Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.
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Georges Danton (Gérard Depardieu) returns from his post French revolutionary rural existence to a Paris where the excesses and indifferences of the monarchy have now been replaced by those of the committees responsible for governing the country. He is determined to galvanise the population to rise against this new form of tyranny, but that means confronting his ailing friend Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak) who is trying to keep the revolution from imploding and, initially at any rate, to keep Danton alive. With the cauldron in danger of boiling over though, and with conspirators whispering in just about every ear, it soon becomes clear to Robespierre that the only way he can be sure of Danton is to relieve him of his head. This won’t be easy, though. He has friends but he also has the ear of the increasingly disgruntled masses, so it’s going to take some clever legerdemain if he is to pull it off without bringing everything down on top of his own head instead, or maybe even as well. It’s a good looking film, this, with plenty of attention to the detail. It’s also quite an effective evaluation of the pointlessness of oratory when you are either speaking into the wind, or when you are philosophising about grand ideology whilst folks can’t get bread, let alone cake, to feed their family. There is a well portrayed survival of the fittest, and/or most duplicitous, illustrated here and it busily demonstrates that mob rule really only ever encourages other mobs to have a go, too. This also has another distinct benefit in that as a biopic, there is a great deal of latitude available to Andrzej Wajda. That’s not least because accurate records of who did what, where and to whom don’t exist so he can fill his boots, creatively, in the telling of a story of betrayal, hypocrisy and survival. An on-form Depardieu delivers his set piece speeches passionately and in the end offers us a convincing appraisal of the decline and fall of a man of principle in a mire of intellectual squalor.
