“To Be and To Have” ( Être et avoir )
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Sight and Sound – July, 2003
Back to basis by Richard Falcon
Nicolas Philibert’s “Etre et avoir” (To Be and To Have) is the most successful
theatrical documentary feature to date in his native France. As a documentarian
Philibert is renowed for closely observed films whose accumulation of subtle insights –
whether into pupils in a school for the deaf (“Le Pays des sourds”, 1992) or life behind
the scenes in a great art gallery (“La Ville Louvre”, 1990) – have a lingering,
emotionally impact. Although his latest work’s popularity places it in the same league
as Wim Wender’ “Buena Vista Social Club” and Michael Moore’s “Bowling for
Columbine”, it is a much more unlikely success story, centring as it does on
unspectacular everyday activities – the processes of teaching and learning.
Philibert’s record of a group of 12 children between the ages of four and ten in a oneroom school serving a small community in the Auvergne is both minimalist and
intimate. At its centre is fiftysomething Georges Lopez, a quietly dedicated man who
has been a teacher for 35 years, 20 of them in this tiny school. Lopez, with his black
clothes and neatly trimmed grey goatee, has the still presence of a film actor – so much
so that initially audiences might be forgiven for believing they are watching a
naturalistic French drama. This is particularly the case as Philibert eschews the norm of
both vérité – the children all seem oblivious to the camera and hardly ever return its
gaze – and television documentary, giving us a minimum of information with the
exception of one brief interview with Lopez. Here the teacher talks of his work in terms
of patience and its rewards, touchstones for Philibert’s own documentary technique.
Part of the film’s pleasure undoubtedly rests in the innocent charm of the children as
they struggle with things most adults have mastered (seven coming after six, writing the
alphabet) and things many haven’t (socialisation, living together in harmony).
Philibert’s nuanced portrait is free from the “issues” – league tables, drugs, truancy –
that usually dominate the media focus on education. Instead “Etre et avoir” gets back to
basics – to the mysteries and optimism at the heart of acquiring knowledge – and
ultimately delivers a far from facile message of hope.
Richard Falcon : Was “Etre et avoir” a commission ?
Nicolas Philibert : No, it was an entirely personal project. The original idea was to do a
film about the agricultural economy, about farming bankruptcies, but then I met with
farmers and agricultural workers and the subject matter changed. For some time I‘d
wanted to make a film about learning to read. It’a an important moment in life that can
perharps be seen as a metaphor for montage : you put the letters together to make
syllabes, the syllabes together to make phrases – a building process, like film editing. So
in the end the combination of the two subject matters – the difficulties facing remote
agricultural communities and a fascination with the process of learning to read – led me
to seek out a remote rural school.
I believe you shot around 60 hours of footage. Was there initially a lot about the
community to which the children belong ?
I rejected a sociological approach from the start ; I didn’t film the village or the working
lives of the farmers, except for Julien, because he’s a pupil at the school and this was
part of his everyday life. The film isn’t a documentary about life in a village in the
Auvergne but an attempt to capture something more universal : what is it to learn, to
acquire knowledge and social skills, which are the building blocks of civilisation.
You must have been very pleased to find a man like Georges Lopez on whom to centre
the film. He strikes me as a superb teacher, patient and understanding.
I was very happy to find him. In the end I made the decision to use this particular school
after spending only half a day there. And since you can’t tell much about someone after
only half a day, there was no shooting script or outline – we began filming to see what
we were going to do, and the filming was like a continuation of our research. So the
film constructed itself as we went along and then took on its own form which carried us
along rather than us shaping it.
There are two scenes that deal with issues outside school – when M. Lopez talks to
Olivier about his sick father and to Nathalie about her communication difficulties.
How did you decide wether to introduce information about the children’home lives ?
This was discussed with the children and parents from the very beginning. I wanted to
film children at home doing their homework and this was worked out beforehand. In the
scene when M. Lopez talks to Olivier I had no idea he was going to discuss his father’s
illness, because they began by talking about Olivier’s academic performance. But at the
moment when Olivier started to cry I began to feel uncomfortable about filming. I’d
already explained to everybody that there would be a lot of film shot and relatively little
used. So the editind gave me a second chance to ask wether I should keep something
that exposed the children’s vulnerability. Such decisions weren’t taken lightly.
A lot of documentaries today are shot on DV and/or shown on television. How
important was it for you how the film would look on a big screen ? For instance,
there’s a very cinematic movement between the close-ups of the children’s faces and
the shot of the countryside.
My culture is cinema. I detest television. Television is obscene in its transparency – it’s
a place where people lay bare their lives for very little return. Cinema isn’t transparent –
it uses elements like the grain, the depth of the shot, the play of light and shadow.
Cinema is the art of ellipsis : the language is metaphorical and every film has its secrets
and mysteries.
M. Lopez describes teaching as a process that demands great patience and takes time
but is very rewarding. Is this how you feel about documentary film-making ?
The roles of the teacher and the documentary film-maker both involve the transmission
of knowledge and require patience and the ability to keep an appropriate distance from
your subject. Documentary film-making demands an aesthetic and moral distance. So
the shots of nature in the film are very important because they create a contrast between
this small class and the rest of the world. We open with the snow, the whistling wind
and the cows being herded ; we thus recognize the school as a refuge from the violence
of the world outside. The first shots you see of the school itself are the tortoises
creeping across the floor : it’s a way of saying that the viewer needs to be patient as the
film is going to take its time and will illuminate its subjects only gradually.
The children seem very comfortable with the camera. Did you work with them much
before you started filming ?
I first met the children when we chose the school and then after M. Lopez had given his
agreement we had a meeting with the children and the crew – five of us – to discuss the
plan. Then we started to film. I’d worked with children in an earlier documentary made
in a school for deaf kids and what I noticed was that far from distracting them, the
presence of the camera seemed to concentrate them. As with all of us, the camera makes
us want to look our best.
The children don’t seem obsessed with popular culture as urban children might be.
The idea was never to pull the school into the past – for instance, the school has
computers but the film of children using them was incredibly boring. So I preferred to
focus on the moments that illuminated the relationship between M. Lopez and the
children. Then in Julien’s house the television was always on, but to film we had to turn
it off.
Have you shown the film to many teachers ?
Thousands of teachers have seen it and there are various reactions. But generally they
feel their work is undervalued by society and take the film as a welcome tribute to their
profession.
What did the children think ?
They were moved, they laughed, but they didn’t talk much about it afterwards. Nathalie,
Julien and Olivier, who were shown in situations that rendered them vulnerable, seemed
even to draw strength from it. In a sense the way we made the film reflected the
children’s experience – we were filming them overcoming obstacles, while overcoming
obstacles ourselves. So we told the children we were in the same boat, both discovering
things as we went along.
Why do you think the film has been such a success with audiences ?
At the moment schools everywhere face problems, but the film conveys the message
that the situation is far from hopeless. And though it’s a documentary, it’s constructed
as a fable or fairytale in which we feel we get to know the characters well. The shots of
the landscape add to the dramatic narrative purpose, suggesting the dangers surrounding
the school.
The film derives humour from scenes like little Jojo holding his tray at head height to
reach the canteen counter.
I was always the smallest in the class so I identified with them struggling with the
photocopier and climbering up to see things. The subject of the film is how difficult it is
to grow up.
Do you wish you’d gone to this school when you were a child ?
As children we are forced to go to school. As adults we’re forbidden to return. I went to
a very different school in the city and was very unhappy. In making this film I was able
to take pleasure in school for the first time.