The Kid with a Bike

I apologize in advance for the intellectual autism, for which others have a patent on FilmBooster, but The Kid with a Bike evoked it in me and I can no longer keep it inside. I am of the opinion that our existence in the world is based on symbolic matter, which we call reality, and movement in this matter is governed by the keys of pre-understanding, attitudes, values and re-presentations that allow us to a) understand the world, b) belong to a group of those who understand it the same or similarly (this sort of strange gang is then called "society"). This is how the French philosopher Louis Althusser defines ideology. The fact that we see the ideologies of others and do not see our own is not the result of not having any, but rather that we perceive our version as a completely natural condition of our own social existence (it is "more real for us than reality itself," to paraphrase my favorite Slovenian team SK Slavoj Žižek). Films such as The Kid with a Bike and A Separation are unique in that they can transfer a fragment of an "unprejudiced" situation to the screen, during which one can realize how one composes and distorts the image of reality. If The Kid with a Bike had been filmed by Northerners, there would probably be some victimization of the protagonist, who would be a victim of social conditions (which is understandable in a culture based on the values of strong social solidarity). An uncompromising analyst like Haneke would focus on the pathology of behavior and derive from it the pathology of modern society. But the Dardenns' veristic approach is that we do not find any similar support in The Kid with a Bike, we are constantly forced to reconsider our attitudes, we do not have the opportunity to run to classic (social, class, religious) explanations of why the characters behave the way they behave - the boy initially seems like a victim, but later shows a chilling activity and prevents us from being emotionally moved by his purity (paradoxically, the fact that he does not do evil out of material greed does not make him much cleaner and more trustworthy, but rather raises the question of his ability to emotionally manipulate - similarly to how others try to manipulate him). We are in it with the characters - relatively free in their choices, exposed to the uncertainty of such freedom. Like A Separation, this film is fascinating with the free flow of meaning, moral impartiality and a completely precise capture of aggravated and everyday situations. If social drama is of key importance in today's world burdened by dominant versions of reality and activated patterns of perception, it is in this field - as a reminder that we live in a completely relative world, which we can seize through ideological re-presentation, but parts of which will always remain a "symbolic surplus" (an apparition) that escapes us. For me, enjoyment of the Dardenns means the experience of the changes of one's own reading of what is happening on the screen and the realization of the biased position of the interpreter (sometimes one simply tends to forget how confident one is in the "correctness" of one's position). This film is completely unique, at least for someone who only knew the Dardenns from hearsay. Moreover, it is breathtaking craftsmanship with such a well-thought-out construction that one almost completely overlooks it in absolute authenticity (but it is not a construct hanging in a vacuum like the Czech film Flower Buds). End of therapy. (23/03/2012) (less) (more)