“The truth is that they don’t care if we die. As long as they get their profit.”
Germinal opens with a woman killed in an underground explosion. When the workers gather to toast her, the head engineer of the mine, Paul (Aliocha Schneider) shows up. He acknowledges the town’s grief and fear, and promises improvements to safety. But he also says, “The world won’t stop turning.”
Germinal sends us straight into the belly of the earth. Men, women and children are sent hurtling hundreds of metres below ground to pick relentlessly at coal seams, working by candlelight and with only a thin strip of fabric over their faces to protect them. It’s a whole other world down there, barely visible for the coal dust and the shadow of imminent danger; poor horses trudge alongside the blackened teams of bent workers.
The series is based on Émile Zola’s novel of the same name, first published in 1885, as the thirteenth instalment of his twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart series. The writer had researched life in French coal mines in the 1860s, and the series reeks of historical accuracy.
Head mine engineer Paul (Aliocha Schneider). Source: Distributor
About the title, a review of a fresh edition of Zola’s book , “Germen is the Latin for sprout or bud, and Germinal was the seventh month (late March to late April) in the revolutionary calendar that France adopted from 1793 to 1805.”
Things are dire, and we journey with the workers – who their manager refers to as “brainless beasts” – from the events leading up to the decision to unite, then go on strike and the aftermath.
Of the hundreds of families in the grimy town of Montsou, we bunker in with the Maheu family, most of whom work underground. The father, referred to as Maheu (Thierry Godard), is a natural leader among the workers. His older children Jeanlin (Max Baissette de Malglaive) and Catherine (Rose-Marie Perreault) also work underground. Maheu’s wife La Maheude (Alix Poisson) keeps house and looks after the younger children, and somehow puts food on the table each day.
Maheu (Thierry Godard), La Maheude (Alix Poisson) and Étienne (Louis Peres) head up the team, with Souvarine (Stefano Cassetti), Chaval (Jonas Bloquet) and Rasseneur (Steve Tientcheu) in support. Source: Distributor
One night, a newcomer arrives. Étienne Lantier (Louis Peres) shows up at the barkeep Rasseneur’s door in the dead of night – he’s on the run after assaulting his superior at his last workplace, and now desperate for refuge and the chance to earn a living. Rasseneur (Steve Tientcheu) puts him in the care of Maheu, who takes the young man under his wing.
Replacing the worker who was killed, Étienne swiftly realises just how long-suffering the miners are. When mine director Hennebeau (Guillaume de Tonquédec) takes the already beaten down workers and throws them back to the ground with extra force, it’s Étienne who suggests they unite and push back together.
If this premise rings a bell but you haven’t read the novel, you may have seen one of the other several adaptations of it, perhaps Claude Berri’s 1993 film also titled Germinal and starring Gerard Depardieu as Maheu. , here Germinal also cuts between scenes showing “poverty and affluence” to send the clear message: “The owners are stealing the fruits of the workers’ labour.”
Mine director Monsieur Hennebeau (Guillaume de Tonquédec). Source: Distributor
It’s Hennebeau’s home that provides the affluence. Its cleanliness and vastness of space and grandeur are extra luminous against the tidy but dark and tiny home of Maheu and La Maheude where ten of them are crammed in. (You get the sense that conditions in real life must’ve been exponentially worse than they appear on screen, albeit it’s as authentic-looking as you’d expect.)
We first see the Hennebeau mansion when La Maheude shows up there to ask for help when they’re down to their last sou. She’s thrown out with insincere smiles, but Cécile, who’s engaged to Paul (who is meanwhile indulging in an affair with Madame Hennebeau) runs out and secretly gives her some money.
It’s these interactions that weave their way into your heart and hook you into caring about what happens to these people as they realise the power they wield over their own lives: a wildly precarious realisation, as up to now they’ve been steeped in resignation to the powers that be. When the workers are consistently beaten down as they are, it’s understandable they’ve little or no energetic reserves to fight back, but the fire burns in the belly nevertheless. When Étienne stokes that fire, a shift feels inevitable, even though more suffering is sure to ensue in the initial chaos before any sort of calm is reflected.
Étienne Lantier (Louis Peres). Source: Distributor
Some of the relationships we follow with interest are the love triangle that connects young Catherine with the clumsy and bullish Chaval (Jonas Bloquet), a mine worker who claims her as his own, into which entanglement Étienne’s feelings for Catherine enter. Then there’s the loving relationship between Maheu and La Maheude, founded on mutual respect and teamwork; it’s beautiful to witness. There’s Paul, who appears to lean towards supporting the workers, and his betrothed Cécile, who pressed the coin into La Maheude’s hand in her hour of need. The show seems so true to life, you sometimes forget you’re watching a drama.
Providing another kind of contrast, acclaimed film actor Sami Bouajila features as Deneulin, the private owner of a mine nearby, known for its good working conditions and pay, a thorn in the company mine’s side. (A rather amusing moment is when Deneulin tells Hennebeau he plans to leave the mine to his daughter upon retirement. The camera pauses on Hennebeau’s face as his utter incomprehension at this outlandish idea is writ all over it.)
Madame Hennebeau (Natacha Lindinger) and Cécile Grégoire (Marilou Aussilloux). Source: Distributor
Germinal is rooted in depicting the breadth and depth of human behaviour, or, more accurately, the repetition of patterns of human behaviour – the way people follow the way things have always been, and the way they can allow that fire in their belly to be set to roaring – infusing it with substance.
The director has struck a fine balance between showing life in poverty and wealth, and above ground and below. While the worlds could not be more different, kindness and solidarity are sewn into some of the hearts of those living in wealth. But will they use their power to help the workers improve their lives? How much more tragedy must befall them before the shift takes hold?
Germinal is full of potency and gripping performances, and well worth a watch.
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