No post-atomic Eden (Malevil)

I started reading Malevil, by Robert Merle, maybe two years ago and stopped in the middle, probably wrongly, but a little worn out by the complexity of the story and by the author's own language, all convolutions and digressions, me who over the years has come to appreciate more and more simple, straightforward styles and narratives. Which is probably a sign that I'm becoming an idiot. Too bad.

The film based on the novel, on the other hand, suffers from a bit of a reverse excess: the settings are certainly very successful, very beautiful in the post-nuclear genre ("Humanity's self-alienation is such that it can experience its own annihilation as an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order" Walter Benjamin), but the plot is reduced to a bare minimum: the protagonists get together at the château, things fizzle out, we muddle along for a while, then Trintignant shows up, obviously very nasty, and the confrontation doesn't take long. Okay.

The film's ending is more optimistic than the novel's: the atomic war has apparently not destroyed the entire world or any form of advanced society, and unexpected, unexpected and, to be honest, rather unwelcome helicopters arrive one fine morning to evacuate Emmanuel Comte (Michel Serrault) and his companions. More optimistic in theory.

In reality, this last scene is appalling: the small community has miraculously survived the war itself, then psychological shock, starvation and confrontation with another group. The sun returns, the wheat grows, the arrival of women of childbearing age evokes the possibility of future births... and now this brand-new freedom, this state of peaceful savagery, finds itself cancelled, confiscated; playtime is whistled by soldiers with metallic voices, in deafening helicopters, who evacuate the whole little community without asking its opinion. Those who destroyed the world continue to rule in the ruins. There will never be an end to domination, there will never be a post-atomic Eden.