L'ENFANT
by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France 2004
Production: Les Films du Fleuve & Archipel 35

L'ENFANT tells the story of Bruno, Sonia and their newly-born son Jimmy, who live in socially deprived circumstances and gain their income from her social benefits and Bruno’s petty larceny. In a thoughtless moment Bruno sells the child for adoption. The devastating consequences of this for Sonia and for their relationship brings Bruno step by step to learn what it means to grow up. The values highlighted by the jury include Bruno's remorse and growing sense for responsibility, Sonia's forgiveness and their mutual reconciliation. Avoiding artificial filmmaking and using only background noise, the absence of music, realistic dialogue, direct camera work with a purity of acting go towards making this excellent film.

The film was winner of the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and was chosen as "Film of the Month" November 2005 by the Evangelical Film Jury in Germany.

The European John Templeton Film Award of the Year is presented on behalf of the US-based Templeton Foundation by the International Interchurch Film Organisation INTERFILM and the Conference of European Churches (CEC). The prize includes a cheque for €10’000 and inscribed certificate. It is awarded to films which
- have high artistic merit;
- lend expression to a human viewpoint in keeping with the message of the Scripture, or which stimulate debate;
- make audience sensitive to spiritual and social values and questions
- and have already received an Ecumenical Award or a nomination as "Film of the Month" by the Evangelical Film Jury, Germany, or the Catholic Media Service and the Reformed Media, Switzerland, during the year in question.

The Award Ceremony took place during this year’s Berlin Film Festival on Sunday 12th February, 2006, within a service at the Franzoesische Friedrichstadtkirche at the Gendarmenmarkt. The sermon was held by Hans W.Dannowski, Honorary President of Interfilm.

Sermon
Held on the occasion of the awarding of the 9th European John Templeton Film Award to L’ENFANT by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Service on the 12th February 2006, Französische Friedrichstadtkirche, Berlin

From the Song of Songs (Corinthians 1, 13) I chose a short extract as the basis of my sermon. “Love never fails”, Paul wrote; he talked about the unfinished work of our knowledge, our insight, our speech and he continues thus:

“But when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Corinthians 1, 13, 10-12

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear congregation here in the Französische Friedrichstadtkirche, Berlin!

When Bruno tells his girlfriend Sonia – in a casual and completely natural manner – that he has just sold their child, Sonia simply passes out. Apparently, Bruno did not think much about it. “I thought we’d just make a new one”, that is his only excuse. He has never really taken any notice of the child anyway. When Sonia gets out of the hospital and finally finds Bruno with the cars, he looks at the child only fleetingly. He has not got a second name for Jimmy; he has not really wasted any thought on it. Actually, they’re both still children themselves, Sonia and Bruno. They’re romping about like little dogs or cats. And one cannot really hold the robberies that Bruno carries out with his two little accomplices against him. All this mirrors a time of childlike innocence and games; and Sonia does not reproach her boyfriend for doing something crooked. Anyway, everything is correctly shared. But all of a sudden, there is a critical point, a break in their life for the two. Sonia has given birth to a child. Jimmy is born. And when Bruno simply sells Jimmy off, just like he sells off the stolen jewellery, the video camera and the CD player, Sonia drops down like dead. This is the moment when the childlike innocence is over. This is the radical change; this is the crisis in L’ENFANT, the flim by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne that we award with the Templeton Award 2005.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child”, that’s what the apostle Paul writes to the Christian community in Corinth. “When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Today and thanks to psychoanalysis, we know a lot more about the relationship between the adult and the child in human beings than Paul could have known: that it is important that the adult does not suppress and deny the child in himself. As the child in us is the joy of living. The child in us, that is the spontaneity and the immediacy, as well as the anarchic and the playful dealing with the things and the events in life. But what if the adult is nothing more than a child?! Then he will continue thinking that everything is handed to him on a plate, just like it was when he was still a child. Then he will continue thinking that the whole world exists only for him, to satisfy all his desires and needs. That is when persons and things become interchangeable because everything has only one purpose: to heighten the feeling of pleasure. Then, we meet a man like Bruno: at the mercy of the ideas and the coincidences of the day. “I’ll always get some money”, he will say, “why save some?” It is a walk on the tightrope that one watches with fascination for a while. Until one notices that the fall is near because, in the 20 years of his life, this man has not succeeded in slowly leaving the protected sphere of the child and in finding his own and special place in the network of life’s relations. Obviously, he has never learned that man is not the centre of his own universe, that man means response and that therefore, responsibility is the personal centre of his life. Being an adult does not only mean bidding farewell to the interchangeable nature of persons and things, but it also means understanding how the persons and things shape a human being. Yes, being an adult means understanding that “I” is another.

With these words, dear congregation, I took up the ideas of a man who would have been 100 years old four weeks ago. Emmanuel Levinas was the philosopher who – as for his Jewish background – sees the subjectivity of the human being radically from the other’s point-of-view second to none. Every encounter with a human being changes me. Every encounter with a thing or more importantly with a human being that really regards me can overthrow me. In the pre-eminence of the other, the self-sufficient identity of the “I” breaks up and changes. The “I” that hospitably receives the “I” of the other becomes another. Thus, the absent-minded child becomes an adult who will – hopefully – not lose his being a child, but who will receive others and maybe even a part of the world at the same time.

Please allow me, Ladies and Gentlemen, to address you directly and ask you to spend some moments on your own memories for a while. What or who shaped me, coined me, expects that I include things in a greater whole that I am myself? There are the parents: the way they were they have decidedly determined a good deal about who I am, not only in terms of outer appearance. There are the teachers whose thoughts I think as if they were my own. And what else is the wonderful experience of love but the set off of my own identity towards another. The fascination that he or she has for me as a mirror of my secret nature, is in fact the pure request of the other to take up him or her and to let him or her live with me: to think their thoughts, to live through their reactions and experiences, sometimes even before they show themselves. Being an adult is not a status, neither is it an aim. It is a tremendous vitality in which the “I” changes permanently in the encounter with the other. “You haven’t changed at all”: When this is not about outer appearance alone, it is indeed the greatest insult there is. We are on our way, we are still the same and yet we are changing all the time. “When I was a child”, Paul writes, “I talked like a child, I thought like a child…When I became a man, a woman I put childish ways behind me...”

“I” – another… But how can such a transition be achieved when a man like Bruno stubbornly refuses to become an adult and moves through this world and time as a dreamer? Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne tell a simple and clear story. But it is enigmatic what they can tell me about the ways of human existence and the crisis of this transition. It is not without second thoughts that I started my sermon by telling you the little scene in which Sonia drops downs as if dead and has to go to hospital when Bruno tells her about his selling off their child. Sometimes, the presence of the other is not enough to disturb my absent-minded circles. Sometimes, it needs to be the possible death of the other. Sometimes, it is the possible or real death of the other that shakes me to the core. That shows me that I am not a solitary person, but a response and that I have a responsibility. A whole cataract of thoughts falls upon me at this point. Maybe it is not my own death – so I think – that is the question mark of my life. The fact that I might not exist anymore one day turns me into a comical character in my perpetual worries about myself. “What haven’t you got that you hadn’t received?” – that is what Paul would say now. But the possible or the real death of the other takes away my peace of mind. I just cannot go on as I have done before! Who am I when the other is gone? And suddenly I realize that the men and women of my generation who were children during the Nazi regime are to the last determined in our self-understanding by the deaths of brothers, fathers and mothers during the war, by the millionfold murder of the Jews and by the execution of the men of the 20th July. The deaths of the others have turned us into adults and have called us to our responsibility. This will never leave us for the rest of our lives. It is an open question how we will integrate the present ongoing murdering and dying around us into the images of our selves. The real or possible death of the other will remain the critical moment of our lives. Life cannot actually continue like that – this is what we can learn from Bruno’s story.

“When I became a man, a woman I put childish ways behind me.” We are on our way, in permanent change, determined by the other and the possible death of the other. It is unfinished work and it will always stay unfinished, says Paul. Unfinished work – the talking, the realizing, the loving and the acting: everything. But I would like to take a last step with you, dear congregation, taken by the hand by the apostle Paul’s words. We are on our way, yes, and everything we are and do remains a fragment. But we have a destination. We have the courage for the unfinished work of our lives, says Paul, because we are hoping for perfection. In every encounter, there is the hope for a final fulfilment. In every happiness, there is the expectation of salvation. With every attentive look of the other, I receive a part of the message: You have been given to yourself! You will be the visible image of the invisible God! I owe my courage to live to the will of God, my toughness is a loan of my faith, my desperation is held in his closeness. The hope of a happy ending to my life in which I firmly believe reaches out into my present. To say it once again in Emmanuel Levinas words: I conceive the trace of eternity in the face of the other. And then, yes then: then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And thus, dear congregation, the wonderful last take of the film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne accompany me these days. Bruno and Sonia meet in the canteen of the prison where Bruno is now. The first words and movements are careful and clumsy, characterized by the wounds of the past. Suddenly, Bruno’s emotions break out of him and Sonia cries, too. And then, the two sitting face to face take hold of the other’s face. Hold each other, let go and once again take hold of each other. Look into each other’s faces through their tears. And one can feel: Something is happening that exceeds the encounter of two people in space and time by far. Suddenly I know that forgiveness is possible. A return, a new beginning. Here is the moment of truth in which I know that I am the response to a call that comes from far and is yet close. Precisely this: This experience of an uncovered life. Face to face. 

        Amen.

Hans Werner Dannowski