“To Throw Away Is to Forget, to Pick Up Is to Remember”: Memory and Violence in Raoul Peck's L'homme sur les quais

Abstract

RAouL peck hAs MADe A consiDeRABLe contRiBution Haitian art and filmmaking by demonstrating an unquestioned commitment Haiti and producing groundbreaking work.1 Peck is recognised as preeminent chronicler of Haiti's ordeal with tyranny.2 His film L'homme sur les quais (The Man on the Wharf, 1993) was the first Haitian film be distributed in the United States, and his film techniques are interwoven with distinctly Haitian plotline that serves foreground the island's history and cultural imagination.The history of the Francois Duvalier regime (1957-1971) serves as the backdrop for the fictional story of L'homme sur les quais. Characterised by years of violence and hardship, the Duvalier dictatorship endured for two main reasons. First, the regime enjoyed impunity because during the Cold War security interests overrode American concerns about human rights violations.3 In addition, Papa Doc survived because he consolidated power by eliminating the faintest attempt at opposition.4 His power derived from a coercion network, made up of the Macoutes, the Haitian army, right-wing paramilitary groups, and rural magistrates. These all helped to prevent civilian resistance authoritarian rule and repress political opposition activity, while censoring or castigating any critique of the state.5 Although the regime was punctuated by rare periods of amnesty, thousands of Haitians fled the island.6 These numbers underline the turmoil of the Duvalier era and suggest lasting negative ramifications for Haitian economic development.However, while the major themes of L'homme sur les quais - which include exile, violence, gender relations, trauma, resistance, and subversion - evoke the Duvalier era, Peck does not simply document the regime. Rather, the expe- rience of the central protagonist, Sarah, evolves into micro-history of life in 1960 during this dictatorship, and becomes single invented strand within verifiable fabric of pain and violence. Peck invents characters based on plausible living figures, such as Duvalier's henchmen, the Tonton Macoutes, local policemen, families, and dissidents, who face an imagined, but probable conflict as result of the antagonistic nature of the regime.7Paul Grainge states that texts of memory . . . invoke the past in specific ways and for specific ends.8 Paul Storey surmises that is the play of the past in the present which makes memory, and [is] always potentially political.9 Therefore, the process and presence of memory reveal the political position of the filmmaker. The set of choices made by Peck condenses and highlights his political views. Through its artistic, critical and emotional creation, this film has the potential heal the wounds caused by the painful past and become site of political production and negotiation.Filmic choices that will be covered in this essay include the narrative structure (the editing, ellipses, anachronisms, temporality), the mise-en-scene (mood, lighting, sound, dominant colours, shots), and character representation (clothing, behaviour, dialogue).Narrative structurePlot structure and contentPeck's film does not consist of linear progression of events. Instead, it operates on three different juxtaposed temporal levels. The first level replays various events leading up the death of young Sarah's father; the second, involving the majority of action in the film, reconstructs the events which take place from the death of Sarah's parents until Janvier's shooting; and the third and final temporal level refers the indeterminate era in which an adult Sarah retrospectively narrates this traumatic period of her childhood.Peck's film takes place in the past and is wholly defined by the act of remembering. His grown-up protagonist, Sarah, casts retrospective gaze on her life during the Duvalier dictatorship provide testimony of her childhood experience and the death of her parents. …