Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine is a film based around humanity and how sometimes wanting happiness leads to a miserable life. The three main characters in this film, Jacques Lantier, Severine, and Roubaud all have a good and bad side to them. Though all three commit some kind of bad deed, the audience can't help but feel bad for them as well. Before I go on with this idea, lets first take a look at the three characters. Lantier: In the video above we see the opening scenes of the film and this is where we are first introduced to the first main character, Lantier. As the video goes on, we can see how happy and immersed Lantier and his partner are. They seem to be enjoying their job and the train that they use. Matthew Sorrento's article talks about how Lantier, "operates his train like the captain of a ship, even referring to it as a female and by name" This passion for his train and his job is what makes him stand out as a normal working class man that is just trying to make a living. Underneath all that is his mental condition, which leads him into a daze and ultimately leads to the death of Severine. Afterwards he goes back to work and decides to commit suicide after he can't take it anymore. Severine: Severine is another character that plays a big role in the film. She is the wife of Roubaud, but after he finds out that she was having an affair with M. Grandmorin, he decides to kill him. Doing so leads to a sad and lonely Severine, who has lost all love for her husband and wants to run away. This leads her to fall in love with Lantier, who in the end is the one to kill her and not her husband. During their time together, Severine asks Lantier to kill her husband so that they can run away and live together. This obviously doesn't work out and in the end, Lantier kills her and himself. Roubaud: Roubaud is the third main character in this film and he is the lead character for the first part of the film. We first see Roubaud as a honest man that loves his wife. This changes after he finds out about the affair with M. Grandmorin and he turns his anger towards his wife. During this scene we see Roubaud brutally hitting and throwing Severine across the room. This scene shows a darker side to Roubaud and it only gets darker as he goes and kills M. Goodmorin. From that point on, Roubaud changes and starts to spend a lot of time gambling. He is depressed and his wife is afraid of him, so he spends the rest of the film wondering around aimlessly and without any passion to live anymore. "All three principal characters, Lantier, Severine, and Roubaud, are driven by some unexplained inner compulsions to do things that can only make themselves and others around them miserable." This comment from The Film Sufi is a great way to sum up the three main characters. All three start off the film with signs that they are good people, but because of their actions, they soon become miserable and devastated. This leads me back to the beginning when I mentioned the good and bad sides to the three characters and how the audience has mixed emotions for them. This film's biggest success is with its characters and how they cannot be considered good or bad. Instead they resemble a more realistic view of people and how people act in different situations. Unless you are a saint, there will never be a time that a person in the real world has never done anything bad. This realism is what makes it hard for the audience to call any of the three characters, "villains". Lets take a look at Lantier first. He is a middle class working man that loves his job, but he is dealing with a mental condition. He saves both Roubaud and Severine from the police and eventually falls in love with Severine. From there he is told to kill Roubaud and only then can he finally have Severine for himself. Just as Lantier is about to do it, he losses his nerves and doesn't go through with it. This leads to Severine leaving him and telling him that, "I have nothing left to hope for with you. Tomorrow will be just like yesterday: the same grief and sorrow. It really doesn't matter. What happens, happens. All I can do is go on living my miserable life until Roubaud kills me." This leads Lentier to reconsider the offer and he decides to kill Roubaud. Just before it looks like Roubaud is going to enter the room, we see Lentier freeze up and go mad. Eventually stabbing Severine and killing her. After he realizes what he has done, he leaves and when he arrives at work, he tells his friend about it. From there we see a few more scenes of the train moving along, before Lantier finally losses it and jumps off the train. The video above shows this scene. Lantier is an interesting character to judge because he is a good man but his mental condition and his love for Severine leads him to his demise. Though he wanted to kill Roubaud, he can't take all the blame because Severine was manipulating him and forcing his hand. As for him killing Severine, that can't be blamed on him because of his mental condition. So instead, the audience is left feeling a mix reaction of sadness and anger for this character, who only wanted to love Severine and be with her. Moving on the Severine, we see another theme in play here, and that is of manipulation. Severine seems like an innocent wife and at first the audience feels bad for her and how she is treated and beat by Roubaud. Then as the story progresses, we see her manipulating all the men around her and that eventually leads to her death. After the murder of M. Grandmorin, Severine stays away from her husband and instead falls for Lantier. From there, she keeps bringing up how badly M. Grandmorin and Roubaud treated her, and how great it would be to be able to leave with Lantier. This manipulation leads to Lantier deciding to kill Roubaud, who he ends up not killing, only to have Severine leave him. The next time we see Severine, she is again with another man and they are dancing. This leads to Lantier confronting her and eventually leads to her death. The audience has a hard time determining what to feel about her, in the beginning you feel bad for her because she is beat and lonely. Then you feel anger towards her as you see her manipulating Lantier. This changes again in the final moments, when she is screaming and running away from Lantier. When she is killed, the audience is left with a void of feelings. Even if she was manipulative, she still died a tragic death and lived a hard life. This lack of a proper feeling towards her is what makes the film stand out. The final character that has a mixed good and bad side, is Roubaud. He starts off as a good man that is happy to see his wife. This changes instantly as we see him beating his wife because of her affair. Soon after, he kills M. Grandmorin and makes her an accomplish in the murder, in order to bond them together. From this point on, the audience has hatred towards him and they don't care if his wife cheats on him with Lantier. Though this hatred carries on for most of the middle part of the film, the audience soon starts feeling sorry for him. He starts gambling and walking around depressed and without life. As Geoffrey O'Brien puts it, "What is finally most haunting in this movie are the faces: the sorrowful frowns of Ledoux, as he walks somnambulistically through the wreckage of his life ..." O'Brien makes a good comment here and the audience really starts feeling bad for the guy. Sure he killed someone and beat his wife, but she also did cheat on him not once, but twice. I think what really gets to the audience is this feeling that he is going to commit suicide or be killed, but in the end he is the one that survives. It's a bit ironic to think about, because both Lantier and Severine wanted to live and be happy together. Meanwhile it looks like Roubaud is just letting life pass by and waiting for death to come. Then in the end, he comes home to find his wife killed and we see him totally break down. This character might seem like the biggest villain, but in the end he might have been the biggest victim. He loved his wife and only did the things he did because of her affair and his strong jealousy. In the end, I feel that Roubaud suffered the most throughout the film and committed the lesser evil, per say. Meanwhile Severine had affairs and manipulated her men. Lantier isn't innocent either, he knew Severine was married, he wanted to kill Roubaud, and he knew about his condition. Overall, this film does a good job at providing three main characters that are neither good or bad, but instead they are realistic and human. They all have good intentions and are good people, but events throughout the film cause the characters to change and do things they normally wouldn't. Overall, this film has a lot of themes and hidden messages. This film portrays a more realistic take on the world and how tragic news or mental conditions can change a person and make him do something that he regrets. This film's greatest achievement is its ability to make you not hate a specific character, but instead have mixed feelings about them all. Throughout the film we see many times where a woman is beat or ignored by the man, but then the woman gets revenge by manipulating the man or cheating on him. Which makes it hard to feel bad for anyone, when it seems that everyone is out to hurt someone else. This method of portraying all the characters as both victims and villains, is something that is not done very often. In the end, this film will take you for an emotional ride and just as you think you know what emotion to place on a character, it chances it up again.
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