Des hommes et des dieux by Xavier Beauvois

Abstract

The third edition underwent several revisions, one of which is the replacement of the explication de texte with the commentaire composé in order to better reflect pedagogical trends in France. The increased clarity with which the commentaire composé is presented, including titled subsections, may well facilitate students’ comprehension of the sample text and their ability to construct a similar analysis. Another change to content in the third edition is a new text on ecology as the sample dissertation text. The relevance of this topic in both American and European societies will hopefully increase students’ interest and participation as they progress through one of the more difficult chapters of the book. A final update worth noting is the mention of E-mail practices in the correspondence chapter. Addressing E-mail usage is an essential addition to this chapter, as many students’ initial questions about correspondence concern such practices. However, the information is minimal, and sample E-mails would be useful and interesting counterpoints to the sample letters. Tâches d’encre lends itself to a variety of teaching contexts and would offer valuable structure to a traditional composition course, a course fusing composition , grammar and/or culture, or a writing workshop that centers on peer-review and editing. The wide variety of genres covered provides variety as well as an indepth presentation of writing in French; the presence of sample texts and ample relevant vocabulary inspires confidence in intermediate students in need of guided practice, and the focus on providing students with the tools to improve their own writing is conducive to a student-centered classroom. Ohio State University Elizabeth Bishop Film edited by Michèle Bissière BEAUVOIS, XAVIER, réal. Des hommes et des dieux. Int. Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin. Armada, 2010. When Xavier Beauvois’s Des hommes et des dieux came out in France in fall 2010, it met with unexpected box-office success. Playing for weeks in both art and popular theaters, French film critics had only praise for the film, which took the Grand Prix du jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and won a César for best picture in February 2011. Des hommes et des dieux is a film about eight Catholic monks who live an extremely austere life in a mountain monastery of Algeria, serving God and the people of the small Islamic community there. Clocking in at two hours, the documentary-style film moves at a very slow pace, methodically recording the monks’ day-to-day activities which involve much chanting and prayer, presented almost always in their entirety, studying religious texts (one of the monks reads, writes and speaks Arabic and has a deep appreciation of the Koran), providing free medical care to the local inhabitants, and working the land and selling the fruits of their labor at the market. They are also integrated into the rituals of Islam, as they participate in local religious ceremonies and celebrations in the village. But an ominous tone is set from beginning of the film when the monks are in conference with some local Muslim men frightened by the murders of a favorite imam and an eighteen year-old girl who was not wearing a 612 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 hijab. “We don’t know who is killing who,” they lament. Shortly thereafter in one of the film’s few violent scenes, men empty out of cars at a construction site shooting and slitting the throats of Croatian immigrant workers. When the authorities bring the news of the slaughter to the monastery, they strongly encourage the monks to accept their armed protection. Though visibly shaken, the monks refuse the offer. For the rest of the film, we follow each monk in his struggle to decide whether to stay or to leave the monastery. Ultimately, all decide to stay and all but two are killed, beheaded presumably by a terrorist group. Based on the true story of the Tibhirine monks who were abducted and murdered in Algeria in 1996 as the civil war was raging there, the film is not about really about the then current political situation in Algeria in which Algerian citizens could not be sure if Islamist fundamentalists or...