On the Dardenne brothers' approach to narrative and why their method is the most morally rigorous in contemporary cinema.

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne work with a handheld camera that follows their protagonists at close range, often from behind, with a physical persistence that creates both intimacy and discomfort. They almost never use non-diegetic music. Their stories unfold in real time without ellipsis.

The effect of this method is to deny the viewer the emotional distance that conventional filmmaking provides. When something terrible happens in a Dardenne film, you cannot manage your response with the grammar of convention — the cut to another scene, the score telling you how to feel, the privileged narrative position that allows you to understand more than the characters do.

The Son (2002) is the film where this method is most completely realized. Its subject — a man teaching carpentry who discovers that his student killed his son — would be unbearable in conventional thriller or drama form. The Dardennes' method strips away every layer of mediation and leaves you in the same state of moral suspense as the protagonist: you don't know what he will do, and you don't know what you would do either.