Jean Dujardin: Drama “On the Way” in the cinema: The reconquest of freedom

Eight meters was enough to break my ribs, my vertebrae and my skull. Eight meters was enough to age 50 years.” These bitter words come from the mouth of the travel writer Sylvain Tesson, who went on a fascinating journey through the Himalayas together with the photographer and filmmaker Vincent Munier in the award-winning documentary film “The Snow Leopard”.

What few people know, however, is that years before, in 2012, 42-year-old Tesson fell drunk from a balcony railing, survived seriously injured and laboriously fought his way back to life on a 1,300-kilometer hike across France.

He wrote a book about it, which Denis Imbert has now made into a film with Oscar winner Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) in the lead role, although he does not slavishly stick to the original.

The main character in the film is not called Sylvain, but Pierre. Little by little we learn his story through flashbacks and through conversations with people he meets on his hiking trip. Before his accident, the successful writer and adventurer was a real philanderer who sometimes carelessly gained access to his friends’ apartments via the balcony railing. In addition, Pierre had a massive alcohol problem before he slipped and fell during such an action.

His publisher declared him crazy when Pierre told him shortly after his hospital stay – still leaning on a cane – that he planned to hike the so-called “Diagonale du vide”. This imaginary line right through the least populated areas of France is sometimes extremely difficult. But Pierre wants to hike this “path” from the southern Mercantour Park via the Massif Central to the sea to the coast of Normandy within just under three months.

Armed with two Nordic walking sticks, the stubborn adventurer sets out to “escape the city’s machinery and the captivity of dead screens along hidden paths.” But he starts to give up for the first time after just 17 kilometers. His particularly damaged leg doesn’t work as well as he wants. But Pierre, who is credibly portrayed by Dujardin, doesn’t give up. He usually sleeps outdoors and doggedly fights his way through scree slopes, meadows and forests.

The author notes his thoughts during the tour de force as usual, but for him this hike is primarily a journey to himself. Pierre has sworn off alcohol and is thinking about his life and his relationships. You can often hear his self-reflections off-screen: “When fear knocks on the door and you have the courage to open it, you will find that no one is standing in front of it.”

In impressive Cinemascope images, camerawoman Magali Silvestre de Sacy captures his journey through sparsely to unpopulated areas of France. That’s why you should definitely watch the film in the cinema.

However, Pierre’s introspection, which we experience in flashbacks, could have been a little more in-depth. Neither his relationship with his late mother, who was also an adventurer, nor that with his last girlfriend, who leaves him while he is in the hospital, can be truly understood.

It’s good that Pierre meets other people every now and then and walks part of the way with them. A sequence in which he meets a young man after a not entirely safe fall is particularly touching. In his own way, Dylan (Dylan Robert) seems just as lost as Pierre. When they say goodbye to each other after a few days, you can clearly feel the pain of parting between two people who met by chance and got involved with each other.

One would have liked to have learned a little more from Pierre’s fleeting but warm encounters with farmers and villagers who are affected by rural exodus, whose picturesque home villages are deserted and whose medical care is no longer guaranteed. But the short conversations already give an idea of ​​the great losses we will still face in many areas of Europe.

The great dangers that Pierre exposes himself to become clear again and again. So once he was twice as lucky when he suffered an epileptic seizure as a result of his serious accident. By chance, an old friend and companion is present who can get help, but only because they are not exactly on the inhospitable top of a mountain.

Still quite macho, but still much more likeable, the reformed Pierre writes in his diary towards the end: “I got the most important thing back: the right to run away and conquer the bride who never disappoints you: freedom.”

Regardless of whether you call freedom a bride or a groom – Pierre’s hike through untouched nature definitely awakens immense wanderlust in these gray November days.

“On the way”; France 2023. Director: Denis Imbert, book: Denis Imbert, Diastème. With: Jean Dujardin. 95 min. Start: November 30th.