All language subtitles for Liberté et patrie (2002)

When did he get the commission?

I think
it was around the 11th of September,

when everyone was saying,
"Nobody ever thought of that!"

Yes.

But you can't expect the word "think"
to be understood in the same way.

More the opposite.

You learn the word "think,"

or rather how to use it,

under circumstances
you don't learn to describe.

Ask someone
to give a look of doubt or pleasure,

and then hide his face
so all you can see are the eyes.

The eyes are where the expression
seems concentrated.

You'll be surprised
at how differently the expression

can be perceived.

You see emotions, even sadness,

hidden joy, boredom.
But you can't reach any conclusion.

It's not the appearance that changes,

it's the interpretation.

Look at that person,

and picture him.

Representations depend on will.

Representations, not images.

Let's look at the difference.

Trying to see something.

Trying to picture something.

In the first case, you sort of say,

"Look right there."

And in the second,

"Close your eyes."

You could say that the sound
you imagine

is in a different space
than the sound you hear.

Vaud

is a country of passivity

and a country of resistance.

Vaud forms

a harmonious, complete whole.

It could live on its own,
with no need for the rest of the world.

Vaud is a whole, a real country.

People say, "the Vaud country."

It's better than a canton,
or a province.

It's something else.
And that country's other half,

its beloved...
- Its fianc�e...

...is France.
The other half, the opposite.

If you venture
across the big puddle...

If you venture
across the big puddle...

...or go up to Paris,
like the people from Marseille in 1789.

You must take care
not to forget anything.

You mustn't forget
that the French were the liberators.

You must take care
not to forget anything.

You mustn't forget
that the French freed the country

from the Alemanns.
- Right.

With the left-over soldiers
Napoleon had.

It was the only time
the tyrant of Europe

freed instead of enslaving.

Mainly so no one
would touch his buddy Dufour.

Still, there were
all those trees of freedom.

And even today, fatherland
and freedom embrace on the flag.

So can we put the question now?

I think we have to.

Why Aim� Pache,

who is never mentioned in art history,
and never will be?

Why did the Expo people
commission that big painting from him?

You have to start at the beginning.

Take a walk at Granges-Sainte-Marie,
past M�tabief.

Yes.

So it's between the Orbe Valley
and Granges-Sainte-Marie,

where the border passes through
fir trees along the future

Lausanne-Paris railroad line...
- And Paris-Lausanne! - Exactly.

...that the future painter
of the big painting was born.

It still hangs in the back room
of the Caf� du March� in Rolle,

at Manigley's place.

In those days

cinema was dying.

In the villages,
they still showed its last reels.

Aim� Pache's mother...

...whose brother had run
the "Eldorado" in Geneva...

...clearly remembered the feeling
that the picture

was, above all, mystery.

The father was an ex-trade unionist
from La-Chaux-de-Fonds

who'd been in
the Communist International,

along with Humbert-Droz and old Forel.

After the Moscow trials,
he gave up the workers' struggle

and married the daughter
of a railroad man. A girl from Savoy.

He just said, "I'm leaving."
- She just said, "Take me with you."

He just said, "The bed's narrow."
- She just said, "We'll manage."

And the two of them lived humbly
on the future Paris-Lausanne line.

I already said that.
- Not exactly that way.

They immediately started to squabble

over who'd watch the tracks
and who'd go to the caf�.

Once Aim� Pache went to the Casino
in Yverdon with his father.

There he saw his first naked woman,

and that did something to him.

It wasn't the woman,
it was already the painting.

Could be.

As an old revolutionary, the father
didn't believe in the power of images,

but more in words.

Father, I want to write
to my girlfriend.

Go ahead.
- I want to say...

I don't know how to put it.

...that we missed the train,
but we still had a good time...

Write, "I don't know how to put it,
but I want to say

that we missed the train..."

But that's what I said.
- Exactly.

Is that how you write?
- Yes, that's how you write.

What if I run out of things to say?

Then you stop writing.
- But I have to finish up,

say goodbye, that all's well.
- So write, "I have to finish up,

goodbye, all's well."

Father, can you disguise a message?
- Sure.

What's the best way?

Stick as close to the truth
as you can.

Father,

what's the best way of knowing
if someone is trustworthy?

You ask him,
"What have you read?"

If he answers,
"Homer, Shakespeare, Balzac,"

then he's not trustworthy.

But if he answers,
"Depends what you mean by "reading',"

then there's hope.

What does the wind do
when it's not blowing?

The past is never dead,
but the years pass.

The father is buried at Tannay,
the mother at Yvoire,

on the other side of the lake.

Facing each other in death.

Freedom and fatherland.

All alone now,
Aim� Pache starts painting in oils.

He doesn't know how, he's learning.

First, a tree.

And another tree.

Then fruit, then blood,
the blood of the country,

of Abraham Jean Daniel Davel.

Content and form.

Fatherland and freedom,

as he saw them from his window,
out over the rooftops.

The father here, the mother over there,

and in between, the waterline
he'll later learn from Rothko.

He thinks
you have to do things the hard way,

because experience is the only truth.

And you have to get it wrong a lot
to not get it wrong anymore.

You could say,
the eyes are freedom,

the hands are fatherland.

A spot of color
under the brush,

then another spot beside it.

They sing together
like the strings of a violin.

But they are too many for him,
and too varied.

There are all sorts of colors in nature,
but he still can't choose.

One night he dreams
his mother returns him to his father.

He discovers an old school notebook

with a mysterious sentence
from an essay:

"Neither the sun nor death
look themselves in the face."

Now that his parents are dead,
he finally understands.

How?

The notebook is full of scribbles,
but this I can read:

"A noun is proper
when it has but a single sense."

And a little farther down:

"What makes the sun the sun?"

And farther down:

"The sun is an example
of a supremely sensitive being,

because it can always disappear."

"Nature at its most natural has
what you need to get out of yourself."

And then:

"Bring nature into the picture."

Initially, he stuck with what
Kandinsky wanted.

The image
was primarily mystery and danger.

And then he goes away:
Freedom.

And then he comes back:
Fatherland.

And he goes away again.
The big city, the lights.

Following the example of his elders,
Edouard Rod,

Cingria, Ramuz and Auberjonois...

A performance in Lausanne of Sartre's
"False Noses" made his mind up.

"Poor and lost,
like flowers between the rails

in the haphazard wind of journeying,"

wrote Rilke, translated by Adamov.

In Paris he lives heroically.

Short on money, tall and skinny,

cooking in a small hotel room
on the Rue du Cherche-Midi.

Now and then
the luxury of a boiled egg.

He goes to all the exhibitions.

In the Louvre,
he copies the old masters:

Delacroix, Chardin,
the Dutch painters, C�zanne.

A picture
you could put in a death cell,

without it seeming horrible.

He mixes timidly
with the younger generation.

He's seen with
Fautrier, Hartung, Manessier...

And with Wols, the poor devil.

In a Europe not purified,
but corrupted, by suffering,

not at all exalted...
...but humiliated

by its newfound freedom,

Aim� Pache discovers his own gifts.

He asks very simple questions:

With reality shattered
by Braque and Picasso,

all that's left for the newcomer
is colors, rhythms, bits of wreckage.

It takes strength
to overcome philosophical storms

and social violence.

You have to endure
to be able to return.

Aim� Pache encounters light
and focuses it on his darkness.

He walks a lot.

The disturbing moment
when night descends,

the eyes of the streetlamps
opening with a blue shadow,

in which more and more people mingle.

Aim� Pache finds himself
in the prehistory of the visible.

One summer evening,
after a Lamoureux concert,

he notices a girl who looks like
Annabella in Ren� Clair's "14 July,"

a long dress, taking the metro.

A young girl,
in evening dress, alone in the metro.

Unheard of, such freedom!

At that time.

But not an unheard-of freedom.

He asks for her hand,
she gives him her arm.

A girl with a boy.

He decides to return home.
She accepts.

She rests her head on his shoulder,
because love is a burden.

A girl with a boy.

O return to the homeland!

O return of the one
who no longer needs to be a guest!

Aim� and his beloved
move into the Pink House,

still on the main rail line, but now
on the other side of the tunnel.

Claire's beauty is Claire herself.

"Claire" is written on her face
and in the shape of her arms.

What pleases me about her mind
is visible on her lips.

I knew that by looking at her.

O universal time, when everything
was ours and was returned to us.

O universal time, when nothing
is mute for the eyes of the child.

The Pink House, the child,

who Pache often paints as an infanta.

Note that he doesn't
call his pictures anything.

Instead, painting calls him.

And then the little girl dies,
bitten by a viper.

Gradually the mother loses it,
as they say.

One afternoon,
when Pache is in the village,

she takes the boat and disappears.

Aim� Pache gives up painting.

For a time
he takes refuge in the forest,

because there the trees
are alone and together.

Then he returns to the vineyards.

Finally at the water's edge,
at a pastor's house.

Along the France road,
as they say in those parts.

Sometimes he helps the roadmender.

It's the late '60s.

It was that summer
that he began the big painting.

To be new,
deep within that which is new.

What's reality, then?

First he puts the children in,
then the road, in one sweep.

Three paces back, three paces forward.

And the children
appear out of the night.

The road accompanies them to the left.
Feet in the fatherland,

eyes in freedom.

In a sense,
fear is the daughter of God,

redeemed on Good Friday night.
She's not beautiful,

mocked, cursed and disowned by all.

But don't get it wrong,

she watches over all mortal agony,
she intercedes for mankind.

For there's a rule and an exception.

Culture is the rule,

and art is the exception.

Everybody speaks the rule:
Cigarette, computer, T-shirt, TV,

tourism, war.

Nobody speaks the exception.
It isn't spoken,

it's written:
Flaubert, Dostoyevski.

It's composed: Gershwin, Mozart.

It's painted: C�zanne, Vermeer.

It's filmed: Antonioni, Vigo.

Or it's lived,

and then it's the art of living:
Srebenica,

Mostar, Sarajevo.

The rule
is to want the death of the exception.

So the rule for Cultural Europe

is to organize the death of the art
of living, which still flourishes.

When it's time to close the book,

I'll have no regrets.

I've seen so many people
live so badly,

and so many die so well.