Colette Marin-Catherine is a 92-year old Frenchwoman. She is a living resistance fighter who fought the Germans during World War II. It has been more than 70 years already but she, unlike those who have lost their loved ones abroad, has not visited Germany. It was in that country where her brother, Jean-Pierre, also a resistance fighter, was taken by the Nazi.
This morning, Colette, is opening the windows of her apartment and calling the birds. She asks them if they are scared. This scene with the birds does not create a deep meaning until the end, after being in the place where her brother died, she looks at the birds again.
Colette is in Germany, finally. She agrees to visit the country that brought so much personal sorrow to her and her family, if only because they are going to honor the memory of her brother. With Colette is Lucie Fouble, a young student of history and a museum docent, or a museum educational tour guide.
Together, the two embark on a journey that Colette calls “morbid tourism.”
The long train ride brings the two to Nordhausen, once the location of a huge camp with thousands of prisoners making up a significant part of slave labor for the Nazi war machinery. One of these laborers was Colette’s brother.
There are many expected scenarios in this short documentary about the evil of Nazi Germany but it is in the character of Colette where the surprises reside. In a café, where she is welcomed by the Mayor of Nordhausen, Colette shocks the welcoming crowd when she stops the city leader’s speech because “I’ve had enough tonight.”
The mayor wants to proceed with his short speech about how the war and the concentration camp in his city had a huge impact on his childhood, but Colette thumps her hand on the table. The old woman’s rage underscores how trite indeed are the speeches of reconciliation can be even when one is past anger, as Colette puts it.
How does one reason with an old lady who has spent 74 years trying to forget?
This is where the power of this documentary, titled Colette, lies: It gives a thumbs-down on all the monumental responses memorial sites and museums have made of places where, in the case of Nordhausen, some 60,000 laborers suffered, many of them ending up dead.
War does not make sense. Remembering the horrors of war, even if it is with the aim that we never repeat the same mistake (as the mayor was about to pompously announce it), is similarly a senseless act.
In her visit to Germany, Colette reminds us that no one is ever prepared for the memories of terror. That day comes when Colette and Lucie travel to the area where the concentration camp was. The younger woman tentatively annotates the path they are treading.
“This is the cell where your brother was kept. Here, as with others, Jean-Pierre slept on the bare floor, sometimes with nothing to eat.”
At this point, Colette tells Lucie to look away. The camera moves away as we hear the wail of this brave, old woman. Then we face her again as she trembles and cries because she has not even brought some flowers for her brother’s grave.
The two continue their fieldwork. They reach the crematorium where we see and hear again Colette let out a keening.
Lucie all throughout the moments where Colette confronts the place with her rage and grief also cries. To this, Colette says: “We make a terrible team.” To Lucie, Colette wonders how those “morbid details can enrich your documentation.”
At some point, we see the two women seated on a bench, where the trees have overtaken the structures of the concentration camp. Colette who loves birds tells Lucie to listen to the songs of the birds as she asks if the songs of the birds are a collection of all our sorrows.
Where many documentarians have seized the tales of the war and transformed them into huge canvases of structured conflict, Colette brings back into the fold an ignored reality—that of deaths and losses which affected individuals. This is also about the fact of how the family of nations, a term threatening to be another oxymoron, can always sign treaties to bring peace and accord because they who brought war upon men and women were never thinking in terms of persons and personal relationships. Nations have always engaged in wars because of boundaries, politics and economics, and not because, at the end when victories are achieved, individual happiness will take place.
Sincerity and candor are two attributes of Colette, the person. In one of her most difficult memories, she tells Lucie how her own mother confronted her about the death of her brother by this statement: It could have been you.
Sincerity and truthfulness are two traits of Colette, the documentary, and this filmic decision to use minimum footage of the events from the 1940s. It is, after all, the memories of Colette on which this narrative of loss derives its virtues and veracity.
Colette knows that she will be a changed person after her visit to Germany. She says she will be crying for years…for all the years to come.
Colette, the documentary, will do the same to us: we will be crying for years to come, for all the years to come, for the many more senseless wars nations and leaders will wage on this Earth.
Directed by Anthony Giacchino, Colette, a short film featured in the Oculus VR game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, is the winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Presented by Oculus Studios and Electronic Arts’ Respawn Entertainment, and later acquired and distributed by The Guardian, it is said to be the first time a video game industry project has won an Oscar. The award-winning short can be seen on YouTube (youtu.be/J7uBf1gD6JY).