Directed by Belgian film maker Stijn Coninx, Daens is one of the great movies about working class history and the enduring social relations of capitalism. Set in the late 19th century in the textile town of Aalst, the film has many striking political and aesthetic similarities with Germinal, Claude Berri's film adaptation of Emile Zola's famous novel about the struggle of French mining communities in the late 1860s. Daens is also the representation on screen of a novel which vigorously exposes the true nature of developing capitalism and which sides openly with the working class.
The story of Daens ostensibly centres on the priest, Father Adolf Daens, whose sympathy for the plight of the proletariat has him marked out as a 'difficult man' by the Catholic hierarchy. However, this is by no means a film about a benevolent hero rushing to the aid of helpless workers. From first to last Coninx is concerned that his camera lingers on the conditions of work and life of the textile workers, and that the screen is filled with their growing defiance and resistance.
Perhaps the film's greatest strength is the absolutely stark, yet totally convincing way in which it represents the various social forces within capitalist society.
The French speaking company directors sit in a plush drawing room discussing the need to deal with the recession by introducing the 'Scottish system', whereby the men in the textile factories are replaced by lower paid women workers. In absolute contrast with the opulence of the dress and surroundings of the bourgeoisie, and in contrast with the vivid light in which Coninx bathes them, the workers of Aalst, who speak Flemish, work and live in an all embracing gloom which is pierced only by their own struggle.
In addition to the excellent cinematic reflection of the central class divide, Coninx also brilliantly weaves into his film the decadent affluence of the Catholic Church, the monarchy and the Catholic Party. The world which these people inhabit is visibly a million miles away from that of the workers whose lives are so profoundly affected by the conversations their rulers have over their extravagant dinners.
The way in which the decisions of the ruling class manifest themselves within Aalst itself reveal the full political power of Daens. When a young socialist from Ghent comes to Aalst to sell his papers advocating political strikes for universal suffrage, he faces arrest by the gendarmes and the violence of the far right street thugs, the Bucks, enlisted as Red baiters by the vile factory foreman, Schmitt. When the workers take the body of a young child killed in the factory to show to a group of parliamentarian inspectorswho Daens and his newspaper publisher brother have succeeded in having sent to the townthey are attacked by sabre wielding mounted gendarmes.
This violent scene is evocative of the procession led by Father Gapon in the 1905 Russian Revolution. This is of considerable significance to the film. It marks in the movie, as Gapon's procession marked for the Russian working class, a major turning point. Just as the violently suppressed attempt of the Russian workers to petition the tsar broke the illusions of many, so the action of the Belgian state assists the Aalst workers in a process of developing their own political independence.
The reviewer for the British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound referred to Daens as a 'monochrome vision of social and political relations' and a 'candy floss approach to history'. That this is abundantly not the case is very well reflected in Coninx's skilful treatment of the changing consciousness of the workers.
Led by the most courageous 'Daensist', a young woman worker, Nette Scholliers, the workers do not automatically rally to the socialists' call for self emancipation. Rather, they look to Daens's newspaper, to the parliamentary committee, to Daens as their representative in parliament and to the popebefore bitter experience teaches them, and Daens, that, as the new defrocked priest himself says, 'In this turbulent struggle there's only one enemy, those who exploit you; and only one ally, those who suffer beside you and with you