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Claire Denis's No Fear, No Die (1990)
Working in an almost cinéma vérité style, Claire Denis drops her camera into the seedy underworld of cockfighting. For 90 minutes we’re no mere observers in this violent milieu. We brush shoulders with these characters. We live and breathe their existence in a way that, through oppressive repetition in which the days and time bleed together, feels inescapable. They, these characters, by place and circumstance alone, all have something profound to say about the world in which we live. This is particularly true of the marginalized immigrants, Dah and Jocelyn, who serve as the nucleus of the film.
Dah, in the first scene of the film, recites the quote, “Every human being, whatever his race, nationality, religion, or politics, is capable of anything and everything.” He says this immediately after we’re given the same quote with an attribution to the author, Chester Hines. When Dah utters it, however, he says he can’t remember where he read it. It’s as if Denis front loads her film with its conceit, as if to say right at the top that these words, these ideas, while inarguable, take on a completely different meaning depending on who you are, where you’re from and where you exist.
Working in an almost cinéma vérité style, Claire Denis drops her camera into the seedy underworld of cockfighting. For 90 minutes we’re no mere observers in this violent milieu. We brush shoulders with these characters. We live and breathe their existence in a way that, through oppressive repetition in which the days and time bleed together, feels inescapable. They, these characters, by place and circumstance alone, all have something profound to say about the world in which we live. This is particularly true of the marginalized immigrants, Dah and Jocelyn, who serve as the nucleus of the film.
Dah, in the first scene of the film, recites the quote, “Every human being, whatever his race, nationality, religion, or politics, is capable of anything and everything.” He says this immediately after we’re given the same quote with an attribution to the author, Chester Hines. When Dah utters it, however, he says he can’t remember where he read it. It’s as if Denis front loads her film with its conceit, as if to say right at the top that these words, these ideas, while inarguable, take on a completely different meaning depending on who you are, where you’re from and where you exist.