"La morsure des dieux" is not as accessible as "l'apôtre " ,but there is a connection between both works ;the latter depicted the rocky road of a muslim who ,slowly but inexorably, recanted his religion and embraced the Christian faith;the movie was a message of tolerance and owed a lot to Fayçal Safi , whose face was longing for spiritual appeasement .
In "la morsures des dieux " (check the plural) , Caron pits the Christian faith against a return to pagan religion BC ( "pagan" means "peasant" in latin , the farmer says ) ;although two scenes show the hero (François Pouron) in the church and another one is a long discussion about Christianity with the local vicar " whose flock is leaving him as time goes by "- which is objectively true-. One should add that this priest is much less convincing than the one one meets in 'l'apôtre" who returns good for evil and whose words are not platitudes by a man who drives a bourgeois car. And Juliette ,the young Christian girl (not a holier-than-thou at all) is not more interesting:she cooks for the hero,sleeps with him but doesn't convince when it comes to defending her faith .Her past and her job could have been a strong asset ,but its' not really exploited.
That's probably what the director wanted : all that the hero has is his earth ,his land which has been in his family for years and maybe for centuries and now ,stands in danger to be seized by the bank (his debts amount to 70,000 euros); and Sebastien 's love for his property is extraordinary ; his gods are pagan ,a pantheism of sorts , these of the former druids: the trees,the flowers, the sources , mother nature that keeps the ancestors ' bones under its soil ; monotheism ,to him,destroyed everything he believes in.
Revealed religion does not mean a single thing to him when he has to fight against a ruthless Civil service , a banker -whose dad , a former agricultor ,died exhausted though- ,or a supermarket manager (who could buy his vegetables and his milk from foreign countries ,where costs are lower ).
The cooperative might be a solution but the hero is not as enthusiast a his neighbors ; the farm, sold by auction ,is a particularly depressing scene.
The cinematography is splendid ,taking advantage of the Basque region ,enhancing some scenes by folk melodies of long ago , "la morsure des dieux" is definitely off the beaten track in the French cinema .Miss Caron is a director to be reckoned with.
