A stereotype reformed; a stereotype re-formed
Les oiseaux chantent pour le futur, pas pour le passé
Colette is a Guardian film, directed by Anthony Giacchino and produced by Alice Doyard, which took the Oscar for best short documentary in 2022. It tells how Lucie Fouble, a young researcher working on a biographical dictionary of the 9,000 French Resistance deportees to Germany in World War II, goes to Nordhausen in Germany with Colette Marin-Catherine, whose brother, Jean-Pierre, was one of those 9,000 and died at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. There, they re-awaken, and then reconcile, Colette’s memories of her brother. It’s a simple, tragic story of grieving over losses wrought by warfare.
Yet, in recalling the past, Colette asks questions about the present: about that when the film was made and that which we are living right now. In 2020, they concerned what Europe is about. Today, they’re about what Europe will be. Rafael Behr, a journalist with The Guardian, wrote an article in which he mentions Colette’s view of the futility of borders in the modern Europe:
The Europe we have now is just one of many that might have crawled out of the abyss in 1945. It describes a choice: cooperation and integration over nationalism and militarism. How probable was that outcome? Chaos and war were the precedents. It was not obvious to Colette as a teenager that she would live to see the frontier between France and Germany dissolved. ‘Now it seems normal that the era of frontiers is obsolete,’ she says. ‘You can try to stop people, but you cannot stop money crossing. You cannot stop a virus. What is it for, this border? You tell me.’
Colette deals with events in the year 1945. It was made in 2020. It is a retrospective from the recent past on events much further in the past. Colette asks Lucie why on Earth she wants to write her dictionary, and make this journey to Nordhausen: “How will that move you forward, enrich what you’re writing about?” “It’ll help us pass Jean-Pierre’s story on to others,” Lucie, age 17, answers, “To not forget the past.” Colette, age 92, tearfully replies, “It took me so very long to forget …” Does she mean there’s no value in passing Jean-Pierre’s story on to the new generation?
At the end of the film, Colette does something extraordinary. She takes from her finger a ring that Jean-Pierre had been making but hadn’t finished when he was arrested. It bears the faint inscription J. P. She gives it to Lucie. A keepsake; a symbol; a talisman: so that the story of her brave brother should continue as an example to others, not simply in her own heart but in the hearts of the new generation. Not that they should carry with them rancour at what happened to Jean-Pierre; but that, through his memory, others should be spared his fate – as Lucie says early in the film, to prevent what happened from happening again. In that moment neither woman could know what the world would experience two short years later.
Today, the trauma of 1945 is happening again. At the end of her life’s span, Colette confronted her disdain for Germans and what they did to her family. It was a hard journey for her, one she shared with us in that film. But, in Ukraine, it’s a journey that, for many, is merely beginning.
The bombings, the murders, the rapes, the looting, the wanton destruction, the outright badness of the Russian attack, as a political measure, as an act of geopolitical manoeuvring, as an act of inhumane outrage, as an encapsulation of everything that could conceivably be levelled in accusation against the evillest of nations, of regimes, of soldiers or of citizens, whether they encourage or delight or silently acquiesce in that nation’s orgy of diabolical debauchery, all these things entrench Russia’s reputation further into an inescapable mire of its own making as each day goes by.
They write from Georgia that some Russian émigrés lack respect towards those who opened their border to them; I hear similar tales of aggression from Lithuania. I so want to understand the good Russians’ dilemma, yet there are few Russian voices of protest even from outside Russia. It gets harder to resist crude stereotypes, when many stories that one hears echo precisely those stereotypes. I still receive invitations from the Russian cultural outreach in Brussels, to attend concerts, talks and films. I baulk at going for not knowing what I’d say in small talk, let alone for being seen going into the place. A Ukrainian resident of Bucha spoke on social media of her pain at the horrors committed there. Her measured tones surprised me: she has every reason to be bitter at what Russia did to her town. Yet, she simply asked, “Where are all these ‘good’ Russians that people speak of? Where are their protests against their government? Why do they not speak out?” LinkedIn took down her post. Many Russians had objected to it. She asks forlorn, “Why is it unprofessional to speak the truth?” As she embarks on a journey not unlike Colette’s journey since 1945, she can offer a resounding answer to Colette’s question of 2020, “What is it for, this border?”
I find it hard to put on a cold, matter-of-fact face in light of the events of 1945; still less those of 2022. Thomas More might have put it, “It’s not that I care, but that I care.” Colette is frank about her relationship to her brother: they were in no way close to each other. She admired him, but she knew he viewed her as his silly sister. In the moment when she says it, one maybe wishes they’d played together continually, were bosom buddies. But, no: he was 17, she was 14, and that’s a lot of years at that age. Would it have served the story better if their relationship had been picture-book cosy?
One of the final shots in The Guardian’s film is at Mittelbau-Dora. Colette notices the twittering of the birds. In a later interview, she recalls the moment poignantly. Harbour no hatred, says she, for that will bring nothing. The birds, they sing for the hopes of the future, and not for the horrors of the past.
Living memory does exactly that: it lives. The story of Colette is important to Colette not because Colette loved her brother; but because Colette loved her brother. It’s not about what a scriptwriter would have couched her relationship as, but what she in fact did couch it as. And, if it needs saying, the story of Colette is important to us and our feelings towards Ukraine for showing that we don’t need to be especially close to something to be capable of caring about it. How we feel about it is not about what it is, it’s about what we feel.
You can view the Guardian’s documentary Colette here. The closing ‘credits shot’ below was directed by Mme. Marin-Catherine herself.
You may also wish to view this interview with the director, producer and subjects of the film, together with the head of Guardian’s video section, Charlie Phillips. The video conference format is a little tiring at times, not to mention the phone calls that come in at the end, but it takes off like a rocket when Lucie and Colette themselves speak (in English/French, with sequential interpreting). Interestingly, they do speak to the film’s impact on the future world, albeit at a time when the Ukraine war is a yet unimagined eventuality. Colette’s words at the end of the film are re-echoed - the birds sing for the future: