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Inspired by Roger Ebert's list of great movies, I watched Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher / The Butcher.
The Butcher is a deceptively simple film. It takes place in a seemingly idyllic small French village. It begins with a festive wedding in which the entire village fits into the modest wedding hall. Then, with apparently straightforward storytelling characteristic of Hitchcock, sinister forces start to creep in.
The film revolves around the curious and perplexing relationship between the village's headmistress, Helene, and its butcher, Popaul.
Helene, played by Stephane Audran (Chabrol's wife at the time) is hardly your average village schoolteacher (particularly 40 years ago). Yes, she commands the devotion of her pupils and respect of their parents, but she is also an alluring blonde beauty who casually leaves a Gauloises dangling seductively from her lips, and who can sit in a lotus posture as easily as she can knock back a few glasses of champagne or scarf down a plate full of choice red meat.
Both Helene and Popaul are recovering from trauma. Helene came to the village years before to recover from a heartbreaking relationship. Popaul has recently returned from a lengthy career in the military in which he was immersed in brutal carnage in Algeria and Indochina. And before that he had a traumatic relationship with his father, which drove him into the army in the first place.
A central theme in the film is humans' innate, atavistic savagery, as well as our innate desire to transcend these primal urges. Before the wedding that kicks off the film, the opening credits appear over Cro-Magnon cave paintings. Later, Helene takes her children on a field trip to these caves and the question is raised whether Cro-Magnon men could adapt to our lives today.
WARNING: "" spoilers below
Similarly, is it possible for Popaul to adapt to life back in the village after the savagery of war? He seeks redemption in the arms of Helene, but she is seeking her own redemption in a chaste life committed to her pupils.
In repressing her own desire and rejecting Popaul's, Helene inadvertently sparks his bloodlust and she becomes an unwitting femme fatale. As Helene and Popaul's platonic relationship progresses, the bodies of murdered women start to appear around the village. Helene witnesses these events with a combination of Buddha-like detachment, shock, and perverse attraction. Popaul's reversion to the most base of his primitive urges compensates for Helene's denial of her own urges. Why else does she not turn Popaul in when she first suspects him?
After the film's tragic climax, a shocked Helene sits for a long time like a Buddha at the bank of a river. She has been unable to dive back headlong into the river of life. But she is no Buddha either. She cannot fully transcend her basic desires. We leave her torn. Torn between the base and the transcendent, like most of us.
In repressing her own desire and rejecting Popaul's, Helene inadvertently sparks his bloodlust and she becomes an unwitting femme fatale. As Helene and Popaul's platonic relationship progresses, the bodies of murdered women start to appear around the village. Helene witnesses these events with a combination of Buddha-like detachment, shock, and perverse attraction. Popaul's reversion to the most base of his primitive urges compensates for Helene's denial of her own urges. Why else does she not turn Popaul in when she first suspects him?
After the film's tragic climax, a shocked Helene sits for a long time like a Buddha at the bank of a river. She has been unable to dive back headlong into the river of life. But she is no Buddha either. She cannot fully transcend her basic desires. We leave her torn. Torn between the base and the transcendent, like most of us.
Chabrol's wonderful simple - yet by no means easy - directing occasionally spills over into a lack of finesse.
WARNING: "" spoilers below
For example, pale, cheap ketchup-like blood, and the inexplicable way in which the blood pouring from Popaul's open wound fails to soil Helene's hands or dress after she has carried him in her arms. Plus, Popaul's final mea culpa, although somewhat poetic, suffers from stilted melodrama and feels a bit wooden.
Most importantly, perhaps, The Butcher leaves us pondering several unsettling questions about the films' protagonists, and about ourselves.
8.5/10
Last edited by CelluloidChild; 04-11-13 at 01:23 PM.
What's more interesting is that Chabrol made us really live with the characters, share their fears, their doubts, repressions, feel the murderer's guilt. That's 'cause he didn't explain/impose anything, he only describes/tells the story about the darker side of human's nature 