Review of the film “Descent into the Abyss” by Mathieu Toury

The film “Descent into the Abyss” (Gueules noires) by Mathieu Toury is in theaters. To my deepest disappointment Mikhail Trofimenkov, what at first seemed like a social horror film to him turned out to be just a horror film.

The first half hour of “Descent into the Abyss” evoked a feeling of déjà vu in the good sense of the word. Almost thirty years ago, the audience of the Cannes Film Festival was depressed by the powerful film of the Romanian classic Lucian Pintile “Too Late”. The action there took place mainly in the belly of the most terrible and most dangerous mine in Romania: some evil force, hiding in a labyrinth of adits, literally gutted one miner after another.

Likewise, in Mathieu Toury’s case, the camera practically never gets out into the light of day from the depths of the most terrible and most dangerous mine in Northern France in the department of Nord-Pas-de-Calais. True, the action is dated 1956, and the prologue is generally dated 1856, but the working conditions and their impact on the psyche of the miners are indistinguishable from the Romanian circumstances of 1996. It’s just that by 1990 in Northern France all the mines would be closed. And everything is the same. Under the ground, time does not flow and does not even trail one foot after another. It seemed to have frozen forever: a century here, a century here – no difference.

The working class of both Pintile and Turi is equally reduced to a semi-animal state. By the way, the original title of the film is much more expressive than the faceless “Descent into the Abyss.” “Black muzzles”, “black mouths” – these were the names in France for miners whose skin was forever ingrained with coal dust. Not exactly like people, but almost lepers, branded by their work.

The principle of “die yourself, but help a friend” can work at a fatal moment, when it is still too late to help someone out. But in everyday life, the maxim “you die today, and I die tomorrow” works rather. And somewhere there, behind the bend of the adit, like Pintile, there lurks such an evil force that the most brutal miner in its bony embrace seems like a helpless toy kitten.

The most powerful and, no matter how boring it may sound, historical and educational scene of “Descent into the Abyss”, however, takes place not in a hellish dungeon, but under the shining sky of Morocco. The main character of the film, Amir (Amir El Kasem), a big guy who speaks fluent French – and is therefore suspicious of his potential employers – comes running to review volunteers who dream of going to France to work in the mines.

This display of working “cattle” cannot be called anything other than the slave market of the mid-twentieth century. Those who are attracted to buyers are given a green stamp on their chest. For those who are rejected, red.

And for the time being it seems that the underground Evil in “Descent into the Abyss” will turn out to be a social metaphor. Why else would it be worth making this whole fuss about the slave-owning nature of developed capitalism? And even with a clear anti-colonial note. It’s no coincidence that the hero is Moroccan? It’s time to remember that just in 1956, Morocco completed its armed liberation from French rule and the whole of North Africa was in flames.

Lucian Pintile brilliantly maintained the social note to the end. His underground evil was a metaphor for the wild political practices of Ceausescu’s successors. They equipped pogrom expeditions of miners to Bucharest, who carried out protesting students from the capital’s squares with pickaxes and axes. It seems that Turi is about to give birth to a political metaphor, but that was not the case.

A very special professor, Berthier (Jean-Hugues Anglade), shows up at the mine and needs samples of certain minerals that are only accessible at a kilometer depth. But, as you can easily guess from the very first minutes of his presence on the screen, he is interested in ancient chthon. At a kilometer depth lie mysterious pictograms from almost antediluvian times, the tomb of the “real God,” known as the “devourer of souls,” and piles of skeletons in decayed armor.

In general, inarticulate mystical gobbledygook begins to flow from the screen, illustrated by cheap special effects. That we, detached but talking heads, haven’t seen enough in B-movies? And no matter how hard Turi tries to squeeze out of us a tear of solidarity with Amir and his comrades, we really only feel sorry for the blind white horse on which the ancient Evil tested the sharpness of its ancient fangs and claws.