Lacombe Lucien is a fictive re-enactment of the banality of evil
If you look up the word banal in the English dictionary, you will find its meanings to be, common, ordinary, commonplace. This film explores the common and everyday nature of evil. This film does not look at the wider evil such as the Nazi occupation and its military machine, its organised fascist cruelty and its genocidal politics. The film looks at how “ordinary people” survive in this complex, evil world of nazism.
We see the banality of evil in this film straight away. In scene one we see Lucien in the hospital , he kills a little bird who is singing happily outside in the sunshine, he reveals his casual callousness by using his slingshot to kill the bird. Here the casual manner of Lucien’s brutality is contrasted with the simple beauty of nature. This can also be seen in scene six where Lucien shoots and kills rabbits until he has no bullets left and in scene seven where he beheads a chicken without......
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