“Germinal” on France 2: how the screenwriter modernized Zola’s work while respecting the novel – franceinfo

It was a premiere night for the new series Germinal (six episodes), whose first opuses were broadcast on France 2 on Tuesday, October 27. Julien Lilti, the screenwriter of the series, had confessed to us, a few hours before the broadcast in prime time, that he would not be in front of his television because he had already seen each episode countless times. But he is one of the first to have received very good audience figures (4.4 million people followed episodes 1 and 2 live), hoping that viewers are hanging on following this ambitious adaptation of the film. ‘artwork monumental by Emile Zola.

In Germinal, the novelist tells how settlers revolted at the Montsou mine in the North at the end of the 19th century when the Compagnie des Mines, arguing the economic crisis, decreed a reduction in wages. Etienne Lantier (Louis Peres), Antoine Chaval (Jonas Bloquet), Catherine Maheu (Rose-Marie Perreault), La Maheude (Alix Poisson) and Le Maheu (Thierry Godard) are the main characters. The series follows this narrative by revisiting certain aspects.

Making a TV series of Zola’s novel, published in 1885 and which is the thirteenth opus in the Rougon-Macquart series, could have looked like a puzzle. How to rewrite such a monumental literary work? And how to position yourself in relation to the film directed by Claude Berri in 1993 with an exceptional cast: Depardieu, Miou-Miou, Renaud?

Julien Lilti, who became known as the co-writer of the series Hippocrates, thinks that Germinal rather “a gift” To adapt. This is thanks to Zola’s talent for describing a setting – the coal mines – and the men who inhabit it. “Zola is an immense novelist for the description. There is a lot of material. Afterwards, we wanted to adapt it with our look, more contemporary. We wanted to make Germinal a great show, a breathtaking story, a Western-style social fresco and also bring the viewer into deep truth with the characters “.

Important element compared to the film of Claude Berri, which had taken word for word a large part of the dialogues written by Zola, Julien Lilti and David Hourrègue chose to rewrite the dialogues to better stick to the language of the 21st century.

In this series that they wanted to be contemporary, while respecting the spirit of the book, the screenwriter and the director have transposed, through the miners’ fight of the 1880s, some of the issues shaking our society. “We started writing at the end of the yellow vests movement and we finished at the end of the first confinement. The series was then shot in the fall and winter of 2020. When we reread Germinal, we say to ourselves that it is pretty crazy the social progress that has been made in 150 years. But we also measure the heritage, of which we are the guardians. On the other hand, and this is the line of the series, we tell ourselves that things have not changed that much with inequalities that are still so difficult to resolve in our society. There is obviously a great resonance with a movement like that of the yellow vests. Like the minors, it is a group of humans who merge into a people to demand rights “.

In Zola’s book, Antoine Chaval, one of the minors, rapes Catherine Maheu, a young woman. She becomes his mistress, despite Chaval’s violence. How to adapt this relationship to the screen, when Zola had sent the rape scene in a few lines in his novel? “Catherine undergoes a sexual assault from Chaval, then becomes her lover. With our gaze today, it is difficult to understand the key to the character. The only solution we have is to say” c ‘that’s how it happens in 1880 “. We wanted to allow the viewer to understand what Catherine is going to look for in this man who raped her”, Julien Lilti breathes. Catherine Maheu resists the advances of Etienne Lantier, the hero of the series, to stay with Chaval, whom the screenwriter wanted more twisted and intelligent than in Claude Berri’s film.

The book Germinal is very often studied by students in French lessons between the third and first grades. But Zola’s writing, which gives pride of place to very long descriptions, is quite difficult to access for young people (as for many adults). The adaptation of the novel into a series with contemporary codes therefore opens this literature to adolescents who are struggling to enter into Zola’s work. “Myself, I have trouble reading and it’s true that Germinal is not the easiest novel to access. Reading it again, I had the feeling that I had missed it during my schooling. And even when I reread it for the first time, I thought to myself: “there are very long descriptions”. But at the same time, Germinal is so multi-faceted that there is a lot to learn “, judge Julien Lilti.

In general, the duo he composed with the director David Hourrègue wanted to show that the entertainment “can be demanding on TV with proposals from authors that give pleasure”.

Series Germinal is broadcast from October 27 on France 2. Episodes 1 and 2 available in replay. Episodes 3 and 4, Wednesday November 3, on France 2, 9:05 p.m. The entire series is already available on the Salto streaming platform.