The Ax

Film Info

France 2005 | 117 min. Director: Costa-Gavras

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The Ax

Synopsis

On a rainy evening, in the outskirts of one of those little towns in the north of France or the South of Belgium, a man is waiting nervously in his car facing the blinking neon sign of a snack bar. A big gun is sitting at his side, on the passenger seat.

A man exits the snack bar. He is walking quickly, his head sunk into his raised collar, to protect himself from the rain and wind. The man in the car turns his engine on, lowers the window, takes the gun and tries to get closer to the walking man. But he is on the other side of the road. The rain is now pouring into the car, blinding the driver.

The headlights of a car driving the opposite way force him back into his lane. He has lost the walking man. He eventually spots him heading into a small street. He races to catch up, all lights off. As the man walks close to the wall, the driver inches on, blindly. He gets more and more upset, as he can’t reach toward the walking man.

The cars in this small well-off and deserted street are parked neatly on both sides at this time of the night, forcing the walking man back onto the middle of the road : the car is now heading toward him. The driver builds up speed. The walking man is not walking anymore : the car has run him down. The driver backs up. The back-lights shed light onto the man on the ground, who is now still.

The car moves away, all lights off. The driver turns his headlights back on, drives to a motel, parks in front of his room, runs into it and bursts into tears.

Bruno D., whom we have just seen running over a man with his car, confides to a voice-recorder before, he says, ending his life.

Cast & Crew

Director

Costa-Gavras
Screenwriter

Costa-Gavras, Jean-Claude Grumberg
Director of photography

Patrick Blossier
Main Cast

Jose Garcia (Bruno Davert), Karin Viard (Marlene Davert), Olivier Gourmet (Raymond Machefer), Ulrich Turkur (Gérard Hutchinson)
Editor (Cut)

Yannick Kergoat
Original Score

Armand Amar
Production Design

Laurent Deroo

Director's comment

Not so long ago, Charlie Chaplin’s lady-killer character Monsieur Verdoux slaughtered women for the sole purpose of providing for the needs of his family.

Today our modern world sacrifices whole continents in order to provide for our immense needs and those of our families. Sadly, even on our own continents, peace and quiet for a select few can only be achieved by letting the ax fall on thousands of our own kind.
Bruno D., a senior executive in a paper mill, after fifteen years of good and faithful service, to the complete satisfaction of his employers and their shareholders, is dismissed one day with a few hundred of his colleagues because of economic redeployment, in other words "outsourcing".
At first, Bruno doesn't worry. At his level of competence he's convinced he'll find a similar job. He's still young, in his early forties.
Three years later, still unemployed, he realizes he has reluctantly become involved in a war of attrition. He is now a foot-soldier whose sole mission is to survive, to preserve his own creature comforts and those of his wife and children. He soon discovers that his whole well-being, the solidity of his marriage, the future of these very children depends on his success in this struggle. He therefore arms himself, goes on the offensive, and sets about, methodically and logically, to wipe out the competition. Then he'll make his final assault on the fortress of the Arcadia Corporation - the last obstacle between himself and what he considers to be the job he deserves. But like any soldier who has been too hastily called up, and is insufficiently trained, his inexperience drives him to feats of incredible clumsiness. Despite it all, he succeeds and reclaims for himself - temporarily, no doubt - a suitable job, thus saving his marriage, or so he believes, and his children's future.
A modern solitary knight, he isn't charging against windmills, he isn't on a quest for an ideal, for humankind, for justice. He isn't fighting evil warlords to protect widows and orphans, he is fighting his own kind, his brothers-in-arms. He is in fact fighting himself, behaving like the rest of us who turn our backs on solidarity, on helping each other, on utopian dreams, to sink deeper day after day into the selfishness, fear and anxiety that this conflict generates.
Like Monsieur Verdoux, Bruno, our hero, is torn between ridicule and vileness, between laughter and tears, between courage and cowardice, as he tries to maintain his composure and dignity.
Today is no longer yesterday. Bruno, unlike Verdoux, will be rewarded for his efforts and manage from his stronghold, his office at the Arcadia Corporation, to keep up the deathly struggle against his own kind for the greater glory of his worst enemies.