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swo17 wrote:I recently commented in the '80s list thread about Bresson's L'Argent, and how it shows the viciousness that we unleash purely by removing ourselves one step from face-to-face communication when we deal with each other instead through paper (i.e. currency, letter writing, bureaucracy). In this sense, Two Days, One Night is the perfect answer to L'Argent. Money is the central issue here, but we never see any of it. Instead, we get nothing but one-on-one conversations, allowing for an in-depth exploration of all of the gray areas specific to the particular situation of this film.

Upon first hearing the film's plot, you might assume that this is going to be a root-for-the-underdog-against-the-system sort of story (and there is a little bit of that) but as with many things in life, it's a lot more complicated than that. Some of the people that voted to keep their bonus over keeping Sandra on may have done so out of selfishness, but most of them seem to need the bonus just as badly as she needs her job. Of course, some of these people may only think they need the money, or may only need it now because they hadn't been as responsible as they could have been with the wages they earned throughout the year. Perhaps this is even true of Sandra. Either way, Sandra needs a job now, sure, but does she need this one? And even if you sympathize with her situation, if you legitimately need the bonus yourself, to what extent do you work against your own interests by cooperating with her mission to contact all of her coworkers over the weekend? There are no easy answers here, and this is just the sort of scenario that the Dardennes excel at presenting.

By coincidence, I happened to precede my viewing of this film with that Mark Wahlberg movie Fear (mistaking it for domino's recommendation of another film with the same name, despite his always referring to it as the one with Ally Sheedy!). That movie is all about processing extreme swings of new information ("He's a dreamboat," "No wait, he's a brute..." "Oh, but he's sorry about it," "Except also, he's a murderer!") but doesn't exactly shoot for subtlety or authenticity. Two Days, One Night is strikingly similar in putting its heroine through the ringer in this way, but it unsurprisingly feels a lot more true to life. While it's somewhat predictable that some of the people Sandra encounters throughout the weekend will side with her and that others will side against her, the real substance of the film lies in how she takes each new bit of news--how much of a rush it is to hear that even just a single person is rooting for you, how soul-crushing it is to be taken down a notch (or perhaps worse, to be brushed off by someone that you assumed would be on your side), and more generally, how much of a toll it takes to fight so hard for yourself. Some more in spoilers:

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A couple of moments here seemed to play the stakes a little too high (the fist fight, or the woman who leaves her controlling husband--more believably, she probably would have just lied to her husband about how she was going to vote and then blamed it on her coworkers if Sandra got her job back; as it is, it almost feels like this woman is trying to hijack the movie from Sandra) but, curiously enough, the most exaggerated dramatic moment here (the is-she-really-doing-this suicide attempt followed by a miraculous moment of joyous hope that prompts Sandra to instantly confess what she has done, then a hard cut to her recovery bed in the hospital) struck me as one of the film's most successful, and a more darkly comic one than what I've come to expect from the Dardennes. Or actually, I don't know if it was so much comical as it was just such an atrocious turn of events that I couldn't help but laugh at it. In any case, I think this moment may have worked more than the other two I mentioned because the film really commits to it, as opposed to maybe feeling tacked on to add a bit of variety to the numerous necessary visits.

A great ending too. Happiness isn't about getting what you (think you) want, but about standing back up again, with hope, after having been knocked down.

swo17 wrote:You might want to keep that one down toward the bottom of your pile. (<---Don't cross this smiley, he has a dark side)

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hearthesilence wrote:And what a great ending indeed. A damning indictment of capitalism, there was no way she could surrender herself to that deal, not after everything she witnessed and the way she was traumatized over and over again. Not so easy when economic consequences are experienced rather than witnessed at a distance, much less on a sheet of numbers.

I don't know that I'd call it an indictment of capitalism per se. I mean, Sandra's boss has insulated himself enough from the ground level that he's started to see people merely as numbers, but even if he were more empathetic to his workers, he'd still be faced with certain marketplace realities. I don't think this film is saying at all that we need to tear down the existing system because it would be more "fair" for everyone to be able to keep whatever job they want forever. That would be a dubious solution where all the change is external to the individual. In contrast, this film is all about finding inner strength and happiness regardless of your circumstances or whether everything goes your way.

Jeff wrote:The entire plot really does seem a bit contrived, real-life parallels or not. It's riveting anyway. I've seen several critics compare Sandra's weekend appeals to Gary Cooper's recruitment drive in High Noon, and it does indeed have that same sense mounting urgency, tension, and desperation. Marion Cotillard is fantastic, realistically navigating the ebb and flow of confidence and determination, discouragement and despair. I too loved the ending, for exactly the reasons swo described. This may be second-tier Dardenne, but that means it still better than 90% of the films this year.

ianthemovie wrote:My apologies for needing to clarify something that seems to have been obvious to everyone else:

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Sandra turns down the offer from her boss to keep her job at the end of the movie, right? I had trouble keeping up with the subtitles in the final scene when she's on the phone with her husband; I think she says something like "It's going to be hard but we'll manage." The idea being that she'll need to find another job, but it will be worth it because she will have retained her integrity and not chosen to screw over a fellow worker. Her decision to "dump" her manipulative boss seemed to me to parallel her female co-worker's decision to break up with her (implicitly abusive) husband. Am I reading this correctly?

knives wrote:I never would have thought they'd allow their early work to be available. That extra is almost more exciting than the film proper.