Direct Action (Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau, 2024)

Direct Action is a 212-minute documentary comprising just 41 shots observing the daily operations of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune, one of the ZAD (Zone à Défendre, or Zone to Defend) communities engaged in eco-activism against the French government. They successfully halted an airport project in 2018 but continue to fight various ecologically destructive initiatives. Russell and Cailleau spent about 100 days filming at the commune's 4,000-acre autonomous zone and despite occasional footage of violent protests, much of Direct Action has a quiet, Jeanne Dielman-like feel to it - long takes of making bread, sawing wood, cooking crepes, gardening, etc. 

About ten minutes into its U.S. premiere Monday night at the New York Film Festival in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, a loud sound came from the back of the theater. It didn't feel like it came from the film and it had many viewers, myself included, looking around for the source. The sound was of a possibly panicked crowd, quite chaotic and disorienting. Since it kept playing for at least ten minutes, everyone in the audience (again, myself included) took it to be part of the film somehow. The sound played over several cuts which felt sloppy, especially given that one shot was a stationary low angle of a tower and another was a close-up of an activist explaining the best ways to deal with police interrogations.

At one point, the panicked crowd sound traveled to the front of the theater and I began to accept that the film was being accompanied by some sort of sound installation. As I was trying to figure out how the filmmakers achieved this effect, I heard a verbal fight between two women in what I assumed was also part of the sound installation. I prepared to strap myself in for what would promise to be a wild sonic ride; perhaps the filmmakers were using these sounds as a Brechtian distanciation device. 

It was only then that I could discern that an animated audience member was yelling at someone. I adjusted my eyes and finally saw that there were two people standing in front of the screen and staging a protest. They started in the back row and moved up front but I was completely oblivious to all of this activity. I heard "They're aestheticizing direct action rather than engaging in it" and "While you're watching, bombs are dropping!" I filmed about 40 seconds of it which you can see below. The film stopped and security ejected the two protestors.

I spoke with a guy sitting in my row and he noticed that the protestors had a large backpack with them which must have been housing a speaker from which the panicked crowd sound emerged. That would explain how the sound traveled with them to the front of the theater. The film started up again and an employee shouted an apology to us and asked if we wanted the film to start over. After a collective "No!" the film continued with no other interruptions apart from the usual talkers and phone users.

As for the film itself, difficult, rewarding, but I have to concede that the protest made it all the more memorable and, at the very least, an excellent teaching tool for the upcoming sound module in my Introduction to Film course. 

Grade: A-minus