In
Alain Berliner’s The Wall (with English subtitles),
the year 2000 approaches in Belgium, a country of 10 million
in a territory about the same size as Maryland. Although Belgians
were ruled for nearly 1,800 years by conquerors, including
Rome, the Franks, Burgundy, Spain, Austria, and France, then
handed to Holland in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, and fought
a war of independence to establish a constitutional monarchy
by 1830, they are still divided. Dutch, spoken with a Flemish
accent, prevails in the northern part of the country, whereas
French is spoken in the southern part, known as Walloonia.
Most government business was conducted in French until a couple
of decades ago, when the country's administration was divided
into three zones (monolingual Flanders, monolingual Walloonia,
and bilingual Brussels), but the enmity between Flemings and
Walloonians remains, as we see in the early part of the film
when a Flemish woman exits from the car driven by a Walloonian.
We next see reporters asking the government what they plan
to do, as the political parties representing the Flemish and
Walloonians are deadlocked and cannot form a government for
months, but the politicians tease the reporters by saying
that a solution, then under discussion, will be found. A happy-go-lucky
French-speaking proprietor of a fried potato wagon in Brussels,
nevertheless, goes about his business as if politics played
no role in his life. He attends a New Millennium party along
with a Flemish woman, and they both fall asleep. When they
awake, it is January 1, 2000, and a wall has been built between
the Flemish and Wallonian parts of the country. Our hero,
the Walloonian potato vendor, is on the Flemish side without
a visa, in danger of arrest; he can travel without a visa
anywhere in the European community but to Flanders. When he
finds a way through the wall, his girlfriend is subject to
the same fate. The film provides a worst-case scenario of
where the country is heading, but the reception of the film
in Belgium unfortunately has not been to see the wisdom of
the message according to Berliner, who discussed the film
at a UCLA screening on June 8, 1999. MH
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