Faculty members are encouraged to use these films in conjunction with courses relevant to this theme. Each film raises questions about social justice, our place in our own tribes, and our personal responsibility for defining and extending these communities. That is the question raised in this hilarious comedy about two billionaire brothers who wager that anyone will rise or fall given the right surroundings. This superb adaptation of Emile Zola's 19th-century novel recounts the painful struggle of French coal miners whose occupation is both supporting them and killing them. When greedy investors lower wages, Gerard Depardieu incites his fellow workers to strike.
Local pride is on the line when the townies and the frat boys take to the track.
Interspersed with Moore's sly commentary are interviews with locals and celebrities. But the heart of the film is the way it reveals the cumulative effects of industrial ruthlessness on small- town American life. In Franco's Spain of the '60s, life for the poorest workers on the estates is feudal and brutal. A young soldier returns to the town of his youth to visit his prematurely aging peasant parents. While the director places his sympathy firmly with these innocents rather than with their morally impoverished employers, his mood is nevertheless one of elegant restraint.