Daens
Directed by Stijn Coninx
Academy Twin, Sydney
Reviewed by Frank Enright
Nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Foreign Film", Daens is a powerful film built on a solid story. There's no Hollywood glitter sprinkled all over this production; its power lies in its simplicity.
Daens is not a period piece complete with designer costumes, but a provoking drama that transports you back to the grubby lives of the working class in industrialised Belgium in the late 19th century.
As an example of the detail, director Stijn Coninx was not content to film the factory scenes on a mocked-up set, but took cast and crew to Poland, filming in recently closed factories - which offers an insight into the awful conditions which inspired the birth of Solidarity in the 1980s.
Daens, according to mainstream film formula, doesn't have a chance of box office success. There's no sex, little romance, no gratuitous violence and no sickly happy ending. But it is a success. The cinematography is excellent, it is well acted and it embodies the great hope for humanity: the indomitableness of the human spirit and the inspiration of youth. Daens impresses itself on the memory.
Set in Aalst, the provincial and newly industrialised Belgium town, Daens paints a picture of the misery suffered by men, women and children labouring for 13 hours a day in appalling conditions. In order to be internationally competitive, working conditions are worsened further (sounds familiar). In Britain, three workers operate four spinning machines as opposed to one each in Aalst. The introduction of the British system causes more deaths at work and further grinds down the weary workers, some of whom are as young as six.
A young woman worker, Nette (ably played by Antje de Boeck in her first movie), launches a spontaneous strike. Father Daens, a Catholic priest with radical views inspired by the 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum (which enunciated the Roman Catholic position on social justice amid the industrial revolution and was seen by conservative Catholics as dangerously revolutionary), intervenes. Writing in his brother's newspaper, he decries working conditions in the factories, earning himself the scorn of the ruling class and the local conservative Catholic party.
At the same time the demand for universal suffrage for those over 25 years gains momentum and eventually triumphs. Daens, with the support of the Liberals, Socialists and the local working class, is elected to parliament. The story then follows the attempts of the rich and powerful, led by King Leopold II, to destroy him.
For me, the strongest character is Nette. Opposed to injustice and not afraid to speak out, Nette bravely takes on the establishment. Inspired by Daens' sermons on social justice and his fiery denunciations of the rich factory owners, she comes to recognise the socialists as fellow fighters and not the enemy. When Daens falters, it is Nette, at the head of an army of young workers, who drives him on.
The film, based on the novel Pieter Daens by Louis Paul Boon, skips along at a good pace, but at the cost of a rather sketchy development of its characters.
However, there are no distracting subplots and no hidden meanings to leave you scratching your head in wonder as you emerge into 20th century reality. Not only "politically correct", Daens is good entertainment, sweeping you along to the last. Give Hollywood the flick; be invigorated by Daens, you'll be the richer for it.