Jean-Pierre Dardenne

Richard Kelly counts Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne a modern-day miracle in cinematic terms, and he names the contradiction in it: they shoot detailed, tangible records of everyday labour, their locations are an unlovely post-industrial Belgium, and the films turn all the same on the weightiest moral questions, with a dramatic temperament that would suit Sophocles or Dostoyevsky. Kelly maps three films onto three subjects, La Promesse and Rosetta being studies in conscience and betrayal while The Son weighs the balance of revenge against forgiveness. The brothers, on his reading, are endlessly interested in what people actually do at their work, and they hold that labour is what gives the individual their place in society.