MODERN LIFE (La Vie Moderne) (France, 2008)
Wednesday, 18th November 2009

In my notes on our opening film The Class, I was at pains to point out how different it was from that splendid documentary Être et Avoir despite the fact that both works portrayed school life in the 21st century. Since Raymond Depardon’s Modern Life is not about young children but features farmers, many of whom are aged, it might seem that in this instance there is no reason at all to refer to Être et Avoir, but the truth of the matter is that there is no better way of introducing Modern Life to a potential audience. That’s not merely because both films are documentaries made in rural France but on account of the fact that they share a natural warmth of feeling: the way in which we responded to the children in the earlier film is identical to the reaction prompted by Depardon’s movie. When Modern Life ends, you feel as though you have come personally to know these people who have been interviewed by the film-maker as they live out their days farming in the Cévennes, and to know them is to be deeply touched by this portrayal of a way of life which, like the infants’ school in Être et Avoir, may soon exist no more.

Raymond Depardon, who was born in 1942, made seventeen films prior to this one, works undertaken between 1977 and 2005 that have made him the most respected film documentarian in France (prior to that he had been a reporter and photographer). Despite being so well known in his own country, very few of Depardon’s films have been seen in Britain. One exception was The 10th District Court, Moments of Trial dating from 2004 for which he was quite exceptionally given permission to film hearings in the Paris District Court. It was a film faithful to its title and, in my own case, remembering how enthralling I had found Frederick Wiseman’s American documentary Juvenile Court, I was very conscious of the limitations inherent in an approach that picked out moments from hearings without supplying the longer view which had made Wiseman’s piece so involving. Consequently, I went to see Modern Life without high expectations. After all to be told that the film consisted of interviews with farmers was not the most exciting of prospects, and it also suggested the kind of film which, consisting of talking heads, might well be better suited to television. However, by the time that the film drew to a close, I was amazed to realise how strong its impact had been. Indeed, Modern Life is one of the best films of recent times, a perfectly judged work that resonates in the mind and in the emotions long after it has ended.

Depardon comes from a family of farmers and that fact was doubtless influential in giving him the idea for a project which he entitled Profils Paysans. He had never filmed his own parents and, indeed, as a young man he had turned his back on their world and admits to having felt some shame about his background. However, his attitude subsequently changed drastically and his work in journalism in the late 1980s included coverage on the disappearance of farmers. But as he looked around he became aware that if certain things were changing others still reflected the life-style he had known as a child. It was as a record of this that Profils Paysans came to be planned by Depardon together with the producer Claudine Nougaret in 1998. Originally they intended to make a single film to be shot over a ten year period, but this proved to be impractical and what resulted was a series of three interlinked documentaries of which Modern Life is the last part, its predecessors being L’Approche which was released in 2000 and Le Quotidien (Everyday Life) which appeared in 2005.

The issues which Depardon had in mind have been commented on by him in the following terms: “Agriculture has changed. It has become industrial. I’ve even heard it said that our small scale agriculture is dead, but having done these three photo reports on highland farmers, I realize that it’s not true, but you weren’t supposed to talk about it as such talk could be ‘bad for France’. Yet these farmers are the people who are most interesting. There is an issue that was at the heart of the story of my parents’ farm: who hands it on and who takes it over? Are they taken over by members of the families who have mostly been settled there for a very long time or by young people who prefer the countryside to the city? Do they all become second homes, which unfortunately is the trend?”

Despite being the third part of a trilogy Modern Life loses nothing by being seen on its own, but it succeeds as well as it does partly because by filming some of those taking part for the preceding films Depardon had won the trust of his interviewees. The empathy built up in those early stages ensured that nothing would be false or forced and Depardon was asked to come back to do more. At the same time, these farmers, particularly those who are elderly like the two brothers both in their eighties seen early on and again near the close, are both very open and often taciturn, but even their reserve is expressive as being a part of their character. Furthermore, Depardon declares that they never ever tried to play up to the camera or acted in a way to please the film-maker. In their silences as in their talk they never lose their naturalness.

The shaping of the material here is admirable. We are invited to travel with Depardon as the seasons change and he calls on one farmer or another many of whom appear only once while others are visited again to discuss developments and changes. The countryside photographed in colour by Depardon himself provides a memorable background while there’s an admirably discreet use of music by Fauré on the soundtrack. It’s also vital to the film’s impact that it was shot using the ’Scope format. Depardon wanted to shoot material that could initially be allowed to flow on uninterrupted and only be edited later. Consequently he found cameras of a special kind with two perforations which, provided that they were shooting in panoramic, would enable the film-makers to use reels of 8’40 instead of 4’20. But, if technical considerations were the basis for this choice initially, the fact is that the long shots in ’Scope encourage the viewer’s eye to roam over the screen and to take aboard details that are a part of the life-style being shown. It’s understandable then that Claudine Nougaret, who also worked on the sound has said that they were as interested in the slow moments as in the action. Many of the faces are as wonderful as any painted by Van Gogh and repay study because, as inhabitants of a world that is slipping away as village communities dwindle in size, these are people so close to the earth that they could never be mistaken for urban folk. I would never have guessed how completely the wide screen turns this into a cinematic experience but, having seen it, I feel certain that a TV screening of Modern Life would be a pale echo of what it is when seen in the cinema.
See (Cont.)
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.