The Empire

Bruno Dumont · 2024 · 110 minutes

In a picturesque fishing village in Northern France, the birth of a special child unleashes a secret war between extraterrestrial forces of good and evil.

Programmer’s Note

“I’ve long wanted to articulate an understanding of the meaning of good and evil, but this time I wanted to approach it through the popular American method of cinema, which is about entertainment and distraction. I don’t mean to mock that, either. I like popular cinema, and my intention is not to point a finger at the Americans and say, ‘Oh là là, look at how stupid they are.'” — Bruno Dumont, on The Empire

When Bruno Dumont’s The Life of Jesus won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, it signaled the start of a two-decade run of films by the writer/director that investigate age-old moral questions (Dumont began as a philosopher) by blending stark naturalism with flights of transcendence. Because of its often-explicit violence and sexual content, Dumont’s early work was deemed by critic James Quandt to be part of the “New French Extremity” movement, alongside directors like Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat.

And then a funny thing happened — quite literally. In 2014, Dumont made Li’l Quinquin, a four-part mini-series that remained true to some of his earlier thematic interests and stylistic quirks — most notably, working with non-professional actors in Bailleul on the northernmost coast of France — but now suffused with absurdist, laugh-out-loud comedy. (The twitchy police detectives first introduced in Li’l Quinquin make a welcomed return at the end of The Empire.)

It wouldn’t be quite accurate to describe Dumont’s latest, The Empire, as a spoof of Star Wars and Dune, because Dumont is as serious as ever about his art. The protagonist of his debut, The Life of Jesus, is a murderous bastard named Freddy, and it’s no coincidence that the magical child at the heart of The Empire‘s strange mythology shares the same name. The Empire lands somewhere between Friedrich Nietzsche, Joseph Campbell, and Mel Brooks — a goofball comedy about the very origins of evil.