Page - 27 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Reality and Paternity | 27www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 15–32 is something in the Dardennes’ films that can break the sphere, allowing the viewer to breathe as well. In this perspective, the “anti-pedagogical” possibility of a father – or of the rest of the father – appears to be crucial, with all its ambiguities and conse- quences. Furthermore, Roger has to be abandoned so that Igor can have a des- tiny and hope; Bruno has to meet an external injunction – both of love and of law – in order to begin something new; Olivier has to come to terms with his internal dramatic struggle with Francis, who killed his young son, in order to be a father again. PROMISING AND FORGIVING AGAIN “What does being human mean today? To view as human beings, not in general, but in the concrete and extreme situations that the present society generates”, asks Luc Dardenne.40 The Dardennes are deeply convinced that there is a neces- sary link between humanisation and filiation. If this link is weakened, the sense of the community of initiation and destiny, that is, of human life, necessarily becomes barbarised. The Dardennes show that a father could only really be a father if he does not kill: The Son (2002) represents this last possibility for a father (Olivier) to refuse to kill, even (maybe) becoming the father of his son’s murderer (Francis). Oli- vier’s work as a carpentry instructor in a rehabilitation centre for young offend- ers, with its world of measures, thicknesses and corners, and his involvement in teaching his students and transmitting a trade are not enough to take him outside his obsessions, to let him live again. In order to be able to be a father again, he must not kill Francis, who, at the age of eleven, killed his son. The in- terdiction against murder appears here as the main possibility for the transfer- ence of legacy in the filial relationship. The prohibition of murder has primordi- ally founded human society and has to be continuously transmitted in order to preserve humanity: “It was Olivier who attracted us. We asked ourselves what a human being is and came to the definition that certainly a human being is an individual who succeeds in not killing.”41 This represents what remains of the fa- ther in the epoch of his evaporation. Olivier at least breaks the circle of violence and murder: despite his despair and anger, he chooses not to eat the child (as Chronos did) so that the future appears possible. He refuses to kill the murderer of his only son, permitting another outcome of the story. If the experience of filiation actually begins with the transmission of practices and gestures in Oli- vier’s workshop, the very act of paternity takes place in the continuation of life 40 Dardenne 2009, 8. 41 West/West 2009, 127.