Stéphane Brizé on The Measure of a Man

We hear from Director Stéphané Brizé about his new film, The Measure of a Man

The Measure of a Man

Tell us about how The Measure of a Man began.

My films have always dealt with the intimate without highlighting human beings in their social environment. The next step was to observe the brutality of the mechanisms and exchanges ruling our world by juxtaposing one man’s humanity – a vulnerable man with no job security – with the violence of our society. I wrote the script with Olivier Gorce, someone I’d known for a long time but whom I’d never worked with. His analysis and perspective on social and political themes are very lucid. He was the ideal travel partner for this project.

At what point did the form of the film become clear?

Quite quickly. Right from the beginning of the writing process, I knew the film would be shot with a tiny crew, and non‐professional actors would work with Vincent. I went even further and told Christophe Rossignon (the Producer) and Vincent Lindon that I wanted us to co‐produce the project by imposing a limited budget and investing the better part of our salaries in the film, while paying the crew the normal rate. Not every film can be made this way, but this one allowed it. Content, style and financing echoed one another, and I liked this coherence. There was also the affirmation that films could be made differently at a time when the industry is seriously questioning how it finances production. I also had to rethink my set design and staging, as well as my themes. This film is the fruit of necessity.

One might see your intuition to have Vincent Lindon work alongside non-professional actors as odd.

I’ve had the idea for this sort of clash for a long time now. I had already filmed non‐ professional actors in tiny roles, and every time I had the feeling that I was getting closer to a truth – which is what interests me the most in my work. I had to push this system even further by throwing an experienced actor into a cast of non‐professionals. The idea was to bring Vincent Lindon to uncharted waters in terms of his acting.

How did you find them?

Many of the roles corresponded to specific jobs: the security guards, the banker, the staff at the unemployment office, the cashiers, etc. Coralie Amédéo, the Casting Director, first looked for people who worked at the same jobs as their characters. I was blown away by the people I met. I doubt they can do what actors do – but I don’t think any actor is capable of doing what they can do. It is fascinating to see people walk up to a filmmaker and Casting Director, in an office they’re completely unfamiliar with, and impose their crude and powerful truth with mind‐blowing authority. Where does their ability to be completely themselves in front of a camera come from? It’s a mystery that continues to fascinate me.

How do technical aspects – and the image, more precisely – fit into your setup?

First, I chose to take on a cinematographer who had only made documentaries. I wanted someone who was used to being completely autonomous with framing, focussing and aperture. I worked with Éric Dumont, a young director of photography, who was barely 30 years old and had never shot a fiction film. I would tell him very precisely about the point of view of the scene and let him translate that into a composition. At that point, he became a full‐on actor in the scene because, based on what he was framing, he gave it one meaning or another. What interested me was Thierry / Vincent’s point of view. He’s at the centre of the story. Whatever he sees and hears is what interests me. That’s why I sometimes film him for a long time, even when he isn’t necessarily the motivating agent of the scene. I film him like a boxer getting punched without necessarily filming the person punching him. That was, incidentally, what fuelled the choice of cinemascope, since I sometimes needed to show what was happening across from or next to Thierry.

The Measure of a Man

Would you call this a political film?

Yes. “Political” in the sense of “organization of the polis” or city. I looked at the life of a man who gave his body, his time, and his energy, to a company for 25 years before being left on the sidelines because his bosses decide to make the same product in another country with cheaper labour. This man is not kicked out because he didn’t do his job well. He’s kicked out because some people want to make more money. Thierry is the mechanical consequence of a few invisible shareholders whose bank accounts needed a boost. He is the face of the unemployment statistics we hear about every day in the news.

They might take up two lines in the paper, but behind them are human tragedies. On the other hand, there was never any question of using tear‐jerking clichés either. Thierry is a normal man – even though the idea of a normal man has taken a beating these past years – in a brutal situation: he has been unemployed for 20 months since his factory shut down, and is now obliged to accept just about any job he can get. And when this job places the individual in a morally unacceptable situation, what can he do? Stay and be an accomplice of an unfair system, or leave and return to a precarious and unstable life? That is the heart of the film: a man’s place in a system.

The Measure of a Man is released on Fri 3 Jun. Head here to find out more and book tickets.

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