Original subtitles

THE TRUCK

Starring

Written and Directed by

It'd be a road,

by the sea.

It'd cross a large, barren plain.

Then a truck'd come.

It'd go across the landscape slowly.

There's a white winter sky.

A mist, too.

Very thin.

Spread everywhere.

Across the lands,

on this land.

This is a film?

It'd be a film.

It IS a film.

The truck'd disappear, then reappear.

We'd hear the sea from afar,

but very loudly.

Then, by the road, a woman'd wait.

She'd make a sign.

We'd go near her.

She'd have certain age, dressed like a city woman.

- You see? - Yes.

There're no buildings around.

She has a suitcase.

She gets on the truck.

The truck goes off.

And we leave the seaside.

Where are we?

Doesn't matter.

Beauce perhaps, near Chartres.

Or immigrants cities in Yvelines.

There she'd start to look at the scenery.

The sea from afar.

The road, the white sky,

The coldness,

the diversity of things.

Then she sings.

We'd see the truck cabin.

It is dark.

The driver and the woman who gets on are silent.

Their meeting is arbitrary, disparate.

You see?

I see.

They are facing the road.

This road bursts

into their eyes.

There'd be music.

We'd see that the music in the film

comes from the truck radio.

It'd be brighter outside than inside the cabin,

As if there are snow.

The driver and the woman

would look at the light from outside,

the road,

the nakedness of the lands, of this land,

for a long time.

We'd see on the daybed behind the seats of the cabin,

there was a dark thing.

It's a man.

He's the second driver of the truck.

He's sleeping.

He'd sleep through the whole film.

Here's the thing in common between the driver and the woman.

He's doing his work,

she's given a ride.

But both are facing the road.

You see?

I see.

Shared by them: this road,

this landscape.

Around them: the coldness,

this desertic space, the winter.

No rehearsal of the text

would be planned.

Does she talk?

She's going to.

Who is she?

De-classed. You see?

Yes.

Their only thing in common

is a certain violence in their gazes.

Facing the emptyness in front of them.

The naked winter, the sea

The silence at the start of the film

would represent the initial relationship between them.

Distant,

almost indifferent, mechanical.

It'd be some sort of introduction

of a relationship to come.

There'd be a relationship?

Maybe never.

What do you think?

Never.

There she'd start talking.

About what she sees outside.

She says, "So many things to see.

"So many...

"We're overwhelmed. Don't you think so?"

He doesn't answer.

She closes her eyes.

She talks again.

She says, "Don't think that I'm sleeping.

"It's the opposite."

It wouldn't take long to shoot this film. See?

Don't stretch over time, drag on.

It wouldn't be expensive.

Its very nature

would call for an economy of means.

It'd come to us in black and white.

I read on.

Here she'd begin to sing to herself.

She's always looking at the front.

Outside is always the...

Sublime nakedness of the hills of Beauce.

Or the sublime desert of the emigrated land.

She's talking. She says,

"We can't really say they're hills.

"But a bulge of the earth.

"Almost... Look.

"Like a slight swelling caused by internal pressures.

"Water perhaps, or lakes

"Looking for exits.

"Sources looking for somewhere to emerge, to get out

"Somehow.

"It's shocking that Earth is trying to reverse its order.

"Everywhere. Its inside becomes its outside."

We're still moving...

barely visibly, just like when we started.

Look. Everything stopped,

whereas, at the same time,

when sleep ceased.

What do you believe in?

Like you.

Every impossible revolution.

Look.

She talks again.

She says,

"Look, the end of the world."

What does she show him?

She shows him the sea.

She'd show him the sea

She says, "Look. The end of the world."

"All the time,

"Every second,

"Everywhere,

"It extends."

She says: "It's better. Yes.

"It was so difficult, so...

"So hard,

"So...

"It's better that way.

"It'd be better.

"It wasn't worth it, I believe. "

She says, "Before, the sea was already here.

"There, look. There."

He says, "What're you talking about?"

She says, "I'm talking."

She sings.

She closes her eyes and sings.

She'd talk about many things.

The geography of the places they passed.

The end of the world.

Death.

Loneliness of Earth in the planetary system.

New discoveries on the origin of man.

Her talk'd show she doesn't know perfectly

on what she's talking about.

No.

She'd make mistakes.

Sometimes enormously.

On science,

geography,

the latest interstellar discoveries.

She'd talk about Mars.

She'd say,

"Did you see? On the Moon, nothing.

"On Mars, nothing.

"Saturn, nothing.

"Nothing but dead lands,

"Aseptic.

"Barren soils."

He listens. He says,

"Nothing on Mars?"

She says, "You're right, I'm wrong.

"On Mars, they found.

"Stones and wind."

She says,

"It's the new situation of human politics.

"I believe that."

He says: "Rapport with God?"

She says: "Yes.

"Rapport with emptyness. Look."

How will it end, the way you see it?

It's perhaps ended.

So, you said that it was a truck?

By the sea?

Yes. A thin mist everywhere.

The lands, the road ...

- It crosses a bare plain... - Yes.

- And the truck passes. - Yes?

That's it, yes.

That's it. It goes across everything. The sea.

We hear the sound of the sea...

Far, loud.

Scary, yes. Scary.

The wind.

Nobody can resist the wind.

What does she say, the woman who gets on?

She says, "The world be doomed,

"This is the only politics."

"The world be doomed,

"This is the only politics."

That's it.

She says what?

She says, "Everything's in everything.

"Everywhere

"All the time,

"At the same time."

"Everywhere, all the time, at the same time.

"It's before us, on the screen.

"I believe that."

He asks, "What screen?"

She says, "In front of us, the road."

She talks again. She says, "We'll never get there."

"Where?"

"Well...

"You do agree? Never?"

"Well...

"Maybe you're right."

She says, "It's so terrible, so hard.

"So hard."

That's the word, I think.

Yes.

I think so.

Want a cigarette?

What brand?

I only smoke Gauloises Blue.

And you?

Me? Stuyvesant.

It's just habit.

It's true.

There she'd start talking about herself.

She'd start saying that

she recognizes what she sees.

This road.

This region.

These buildings.

These people.

This existence.

This colour.

This coldness.

He speaks. He says, "You're lying.

"Nobody has ever lived here."

She says, "It's true, but ..."

He repeats, "You're lying."

She shuts up.

What does the lady say?

She says these words, "proletariat",

"Working class".

She says, "Now they can name their exploiters,

"Their oppressors.

"Read. Write.

"In the past, they couldn't read or write.

"Now they can read and write.

"Their knowledge about their situation are enormous.

Yes, their knowledge about themselves are enormous.

She says: "What a progress!

"Fixed. Dazzling.

"Fixated. Dead."

She says,

"The proletariat should be removed,

"But they refuse."

"I was young...

"Once."

Hiroshima! Hiroshima!

Yes. She wanted to die of love.

She died of love.

Yes.

And she lived.

She waited for 10 years, 20, 30...

100 years.

She lived.

- Who is she? - Who?

The lady of the truck.

De-classed. That's the only information.

Why is she crying?

This love story that she'd have had.

Her body was his body.

Inseparable, day and night,

from her own body.

With whom?

2 million men.

She made mistakes?

No.

These are the errors of ...

youth, intelligence.

That was in the past, I think.

We didn't know what were behind the clarity of words.

Revolution.

Class struggle.

Dictatorship of the proletariat.

The clarity got obscured.

Yes. Now we don't read. Now we don't see.

Before going there, we couldn't know that it was empty.

Before doing it, how'd you know it's not worth it?

Those who didn't go, do they know that?

No.

What's the truck doing?

You see it?

Yes. I see it.

Tireless.

That's it.

It'd go on. It goes on.

Yes.

All the time.

It'd cross the lands,

this land.

Yes. It'd go along the sea too.

The oceans.

Tireless, yes.

It'd carry us.

Yes.

Look at its route.

It's like a trace.

A writing.

Indecipherable.

And clear.

It is blue.

It is blue.

Blue, yes.

Yes.

She talks of trips she'd go, to places

that look the same.

She says it doesn't depend on the place, or anything.

He doesn't ask what depends on what.

She answers it anyway. She says,

"I was talking about killing time."

She'd also talk about a city she'd have lived as a child.

Far from France.

Tropical.

She says, "There's a river."

She remembers with dazzling precision.

He wouldn't ask which city.

She'd talk about other cities.

Several other cities.

She'd say, "My head is full of vertigo and screams.

"Full of wind.

"So sometimes, I write.

"Pages, you see?

"Or I sleep."

Where'd she go?

Well...

He may ask her.

She'd give a direction.

Towards the sea, it'd seem.

He'd say he's going the same way?

Reluctantly.

He's not interested in her.

The aim is reached in the film.

They are locked together in one place,

the truck cabin.

The driver and the woman.

The lady. The lady of the truck.

He doesn't ask who she is?

No, he's not wondering who she is.

He asks nothing.

He wants nothing with a woman of a certain age.

His habits are precise.

They are discriminatory.

A woman of certain age won't interest him.

She talks again.

She says,

"What's in the truck?"

"I don't know."

"They're all packed.

"To be shipped."

"To where?"

"I don't know."

She says, "It's funny.

"Products, people...

"They get together, everywhere,

"Then from time to time they go away.

"They go out.

"They go outside.

"Onto different stories."

Why's she on the road, waiting?

There'd be several explanations.

She could go from one place to another for personal reasons.

Or her car breaks down and...

She has to visit her family. The place is empty.

She stops the first vehicle that comes by.

- Or? - Nothing.

Idleness.

She travels.

When she gets on the truck,

the aim is reached?

Yes.

By the fact they're locked in one place,

for some time,

Incarcerated, see?

Locked. In one place.

For some time.

The aim's reached.

They see the same landscape

at the same time.

From the same space.

Their difference'd be the subject of the film.

And their confinement in the truck cabin,

the first space.

Between them,

the driver and the lady,

What?

What'd happen?

She'd talk during the ride,

from time to time, see?

About the country.

The wind.

Recent scientic discoveries.

The difficulty of transport in that region.

A child named Abraham.

Love.

She'd suddenly say,

"There is no history

"Outside love."

He asked her something?

No. Look, she'd have a certain inconsistency.

A certain incoherence in her talk.

This film'd be about love?

Yes. About everything.

This'd be a film on everything at the same time.

About love.

I see them locked in the cabin,

as if threatened by the light outside.

I feel that you and me too,

are threatened by the same light that they fear.

The fear that bursts into the truck cab,

in the dark room,

a flood of light.

You see?

The fear of disaster.

Political intelligence.

A militant is someone who doesn't doubt.

That's it.

Mobilized by detailed requests

of improving one's lot.

All material in nature.

Material?

Yes. Better housing, easier transport,

cheaper holidays.

This is the aim of his fight.

He'd talk about that?

The driver?

No. He'd think he'd better not.

She'd talk on her own almost all the time.

Does he get it?

No, he sees nothing.

He's stuck between two loyalties.

He only sees out of them.

I forgot to tell you that,

She once submitted herself to this omnipotence,

This reign of a class who claim they're deciding for all classes.

When she was young

and after.

Their alienation'd be equal?

Yes. She wouldn't mind this at all.

Latest incarnation of the Supreme Saviour, the proletariat.

She believed it.

Holy God, the proletariat.

She believed it.

Nobody has the right to challenge the responsibility of the proletariat.

She believed it.

It'd be blasphemy against the working class,

if you question the responsibility of the militant.

She believed it.

No one dared, no one dares

to question the responsibility of the working class.

Blasphemy.

She didn't dare,

for a long time.

Then one day she saw...

the complicity between capitalists and proletariat.

The same fear.

The same goal.

The same politics.

Delay indefinitely all free revolutions.

Kill the other man in every man.

Cut off his fundamental gift.

The naysayer in himself.

Then one day, she saw. It was summer,

the clowns on the tanks that entered Prague.

You may remember.

These smiling clowns with full makeup.

Nicely brainwashed.

These new killers.

The result of the collusion

between capitalism and socialism.

This result, they were proud of it.

For long, she looked without seeing.

And that day, she saw.

The anxiety is just material.

The anxiety is that of the working class.

This material anxiety is still worthy to be considered.

- The anxiety of others? - The others? Nothing.

Class privilege.

Listen.

She sings.

She closes her eyes and she sings.

We hear the sea.

From afar, loudly.

Then she'd talk about other cities.

Several other cities.

Less distant.

Between the vineyards...

Between vineyards and rivers.

Other rivers.

She'd remember those less precisely.

He doesn't ask which rivers.

She sings.

She closes her eyes. Sings.

She's talking.

She says to the driver:

"You belong to the French Communist Party."

He answers, "That's none of your business."

That's it.

She says,

"You know, Karl Marx,

"He's finished."

She always says the first names.

"Marcel Proust"

"Pierre Corneille."

"Leon Trotsky" "Karl Marx"

An obsession.

He looks at her.

Yes, it's true.

For the first time?

Apparently, yes.

What does he think? What does he say?

He says, "I know now.

"You're a reactionary."

What does she say?

Nothing.

She laughs.

Then he says, "Now I know.

"You escaped from Gouchy asylum."

That's it. Gou-chy.

She doesn't hear it?

She does. She replies, "Oh, you know it?

"Did you see? They enlarged the buildings

"By the river side.

"On the south side, at the slope.

"That's good. On the north side, it overlooks the forest.

"It was necessary. It's been too small for quite a while."

He asks: "Are you in politics?"

That's it.

She answers, "No.

"Nothing.

"I do nothing.

"I've never done anything."

Maybe she's going to her daughter who just had a child.

She says,

"Say, my daughter has just given birth

"And my car broke down the day I go visit her.

"It's a boy.

"The childbirth wasn't badly done.

"Today my nephew'd visit his brother, who lives near my daughter,

"I told myself that I could go with him.

"But when I got there he was already gone.

"What then?

"I took the train to see my sister.

"Without waiting, see? Without telling her.

"Of course when I arrived,

"There was nobody there.

"A neighbour told me that my sister left to visit a friend.

"For the whole day, and she won't return until evening.

"So I decided to stop the first car that passed.

"It's a forsaken place, where my sister lives.

"Only one train per day

"And at impossible hours."

"I tried calling her but the information said

"That the regional phonelines were out of order,

"Because of a storm.

"It often happens in coastal areas.

"The wind."

"The wind, see?

"That's a huge plain.

"With nothing to stop the wind.

"Nothing. No tree. It's naked.

"The trees were blown off.

"Or twisted, lying on the ground like slaughtered."

She sings.

She stops singing.

She says, "Excuse me.

"I sing because I'm happy

"about this child. See?

"I apologize.

"I must tell you that I'm always confused, mentally.

"I've never been able to order my ideas.

"Can't follow through an idea

"before another comes up.

"Oh, you aren't listening.

"That's what they say,

"Don't listen to her.

"Mind you, this isn't always so.

"Sometimes I say something more substantial.

"Or as they say,

"The more serious things.

"Sometimes I stay silent for very long.

"What happens to me, isn't it the same as everyone?

"Speak, keep silent, to be sad or happy.

"But without order.

"That's perhaps why they feel sorry for me.

"This mental irregularity.

"But I could argue that

"even if I don't follow any logic,

"doesn't mean that I don't have one.

"They say I'm too personal.

"It's a common saying. You must have heard that.

"It's very offensive.

"They use it on children too.

"Too personal."

"He's too personal."

"She's too personal."

"I think the child is called Abraham.

"I hope this won't get him in trouble.

"It's my daughter who wanted that name.

"Her husband was against it.

"He said he feared for the child,

"later on. Just because of the name.

"She insisted.

"He said she'd better forget those names.

"Those Jewish names.

"He said it was encouraging the worst collective psychosis

"By naming a child Abraham.

"The discrimination,

"The pogroms.

"My daughter stood firm.

"She named her child Abraham.

"Her husband belongs to the Communist Party.

"That's why.

"He was afraid that people'd think he's racist,

"For naming his child Abraham.

"He was afraid.

"He said it wasn't worth it.

"To give a child that name.

"A non-Jewish child.

"I must tell you that we are not Jews. No.

"Nor Arabs.

"Neither Jews nor Arabs.

"My daughter thinks that poetry

"Is the most commonly shared thing.

"Along with love, and hunger.

"She always says that there's a counter-wisdom

"that interferes us all the time,

"and rejects us.

"But in vain, she says.

"Fortunately. Or we have to wait for the death of the dead."

"I think she's talking about her husband.

"The birth was pretty painful but the child didn't suffer."

She sings.

She'd say she knows how not to exist.

By holding back some evidence.

Internal.

She says, "How to say it?

"Interior. Internal."

She says, "It happened when I was there."

He says, "You're lying."

She shuts up.

She's crying for what?

She stops crying.

She closes her eyes.

He sees that?

No. He sees what he's ordered to see.

He sees nothing by himself.

What does she see?

Precisely two continents.

Isolated.

The sea gets very dark.

Curfew after sunset.

When night falls, nothing.

Forest won over the walls of the borders.

Between the continents, the ocean, the immensity.

Between the continents, nothing.

Before the sea, tanks.

They watch over the emptyness.

She thinks about little Abraham.

She says she had children,

a life, once.

In an undefined time.

She raised children.

But she's wrong about the number,

the places, the dates.

Abraham.

Abraham.

She talks about him

but nobody knows him.

A child she'd perhaps invent.

Jewish.

A Jewish child.

Invented.

What time is it?

It's early.

It is still broad daylight.

The truck?

It's always running.

It's going forward?

Always.

Want a cigarette?

No.

You're tired?

- No. - No?

We're almost finished.

Let's go on.

At one point

the driver'll stop at a reataurant

and he'll eat a sandwich.

She watches him eating very attentively

and she talks about his hands.

She says,

"I can't bear a man who touches me with such hands.

"So damaged, So dirty.

"Never, never."

He laughs.

He says,

"Is that a good one?"

Yes. Like that.

Then he looks at his hands.

Then she says,

"You know, personally,

"I think Karl Marx is finished."

Then she sings again.

She closes her eyes.

She looks at things behind her eyes.

The end of the world.

He says, "Are you really from Gouchy asylum?"

She doesn't answer.

He says: "Then where're you from?"

That's it. She doesn't answer.

He says, "I need to know. I have a right to know.

"I've the right to ask for your papers.

She cries?

No, she's not always crying.

He says, "There's nothing at where you got on.

"Nothing out of sight.

"So? Who are you?"

He waits for her answer.

He waits for her answer.

Yes. She answers,

"I don't know how to answer.

"I can't get your logic.

"If someone asks me who I am, I'm confused."

He says, "Ah...

"I suspected something."

She says, "I can start loving. Loving you.

"Loving. All the time.

"Screaming. Loving.

"Abraham, or you.

"Everything.

"Or nothing.

"Nothing."

There she asks to get off the truck.

This is the countryside. Not a house.

She wants to get off and she screams.

She's afraid?

Of what?

To be brought to Gouchy asylum.

He says,

"What do you want actually?"

That's it. She said she doesn't know.

In the film,

someone'd say,

"There's such a woman."

"Every evening, she stops cars, trucks.

"Then she tells her life story to whoever picks her up.

"Every evening,

"she recounts her life for the first time.

"It's more or less listened to.

"But no one really cares."

What'd she look like?

What does she look like?

Little.

Lean.

Grey.

Banal.

She has that nobility of banality.

She's invisible.

Someone'd say that, yes.

Someone'd say,

"There's such a woman.

"Every evening, she stops cars, trucks.

"Then she tells her life story for the first time. "

For example, a waitress of the restaurant

at dusk would recognize her.

Or a road user

who'd recognize her.

She wouldn't know that people talk about her.

Abraham ...

Where is Abraham?

She talks about him, all the time

But no one knows him.

She goes down.

She speaks one last time,

then she gets off.

She'd speak one last time.

She'd say she made mistakes all her life.

Cry when she should laugh.

Laugh when she should cry.

Cry when she should cry.

She says,

"The world be doomed.

"It be doomed."

She'd go down. He'd let her.

Then he'd drive off.

That's all we know of her.

They wouldn't exist for one reason or another.

The story is then stopped.

It happened for years,

in the past.

We couldn't know what were behind the clarity of words.

The clarity of words was obscured.

We no longer read anything.

We no longer see anything.

Nothing.

Revolution.

Class struggle.

Dictatorship of the proletariat.

Nothing.

It is a hill. A gentle slope.

The forest. Above it, the sky is clear, naked.

Blue. No wind.

The sun is very strong.

Fixed. Ferocious.

The color that dominates is dark green

that's yellowed by the heat,

the salt of the air.

The sea is there.

Cracking dry soil.

It's summer.

Very slowly, a truck goes across it all.

Then it disappears.

It leaves behind a rumpling of thorny bushes.

It's the wind caused by the passing truck

that makes dead summer plants squeak.

The truck's gone.

We wait for the accident that'll fill up the forest.

This is the sound of something passing.

We don't know who.

Or what.

Then it stops.