Les Revenants (They Came Back) (2004)
The dead return. But it is not brains or human flesh they crave: simply their old jobs and lives. Philosophic zombie movie? Directed by Robin Campillo.
This film focuses on a town in France where the dead from the last 10 years have suddenly returned. Apparently it is going on throughout the world, but the movie doesn't venture far outside of the town (and we quickly forget that there's a possible wider implication for the outside world). We follow three couples: an old man whose wife returns, a younger woman who has her husband return, and a young couple who have to deal with the return of their six year old son.
The dead are not flesh eating beasts. They don't have gaping head wounds or appear really appear different. They are slower, both mentally and physically, and their body temperatures are lower, but that's about it. However, they don't appear to be able to sleep, and they begin to have mysterious meetings at night - they also seem to do a lot of roaming about the town.
One of the thoughts that I kept having throughout this film was: would I actually want people who were dear to me to be returned from the dead. At first, the obvious answer is yes, as the young couple who have lost their son feel. But the mother begins to change her mind, because she had seemed to make some peace with the loss, and her son is now much different from what he was. I think this was a problem that all of the characters had to face: they don't really trust the returned, which is understandable because no one can understand how they returned or what they're doing.
The social implication is that of immigrants: a new body of people, different from the existing population, moving in and taking a lot of jobs - the dead in this case are ideal for "grunt" labor, labor that doesn't require a lot of thought.
Finally the dead leave, in a rather strange manner of flocking to underground passages. They set off some explosions in the process, and the masses of the returned are enough to encourage the military to make its presence felt. The bodies of the returned that the military manages to kill then mysteriously vanish in the morning.
This film focuses on a town in France where the dead from the last 10 years have suddenly returned. Apparently it is going on throughout the world, but the movie doesn't venture far outside of the town (and we quickly forget that there's a possible wider implication for the outside world). We follow three couples: an old man whose wife returns, a younger woman who has her husband return, and a young couple who have to deal with the return of their six year old son.
The dead are not flesh eating beasts. They don't have gaping head wounds or appear really appear different. They are slower, both mentally and physically, and their body temperatures are lower, but that's about it. However, they don't appear to be able to sleep, and they begin to have mysterious meetings at night - they also seem to do a lot of roaming about the town.
One of the thoughts that I kept having throughout this film was: would I actually want people who were dear to me to be returned from the dead. At first, the obvious answer is yes, as the young couple who have lost their son feel. But the mother begins to change her mind, because she had seemed to make some peace with the loss, and her son is now much different from what he was. I think this was a problem that all of the characters had to face: they don't really trust the returned, which is understandable because no one can understand how they returned or what they're doing.
The social implication is that of immigrants: a new body of people, different from the existing population, moving in and taking a lot of jobs - the dead in this case are ideal for "grunt" labor, labor that doesn't require a lot of thought.
Finally the dead leave, in a rather strange manner of flocking to underground passages. They set off some explosions in the process, and the masses of the returned are enough to encourage the military to make its presence felt. The bodies of the returned that the military manages to kill then mysteriously vanish in the morning.
posted by Mike at 10:31 PM
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