The Crowd Is Dead, Long Live the Crowd!

ERIKA BALSOM

for RMC 1. It was a total coincidence and yet it felt freighted with meaning: when I returned to the cinema at the end of August after months of suffering with the small screen, the first two films I saw began with crowd scenes. The streets of London were eerily empty as I walked to the Genesis, but as soon as Les misérables (2019) began, the streets of Paris were full. France had won the 2018 World Cup and the city was alive with celebration. The image of so many young people of colour waving so many French flags was a succinct and spectacular way for director Ladj Ly to stage the problem of national belonging and its relation to race, coloniality, and inequality. Since the Revolution, the body politic…

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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 85 - Winter 2021

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