It's been said that a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet. But deeper minds than your average sloganeering pundit have pondered staying true to one's beliefs in the face of faith-shaking trauma.
People like Victor Hugo, whose poem How Good Are The Poor? is the inspiration for The Snows Of Kilimanjaro -- a movie that is not about travel to Africa, but rather, about how a lifelong French union man and socialist reconciles being robbed and beaten by one of the working stiffs he's spent his life ostensibly defending.
The movie is obviously applicable to France, where a generation accustomed to the Western world's most generous work benefits is handing off to a younger generation that must accept far less.
But it also applies here, where many a labour dispute is resolved by "grandfathering" (ie. less money and benefits for new hires). The Snows Of Kilimanjaro translates perfectly well as a portrait of Boomers who pat themselves on the back for past glories and the reality of a resentful younger demographic on their heels.
The Snows Of Kilimanjaro opens at a blue-collar workplace in Marseilles, where outsourcing has forced a layoff of 20 workers, names pulled randomly out of a hat. In an outwardly principled act, union head Michel (Jean-Pierre Darrousin) includes his name, though he isn't required to, and is among the casualties.
But some layoffs hit harder than others. Michel takes a generous early retirement while his wife Marie Claire (Ariane Ascaride) continues to work as a part-time housecleaner for seniors. They have disposable income, and an upcoming trip to Africa, a celebratory vacation chipped in for by friends and family.
Meanwhile, new hire Christophe (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) gets virtually no severance, and struggles to support his two young brothers, who've been abandoned by their gallivanting mother (Karole Rocher).
Michel's mistake: he invites all the laid-off workers to his retirement party, including the resentful Christophe, who sees affluence he'll never have.
What follows is a home invasion, in which Michel, Marie Claire, her sister (Maryline Canto) and brother-in-law (Gerard Meylan) are tied to chairs and beaten for their vacation money, credit cards and ATM PIN numbers. When sheer chance leads to Christophe's arrest, the previously furious Michel comes to realize his legal revenge means the ruination of not one, but three lives.
Having set up the moral quandary, director Jean-Pierre Darrousin then sets about having characters act out various political roles. Michel's best friend, and fellow victim, Raoul plays out the "mugged liberal" cliché, going from feed-the-poor to hang-'em faster than the bullet train to Paris.
But Michel (and by her own devices, Marie Claire), fall prey to their conscience and pity. The contemptuous Christophe doesn't make it easy for Michel to act out his what-would-Jesus-do moment. But act he, and she, do, in parallel acts of self-sacrifice that might seem hollow by dint of this being fiction, and self-congratulatory, generation-wise.
The Snows Of Kilimanjaro works worst as an apologia for Baby Boomers. It works best, however, as a study of one man's shaken belief in his own goodness, and his principled last-ditch effort to do one truly good thing. Food for thought all around.
