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| The Marching Band's Benjamin Lavernhe as Thibaut takes up the baton during rehearsals for the orchestra in Lille Photo: UniFrance |
He adds with a genial yet knowing smile: “There are plenty of other directors doing that already without me weighing in.”
The writer/director, whose film will be released in the UK on May 16, can see why both critics and the public have opted for the easy description of “feel-good”. He says: “That makes me annoyed because it puts the film in a certain category which it isn’t. It is possible to make a popular film that works on different levels and that you can read in different ways.
“In discussions with audiences at screenings all over France and in festivals it was heartening to hear that people got the film at various levels. There was no need to take them by the hand.”
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| The Marching Band director Emmanuel Courcol: 'I’m a screenwriter first and a director second' Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival |
The Marching Band marks his third outing as a writer and director after Ceasefire (Cessez-le-feu) in 2016 and The Big Hit (Un triomphe) in 2020. There are certain similarities of theme and substance in the three films. This time around the narrative focuses on two brothers Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) and Jimmy (Pierre Lottin) who share a love of music but come from different worlds.
Thibaut is a famous conductor with Lille National Orchestra while Jimmy has a mundane job in a small former mining town where his factory is threatened with closure. They were adopted by different families, and it is only when Thibaut discovers he has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant that the siblings are reunited. Jimmy plays trombone in the local brass band and Thibaut steps in to coach them for a regional competition.
“There was nothing particularly artistic in my background. It was a bourgeois family, and I grew up in Angers. My parents listened to classical music and took part in choirs. When I told them I wanted to do theatre, they were a bit surprised, but nobody tried to stop me,” says Courcol. “I was more interested in classical music because that is what I listened to at home. It was only much later that I discover pop and rock and jazz.”
He professes an admiration for the 1996 British film, Brassed Off but stresses The Marching Band is not in any way a rehash.
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| Pierre Lottin and Benjamin Lavernhe in The Marching Band. Emmanuel Courocol: 'Although neither of the two were classically trained they both have a very good musical ear' Photo: UniFrance |
“I like a lot of British Cinema from that period including The Full Monty and so on. I love these comedies with a strong social conscious and real drama going on underneath the surface. Although The Marching Band could have taken place anywhere in France, or indeed elsewhere, the north of France and these former mining communities have lots of brass bands – more so than any other part of the country. They’re a tradition and the people are warm and friendly. This background certainly makes it feel part of the same universe as Brassed Off.
“The north also has this sense of community, this sense of camaraderie and ‘togetherness’. It seemed the ideal place to tell a story like this.” The band couldn’t resist the opportunity of attending the premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and trumpeted its success live at the end of the screening.
Courcol started his professional journey as an actor on stage under the direction of theatrical heavy-weights including Roger Planchon and Robert Hossein. Gradually he turned to writing scripts and earned himself a César nomination for best original screenplay for Philippe Lioret'a migrant drama Welcome.
“I’m a screenwriter first and a director second. What my co-writer Irène Muscari and I both wanted was to focus on the central thread, which is the brothers’ relationship through a story that has a both musical setting but also the social setting in the north of France. There’s also illness, but illness is not the centre of the film. Far from it. The centre of the film is how the brothers’ relationship is built through this musical encounter.
“I felt a need to make amends, probably due to my own past, which the actors brought to life. And the character played by Benjamin wants to make amends because he’s more privileged than his brother. He had an education that let him achieve his dream of being a top-level musician, he feels that fate has been unfair, and he tries to fix it. He tries to do good! And I try to make the viewers happy.”
He wrote the part of Jimmy with Pierre Lottin in mind although the actor didn’t know. “The role was tailor-made for him. He’s self-taught, a real musician. And Benjamin? When I was searching for the brother, I investigated Benjamin to see what kind of music he had been involved in. He had been in a show at the Comédie Française called Serge, which was built around the songs of Serge Gainsbourg. So, although neither of the two were classically trained they both have a very good musical ear.”
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| Emmanuel Courcol and co-writer Irène Muscari at the launch of The Marching Band at last year’s Cannes Film Festival: 'It is possible to make a popular film that works on different levels and that you can read in different ways' Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival |
“In The Marching Band I wanted to find a way for these brothers to meet: a bone-marrow transplant felt like a good excuse. It allowed me to develop a script full of different themes and ruminations on life. Thibaut meets Jimmy and starts thinking about the existence that could have been his. He sees him and wonders: what if things were the other way around? There is a sense of urgency because of what he is experiencing, but it was never about the illness itself. It was about his trajectory.”
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| The Marching Band poster |
There is also something about the power of art to heal and raise the spirits. “Society is better with art and culture, for sure. But the power of Art is not something automatic. I treated the subject in The Big Hit, with Kad Merad, in which a group of prison inmates bond together in creating a theatre performance that lifts them out of the everyday.” Co-writer Muscari had first-hand experience of working within the penal system.
Courcol admits that having been an actor (and he still takes on the occasional role) has given him a distinct advantage when it comes to directing. “I don’t need to have long discussions or in-depth theorising. It’s more instinctive. And, of course, I realise just how much trust an actor requires from the director because often they feel very exposed. I tend to give them plenty of liberty …”
