised horizon. At the end of The Promise (1996), when Igor wants to confess the truth about Assita’s husband, Roger reacts violently and the rela- tionship between father and son comes to an end. Igor chains his father’s foot to a block in order to prevent Roger from hitting him and to permit Assita to escape. The father assumes the figure of an enchained animal, who wriggles trying to release himself from his cage. Roger: Igor let me loose! In God’s name, let me loose! Come here! Come here and let me loose! Tell her I’ve got the money for her return. All she wants. I’m begging you. Wait! I’ll give her this. She can go where she wants. Just let me loose. What do you want to tell her? What’ll it serve? She leaves, we never talk about it again. Give me my glasses, at least. The house. It’s for you. I did everything for you. Only you. You are my son. Igor: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Roger: Give me my glasses and let me loose. I’m your father. You can’t do this. Let me go, Igor, I’m begging you. Igor leaves his chained father alone and accompanies Assita towards her unde- termined future. In The Human Condition, which Luc Dardenne was reading during the shoot- ing of Rosetta (1999), Hannah Arendt very clearly affirms this necessary qual- 35 Dardenne 2009, 32. 36 Dardenne 2009, 60.