Carrère Emmanuel - The Kingdom

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One of the challenges of translating works by Emmanuel Carrre is finding the right balance between his personal use of his many sources and the text of the sources themselves. Where no translation exists, I translate directly. Where several translations exist, I seek the one that in my view best corresponds to Carrres version. So, for example, I use the Bible of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Robert Fagless translation of The Odyssey , Charles E. Wilbours translation of Ernest Renan, Grace Fricks translation of Marguerite Yourcenar, and David L. Schindler Jr.s translation of Charles Pguy. Where Carrre distances himself somewhat from the works he cites, I go to the English sources and tweak them accordingly. And when he uses his own words, as notably with Edgar Allan Poes The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, I leave the text behind and follow him as he strikes out on his own.

(PARIS, 2011)

That spring, I collaborated on the script of a TV series. The logline ran like this: One night, in a small mountain town, some of the dead come back to life. No one knows why, nor why these dead and not others. They themselves dont even know theyre dead. They discover it in the horror-stricken faces of their loved ones, next to whom theyd like to resume their natural place. Theyre not zombies, theyre not ghosts, theyre not vampires. Its not a fantasy film, but reality. It asks the question, seriously: What would happen if this impossible event really did take place? How would you react if, coming into the kitchen, you found your adolescent girl who died three years ago pouring herself a bowl of cereal and worrying shes going to get bawled out because she came in late, without remembering anything about what happened the night before? Concretely: What would you do with your hands? What would you say?

I stopped writing fiction long ago, but I can recognize a powerful fictional device when I see it. And this was by far the most powerful one Id been offered in my career as screenwriter. For four months, I worked with the director Fabrice Gobert every day, morning to night, in a blend of enthusiasm and, often, a state of shock at the situations we created, the feelings we manipulated. Then, as far as my participation went, things took a turn for the worse with our backers. Im almost twenty years older than Fabrice, and I took less willingly than he did to having to jump through hoops for twerps with three-day beards who could have been my sons, and who pulled blas faces at everything we wrote. The temptation to say Look, you guys, if you know so well how it should be done, then do it yourselves was great. I ceded. Lacking humility and against the wise advice of Hlne, my wife, and Franois, my agent, I slammed the door halfway through the first season.

I started to regret what Id done only a couple of months later, at a dinner to which Id invited both Fabrice and Patrick Blossier, the director of photography whod created the images for my film La Moustache . I was sure hed be just right for Les Revenants and that he and Fabrice would hit it off from the start, which they did. But listening to them that night around the kitchen table talking about the series that was taking shape and the stories wed imagined in my studystories that were already becoming choices of sets, actors, and techniciansI could almost physically feel that enormous and exciting machinea film shootbeing set in motion. I said to myself that I should have been part of the adventure and that I was to blame if I wasnt. All of a sudden I grew sad, as sad as that guy Pete Best, whod been the drummer for a little Liverpool band called the Beatles and whod left the group just before it got its first recording contract, and who I figure must have spent the rest of his life regretting it. ( Les Revenants has been a huge global success. It won the International Emmy Award for best drama series and has now been remade in the United States as The Returned .)

* * *

I drank too much during that dinner. Experience has taught me that its better not to go on and on about what youre writing if you havent finished writing it, above all when youre drunk: such shared enthusiasm is sure to cost you a week of discouragement. But that night, no doubt to vent my sour grapes and show that I too was doing something interesting, I told Fabrice and Patrick about the book on the first Christians Id been working on for several years. Id put it aside to work on Les Revenants , and had just picked it up again. I gave them the story the way you pitch a series.

It takes place in Corinth, in Greece, around A.D. 50but no one, of course, suspects that theyre living in the year of our Lord. It starts with an itinerant preacher who opens a modest weavers workshop. Without leaving his loom, the man who would later be known as Saint Paul weaves his tale and, step by step, spreads it over the city. Bald, bearded, weakened by a mysterious sickness, he tells with a deep, evocative voice the story of a prophet crucified twenty years earlier in Judea. He says that this prophet came back from the dead and that his coming back from the dead is the portent of something enormous, a mutation of humanity, both radical and invisible. The contagion comes about. The strange belief radiates out from Paul in the seedy parts of Corinth, and its followers soon come to see themselves as mutants disguised as friends and neighbors: undetectable.

Fabrices eyes light up: Told like that, it sounds like vintage Dick! The science fiction author Philip K. Dick was a major reference during our screenwriting work. I can feel my audience is captivated and go a step further: yes, it sounds like Dick, and this story of the early days of Christianity is also the story of Les Revenants . What we tell in Les Revenants is the last days that Pauls followers were sure they would experience, when the dead come back to life and the judgment of the world is consummated. Its the community of outcasts and chosen ones that forms around this shocking event: a resurrection. Its the story of something impossible that nevertheless takes place. I get excited, pour myself glass after glass, insist on filling my guests glasses as well, and its then that Patrick says something thats basically pretty banal but which strikes me because it seems to come to him out of the blue, something that hes never thought about before and that takes him completely by surprise.

* * *

He says its strange, when you think about it, that normal, intelligent people can believe something as unreasonable as the Christian religion, something exactly like Greek mythology or fairy tales. In ancient times, okay: people were gullible, science didnt exist. But today! Nowadays if a guy believed stories about gods turning into swans to seduce mortals, or princesses kissing frogs that become Prince Charmings, everyone would say hes nuts. But tons of people believe in something just as outrageous and no one thinks theyre nuts. Even if you dont share their faith, you take them seriously. They play a social role, less important than in the past, but one thats respected and rather positive on the whole. Their pie-in-the-sky ideas coexist alongside perfectly level-headed activities. Presidents pay deferential visits to their leader. Really, its kind of strange, isnt it?