“Thieves of the Wood,” Netflix, 2020 or “The Gang of Jan de Lichte”
Set in
1750s during the reign of Louis 15th, this short 10 episode series
hints at the complete revolution coming to France’s cities, rural areas and towns. The story is based on a real history of an 8
or so year rebellion in Flanders, now Belgium,
dominated by France
at the time. It is set close to Brussels and Bruges, near Germany,
in a small town called Aalst
run by a set of cruel and privileged bastards.
They nearly always wear ridiculous wigs as some mark of nobility.
The local ruling elite’s method is to charge civilians with petty crimes and banish them to the woods, then offer them almost slave-like conditions to survive. Road-building and canal-building projects are their prizes. Sort of like the Jim Crow south. In one monologue, the mayor of the town rhapsodizes over American slavery as the way to go. He says: “We’ll create our own slaves!”
On the other side are the many poor wretches who live in huts in the woods, trying to survive through robbery, running a low-end bar/brothel or working for the town bosses on their projects. The people of the wood die of starvation or are worked to death. Orphan girls are raped by the town’s best citizens. Innocent people and children are sent to the gallows because the real culprits cannot be caught. In effect normal 18th century fare.
A woman is one of the leaders of the woodfolk; not afraid to wield a knife or drink some ale. Two beautiful women feature, one being forced into a bad marriage with a clownish rich boy; another risen from the orphanage to a nice apartment. There are two predictable cross-class romances. A group of criminals work a better bar/brothel in town and supply the town’s nobility with their cheap labor. A terrible Catholic priest, who functions as the lords' ideological leader, runs a violent exorcism and approves of torture. A ‘liberal’ bailiff, Baru, is appointed to the town and is lectured by the mayor on how things are really done in Aalst. Baru attempts to modernize the police, use facts and show compassion, but is ultimately drawn into the sorry mess when he becomes a target.
Their nemesis is Jan de Licht, a supposed murderer and deserter from the French Army who arrives back in the woods to be with his brother Tinke. Jan is a sort of modern Robin Hood who survives, then organizes the people of the woods, including a gypsy camp, to go to war against the town’s ruling citizens. Everything is shared equally in their primitive commune. This story is a bit reminiscent of another rural rebel in the film “The Age of Uprising – the Legend of Michel Kholhass” which was set in the 1600s’ France. (Reviewed below.) Like so many, Jan’s rebellion ultimately fails.
A bit slow-moving, melodramatic and too short compared to history, the series nevertheless tells you why the greedy rural elite became targets of a fed-up peasantry and towns-folk in the revolutionary wave that rocked France in the 1790s.
Other prior blog reviews on this subject: “The Age of Uprising – the Legend of Michel Kholhass,” “The Permanent Guillotine,” “Citizen Tom Paine,” “Two Days, One Night” or the words “France” or “Belgium.”
The Cultural Marxist
September 29, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment