Jean Dujardin returns in a principled conservative vision.
Jean Dujardin, the French actor who won an Academy Award for that awful silent-movie spoof The Artist, is almost unrecognizable in On the Wandering Paths (Sur les chemins noirs). Though still imposingly tall and handsome, he drops that parody of suaveness to portray Pierre, a successful, middle-aged white Parisian writer who opts out, neglecting the world of celebrity to hike 1,300 kilometers across central France.
This non-escapist escape distinguishes On the Wandering Path from most contemporary movies. Pierre’s trek comes after he has recovered from a near-fatal accident — a fall that cracked his skull, broke his legs, and required a long rehab. But his breakaway is also a critique of the modern France where decadence is normalized. “Movement is my salvation. Movement shall be my prayer,” he vows, speaking the mental notes that will become a book, the ostensible purpose of his sojourn.
The further out Pierre explores, the deeper director Denis Imbert searches (going deep like Éric Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert and Jérôme Reybaud’s Four Days in France). On the Wandering Path is a quiet adventure film that observes Dujardin’s Pierre in the center of astonishing landscapes: some tree-lined roads, vast fields, mostly craggy mountains, and many desolate turns. Pierre is man in forgotten wilderness, off the beaten path and passing through small villages that urbanites dismiss, although townspeople can also feel the effect of urban crisis (a provisions shop doubles as a delivery post).
Imbert reminds us of social change and collapse via brief flashbacks to Pierre’s dissolute life before his fall. Dujardin contrasts Pierre’s post-op struggle on lightweight baton-crutches — walking a bit tentatively but determined — with his earlier, physically assured demeanor. The red scar that curves from his temple and around his eye socket is a lingering sign of damage, even when he stands erect and looking deceptively fit.
But inside, Pierre suffers modern man’s cynicism. No longer connecting with others as before, he takes refuge in bookish intelligence, relying on privileged social standing (and disgust) to justify his isolation. A stumble invites the aid of a young drifter (Dylan Robert) who becomes a temporary traveling companion. But there’s distance — the dark-skinned, postliterate youth barely breaks through Pierre’s solitude. He hands the kid a treasured copy of Thoreau, but the gift is partly a rebuff. Pierre isn’t ready to bond.
Disappointments recur when he recalls a woman he didn’t marry or visits his aunt, sister, and old friend. Imbert depicts these meetings with the same deftness as the treks and flashbacks. On the Wandering Path is a balanced, perfectly tooled account of different-drummer reserve. Wouter Dewit’s tactful piano score, Basile Belkhiri’s swift, precise pacing, and Magali Silvestre de Sacy’s lighting of the ecstatic vistas sustain a contemplative atmosphere, held together by Dujardin’s composure.
It takes an actor of real self-possession to back up Pierre’s pensées: “Napoleon said there are two kinds of men: Those who command and those who obey. I think the emperor forgot a third kind: those who run away.” Pierre’s refusal of the society that indulged his worst habits amounts to Imbert’s understated declaration. (The bearded Dujardin bears a brotherly resemblance to Imbert.) It recalls Alain Jessua’s Life Upside Down, a droll study of schizophrenia from the middle of the French New Wave of the 1960s, but away from Parisian chic. Imbert travels across France, suggesting an unusual, unspoken patriotism. Pierre’s brief visit to a monastery, touching a spiritual stone, then spotting Mont Saint-Michel, lends Catholic sensitivity to the quest.
The closest Pierre gets to a mission statement comes when he confesses, “Having neither the narcissism of the activist, nor the rage of the saboteur, I will run away.” On the Wandering Path is a dramatic adaptation of a travel book by Sylvain Tesson, the self-styled modern Thoreau whose published reflections recount his own mountain-climbing injury and who is controversial in France for not being a fellow traveler of the cultural cognoscenti. And Imbert doesn’t reduce Tesson to the miserabilism of Sean Penn’s nihilistic travelogue Into the Wild. This straightforward, beautiful character study exemplifies neither radicalism nor schizophrenia, although Pierre’s persistent dissatisfaction indicates a larger and recognizable alienation from the trash and decadence of most new films. This is a rare conservative vision, almost a guide for the dissatisfied moviegoer — and it’s bracing.