An epidemic. Mass enclosures. Politicians who refuse to do the right thing for the public good for fear of affecting their votes. A speech on personal freedom and the future controller of the State and fascism. Albert Camus published At fish In 1947, but today, five years after living a global pandemic, some of the themes of his argument sound like something we have lived. No dystopia. In our own quarantine memory, see this argument on the screen in 2025 resonates different.
The Georges Script-March Benamo, in charge of adapting At fish To a series that since May 1 is available on demand in telephone operators and platforms that include the AMC Selektcon channel: “We wrote it during the Covid, and we felt that Camus had perfectly captured everything that was happening around us. We had to think about what we put in the center. Then we began to wander on whether to place ourselves again in Oran (Algeria), and if I return to the book. And that was precisely the key, because fascism was not only present in those forties with Nazism, but the rise of totalitarianism always remains alive, ”he recalls. “Today that message sounds even more relevant than when we write it.”
Police states are epicenter of this story that mixes Camus with the thriller and that place in the hot south of France in 2030. This time At fish It adapts to a world of corruption, telepredictors, a garbage strike, video surveillance and police violence. In the center, luckily, there is still an optimistic doctor (Frédéric Pierrot) who struggles to make the system into the problems that can lead to civilians’ deaths in a pandemic. It all starts with a beach scene that leads us to Sharkby Steven Spielberg. Because, as on that occasion, it doesn’t matter if it is for a virus or by a escualo, the true villain is again the power, who does not want to close a holiday place for not losing tourists, or for fear of its citizens.
The story is repeated. Camus, after all, was based on the cholera epidemic of Oran in 1848. The presentation of the French film market Unifrance, which the country went in January invited by the organization. “This is not science fiction. We simply live in the future, in a dystopia. It can happen not in five years, but in two.”
Actually, the idea of reviewing this classic came long. “It is a curious story, because we plan to adapt it before the Covid, and we were negotiating with the family of Camus and the Gallimard publishing house to buy the rights. Then the confinement arrived,” recalls Benamou, also in Paris. “Suddenly, the book became a best-seller Global and Netflix said: We want rights. And we had to fight them. But thanks to the protection of French public television and Catherine Camus [hija del escritor]which then accompanied us on set, chose our project. They spent a lot of money, because it was important, ”recalls that battle that suddenly became a story of David against Goliath of the television market:” His daughter ended up telling us: ‘Dad would have liked him. “
At that time as an uneasiness of 2020, the viewer wanted to understand what was happening. The movie Infection, From Steven Soderbergh, one of the most preocognitive, also became one of the most viewed on platforms. Soon series like Gray anatomyThis Is Us, Black-ish, The Good Doctor o The Conners The covid, time and tone that has recently remembered from their hospital The Pitt. And, since then, the virus has become recurring material for horror works (Host, Sick), Science fiction (Immune), romance (Fuego, Timeshare), comedy (The bubble), thrillers (Kim), human dramas (Help, Here) and politicians (This England) or even banks (Confined). In the next Cannes, director Ari Aster will also give his own vision to what happened in 2020 in Eddingtonalthough it does not seem that the viewer is as interested as the filmmakers in reviving that recent past.
A At fish His theme did help him, and the four episodes managed to lead the audiences of traditional French television with around three million viewers on average in the public France 2. It helped that today it would not have to explain concepts such as group immunity or the Darwinist plan that the series politicians start up. “When you hear Trump say that you have to get rid of the poor, who is not strong, you see that all that is still close. And the future worries a lot,” explains the Algerian Benamou.
But, despite the fact that Camus’s material was nourished, they also had to update their gaze through female voices and characters of different ages in a choral cast, as well as including action and suspense scenes, without wandering so much, on the other hand, in the philosophical debate about God and goodness. “It is a television series, so if they are not hooked in the first 15 minutes, they change channel,” Garceau acknowledges. “In addition, we made the virus not transmitted through the air, so that such good actors did not have to wear a mask, which is something little cinematographic.” The mask fattening was also learned in the Covid. “And that real fascism is a constant threat. When you do not debates, but insults by networks, the totalitarianism that Camus anticipated. It predicted it very well,” Benamou concludes about that book that his author considered had been “totally failed” by the “excess” of ambition.
Related news :