Germinal

A splendid evocation of Emile Zola's most celebrated novel, this film adaptation by director Claude Berri chronicles the tragic aftermath of French industrialization, as miners and bourgeoisie do battle for economic survival. Berri's conscientious fidelity to the 1885 novel was probably inevitable--it's virtually a sacred text in France--but the film nevertheless emerges as a lament for the ruin of the modern European Left.

Northern France, during an economic slump in the 1860s. The massive Voreux mine, where modern steam-engines and cast-iron machinery combine incongruously with horse-drawn carts and rickety wooden towers, is first seen at night, through the ...